What are Blogs?
Having heard the term previously but not having paid much attention most are just to afraid to show their ignorance and ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it; the term blog does not conjure pleasant images.
Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis. They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people's personal lives, political views, or even as social commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.
Where Did Blogs Come From?
The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990's. Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.
The Future of Blogs
A buzz word in techie circles, "blogging" is the wave of the future. Whether its a fad, or proves to be a new way to communicate with existing and potential customers it deserves at the very least a cursory look.
Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?
Just as animated .gifs were once cool, blogging is the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Webmasters struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.
Now that we have established that blogs are not only trendy but also beneficial to businesses, its important to understand how they can be used to your advantage. We currently manage and update two blogs on a daily basis. The first is our new business blog.
This professional business blog allows us the opportunity to tell potential, or existing customers industry news, updates, or generally how mobile or paging software can be used in specific situations to alleviate problems. The bottom line is we control the content. Its updated daily, which increases the chances that search engines will spider on a regular basis and it helps with page rank because it's been submitted to all the blogging directories. Initially started on a whim we've found it beneficial to report tips, tricks or make visitors aware of new regulations related to the mobile or paging industry.
This blog is less formal and contains marketing tips, or promotional advice for software developers or online marketers. We found that we had overflow from our monthly newsletter. Generating a daily blog would require very little effort and would assist us in creating fresh content which our readers told us was of significant interest.
Blogs & Your Business
The bottom line is you need to determine how a blog will benefit your business, determine a schedule and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your business that you want to showcase; you direct the content but let your readers guide you.
Creating a Blog
There are numerous online tools that can be used to create a blog. We found that because of security concerns, it would just be best to use a standard html program. In our case we used Dreamweaver and create daily posts. Its really not much more complicated than typing an email. The content is then sent via FTP to a web server. If you want to test the waters there are online web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly. The most popular web based tool is likely Blogger.
Other Advantages to BlogsWhile you may initially create a blog for your existing customers, you may find that you can attract new customers by illustrating your expertise in a specific field. There are numerous websites that act as "blog search engines", be sure to submit your sites to these websites to increase your exposure. This will also help with your page rank and possibly increase the likelihood you will receive decent ranking with Google. You can also create an RSS feed in order to syndicate blog content and gain additional exposure.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Having heard the term previously but not having paid much attention most are just to afraid to show their ignorance and ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it; the term blog does not conjure pleasant images. Blogs are web logs that are updated regularly, usually on a daily basis.
They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people's personal lives, political views, or even as social
commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.
Where Did Blogs Come From?The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990's. Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.
The Future of BlogsA buzz word in techie circles, "blogging" is the wave of the future. Whether its a fad, or proves to be a new way to communicate with existing and potential customers it deserves at the very least a cursory look.
Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?Just as animated .gifs were once cool, blogging is the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Webmasters struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.
Now that we have established that blogs are not only trendy but also beneficial to businesses, its important to understand how they can be used to your advantage. We currently manage and update two blogs on a daily basis. The first is our new business blog
This professional business blog allows us the opportunity to tell potential, or existing customers industry news, updates, or generally how mobile or paging software can be used in specific situations to alleviate problems. The bottom line is we control the content. Its updated daily, which increases the chances that search engines will spider on a regular basis and it helps with page rank because it's been submitted to all the blogging directories. Initially started on a whim we've found it beneficial to report tips, tricks or make visitors aware of new regulations related to the mobile or paging industry.
The second blog we manage is
This blog is less formal and contains marketing tips, or promotional advice for software developers or online marketers. We found that we had overflow from our monthly newsletter. Generating a daily blog would require very little effort and would assist us in creating fresh content which our readers told us was of significant interest.
Blogs & Your BusinessThe bottom line is you need to determine how a blog will benefit your business, determine a schedule and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your business that you want to showcase; you direct the content but let your readers guide you.
Creating a BlogThere are numerous online tools that can be used to create a blog. We found that because of security concerns, it would just be best to use a standard html program. In our case we used Dreamweaver and create daily posts. Its really not much more complicated than typing an email. The content is then sent via FTP to a web server. If you want to test the waters there are online web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly. The most popular web based tool is likely BloggerOther Advantages to BlogsWhile you may initially create a blog for your existing customers, you may find that you can attract new customers by illustrating your expertise in a specific field. There are numerous websites that act as "blog search engines", be sure to submit your sites to these websites to increase your exposure. This will also help with your page rank and possibly increase the likelihood you will receive decent ranking with Google. You can also create an RSS feed in order to syndicate blog content and gain additional exposure.
They contain information related to a specific topic. In some cases blogs are used as daily diaries about people's personal lives, political views, or even as social
commentaries. The truth of the matter is that blogs can be shaped into whatever you, the author, want them to be.
Where Did Blogs Come From?The roots of blogging can be traced back to the mid 1990's. Who the very first blogger actually was is unclear, as the art of blogging did not really take hold until 1999. The original "weblogs" were link-driven sites with personal commentaries. The very first blogs were human guided Internet web tours. While initially thought of as diaries or online journals, blogs have evolved into the latest fresh web content.
