Guest post by Susan Daniels

When most people think of blogging, they don’t conjure up images of brand blogging. However, even Coca-cola has a blog to further empower its brand. Brand blogging helps your business out in two ways: it gives your customers a sense of community and it allows you to gain greater online visibility.

But starting a brand blog doesn’t simply mean writing an article every couple of days or so. To make your brand’s blog successful you need to incorporate the following into your every day posting:

Media

A brand’s blog should never be text only. Images and videos including the brand should be integrated throughout the blog to make it more appealing to readers, and you don’t need to hire a creative agency to create these for you. You can easily take and create them yourself; however, if you aren’t competent with your video editing, hiring a professional may be beneficial. Including images and videos also give you a greater chance of a post going viral which can greatly increase your PageRank – and thus, your overall online visibility.

Relevancy

One of the most important aspects of blogging is content relevancy. If a soda product is your brand, then you don’t want to be writing about dog food. Instead you want to be writing about anything and everything that pertains to your brand – the people behind the brand, different flavors being released, projects you may be involved in, and any other interesting tidbits.

Hype

When you have a blog that is focusing on a certain brand, you want to make sure that you are able to create hype through your posts. If you are improving a brand or making changes to products and services, you want to give your brand loyalists little insights into doing so. Not only will this get them excited and coming back for more, but this will also keep them from panicking when an updated product or service is released that may be slightly different from the old ones.

Creating an image of a company is hard, and trying to get as high as you can in the search engines is no easy feat. However, blogging can greatly help you attain new customers, engage the old, and manage your online reputation – all of which are needed if you wish to remain successful.

About the author
Susan Daniels is a freelancer writer that specializes in business and technology.

Blogsessive.com has just published a guest post written by yours truly on how to make your blog and twitter account work better at promoting each other. And the solution is simple: notice what they have in common, notice the differences, and if it’s a team you want, then create one!

I’d love to hear your thoughts and your own tips on how to create a dream team out of your blog and Twitter feed, so head over to Blogsessive to read the article and share your insight

I can still perfectly remember the first comment on my blog. It’s not about what the commentator said, it’s not about the fact that I was a great fan of the first person commenting, it was about receiving the first comment to something I had written and sparking a conversation. I was so thrilled!

Writing was a daily habit for me at the time. Be it novels, stories, essays, articles and projects for school, I have always enjoyed putting my thoughts on (real or electronic) paper. And I have always enjoyed having people read it and give me their feedback. So the part about having an outlet for my thoughts was not what hooked me to blogging. It was the comments, the conversation and the almost instant feedback. What kept the addiction going was the great number of friendships that resulted from my casual chat with fellow bloggers.

Some of the people I’ve met online have quit blogging, some just are in a different place right now, where we’re no longer able to connect. But what I’ve learned, the feeling of a geographically ignorant circle of friends stayed with me and are now stronger than ever.

Of my oldest friends, Sarah and Bart are still around. Bart has actually become one of my closest friends and a second father to me (if his daughters weren’t enough trouble ) and has supported me through painful breakups, career issues, health issues and shared lots of fun and amazing times with me. When it comes to online friendships, a lot of people say that real life meetings are disappointing. Never my case! Not with Bart, whom I visited together with my fiance, not with my big sis Trisi, not with Zu, or any other person I’ve met through my blog.

Since that first comment, I started meeting amazing people. Powerful, inspirational, funny, supportive, innovative, extremely bright. Mig, Joanna, Bogdan, Deb, Ali, Haal, Mohammed, Liz, Lou, Brad, Karen, Alex and so many more it’s impossible to mention them all and not remembering a few more names every other five minutes. Some of them are listed here, others are listed in my Google Reader (I’ve got about 300 subscriptions). If I wanted to write a personal thanking note to all of them, it would probably take me weeks and I’d get lost in the forest of memories quite soon after starting.

People talk about networking, making connections, I like to say I try my very best to build meaningful relationships through my blog. I don’t care nearly as much about rss subscribers, daily visits and ranks, as I care about the number of people I can call my friends and the impressive number of memories and experiences we’ve shared. Investing in such relationships does entail impressive ROI. Probably not the kind of ROI you might think of at first, but definitely more than you could ever wish for!

This is my contribution to and the official launch of the “Blogging and Relationships – Write about the wonderful people you’ve met!” Group Writing Project. In case you’ve forgotten the rules and prizes, here they are:

• Publish an original article on your blog before February 28
• You may only have one entry per blog. If you have more than one blog, lucky you
• Link to the post announcing the group writing project
• Comment on the announcement post, just to make sure I don’t miss your entry, we can’t always rely on trackbacks!

And the prizes:

1. A copy of IttyBiz’ SEO School
2. Depeche Mode – The Singles 86-98 in mp3 format (I love them and this particular collection holds all my favorites)
3. A copy of Lillie Ammann’s “Dream or Destiny”
   

Additionally, along with these prizes, you’ll get 2 hours of free PR consulting from yours truly.

As for the jury I’ve told you about, the parts have been given to: Loredana, Alex and little old me.

Good luck everyone!

P.S. If you’re not among the names I’ve mentioned in this entry and feel you should be, you probably should And I did think of you when writting this post!

Yes, after a quite bumpy two weeks ride, Words of a Broken Mirror is once again up and running! It took two weeks to get a new hosting account, backup my old files and get the answered approved, two days for my to partly import stuff on my new account and majorly screw everything up and about 2 hours for Alex to get everything sorted out and clean up my mess .

While my blog was down and I couldn’t share anything with you through posts and comments, I realized that this blog is such an important part of my life that I really wouldn’t want to live without it. I could, but why would I ever? So many friends, so many thoughts, so many moments, why waste something like that?

Again, I apologize for the down time and for all the hassle you might have encountered when trying to access my blog. Hope you quickly forgive me and get back to regular visits.

P.S. From what Twhirl shows up, Joanna Young was the first to comment after the move! Thanks so much for that!

I’d first like to apologize to anyone who’s been trying to access my blog and got errors instead of my posts. I know it’s really frustrating, so I’ve decided to do something about it! I initially planned to move at the end of the month, but as my site is temporarily down a few times a day, I decided my current webhosting provider is no longer a wise choice. I’ll be moving to GoDaddy.

I’ll officially start working on this tonight, but the effects might last for a couple of days. I’m sorry for all the trouble you’ll experience in the meantime. Please stay tuned as I’m sure the situation will be significantly improved after the transfer!

You might have notices my blog has run amok lately. Posts that never show up, although they’re weekly regulars, I’m not on Twitter as often, I comment less on other blogs and I’m generally keeping a low profile. And this situation will go on for the next three weeks. Why? Well, there’s a few things…

• Most of my team is on vacation and I’m practically alone in getting to important launches ready
• Some time consuming personal projects need to be taken care of before my vacation
• I’ll be on vacation for the next three weeks. And here’s a taste of how great it will all be!
• I somehow managed to accumulate so much tiredness, I can’t even think straight for more than half a day
• Getting everything ready for the vacation in the evening only, after work, has proven to be quite a challenge.

The good news is I have some interesting articles planned for all of you and some amazing bloggers will be guest posting here. Speaking of guest posting, if anyone’s interested, let’s talk! In the mean time, I’ll also cover my whole trip on Travel Spells.

Thank you all for understanding, for still being registered to my feed, for stopping by and commenting. I’ll be back with a new and improved blogging force after the vacation, promise! Oh, and don’t worry, I have an internet connection at the hotel, I’ll do my best to keep in touch!

Hugs,
Alina