You may recall in Part 1, entitled, Why Blog For Business, I highlighted the compelling reasons why you should blog for business.  In Part 2, I will give you some help in how to set up your blog for business.

The best blog platform to use is WordPress.  Google loves WordPress and there are many, many, free applications to use with WordPress. You can use a blog as a standalone web presence or your blog can be part of your website in a sub-directory.

What’s really appealing about WordPress is the software is free and so are many free themes you can use with WordPress to give your business site a custom look.

Free Blog Software

You can download the WordPress software from http://wordpress.org/ If you already have a hosting company, they may already have WordPress available from their site.  You can download the software either into your root directory or sub-directory depending on your choice of using a blog as a standalone or making it part of your website.

Free Blog Themes

There are many websites you can go to for free WordPress themes.  Type in the Google search box, “free wordpress themes.”  Here are a few of them I have found:

http://michaelhutagalung.com/arthemia/ This is the one I use for my blog.
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/02/14/free-design-templates/
http://wpcrunchy.com/
http://stylewp.com/
http://web2feel.com/
http://www.premiumwp.com/demo/thestars/
http://www.emilyrobbins.com/how-to-blog/comprehensive-list-of-615-free-wordpress-15-and-20-themes-templates-available-for-download-266.htm A comprehensive list of 980+ free themes
http://www.wordpresstheme.com/
http://wpthemes.info/

You should choose a theme that has an eye-catching layout and that will be easy for your visitors to navigate.  Your content is important, not the fancy, distracting graphics and loud color choices. For example, themes with dark backgrounds are not easy to read.  I suggest you keep a white or light-colored background so the copy can be easy to read.  You will need to decide if you want a one, two or three column setup.  The most popular are two and three columns for business or marketing use.

Free WordPress Plug-ins

The next set of choices are which free plug-ins you want to use in your blog.  Plug-ins are scripts that give you different functions. A comprehensive list of plugins can be found at WordPress Plugin Database with descriptions of what they do.  You can also Google “WordPress plugins”  to find more plugins from other web sources.

Blogging Help Recommendations

Do You Feel This is Over Your Head and Need Help?

If this blogging business is all new to you and you feel that you need some help getting started, here are my recommended resources, many of them I use myself:

Step 1: You should host your blog with your own domain name and hosting company.

# Get your domain name at www.GoDaddy.com
They are the largest registrar of domain names.  TIP: Make sure to get the Private Registration Service for privacy and select auto-renewal to make sure your domain name does not expire and someone else buys your name out from under you.

# I use the hosting service, HostGator. I’ve been very happy with this hosting service and you can’t beat the $10 monthly fee for what you get, namely, good and reliable service, the option to have multiple blogs/websites for no additional cost and lots of free tools to use with your blog or website.

Step 2: If you want to hire a programmer to install your blog and set it up, you can hire talented coders for very reasonable fees at RentACoder. Click on the link in the “Software Buyer”  box on the homepage. I use this service all the time and I really like the work of one particular coder. If you want to know who I use after you open an account, email me

Step 3: Choose a blog theme that fits the business image you want to present. Many attractive and easy-to-navigate themes are free at the sites I listed above. Hire a coder to install and customize the theme and configure the WP plugins that you want.

Step 4: How to use your blog to get business. I have two recommended instruction guides:

Guide #1 teaches small business owners 11 specific strategies for getting massive website traffic. The instructors are two guys that generate over 8 million web visitors a month to their own websites. Learn more here

Guide #2 gives step-by-step instructions on how to quickly and correctly optimize your blog for local results. Not as many strategies are taught as in the first guide but this course will still help you get local traffic for your business if your customers are strictly in a local, geographic area. Learn more here

If you have any questions, just send me an email

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Technorati Tags: blog, blogs, blogging, money, business

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