It’s been almost six years since Businessweek Magazine’s cover story, “Blogs Will Change Your Business.” Since then, the blogging world has evolved and grown in ways no one could have predicted. If you’re a business still struggling to make sense of blogging, don’t miss Social Media Club Sacramento’s next workshop: Blogging for Business.

This hands-on session will be offered by local expert, Jennifer Bourn of the Sacramento web design firm Bourn Creative.

During this 90 minute presentation, Jennifer will focus on the technical aspects of building a blog:

• How to choose a blogging platform
• The differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org
• What elements are essential to developing a successful blog
• SEO tips and tricks
• Essential plugins

Jennifer will also briefly touch on best practices for developing memorable blog content that keeps readers coming back.

This is a hands-on workshop; participants are highly encouraged to bring a laptop computer. Free internet access is available.

This event technically SOLD OUT in less than 24 hours! But, if you want to attend, let me know and we’ll see about getting you on the priority waiting list!

http://www.eventbrite.com/event/1377360723/efblike

Content marketing is a form of education marketing that refers to using content that you create to market yourself and your business. Content marketing can come in the form of blog posts, articles, videos, reports, ebooks, audio CDs, video DVDs, teleseminars, webinars, and more.

But let’s be honest. At some point it is inevitable that you will run out of new, fresh, never been published before content, and then what? What happens when you have nothing new to say or write about?

The solution to this content problem are the 3 Rs of content marketing: recycle, rewrite, and redirect. These three words will teach you a great online copywriting secret… Let me explain:

If you’ve been blogging for any length of time, I can pretty much guarantee that you have old blog posts that contain great information that is still relevant and useful, but because the posts are old, they get very little or no traffic.

This is where the 3 Rs of content marketing come into play…

Recycle

Identify your oldest posts or your posts that get little or no website traffic (you can see this in your website analytics) but contain information that would still be valuable to your readers. Group them together by topic.

Rewrite

Select two or three blog articles on the same topic and rewrite them, combining the content into one super post with a killer, keyword rich headline. This post will contain more “juice” for search engine optimization purposes because it will expand your keyword cloud of related keywords and contain more content to be indexed.

Redirect

Redirect the old URLs for the old blog posts to point to the new super blog post to prevent breaking any links to those posts that may exist. You want to make sure the redirects are set to either “301″ or “Permanent” – they mean the same thing. For beginners, you can use the WordPress Simple Redirects plug-in. For advanced users, you can write the redirects directly in your .htaccess file. Once the redirects have been completed, you can delete the old posts from your website.

Using this approach, recycle, rewrite, redirect, you can quickly repurpose old but still valuable content into new, fresh, highly-optimized posts without a lot of effort.

And, since I mentioned the other important R word related to content marketing – Repurpose, I’ll share a bonus tip with you:

Repurpose

Once you have created a few new “super posts” on a single topic, you can recycle the new super blog posts. Combine them into one single document and rewrite a bit of each to create a seamless flow between the different pieces content. Add an introduction and a conclusion, and Whala! You have repurposed old content and created a brand new, value-added free report that you can give away on your website. And, if you want to take it a step further, you can use the report as a script and record an audio gift or create a teleseminar!

So remember, recycle, rewrite, redirect, and repurpose to get more out of the content you have already created.

And, if you liked this strategy and want more just like this, check out Bourn Creative University and our 2011 Marketing Acceleration Training and Mastermind Program. The Pro Membership level is $6,000 for the entire year and includes how-to training to help you build your brand, market your business, and accelerate your online success. Each month we’ll cover in depth marketing strategies you need to know about and HOW to implement them for your business. The Pro Membership level also includes two live 2-day retreats, five 60 minute one-on-one strategy sessions with me, ongoing support and guidance, accountability, Q&A, and more!
 

But here’s the problem… That’s not true. You have to work to get your blog noticed and to get in front of your target market. And you have to consistently publish great work to get visitors to come back again and again!

Here are eight ways you can build a better business blog and make blogging for business payoff sooner, rather than later:

Use WordPress for Your Business Blog.
WordPress blogs, especially self-hosted, custom designed WordPress blogs give you an unprecedented level of control over your blogsite. Also, because WordPress is open souirce software, new plugins are being developed constantly to add even more functionality that can help make your life easier and your marketing more effective.

Brand Your Blog.
Your business blog should always match your business website. Now, it doesn’t have to be the same, it just has to appear to belong to the same business and the same family of marketing messages. Give your blog a name and a unique design if you want, but use the same typefaces, color palette, and brand imagery to tie your blog to your business website. This will also help you build brand equity.

Put Your Audience First.
When brainstorming blog posts titles and writing blog posts, make sure the content is something that your audience will want to read and make sure it is valuable and useful to them and their business. You may even want to run a list of titles by a focus group of people in your niche to get their feedback.

Don’t Waste Your Audience’s Time.
Be careful to not use your blog as a place to shamelessly promote your products, programs, and services. and don’t use it to create “marketing hype” around your promotions. Also make sure you stay on topic! If you are a financial advisor and your blogging on your parenting woes, you’re going to confuse your visitors because that is probably not the information they were expecting to receive.

Write Smart Headlines.
Once of the fastest ways to get your blog post ranked by the search engines, and maybe even move it right to the first page of the search results is to use the exact keyword(s) you are targeting in your blog headline and page title.

Use Photos and Graphics to Attract Attention.
A photo, image, graphic, or chart is an immediate attention grabber and will attract your site visitors to check out your blog posts. Some studies have even shown that including images in your blog posts equals more people reading the post and more time spent of the page.

Break Up Your Writing With Audio and Video.
Not everyone prefers to get their content by reading an article. In fact, there are three ways people like to learn, by listening (auditory), by seeing (visual), and by touching (kinesthetic). Break up your written blog posts with audio and video every once in a while to appeal to all different styles of learning.

Engage Your Readers and Join The Conversation.
Encourage comments on your blog and when someone comments on your blog, tweets about it, or mentions it in their blog, thank them. Post a reply comment and interact with your audience. It shows you appreciate them and that their voice matters.

Support Other Experts.
One of the best ways to get out there and build your business blog’s visibility and reputation to is to interact with other experts. Comment on their blogs. Reply to their social media posts and retweet great content. By helping others, you’re inevitably helping yourself and your helping your audience by making them aware of more great content.