The Future of BlogsA buzz word in techie circles, "blogging" is the wave of the future. Whether its a fad, or proves to be a new way to communicate with existing and potential customers it deserves at the very least a cursory look.
Why is Blogging Helpful to Businesses or Individuals?Just as animated .gifs were once cool, blogging is the trendy thing to do. That does not mean that it is not beneficial to businesses. Webmasters struggling to keep fresh, attractive content on their websites to lure visitors back, have found blogs the answer. Content is a necessity for online businesses, both for purposes of being found by search engines but also because it gives visitors a reason to come back.
Now that we have established that blogs are not only trendy but also beneficial to businesses, its important to understand how they can be used to your advantage. We currently manage and update two blogs on a daily basis. The first is our new business blog
This professional business blog allows us the opportunity to tell potential, or existing customers industry news, updates, or generally how mobile or paging software can be used in specific situations to alleviate problems. The bottom line is we control the content. Its updated daily, which increases the chances that search engines will spider on a regular basis and it helps with page rank because it's been submitted to all the blogging directories. Initially started on a whim we've found it beneficial to report tips, tricks or make visitors aware of new regulations related to the mobile or paging industry.
The second blog we manage is
This blog is less formal and contains marketing tips, or promotional advice for software developers or online marketers. We found that we had overflow from our monthly newsletter. Generating a daily blog would require very little effort and would assist us in creating fresh content which our readers told us was of significant interest.
Blogs & Your BusinessThe bottom line is you need to determine how a blog will benefit your business, determine a schedule and adhere to it. Let your readers know what to expect and when to expect it. Blogs provide great supplemental content and direct attention to areas of your business that you want to showcase; you direct the content but let your readers guide you.
Creating a BlogThere are numerous online tools that can be used to create a blog. We found that because of security concerns, it would just be best to use a standard html program. In our case we used Dreamweaver and create daily posts. Its really not much more complicated than typing an email. The content is then sent via FTP to a web server. If you want to test the waters there are online web-based tool that helps you publish to the web instantly. The most popular web based tool is likely BloggerOther Advantages to BlogsWhile you may initially create a blog for your existing customers, you may find that you can attract new customers by illustrating your expertise in a specific field. There are numerous websites that act as "blog search engines", be sure to submit your sites to these websites to increase your exposure. This will also help with your page rank and possibly increase the likelihood you will receive decent ranking with Google. You can also create an RSS feed in order to syndicate blog content and gain additional exposure.
The Future Of Next Generation Weblogs
In the earlier days having a blog was an instant hit. People who embraced writing web logs from the beginning, did get a lot of extra exposure. Now the mass is jumping on a train which already left the station some time ago.
The success of the first blogs explained
The first blogs on the web were non commercial and that was the first ingredient for their success. Second, web logs are quality content and can be made really easy. As we all know search engines like Google really love good content. The first blogs could be on top of search results in mayor search engines like Google in a matter of days, where other (big) websites struggled to get the same result in years. This could happen because web logs contain loads of text which is related to quality content. Other traditional websites tweaked their sites with tricks that did not compete with the awesome power of blogs: honest quality content.
These days loads of people have their own blog and I must say 90% is not even worth reading. Because the amount of people having a blog is exploding, search engines which finally were able to find some good content related websites, now have to struggle with the millions of blogs with absolutely no good content at all. Many blogs are not updated on a regular basis, they are often made to sell products or used for marketing the thousands "get rich quick schemes" around on the internet. They really lack the power a good blog can have.
Next generation blogs
But there are really good blogs around and web logs will definitely stay around for a while. Beside that there is a new generation blogs on their way. Blog techniques are changing fast, many people start to put photos and pictures on their blogs. This caused a very interesting phenomenon. The first pictures of the London bombings where spread by blogs so fast, that they did beat the big television networks and news agencies. People actually submitted their pictures made from the scene with their mobile phones on their blogs. Other blogs picked up the news with the photo material in minutes and spread them around with lighting speed. I think this is the evidence that blog are really powerful things and earned their place on the internet. With the implementation of video on blogs their importance and popularity is even growing. This makes us consumers of news and multimedia much more independent from big commercial TV and news agencies. Those guys have other interests to consider then provide us with objective news, quality TV and radio programs.These advertisers and investors want everything to be a commercial success, rather then not so commercial quality content.
If you want to start your blog then here are some tips.
These days you can't make any money from having a blog. You are way too late to do that at this stage. Use web logs for their own purpose e.g. provide quality content. This is the only way to attract people to you web log.
