Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

By: Carrie Lauth

When I network with small business owners and online marketers, I often find myself asking them if they’ve launched their blog yet. Adding a blog has so many important benefits and it’s no wonder that huge corporations and megastores are also getting into blogging. Especially for the micropreneur however, blogs have several distinct advantages. Here are a few.

1. A blog is search engine food! Google and the other big search engines love content and a blog can help you get free search engine traffic. Recently search engines are giving more weight to blogs because they want to offer the freshest, most relevant content to internet searchers.

2. Blogs create community. Because they are interactive, a blog draws people back to your site again and again. Your visitors will read your post then leave their comments, read comments left by others, and come back to see how the conversation is flowing. Blogs are much easier to manage than message forums too. With RSS (Real Simple Syndication), people can subscribe to your blog feed and be notified automatically when you update your blog.

3. Blogging puts you in control of your site. Posting to your blog is as easy as typing an email or a word document. Why pay a designer to add a page to your website when you can update your site whenever you like, easy as pie? You can blog as often or as rarely as you like to serve your particular needs.

4. Blogs help you grow your bottom line. There are many ways you can add additional monetization streams to your blog so you can make more money in your business without working harder.

5. Your customers love blogs. They can ask you questions, read info about your products and services, and share their opinions. A blog has a more friendly feel than a website.

6. Blogs help you know your target market. As you observe who is leaving comments on your blog, you get to know your market better. This education helps you be a smarter marketer.

7. Conduct market research. A blog is an easy way to conduct surveys and polls to help you get inside the mind of your customers. This information is invaluable to you.

8. Blogs help your customers get to know you. A blog gives your customers a chance to see your personality shine through. People buy from people they like!

9. Blogging is fun. I’ll admit it, blogging is addicting once you get going! There are so many benefits to your business. What’s not to love?

10. As a small business owner, you have a limited marketing budget. Blogging is a free marketing tactic – it only costs you a little of your time. Getting a blog installed and designed on your domain typically costs less than having a new website designed too.
Have I convinced you? Blogging is not a fad or a trend. It’s a smart marketing technique that allows you to build relationships with your target market and leverage the power of the internet.

About The Author

Get help setting up your blog, learn what you should blog about, and get marketing tips to get more blog traffic at www.CarrieLauth.com/hire-carrie.htm and visit Carrie at her business blog, www.CarrieLauth.com/blog.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

By: Debbie Proctor

Blogging is now something that most people are well aware of and a practice that even computer novices are employing in their daily life.Blogging can be used as a promotional tool on the Internet for a multitude of different purposes. It is much more effective than the standard sales pitch because it communicates to prospective customers on a more personal level.If you have an online business, it is essential that you develop a business blog.

You can create a business blog just about anywhere,even a social networking site such as MySpace. You can develop relationships with people who would be inclined to purchase your product on these sites, and begin writing to them. Once you have them on the hook, you can direct them to your affiliate website. You can also use RSS feeds that can be fed into your website to generate more publicity for your affiliate product. This will also establish you as an expert. Here are 5 tips on how to use blogging to promote your business:

1) Think of Your Audience
When you are blogging for business or to generate publicity for your product, it is important to keep your target audience in mind at all times. After all you are writing to keep their interest alive.So make your blog posts short, lively,and interesting. Most of all make sure they pertain to relevant key words.

2) Use Graphics
Have you ever received an e-mail from someone that is one long paragraph? Pretty tough to read,isn’t it? Break up your paragraphs and incorporate graphics, if you can, to make your copy easier to read. Remember, people on the internet have the attention span of a gnat,so make it short and sweet.

3) Relevance
Posting links to the lastest YouTube video may be fun, that’s if you are 15. If you are an adult on the Internet trying to earn money, you need to have better things to do. Again,make each blog count towards the ultimate goal. What is the ultimate goal? To get people over to the website to buy the affiliate product, so that you can make some money.

4) Keep Everything Simple
Typically, readers tend to veer towards things that are short, simple and non-technical. Keep the technical jargon separate.

