Wordpress Knowhow ...building your first blog

So What Is A REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER?

Sounds like some kind of new alternative therapy dealing with mirrors!

It's a person who has the ability to take on board new experiences and look at how these experiences improved them or moved them forward in their development. They then analyze these experiences on how they would improve their approach to that experience next time round.

By analyzing the experience first time they would then make changes in their approach and take something different from the experience at another time.

If you understood that last paragraph then chances are you will enjoy the rest of the article!

When working in the Health and Social Care field becoming a reflective practitioner is crucial to becoming an effective carer and it's not that different to becoming an efficient marketer online.

So many times we decide to try a different technique to spread our wings so to speak and when the results were not quite what we expected we give up ...it didn't work. If we took it on board to become a Reflective Practitioner then we would learn from the outcome and reflect on how we approached the situation, what we have learnt from the outcome and how we approach it differently next time.

We view it as a learning process rather than results driven method to obtain the final outcome.

Many of us are online to build a business and make money. The Internet is 24/7 and global and we can work from anywhere. But just maybe that is the problem, we expect immediate results and when they do not come we move on to the next "solution" instead of reflecting on why it didn't work, what we have learnt from it and how we will change the way we do it next time.

We need to ask ourselves the questions

What tasks did we complete today?
What skills did we need to perform these tasks?
What do we feel we learnt today and how can we improve next time?

I know I get really frustrated when things do not work the way I felt they should have. Maybe I have learnt some new technique that I find exciting and when I try to put it in place there are a few glitches in my method or the system itself. It's really easy then to become discouraged and throw in the towel.

Then I remind myself that all those successful businesses online where not built in a day. I know we read the rags to riches stories all the time online but it's always important to remember the hours and hours of work and the sacrifices many of these people made to get to where they are right now.

At the end of the day becoming a Reflective Practitioner will not only allow us to improve our online marketing skills but it will also help to keep us focused to the task at hand. As we gain in experience things start to become easier and more clear and a light to to a future successful and viable business begins to shine

Video teaching course on building a blog. http://www.kathydmarketing.com

Building your business can be a difficult task. You can put hundreds of hours of effort into the business, but if you still don’t have important components, you will not be successful. Today business owners are realizing that blogging boosts business. Blogs are typically only seen as personal places to express yourself and your views. The truth is however the blogs are also great places to reach people about your business or your products. There are several ways to do this type of blogging.

The best way a business can use blogging to boost their business is by taking part in the blogs of others. You can easily create quality posts with your business in mind without needing to set up a blog of your own. Try finding blogs that pertain to the area of business you are in. This will help you get started. With millions of blogs out there, you should be able to find some with no problem. Choose to post on all of them, or choose the few that get the most activity. Then begin posting. When you do, you will see positive results come in. If you are still curious about how this can boost your business, check out these three reasons blogging boosts business.

Quick Name Recognition

The fastest way to get your business’s name out in the public is to make it known to your targeted marketing group. If you want to get your company’s name out to men who like fishing, then you can find a blog that is about just that. When you find the blogs pertaining to this marketing group, post useful and intelligent information about topics that pertain to your company. You might not want to sound like an advertisement. Think about responding to another comment and simply tagging your signature with your company’s website. This is a subtle way to get their attention. The more you post on blogs, the more widely known your company’s name will become with the select marketing group. When they tell their friends and family about the site then your consumer group will have grown even more. This is a fast way to get started. You will have to invest some time however. At least an hour a day can be used for this type of task.

Consumer Testimonies

Your company might even think about hiring professionals to blog for your company. You can offer these employees products to try and give them the task of finding blogs where they can appropriately “praise” the product. By paying these people to do the task, you will be getting the work done that you need without having to devote much time. Consumer testimonials go a long way with other consumers. If these bloggers are productive enough, you will see an increase due to it.

Building Relationships

Smart business owners know that they can go further with the help of others. A great way to connect and build relationships with other businesses is via their blog. If you are a regular poster who values their business, they will be more likely to work with you. Working together with advertising is a great idea. You can swap ad space for no fee if you like. These are great things for business owners and are easy to get into when you blog regularly.

As you can see, blogging can be a great way to do business. It may seem like tricky advertising, and it is in some ways. However, it is free advertising that does the same thing as a commercial on television does. It reaches a targeted marketing group and lets them know your company’s name, products, and sometimes offers an endorsement. Overall, it is an effective way to get your business out there. When people have no idea who you are, they are not going to feel comfortable working with you. The better your reputation is, the more likely they will trust you. When you have no reputation at all, they will not trust you either. So, even if you just want to use blogging to build your company’s reputation, it will be worth your while. Give it a try and see what type of results you can get using these tips.

So what is blogging really all about? First off, let me tell you that if you want a business blog then it's a lucrative business and blogs are easy to set up and manage.

Imagine getting paid to write about subjects that interest you, whenever you want, wherever you are! The flexibility involved allows you to maintain your blog at your own pace, and

with Internet cafés easily accessible all over the globe, even your vacation won't get in the way of your blogging... Or should I say: even your blogging won't get in the way of your vacation?

There are several options to setting up your blog – host a blog on your own domain or get a free one. For starters, let’s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain one at http://www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) http://www.wordpress.com.

WordPress is a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected by Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed more quickly. WordPress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).

Get a free blog at either Blogger or WordPress. Then, familiarize yourself by publishing your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are some words to start expanding your blogging vocabulary:

Permalink – Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

Trackback – When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger account.

Pinging – Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gain traffic, which I'll discuss in a future article.

Content

Next, let's look at the type of content that's suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. You need to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in. Mind you, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable one is the way you write.

What would you prefer: reading your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favorite author?

People prefer to read "light" items most of the time. When they check out your blog, they are not only looking for information, but they are also looking for information that they can access easily.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current readers coming back for more, it's very important to add a personal touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining that you’re talking with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humor, so try to add funny comments in your articles where relevant.

Another important point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. Don't write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, write as if you’re having a conversation with a single person, an equal friend, because this will make your reader relate to you more easily.

Besides that, it's also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. We're very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog will make a world of difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

There will be more on the subject of content the next time.

When word gets around about your command of blogging, others who need to know about blogging will start to actively seek you out!