Pick a quality blog hosting provider on the internet where to host your blog. There are free providers like blogger.com and both of them are free and provide features for your blog you really need. There is no reason why you should go for a paid service. The bigger the blog community not always means this is the best choice, because the servers of these providers often can't handle the hughe amount of traffic and need to be shut down for maintenance very often. So bloxster.net would be a good pick
Post pictures with your articles to enhance your blog. If you have a startup band or you want to be the new rising pop star on the block, place a link to your demo (make one in mp3 format), and place it on your blog. This is called pod casting. While traveling submit travel stories and photo's to inform people at home or fellow travelers about your adventures. You can even stream video on you blog!
Most important write and provide quality content and update your weblog on a regular basis. Also take the time to promote your blog and rss feed to web blog directories because the competition of other blogs is fierce!
The success of the first blogs explained
The first blogs on the web were non commercial and that was the first ingredient for their success. Second, web logs are quality content and can be made really easy. As we all know search engines like Google really love good content. The first blogs could be on top of search results in mayor search engines like Google in a matter of days, where other (big) websites struggled to get the same result in years. This could happen because web logs contain loads of text which is related to quality content. Other traditional websites tweaked their sites with tricks that did not compete with the awesome power of blogs: honest quality content.
These days loads of people have their own blog and I must say 90% is not even worth reading. Because the amount of people having a blog is exploding, search engines which finally were able to find some good content related websites, now have to struggle with the millions of blogs with absolutely no good content at all. Many blogs are not updated on a regular basis, they are often made to sell products or used for marketing the thousands "get rich quick schemes" around on the internet. They really lack the power a good blog can have.
Next generation blogs
But there are really good blogs around and web logs will definitely stay around for a while. Beside that there is a new generation blogs on their way. Blog techniques are changing fast, many people start to put photos and pictures on their blogs. This caused a very interesting phenomenon. The first pictures of the London bombings where spread by blogs so fast, that they did beat the big television networks and news agencies. People actually submitted their pictures made from the scene with their mobile phones on their blogs. Other blogs picked up the news with the photo material in minutes and spread them around with lighting speed. I think this is the evidence that blog are really powerful things and earned their place on the internet. With the implementation of video on blogs their importance and popularity is even growing. This makes us consumers of news and multimedia much more independent from big commercial TV and news agencies. Those guys have other interests to consider then provide us with objective news, quality TV and radio programs.These advertisers and investors want everything to be a commercial success, rather then not so commercial quality content.
If you want to start your blog then here are some tips.
These days you can't make any money from having a blog. You are way too late to do that at this stage. Use web logs for their own purpose e.g. provide quality content. This is the only way to attract people to you web log.
Pick a quality blog hosting provider on the internet where to host your blog. There are free providers like blogger.com and both of them are free and provide features for your blog you really need. There is no reason why you should go for a paid service. The bigger the blog community not always means this is the best choice, because the servers of these providers often can't handle the hughe amount of traffic and need to be shut down for maintenance very often. So bloxster.net would be a good pick
Post pictures with your articles to enhance your blog. If you have a startup band or you want to be the new rising pop star on the block, place a link to your demo (make one in mp3 format), and place it on your blog. This is called pod casting. While traveling submit travel stories and photo's to inform people at home or fellow travelers about your adventures. You can even stream video on you blog!
Most important write and provide quality content and update your weblog on a regular basis. Also take the time to promote your blog and rss feed to web blog directories because the competition of other blogs is fierce!
Bad Blogs Have Got To Go, Blogging Could Be Really Cool
There's a lot of blogs out there on the Web, most of which don't entice one to go back regularly to read updates. What is missing from these on-line journals that would essentially make them 'good' blogs? Well, the answers in life usually come down to simplicities. So let's look at the problem like we were children. Children don't complicate life with miscellaneous information, and when they speak they tell you straight to the point exactly how they feel and think about a subject.
First of all, we should ask the questions," Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?" Well, in an ideal world 'good' blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they'd be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise.
Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they'll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on 'your world'. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you've never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil.
I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be 'good' reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you're looking for. Share yourself; don't hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It's the same in the 'virtual' world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don't want to hear the 'other side of the coin'.
Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I'm giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of 'bad' writing. In my next article I'll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven't come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the 'blog world' could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it's missing the mark.Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics
First of all, we should ask the questions," Why do blogs exist? And what are they here for?" Well, in an ideal world 'good' blogs would help people connect, sharing knowledge and feelings about issues in life. As they are journals written by individuals we would hope that they'd be readable and open to comment by all other people, not just a select group of friends. The key is speaking in a way that is understandable by the masses, get rid of acronyms and local slang that only few will comprehend. Keep the sentences grammatically simple and generally short and concise.
Try to write in your blog as often as possible because if people enjoy reading your thoughts and ideas they'll want to communicate or at least be filled in regularly on 'your world'. Ask questions, comment on other blogs of similar content, start communities with others you've never met, based on your interests. Keep focused; if your blog is about thoughts on war and peace, keep your thoughts on the latest movie and how hungry you are for somewhere else. The idea is to incite intelligent communication so that in time our collective stockpile of knowledge and wisdom will gradually grow like a tree in fertile soil.
