Recently, a paintball gun eccomerce site owner asked a question many business owners ask,
"I've got a blog, what now?"

His question has been repeated in its original form below and my response follows.
These 16 blogging quickstart tips are meant to: increase traffic, encourage community, get better search rankings.

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Subj: Blog is up but what now?

Alright I made a blog site, but I am a little confused on what to do now. I have pinged all of the major places that I have been told but I am wondering what this does? Do they index the posts in there search engine or what?

Do I need to do anything else right now or how does it work?

perrier
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My Response

By visiting your website, I can see you have installed a Wordpress blog. Many of these tips apply to blogging in general,
but some specifically are for Wordpress.

16 Quickstart Blogging Tips

1. Sign up for Technorati.
2. Establish yourself as an expert in your field.
3. Offer non-commercial content, commentary on industry news, lists, How Tos. Examples:
   A.) 12 Paint Ball Gaming Strategies for Beginners
   B.) Paint Ball Color Psychology- Learn Which Color Intimidates the Most & Cripples Your Opponents' Confidence(It's Not the One You Think)
   C.) Top 25 Best Paint Ball Fields in the US.
4. Add others in your industry to your blog role (only if you actually read them).
5. On other people's blogs start making relevant comments without SPAMMING.
6. Use trackbacks & pingbacks as a a way to further a conversation.
7. Share strong opinions & don't be afraid to be controversial.
8. Speak to people in a non-commercial, human voice. No corporate "We." A blog is not a press release.
9. Measure and set traffic goals.
10. Illicit comments and interaction by asking questions and offering remarkable content.
11. Optimize your blog meta title at the bare minimum by using descriptive keywords.
12. Make the blog apart of your site's main navigation.
13. Get links to individual blog posts by writing and submitting related articles to article sites linking directly to the permalink URL of the post.
14. Use social bookmarking sites: Reddit.com, Digg.com, and Stumbeupon.com on every new post and encourage your network to do the same.
15. SEO your blog posts using dozens of SEO plugins available.
16. Be interesting.

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He responded and here are his follow up questions.

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Five More Blogging Questions Answered

Originally Posted by perrier
Thank you for taking your time to write this! Technorati has all of my blog posts indexed.
What else do I need to do with technorati now?

Find related highly popular (aka lots of links) with similar industry blogs and make friends by commenting. Technorati rates blogs by popularity. Set alerts to find related blogs based on your keywords.

Originally Posted by perrier
Why should I make comments in other peoples blogs?

Your comments in other blogs will make a link to your blog from other blog, although often the comment link is nofollow, unless the added a special plugin, you can still gain a relevant audience interested and readership by doing this enough. Many curious people will click your handle, which is a link, if your comment is interesting enough. It is just free added exposure. This also counts for having a blog roll. Savvy bloggers see who is linking to them, and he/she might just link back to you. Blog readers may regard being on a blog roll as endorsement for your blog.

Originally Posted by perrier
How do I seo the blog title? (check my site and see if its alright?)

I did check, you need more keywords in your title. Example meta title: YOURCOMPANYNAME.com | Top Paintball Fields Review, Tactics, & Strategy Blog

On Google
paintball fields 162 searches/day

You would only want this title, if you do indeed review paintball fields, reveal tactics & strategies. You would use something like this for your homepage meta title: YOURCOMPANY.com | Paintball Guns, Equipment, Markers & Supplies Online

paintball guns 1,052 searches/day
paintball equipment 160 searches/day
paintball supplies 152 searches/day

Originally Posted by perrier
How do I make the site apart of the main site nav?

The same way you made Goggles, Clothing, and Tanks apart of the main navigation. You also want a separate Blog link with chosen keyword anchor text to be linked on the homepage somewhere. The more internally linked up your pages the better.

I hope this helps.

Neil