An article is a lengthy piece of writing, written in an expert’s point of view, aimed at explaining a topic in great detail. A blog post is a shorter piece of writing, usually in a ‘conversational’ style, aimed at updating or educating your readers, or to spark ideas and interest in your business.

Articles are produced to promote the author’s expertise and prowess at writing and research, hence why they are long. A blog post should take one subject and explain it succinctly within a few short paragraphs, written from multiple view-points to gain the comprehension of the reader.

Articles can vary in length, and even though they are online, are designed to be printed out for leisurely reading. Blog posts are meant to be read immediately. The subject should be introduced within the headline and first sentence, and the concept within the first paragraph. As most blog readers only read the first 25% of a post, or spend an average of 96 seconds, getting the jist across at the very beginning is important to achieve your post being read in full.

Twitter has minimalised this even further (hence why it’s called micro-blogging). There are just 140 characters to get your point across and capture your reader’s interest, but you do have the advantage of interaction: a tinyurl link can be added to direct the reader to a blog post or article for further reading.

Think of your blog as another platform to advertise from. Call it promoting yourself, your product and your company. But you could write endless posts providing valuable insights and top tips about your business, and even though they would be interesting reading, they are missing a vital element.

Don’t forget to post with a purpose. Is there a motive for your blogging? As well as providing something of value, guide your readers to your website, especially specific pages of your website that relate to the subject of your posts, where they can find more information.

Blogging without a focus will not make money. Structure your posts into a series, culminating into a purpose, promotion, event or special deal. Get your readers to do something in return for all this wonderful information you’ve given them!

Just like advertising, take advantage of your post’s purpose and include a call to action. Make it incentive-laden and time-dependent, with clear links or buttons to enable your readers to sign up for more information or see where to pay.

Guide your readers to specific landing pages, or squeeze pages, on your website, which must be relevant to your blog posts. There you can convert your customers into achieving a sale or signing up to an event. You could also provide special codes to particular readers to gain access to protected squeeze pages in exchange for their email addresses, and then use these permission based details to send focused communications for specific projects culminating in a sale.

Use the advantages of a blog to write varied posts with alternative persuasive text in order to attract different audiences to your squeeze pages, so you can increase your customer base. And the practicality of RSS will feed these posts to various social networking sites, giving you access to different kinds of customers.

Ask your friends through social networking either to respond favourably, recommend, forward on or retweet your promotion to increase your exposure. Test and measure to find out which posts work on specific target markets, so you can improve your next marketing campaign.

Remember marketing works with multiple messages driven home over a period of time. Communicate your expertise to a wider audience to achieve recognition, as it takes anything from 7-21 times to get results. Hence why it’s good to blog frequently in order to promote your business in as many different ways as possible.

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