I think of most importance is the fact that you want this journal to be 'good' reading. Of course we all have ideas about what genres and styles we like, but writing from your heart and soul is imperative for the connection with others that you're looking for. Share yourself; don't hide behind walls of fear of ridicule and judgment. In real life relationships trust, respect, intimacy, and unity are all necessary for a bond to form. It's the same in the 'virtual' world; people want to hear from real people-not just one-sided, highly opinionated arguments from egos that don't want to hear the 'other side of the coin'.
Now, in my last article I really tore apart most writers out there, and here I'm giving some pretty complex ideas on how to fix the problem of 'bad' writing. In my next article I'll attempt to go back to the simple basics of how to write for beginners. I hope I haven't come across as too judgmental, I just truly believe the 'blog world' could become a real asset to humanity, and at the moment it's missing the mark.Ideas about sentence structure, grammar, paragraphing, using a thesaurus (varying terms used so as not to sound repetitive), whether or not your blog is suitable for a personal or professional approach, are all important to creating a simple and enjoyable read for the blogging visitor. If you are a beginner, please check out my next article on the basics
Sunday, August 19, 2007
7 Questions To Ask Yourself BEFORE Starting A Business Blog
But with so many marketers jumping on the blogging bandwagon, few people are giving a thought to whether blogs are really up their alley, or taking the time to consider the best ways of going about it.If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge.
1. Do you really need a blog?Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog.But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing - like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?
2. Whom do you want to reach with your blog?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.
If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.
If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.
Internet users
Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.
- Blog readers
Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users
A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.
3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
-Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders
Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.
4. How much time can you spend on your blog?Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business.If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.
5. What blogging platform will serve your needs best?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.
The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.
Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.
According to T.L. Pakii Pierce who writes at "How to Blog for Fun & Profits!" ,if you are short of time, and want to spend more time writing, then a hosted solution like Blogger, Blogware, Squarespace or Typepad might serve your purpose better.
This might also prove a better option if you want to get started as soon as possible, are new to the internet, or are unfamiliar with scripts or code.
If, on the other hand, you're a control freak (like me) and don't mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like Wordpress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you.If you don't want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.
6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog?
Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.
You'll learn more about the methods to promote your blog when you subscribe to the email course below. Some of these tasks can be outsourced, while others you would have to do yourself.Decide what you want to take on and look out for service providers to handle the other functions so you can start building traffic to your blog as soon as possible.
7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.
Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.
Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.
Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.
Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.
But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business
1. Do you really need a blog?Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog.But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing - like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?
2. Whom do you want to reach with your blog?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.
If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.
If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.
Internet users
Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.
- Blog readers
Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users
A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.
3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
-Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders
Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.
4. How much time can you spend on your blog?Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business.If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.
5. What blogging platform will serve your needs best?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.
The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.
Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.
According to T.L. Pakii Pierce who writes at "How to Blog for Fun & Profits!" ,if you are short of time, and want to spend more time writing, then a hosted solution like Blogger, Blogware, Squarespace or Typepad might serve your purpose better.
This might also prove a better option if you want to get started as soon as possible, are new to the internet, or are unfamiliar with scripts or code.
If, on the other hand, you're a control freak (like me) and don't mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like Wordpress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you.If you don't want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.
6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog?
Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.
You'll learn more about the methods to promote your blog when you subscribe to the email course below. Some of these tasks can be outsourced, while others you would have to do yourself.Decide what you want to take on and look out for service providers to handle the other functions so you can start building traffic to your blog as soon as possible.
7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.
Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.
Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.
Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.
Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.
But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business
24 Tips and Strategies
By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. "Blog readership shoots up 58% in2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed tothem through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans donot know what a blog is." - Pew Internet & American Life Project
Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting servicesuch as Blogger, or other similarfree services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com orBlog-City.com. The learning curve for using such freeservices allow you to spend more on developing your contentrather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting, hosting, or programming.
Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write AboutAlthough not a required prerequisite for you in order towrite a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find atopic to write about based on your level of interest and knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier itis for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiasticallywrite about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a nichewhich suites you well. A niche is basically a targetedproduct, service, or topic.
Tip #3 - Always stay on topic.Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the itemsin the blog should all relate to a general theme. Themajority of your readers will be interested in the contentthat relates to a specific defined theme or loosely definedarea of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyalfollowing of interested readers.
Tip #4 - Information is king, be informative.If you are attempting to create the impression that you areknowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. Checking your facts beforeyou're giving out an opinion or a product review is always agood idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chanceyou're utilizing other people's articles for you blog content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage definedby the author.
Tip #5 - Old news is not news, but old information can berecycled and made new. While blogging everyday can bestrenuous and time consuming, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate. Information,articles or any other archived resources can be recycled /modified to add more substance to your content. As long asthey're relevant and informative, there's no reason why it's not a good approach.
Tip #6 - Be disciplined and stick to a fixed postingschedule. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort,don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable todeliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don't want to lose them due to lack ofcommunication. If time is not on your side, take advantageof tonnes of automatically updating contents which areavailable for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic canbe inserted within your blogging post.
