Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I believe that my business could benefit from a blog but find writing wearisome. If you have hired a blogger, what has your experience been? Any suggestions, tips, advice, etc. are welcomed.

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WicksWorks Candle Emporium
Featuring a wonderful selection of natural wax, aromatherapy and massage candles

If you hire a blogger, make sure you know someone who knows not only how to write, but how to bring in traffic as well. Writing is only half the equation if the person is not well-versed in social media to be able to drive traffic with their content.

There`s a lot of information on blogs for marketing purposes here on SuN, in the 5 Steps to Marketing your Website. Sometimes making your own blog is best -- but sometimes participating in other blogs is more cost effective for you. It really depends on the situation.

Good luck and let me know if you have any other questions.

There is a service called PayPerPost that might provide the services you need. http://www.payperpost.com/. Now they require disclosure so I think if you hired a blogger, the blogger has to disclose if they receive payment from you.

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WicksWorks Candle Emporium
Featuring a wonderful selection of natural wax, aromatherapy and massage candles

This whole topic interests me, as a writer. I`ve been doing some SEO writing, which I`m not all that excited about, and I write lots of stuff all the time. For years, I`ve watched people in general assume that writing is something everyone can do (who`s passed through some kind of school system).

Lately, it seems like the "hot item" from the e-commerce gurus is all about how blogs, articles, and other written content are great ways to drive business to a Web site. Of course they are! Why would anyone read blank or pointless pages on some Web site? For now, the Web seems to be pretty closely involved with text.

Whatever the case; everyone seems to be getting interested in hiring writers nowadays. Good for me! :-D But not so many people seem to know what they want written.

SEO writing---search engine optimization using key phrases---isn`t at all the same as writing articles, or blog posts, or forum posts. It`s a pretty specialized form of writing and requires an even more sophisticated application of those key phrases. Who comes up with them...the writer? If so, that`s worth money on a whole different scale than someone writing only the articles based on those key phrases.

What about copywriting? That`s yet another very different skill. It involves knowledge of marketing, skills in the particular field of copywriting, and often has little to do with SEO optimization.

A blog is supposedly a person`s journal or diary of events and things they find interesting. Presumably, if they`re fairly good at writing, other people also will find their blog interesting. So I guess I`m curious how what I find interesting would make sense on someone else`s blog?

One way I could see it would be like any freelance article writer for a magazine, but those are actual articles. They`re not really designed as journal entries, and don`t typically include the option to make comments.

You`ve got a candle emporium. What would be the focus of your proposed blog?

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WicksWorks Candle Emporium
Featuring a wonderful selection of natural wax, aromatherapy and massage candles

I think that is a fine topic for your site. You can go a number of ways with this ... but also use the same list for announcing your specials when they come up.

If you look at the right sidebar of my blog here, you`ll notice I give people a wide variety of ways to subscribe to the site. That allows you to keep in touch with your readers on a regular basis. It would be a great thing to do for your own site, so that you can also include your readers in on the occasional special or company announcement. Don`t abuse that privilege though! Space the announcements out or include them within your content.

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WicksWorks Candle Emporium
Featuring a wonderful selection of natural wax, aromatherapy and massage candles

This isn`t about doing newsletters to existing customers ... this is doing an occasional ad to customers interested in the candle info site.

Ah, now I understand!

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WicksWorks Candle Emporium
Featuring a wonderful selection of natural wax, aromatherapy and massage candles