5) Make it Interactive
Make your page or blog as interesting as possible.Have music playing in the background that relates to your theme. If possible, have a video of yourself talking about how your life has changed due to the affiliate product.

The trick to using blogs as a way to market,is to never make your target market feel as though you are”selling” them anything. They are your friends, and you are helping them out by giving them a golden opportunity. This takes a bit more time than the slam bam approach. But it is the best way to market anything.
Happy Blogging!

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Article Written By: Debbie Proctor is a marketing coach who teaches people how to generate thousands of dollars a month promoting any business,product or service. She will show you right away. If you want to discover her proven methods visit:
www.themaptoperfectwealth.com

By: Connie Ragen Green

Blogging for your business or for your niche market is a way to start a conversation with your readers and keep it moving. But keeping your blog posts fresh, interesting, informative and frequent can be a real challenge.

Before you make more than one or two posts to your blog, write down a list of topics that you will cover. You may have many ideas on what to write that readers will want to read, so keep a journal of topics and ideas that you can draw from. You will also want to read other blogs on topics that are similar to yours. You should actually read and comment on several blogs regularly to truly become part of the blogosphere.

Having a series of blog posts on one topic may make your readers more likely to sign up for your feed (your RSS feed) and come back to your blog often. A series of tips is a good way to show your readers that you have thought out what you are going to write about. You may also want to offer them a PDF file of all of your tips that they can easily download from your blog.

Make every effort to post to your blog twice a week. Even if you only write one paragraph, it is better to post more frequently. This will help both readers and search engines to find you more easily and get your name and message in front of more people. Adding pictures will also make your blog more interesting. Make sure you use royalty and copyright free photos. Blogging can boost your business tremendously if you stick to it and always give your readers good information.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Connie Ragen Green has been blogging for one year now. She learned how to write articles and blog posts from the article guy, Jeff Herring. Join Jeff for a f’ree teleseminar each week on writing articles by visiting www.WriteArticlesWithJeffherring.com

By: Carmen Jonathan P. Niess

Imagine a place where you are allowed to speak your mind freely. Imagine that everyone else listened intently and nodded rhythmically in agreement with every word that was spoken. It is this fantasy that has fueled internet users all over the world to start posting blog entries on every subject imaginable. With the help of free sites such as Myspace(www.myspace.com), Livejournal(www.livejournal.com), and Deadjournal(www.deadjournal.com) there are now millions of blogs maintained in the United States alone. There seems to be no decline in this trend. The blog is one trend that may not be going anywhere for a while.

There are quite a few bloggers out there making quite a name for them selves and not doing anything more than typing out a few opinions or in the case of the vlogger, video recording those opinions. It is becoming a daily routine for people to write in their blogs just as someone might write in a journal or diary. It has not caught on completely but the statistics are pretty impressive with 12 million Americans keeping blogs as a Jan 2006 study states.

Blogs started to rise in popularity just in the last few years but got their start in the late 90s. The first blogs were online journals started by individuals just keeping track of their lives and sharing them over the internet. This was a harmless hobby that very few participated in. It did not stay that way for long. Now there are news groups, public figures, celebrities, and people from all walks of life that have skipped over the pen and paper and gone straight to the keyboard to log about the many facets(or not) of their lives.

The internet has made a completely new form of media/entertainment in our recent history. This development opened the door for a new type of celebrity (as if we needed more of those), the internet celebrity. Many a new face came forth from our computer monitors with the development of the blog and it’s offspring, the video log, or vlog. A good example of a popular vlogger is the, Oh so popular, Chris Crocker, who can be found in all of his highly emotional glory on Youtube.com ranting in defense of the falling star, Britney Spears.

When we are not distracted by the over exposure of internet celebrities, some of us use blogs in a more productive sense. I am speaking from experience when I say that blogs can be an excellent creative outlet. Blogs are not exclusively used as online diaries. One of the great wonders of blogs is that they start as a completely blank canvas for the blogger. Using handy html coding; pictures, videos, and music can be added to any blog page maximizing personal expression.