Tip #7 - Posting FrequencyIf your blog content is updated frequently, search engineswill tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting toreaders, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a dayto day making it more appealing to search engines. To keepyour blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Youshould try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 - 3or more daily entries, depending on your daily schedule.
Tip #8 - Quantity matters.In order to attract the attention of search engines, youwill need to produce a relevant amount of content andinformation. A headline or simple sentence is not going togenerate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop alarge portal of similarly-themed content.
Tip #9 - Clarity & simplicity / Short & ConciseKeep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Simplicity always produce better results at theend of the day.Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication andpublication your blog entries should be short & concise (ifyou can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style,proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for yourtitles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, gostraight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert images to spice up things if you're an avid fan of longposts.
Tip #10 - Utilize the
and tagsBeing one of the few most underutilized blogging formattingtags, these 2 items can help you on emphasizing certain points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formattingis simple and straightforward. Just
HiWorld!
and your message will apeardistinctively different from the rest of your text, thus gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that theformatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blogdepending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS(Cascading Style Sheets).Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.
Tip #11 - Keyword-rich.If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility,include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item postshould have a title that will attract attention but still berelevant to the post. The title should be no longer than10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must, possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try toinclude extraordinary and innovative titles to grab thereaders' attention.
Tip #12 - Spell checking and proof-reading.It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards ofInternet is that if you're too late to correct your mistake,most likely it's already been crawled by the search enginesand read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you postbefore doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.
Tip #13 - RSS FeedsRSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single freeblogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikelythat you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave itand find a new one, if you happen to come across one withoutit.
Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic. It's no secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of ablog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid andfree advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing,RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit provides a submission servicefor your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blogURL address in the signature of your email, forumdiscussions, message boards, or any other communicationmedia. Never forget to share your blog to your friends,colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.
Tip #15 - Track Your BlogTracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticatedusually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com,ActiveMeter.com, willdo the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html ofyour blog template and start tracking your visitors. Itsbetter to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referralinformation, and search engine information. Visitors,returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standardfor any page counter service you choose.
Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and trackinginformation. Believe it or not, your visitors' informationfrom your tracking scripts will provide you pricelessinformation on how you can attract more readers. Keep note on the keyword terms used from search engines which bringyou traffic. You can identify relevant closely relatedtopics which you can venture into and add more variety intoyour blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You mayanalyze your tracking information further on how you canstrategize your blog's content. You can also apply somekeyword optimization strategies here.
Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listento them. Always interact with your readers who post commentson your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or justsimply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a proven fact when there's a direct human interaction andknowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the otherend of the blog makes most of them coming back. If youraudience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take them constructively and inform them if you have any desiresof implementing such ideas on your next update. And ofcourse, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it'sa great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their website in your blog?
Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Valueto Your BlogEveryone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level ofreturning visitors because of its constantly updated content. Why don't you add more interesting items to thatreturn value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g.Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of theMonth, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute excuse to return to your blog. As long as you canefficiently and appropriately increase that Return Valueconstantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be gettingtonnes of repeated visitors, period.An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anythingsimilar to that also can act as a short term return valuestrategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices/ posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.
Tip #19 - Multiple blogsIt never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attractmore people. You can even have multiple blogs withinitself, but you may also want to try different free blogging services such as JournalHome.com,LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have theurge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog justto gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search engines / feed directories might translate that as excessiveredundant information which simply brings you trouble, andyou're tend to get penalized, banned or even accused ofspamming.
Tip #20 - Digital Art, Creative Graphics Another proven fact - Monotonous and continous display of text will make yourreaders run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics,pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try tokeep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower loading time and messy text and graphical combination. Youdon't want your blog to look messy. Most of the time,graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can makeboring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical elements are by far the fastest message delivering elementavailable on the net today. It may deliver various messagesby a split second of a look.
Tip #21 - Maintain a Personal BlogA blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic ofyour blog entry. Stay away from the business style ofwriting. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Share product reviews and personal endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you'reselling.
Tip #22 - Credibility & PopularityAs thing progresses, things need to change in order to copewith the flow and nature of development. If your number of readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free bloggingservice to get your messages out, you may want to considergetting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a morepersonalized Blog.Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get thebest of all the available options. For the most highlyrecommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging softwareout there, drop by at. This isby far the best place to drop by if you want to get yourresearch done about which blogging software to choose.Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which meansthey are totally free. Try going through the serverrequirements for each software before purchasing yourweb hosting.
Tip 23# - Customize the look of your Blog If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging servicesout there, you might notice that most of us are using thesame template again and again for our blogs. It is wellunderstood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you havethe knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make itlook DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you'redifferent in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.
