Small business owners have been asking me about automated blogging programs they’ve seen. For entrepreneurs and business owners who are serious about building relationships with their target audience and maximizing the impact of their business blogs, beware of the claims these software programs make.

All the blogging automated programs I’ve seen thus far will have some immediate and long-term detrimental effects on your marketing efforts.

Most of automated blogging programs use robots to generate posts made up of random words. Sometimes these words are pulled from a master list that you’ve entered into the program. And sometimes the words used to create the post are gathered from web pages you’ve directed the programs to crawl.

The main purpose of these programs is supposedly to get your main web site indexed quickly by search engine spiders and to gain high rankings. While many of programs I’ve come across do not blatantly promote Spam blogging, the sheer number of pages they offer to scan and create posts for exceeds by many multiples the number of pages even a Fortune 500 Company would have on a regular web site. Hence — the inherent tendency for these programs to be abused.

The Bad News:

Business owners who are looking to get their pages indexed quickly, fall prey to the hype generated by the sales copy for these programs. Unfortunately when they do, they become unwitting participants in roots known as blog spamming.

The reason that these programs create what’s considered Spam is mainly due to the fact that they automatically ping blog directories as often as every 15 minutes. David Sifry founder and CEO of Technorati estimates that as much as 20% of the aggregate pings that Technorati receives are from Spam blogs.

You might say, “Big deal, I want to get all my pages indexed as quickly as possible too. Isn’t that one of the benefits of having a business blog?” And my answer to that question is in an emphatic yes!

But by using a robot to create nonsensical posts related to your business web site you’re shooting yourself in the foot – twice!

First shot — you turn off human visitors.

Key-word rich blog posts created by robots don’t make sense to human visitors. You may fool the search engine spiders, but you won’t fool your target audience. And that should ALWAYS be your number one concern — your real, live audience.

This blog spamming behavior is likely to turn people away from your company. That also means you lose out on one of the main benefits gained with a business blog — human visitors finding your blog posts and following links through to your main site.

Second Shot – you force a change that will kill you – and those around you.

Spam blogging will force search engines to change their algorithms. This of course will make your business blog (and blogs in general) less effective as search engines will begin to give less and less credence to links coming from blogs.

Plus, if the pages that the search engine spiders are being driven to are not already optimized, you’re not going to get top search engine rankings anyway.

The Good News:

You don’t need to resort to an automated Spam blog in order to reap search engine optimization benefits.

The creators of these automated blog programs would like you to believe that you need hundreds of blog posts to bring in the search engine spiders and get your entire site indexed.

The fact is that several well formatted blog posts linking to a web site with a search engine friendly navigation menu or site map will work just as well for the average small business owner.

We’ve been able to consistently get brand new web sites crawled and indexed within three to four days with just a handful of carefully crafted posts. And we’ve never had to use an automated Spam blog to gain top search engine rankings for chosen keywords in Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

All we rely on are the same proven techniques you can learn in the blogging course for small-business owners, “How to Master Business Blogging”.

What you can do instead

Once you know how to properly structure your blog posts using keywords and links, and where to place them at the right frequency, search engine optimization becomes a breeze. Then you can focus on the real high leverage benefit of business blogs — connecting with your clients and target audience.

Remember that your business blog is about more than just search engine optimization. It’s about building rapport and developing relationships with your clients. Today’s consumer is tired of tricks, Spam, and other outdated marketing tactics meant to interrupt their day.

Instead of running with the pack who are still trying to market based on the outdated tactics of last century’s marketplace — step it up to a new approach that will help you build relationships with the 21st-century consumer.

Here are five quick tips on how to use your business blog to build trust, increase rapport, and develop relationships with your ideal client:

1. Provide information and education that helps your prospects and clients get the most out of your product or service. Don’t just market to them, but explain in detail all the ways that your product or service can enhance their life.

2. Provide summaries and links to pertinent research and education about your niche or industry.

3. Highlight specific benefits of your product or service using the words of current clients. You can simply base your posts on legitimate testimonials you’ve received. Then expand on the client’s testimonial in your own words.

4. Share your personal commentary on issues and events that relate to your industry or niche.

5. Encourage open dialogue with your audience by actively soliciting their input and feedback through commenting, polls, and surveys.

The bottom line is, search engine optimization is a great side benefit that comes along with business blogging. But your business will never grow without human beings.

Keep your ideal clients in the forefront of your mind. Make them the main focus of your business blog and you’ll build trust, increase rapport, and develop relationships with the people you most want to attract.

That’s something no robot will ever be able to do. Only a human being can do this. That’s you!

To learn how you can make business blogging part of a proven approach to getting, keeping, and growing more clients — get the advanced interactive coaching course that shows you exactly how to start and maintain a successful business blogging strategy”.

John-Paul Micek
The Click-and-Mortar Business Coach
Business Owners Coaching Club
http:/www.AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com

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