“Go”, “Slow”, And “Whoa” Tools For Blogs

At Glen Cove Elementary School near El Paso, Texas, U.S.News.com reports, students learn about healthy eating by identifying "go", "slow", and "whoa" foods.  Rather than warning, cajoling, or teasing to motivate children to lose weight, (all of which have proven to be nonproductive tactics), the school is instead teaching "best practices" for health.

There are best practices in business blogging, too, and the  "go"-slow-whoa" grid is useful for new corporate and small business bloggers to use as a guide.
 

"GO"S FOR BLOGS:

Relevancy – Don’t waste searchers’ time.  Offer valuable, timely, usable information in your blog. Jennifer Benz in Employee Benefit Adviser Magazine warns: "In a world of information overload, the worst offense is being irrelevant."

Links – Read other bloggers’ posts and comment on them.  You can agree with the post, disagree, or just get an online conversation going on a topic. Make sure you’re writing a legitimate comment that adds value, not just promoting yourself, explain Shel Holtz and Ted Demopoulos in their book Blogging For Business.

"SLOW"S FOR BLOGS

Self-promotion – Talk sparingly about your products and services, always remembering your blog is not your advertisement or brochure.  "If you want to sell something, provide knowledge about the product", advises ProBlog Service. "If you’re a house painter, teach people how to paint a house."

Jargon and technical terms – Readers came to your blog to find information they can understand and use.  While you want to show that you know what you’re talking about, don’t make your text too "heavy" to absorb.

"WHOA"S FOR BLOGS

Disallowing comments – As Employee Benefit Adviser‘s Jennifer Benz puts it, "The days of simply broadcasting information…are over. You must engage in two-way conversation for communication to be truly effective."  Ironically, even critical comments are good for your blog by search engines’ standards.

Overusing key words –  Key words are your "traffic magnets", but your blog text needs to flow naturally, so the key words must be a natural part of the sentence.  If you overdo the key words, your blog will sound "spammy" and artificial instead of conversational.

Educators at Glen Cove are still working on winning the weight battle through best health practices and building good habits. Savvy blog marketing takes habit-building as well, working on a long term strategy in the "battle" to win search.