Tip #24 - Blog and Make MoneyOnce your blog has gained some real momentum and your blogtraffic is increasing then it is time to start thinkingif you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the recommended income generating sources are as follow :-
Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program Affiliate Programsand any advertising related text links can be your place tostart off.Final #Tip - Conclusion.Following these blogging tips should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally doneout of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for incomegenerating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will nevercease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting servicesuch as Blogger, or other similarfree services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com orBlog-City.com. The learning curve for using such freeservices allow you to spend more on developing your contentrather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting, hosting, or programming.
Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write AboutAlthough not a required prerequisite for you in order towrite a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find atopic to write about based on your level of interest and knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier itis for you to get your quality content posted on your blog.Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiasticallywrite about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a nichewhich suites you well. A niche is basically a targetedproduct, service, or topic.
Tip #3 - Always stay on topic.Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the itemsin the blog should all relate to a general theme. Themajority of your readers will be interested in the contentthat relates to a specific defined theme or loosely definedarea of interest. Define a topic and try not to run too far away from it. This will ensure that you create a loyalfollowing of interested readers.
Tip #4 - Information is king, be informative.If you are attempting to create the impression that you areknowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. Checking your facts beforeyou're giving out an opinion or a product review is always agood idea, your reputation is at stake. If by any chanceyou're utilizing other people's articles for you blog content, ensure that you follow the terms of usage definedby the author.
Tip #5 - Old news is not news, but old information can berecycled and made new. While blogging everyday can bestrenuous and time consuming, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate. Information,articles or any other archived resources can be recycled /modified to add more substance to your content. As long asthey're relevant and informative, there's no reason why it's not a good approach.
Tip #6 - Be disciplined and stick to a fixed postingschedule. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort,don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable todeliver. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don't want to lose them due to lack ofcommunication. If time is not on your side, take advantageof tonnes of automatically updating contents which areavailable for your blog. Looking at the constantly updating nature of RSS feeds, other RSS feeds from similar topic canbe inserted within your blogging post.
Tip #7 - Posting FrequencyIf your blog content is updated frequently, search engineswill tend to spider the pages at regular intervals. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting toreaders, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a dayto day making it more appealing to search engines. To keepyour blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. Youshould try to update your blog everyday with at least 2 - 3or more daily entries, depending on your daily schedule.
Tip #8 - Quantity matters.In order to attract the attention of search engines, youwill need to produce a relevant amount of content andinformation. A headline or simple sentence is not going togenerate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop alarge portal of similarly-themed content.
Tip #9 - Clarity & simplicity / Short & ConciseKeep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Simplicity always produce better results at theend of the day.Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication andpublication your blog entries should be short & concise (ifyou can help it). Should you insist on partaking on the lengthy road, try to maintain a clean paragraphing style,proper spacing, use different size, color and bold for yourtitles as well as the subtitles. Use bullet points, gostraight to the point and never run out of topic. Insert images to spice up things if you're an avid fan of longposts.
Tip #10 - Utilize the
and tagsBeing one of the few most underutilized blogging formattingtags, these 2 items can help you on emphasizing certain points, in the most efficient and striking way. Formattingis simple and straightforward. Just
HiWorld!
and your message will apeardistinctively different from the rest of your text, thus gets more attention which it deserves. Take note that theformatting for these 2 tags differ from blog to blogdepending on how the owner defines the tag in the CSS(Cascading Style Sheets).Click the below link if you want to read more about CSS.
Tip #11 - Keyword-rich.If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility,include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item postshould have a title that will attract attention but still berelevant to the post. The title should be no longer than10-12 words. Experiment with the titles if you must, possibly try to avoid general and ordinary titles. Try toinclude extraordinary and innovative titles to grab thereaders' attention.
Tip #12 - Spell checking and proof-reading.It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. The hazards ofInternet is that if you're too late to correct your mistake,most likely it's already been crawled by the search enginesand read by many. It is extremely essential to think / proof read carefully twice or even thrice, about what you postbefore doing so. Take note of your language and grammar.
Tip #13 - RSS FeedsRSS to a blog is like fuel to cars. Mostly every single freeblogs or bloggin software out there will have an automatic RSS feed generating feature. Although it's most unlikelythat you'll find one without a RSS feature, simply leave itand find a new one, if you happen to come across one withoutit.
Tip #14 - The essence of the Internet - Traffic. It's no secret. You must have traffic to realize the definition of ablog.. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid andfree advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing,RSS/XML feeds, word-of-mouth, submitting to numerous blog and RSS directories, etc. RSSBlogsubmit provides a submission servicefor your Blog & RSS feeds. You should always use your blogURL address in the signature of your email, forumdiscussions, message boards, or any other communicationmedia. Never forget to share your blog to your friends,colleagues, and any other invidious that you know of.
Tip #15 - Track Your BlogTracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticatedusually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com,ActiveMeter.com, willdo the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html ofyour blog template and start tracking your visitors. Itsbetter to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referralinformation, and search engine information. Visitors,returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standardfor any page counter service you choose.
