GUEST POST: Your blog is important to us

Hi, I’m Glenys Power, owner of Cupcake City. This is a guest post to follow up on Kellie’s “Working with PR post”.

Whether you are just starting a blog or have been running one for a while, you are important to online business. Specifically WAHM businesses need your assistance. Most mummy businesses are run on, as my dad says “The smell of an oily rag”. There is little, if any, room for a marketing budget. There is, however, almost always an item or two that can be given to you to use as a prize for a competition to help promote the business.

So bloggers and businesses can help each other. In fact I think we have a great synergistic relationship.

Businesses can provide bloggers with:

• A featured post that you didn’t write yourself
• A guest post on a related topic to your blog
• Products to give away
• Money through banner ads

All these things can help to both fund your blog and create interest for your readership.

Blogs provide businesses with:

Third party recommendations – your readership trust you. As a business we know that word of mouth sells better than any other marketing tactic you can name. If you honestly like a product and recommend it you will help drive sales.

Links – Links are vital for a webpage to rank well in search.  Using my website as a case study for illustration; let’s suppose I want to rank on page 1 of Google for the key-phrase “cupcake stand”.

Now for Google to believe that this cupcake page is in fact about cupcake stands, they look for links that have text in them that substantiates this. There is nothing better than a link that says.. “you can buy this fabulous cupcake stand from Cupcake City. AND the words “cupcake stand” links to the page that is about the cupcake stand.

This type of link is gold, so if you find yourself working with a business make sure to ask them what the anchor text should say and refrain from the old “click here” link. It also helps if the link is in the standard “link” blue that we are all used to and if it is in a slightly larger font size.

I really encourage you to be open to working with more businesses. Be brave! If there is a business on facebook you’ve used or noticed then approach them. Let them know you’re a blogger and you’d like to.. run an article on them / do a product spotlight featuring an item / have a giveaway… whatever suites you.

It will help if you have a media kit that tells the business a bit about you and your websites statistics, but don’t be put off if you’re just new. It might mean that you really can only ask $5 to run a feature article instead of $25. It’s a start and your price can always go up as your readership does.

Glenys Power is a wife, mother to two small boys and the proprietor of the online cupcake supply store, Cupcake City. Cupcake City can supply you with lovely cupcake decorations, wrappers and more. She has also been helping other businesses with their search engine optimization for the last 2 years. If you would like any information on either Cupcake City or help with your own SEO, please contact her at admin@cupcakecity.com.au