Great tips Darren, here are a few on my own:

Offer a newsletter for people to subscribe to, the update service offered by Feedburner is a good start, because I still think some people aren’t comfortable with RSS feeds.

Pick out 10 of your best articles and give them a stand alone section in one of your columns.

Try to feature a recent comments list in a column as this draws people in and can highlight articles from within your archive.

If you want to earn some pennies from Adsense make sure the ad blocks blend in with your site, and think where people are going to click next after reading your articles.

Benefit from Amazon by doing book reviews and then a simple affiliate link at the foot of the piece, and again highlight your reviews in a column.

Spread your work in different formats across other sites, for example, photos on Flickr, if you do podcast style interviews mix them with your photos and turn them into video to post to YouTube.

I’ll stop now…

All the best

Craig

Yes Darren it is true that it is hard work to keep writing interesting and informatvie posts for a blog and promote the blog through all possible channels. It can sound easy to say just start a blog it’ll be good for your business but you have to be in for the long term.

Great tips Craig, especially

“Pick out 10 of your best articles and give them a stand alone section in one of your columns.”

Karen, that’s a very good point about been in it for the long term. Having a blog is a great way to market, and build a companies brand, but its not as simple as adding on a blog and hoping people come and visit - you have to promote it and network yourself.

Networking I would say has made the biggest impact on my blog.

Blogging is certainly a strange Phenomenon ( Spelling Check?) Whilst Darren gets his fair share of comments etc, which can help to check how well a blog is doing, and the stats are also useful to see where traffic is coming from, our site receives virtually no comments on the site, but a steady flow of Telephone calls. Yesterday we had somebody telephone us from Germany who is in the Forces, and was interested in the Asfiya hotel in Turkey.

We were also contacted by the Palazzo Belmonte who found our blog, and i’m glad they did. We now have a superb video of the Palazzo on the blog, which has already resulted in a Wedding enquiry.

My Tip for start up Bloggers would be that, it Ain’t gonna happen over night, be Patient, Think out your content and what you want your Blog to be, Don’t get disheartened and don’t be afraid to try new things. Keep perservering and make sure you have at least two or three new entries a week. After 6 Months you will start to see the difference.

Lee your blog is an example how a blog should be created if you want to market your business. It’s not full of commerical marketing, but provides useful content to readers.

I read somewhere that only 10% of visitors leave a comment, and whilst I’d like to see more comments from consumers, I get enough emails, and can see my stats to be confident that the blog is doing well.

Not that itll be any use to me I do like the new blog Darren, I hope thats as much of a success as this one.

Oasis Airlines will be launching a blog in the foreseeable future so these are really great tips for us. Thanks.

Thanks Annie. I am glad people are finding it useful. If you need any help with getting the blog off the group just let me know.

BTW, I meant getting the blog off the ‘ground’ not group, tired fingers I think.