Tip #16 - Make use of your Blog's statistical and trackinginformation. Believe it or not, your visitors' informationfrom your tracking scripts will provide you pricelessinformation on how you can attract more readers. Keep note on the keyword terms used from search engines which bringyou traffic. You can identify relevant closely relatedtopics which you can venture into and add more variety intoyour blog, yet staying very much in topic. Simply put, more topic coverage and more variety = more traffic. You mayanalyze your tracking information further on how you canstrategize your blog's content. You can also apply somekeyword optimization strategies here.
Tip #17 - The essence of your Blog is your Audience, listento them. Always interact with your readers who post commentson your blog. Reply with a brief thank you note or justsimply attend to their questions if they have any. It's a proven fact when there's a direct human interaction andknowing the fact that there's a "real human" at the otherend of the blog makes most of them coming back. If youraudience provide suggestions, comments or feedbacks, take them constructively and inform them if you have any desiresof implementing such ideas on your next update. And ofcourse, don't forget to thank them for their ideas. If it'sa great idea, why not throw in a free gift? Mention their website in your blog?
Tip #18 - Create and increase the "Why Must I Return" Valueto Your BlogEveryone knows the fact that Blogs get a huge level ofreturning visitors because of its constantly updated content. Why don't you add more interesting items to thatreturn value by having fixed periodical posts / offers, e.g.Monday Top 10 Tips, Picture of the Week, Free Bonus of theMonth, Free Daily Wallpapers, etc. to give them the absolute excuse to return to your blog. As long as you canefficiently and appropriately increase that Return Valueconstantly, it is mostly guaranteed that you'll be gettingtonnes of repeated visitors, period.An advance notice, prelaunch announcement or anythingsimilar to that also can act as a short term return valuestrategy. Encourage readers to comment on your such notices/ posts. Experiment and play around with this idea.
Tip #19 - Multiple blogsIt never hurts to use multiple blogging accounts to attractmore people. You can even have multiple blogs withinitself, but you may also want to try different free blogging services such as JournalHome.com,LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, etc. Should you have theurge to have multiple similar duplicates of your blog justto gain more traffic, it is wise to avoid it as search engines / feed directories might translate that as excessiveredundant information which simply brings you trouble, andyou're tend to get penalized, banned or even accused ofspamming.
Tip #20 - Digital Art, Creative Graphics Another proven fact - Monotonous and continous display of text will make yourreaders run away! Try to include non- advertising graphics,pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries, but try tokeep them at a limit. Too many graphics also mean slower loading time and messy text and graphical combination. Youdon't want your blog to look messy. Most of the time,graphics can bring your blog to life. Pictures can makeboring texts interesting no matter how long it is. Graphical elements are by far the fastest message delivering elementavailable on the net today. It may deliver various messagesby a split second of a look.
Tip #21 - Maintain a Personal BlogA blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic ofyour blog entry. Stay away from the business style ofwriting. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Share product reviews and personal endeavors, instead of trying to make it sounds like you'reselling.
Tip #22 - Credibility & PopularityAs thing progresses, things need to change in order to copewith the flow and nature of development. If your number of readers are reasonably huge, and still using a free bloggingservice to get your messages out, you may want to considergetting your own domain name and hosting plan to have a morepersonalized Blog.Domain names and hosting plans are pretty much straightforward. Research is all what it takes to get thebest of all the available options. For the most highlyrecommended comprehensive listing of Free Blogging softwareout there, drop by at. This isby far the best place to drop by if you want to get yourresearch done about which blogging software to choose.Reviews, ratings, public votes, demos, etc are provided. And the best thing is, all of them are Open Source, which meansthey are totally free. Try going through the serverrequirements for each software before purchasing yourweb hosting.
Tip 23# - Customize the look of your Blog If you happen to be using one of the Free blogging servicesout there, you might notice that most of us are using thesame template again and again for our blogs. It is wellunderstood that not everybody has the technical knowledge to change the layout as how they want it to be, but if you havethe knowledge, by all means try to customize it and make itlook DIFFERENT. You can grab that extra attention, if you'redifferent in certain ways. Create that image for yourself.
Tip #24 - Blog and Make MoneyOnce your blog has gained some real momentum and your blogtraffic is increasing then it is time to start thinkingif you want to turn your traffic into profit. Some of the recommended income generating sources are as follow :-
Google Adsense, Amazon Associate program Affiliate Programsand any advertising related text links can be your place tostart off.Final #Tip - Conclusion.Following these blogging tips should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. Blogging is generally doneout of interest and enthusiasm and sometimes for incomegenerating purposes. The flexibility of blogging will nevercease to expand. Through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging.
13 Steps to Successful Blogging
Blogs can be a very marketable and very profitable tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of grabbing the attention of an audience and not doing any actual salesmen selling. In this article you will learn the 13 most essential steps to successful blogging.
1) Where to start?You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!
2) NicheA niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) TrafficIt's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your BlogHow do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors. Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your AudienceWhen using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogsUse multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
8) Short & Concise Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.