Of course, like most things, blogs are not exclusive to being a benefit to society. With more computer literate kids than years before we are seeing a higher number of young users being exposed to and creating blogs of their own. This can be especially hazardous with the prowling eyes of cyber stalkers hiding among the massive internet community. Then again with crime fighting blogs like Crime Blog, The True Crime Weblog, and Bonnie’s Blog of Crime it seems that the crime fighting is on pace with the criminals. Still, the preventative measures of parents are the first defense to such internet hazards.

These days many of us are spending more and more time in front of our computers. Since you are sitting there anyway, why not type up what you did today. Throw in some dreams, aspirations, opinions on major issues of our day and you have just created a blog. A blog could be a pretty useful tool in keeping all your friends and family in touch with your daily life. Computers are becoming more and more a part of our lives, this is just one more evolutionary step in the life of technology.

By: Jonathan P. Niess
Edited by: Bruce A. Tucker

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Carmen Jonathan P. Niess is a freelance writer and wrote this article for www.Indocquent.com, an online resource that allows businesses to post their products for sale on over 20,000 blogs throughout 200 countries around the world.
You can inquire about Jonathan P. Niess `s writing services via email at: demanar2001@yahoo.com

By: Nivea David
General concept of blogs

Blog is basically an online diary which usually comes in the form of a website. Users can add postings from time to time. Blogs include photos, text etc. Blogs are in different templates, designs, background colors. You can create your own blog. There are websites like blogger.com which is owned by Google. It allows you to choose blog address and control your blog and post messages on to your bog. Other web users can subscribe to your blog and you can edit or control the comments. Blogs are in the form of personal diaries, new diaries, specific diaries some of them could be highly technical.

RSS Feeds

RSS (really simple syndication) is a style through which users can easily read your web feeds. With RSS Reader you can automatically download stories, news,blog feeds to your desktop. For SEO, you can begin to really get your blog postings subscribed by creating information and interesting blogs. This will result in giving your information, links and site information out to the masses.

Advantages of blogs

Blogs are search engine friendly as they always contain the new content which is interlinked. Some successful blogs even come in the top of search engines on certain common searched keywords or terms with less effort as compared to websites. You can promote a site with a blog in an inexpensive way. Blogs are easy to maintain and update. It can be maintained by even those who do not have initial knowledge about creating a webpage. Anybody can run a blog as it’s easy to update, edit text, add or remove links from pages. From SEO point of view blogs are straightforward, undemanding, and cost effective way for achieving search engine ranking, online feedback and product or service sales.

Blogs encourage repeat visits because they provide the fresh content. You can include links in blogs to make it popular from SEO point of view. You can feed blogs into other people RSS Feeders. In this way your blog becomes syndicated (subscribed to). Hundreds of people can subscribe to receive your blog when you publicize the URL of your blog feed of a well written and interesting blog. Thus people receive the blog postings written by you by clicking on the links into your website.

Use of blogs

In past it was trend of making personal homepages. But nowadays people are making their own personal blogs. Some blog interpret people personal thoughts, activities, and reactions. Some are in the form of a family news letter and some promote as their personal hobbies. Other use is blog helps in building online communities of people with similar interests. Blogs are also used as a news source in the form of online news papers. The major news agencies now have online news blogs of their own. Webmasters helps in providing webmasters adding content to their sites. Blog becomes powerful source for SEO when it has keyword rich content and in imbedded links Thus Blogs provide quality search engine optimization.

Future of blogs

With the increase in the internet users there is increase in internet journals too. Most of these are in the form of blogs and now there are millions of blogs on the internet. And this figure is going to increase in the future. So the popularity of blogs is continuing to grow at a faster pace. The reason for this is that blogs are gateway for visitors of a site to communicate and leave feedback to the publisher of the website. Webmasters use blogs to get ideas feedbacks about the new products from the site visitors. This has made the blogs the most precious marketing and SEO tool and its importance is going to grow in the near future.

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Nivea David writes articles for SEO. She has vast exposure in writing for Search Engine marketing. She is working for NDDW. For Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and www.nddw.com/seo-blogs.htm. SEO Blogs visit www.nddw.com