9) Digital ArtTry to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it PersonalA blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your VisitorsYou now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring.
Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You're a ProfessionalYou're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability.
Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference:
This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog.
The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding.
There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging
1) Where to start?You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Journal Home or Blogger. Starting with a free blog hosting service allows you to begin blogging instantly without having any advance knowledge of scripts, hosting, or programming. It allows you to focus on your content and not the internal maintenance of the blog. The best benefit of starting with a free service is, in the case your blog doesn't become successful you do not lose any money or are you left holding the bill. The great thing about a blog is that they are organized in chronological order, your latest entry is displayed first. When your blog traffic grows greatly and you are ready to upgrade to your own domain then you can simply make your last blog entry the announcement of your "move". Simply add a last entry stating that your blog has "moved" and type the new blog URL address. Which directs visitors to your new blog site, keeping your following, without a major inconvenience to anyone. Upgrade as you need to...but only when you need to!
2) NicheA niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic which interest you. Choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis. You can use keyword research services like Google Zeitgeist or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular searched topics. It does NOT matter if your topic is popular as long as there is a audience for your topic and the topic is precisely focused then your blog should be successful. Anything can be considered a niche as long as it has a target audience no matter how large or how small the audience is. A blog about your cat can be a niche or a blog about the species of the cat family can be a larger niche market, if there are people who are interested in hearing about your cat or the species of the cat family...you can even choose to build your audience for a market which an audience does not exist, but first you must build your blog.
3) Update Daily (nothing less)This step is a must and not a suggestion. Updating your blog daily not only keeps your blog more interesting to readers, but it also gives your blog fresh content on a day to day making it more appealing to search engines. Not updating your blog on an occasional holiday or one day here and there is understandable to most, but missing days at a time or weeks is unacceptable and will most likely result in your blog being unsuccessful. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors interest it is a must to update your blog daily with multiple entries. You should try to update your blog everyday with at least 3 or more daily entries. The best way to accomplish this is to set aside 1-2 hours a day for tending to your blog and adding new entries. It may even be wise to schedule a set time which you dedicate to your blog each day. Give yourself work hours and treat your blog as a job, what happens if you don't come to work for days or weeks...you lose money or worse you get fired! Same applies here...if you don't update your blog for days or weeks you'll lose visitors.
4) TrafficIt's no secret. You must have traffic to profit from blogs. There are numerous ways to build traffic. Paid advertising, free advertising, viral marketing, search engine marketing, RSS/XML feeds, and word-of-mouth. You should always use your blog URL address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media. You should submit your blog URL address to search engines and blog directories. You should submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger. You should confidently share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates. Many blogs can be considered as a collection of articles, for this purpose you should submit your blog entries (those that are valuable and lengthy articles) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. The trick is to make sure you include your Blog URL address in the "About the Author" passage. What this does is create link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the "About the Author" passage is included with each publication and the link you included is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Imagine if your article is popular enough or controversial enough to produce 10,000 publications across the web. The search engines is bound to find your site in no time with that many publications and credit you a authority on the topic, in return increasing your rank on search engines. The small effort of writing a well written article is rewarding. You should try to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to at least 10 article syndicators.
5) Track Your BlogHow do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn't mean your blog isn't growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors. I know it sounds crazy but with blogs people are more interested in what "you" have to say! Many visitors do not comment their 1st, 2nd, or 3rd time. Some do not comment at all, but are active daily visitors. Tracking your blog does not have to be overly sophisticated usually a simple free page counter like StatCounter.com or Active Meter will do the trick. Install (copy/paste) the code into the html of your blog template and start tracking your visitors. Its better to use a service which gives you advanced traffic analysis, such as keyword tracking information, referral information, and search engine information. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any page counter service you choose.
6) Listen to Your AudienceWhen using the proper page counter you should begin to see how others are finding your blog and if through search engines then which keywords are being used to find your blog. If constantly your blog is being found by 1 or more keywords then focus your blog around those keywords to make it even more powerful. When writing entry titles and entries use the keywords as often as possible while keeping the blog legible and interesting.
7) Multiple blogsUse multiple blogging accounts to attract more people. This means you should have a blog with JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com, Blog-City.com, tBlogs.com, etc. The more blog accounts the better. You can copy/paste from 1 blog to all others. Having different blog accounts is like having a publication in different newspapers. This enables you to attract more visitors and this also increases the chance that 1 of your blogs will be in the search engine results for your focused keywords.
8) Short & Concise Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & concise (if you can help it). Sometimes there are exceptions to the rule and you have no choice but to blog lengthy entries, but try to avoid this as much as possible. You do not want your blog entries to become hours of reading. Visitors like to easily find information and skim through your entries. It is good to be detailed and provide useful information, but do not include useless information or run away sentences that veer away from your topic.
9) Digital ArtTry to include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Not too much. Once a week is fine. Graphics can sometimes bring your blog to life. Of course, the content of the blog is the most important aspect and you do not want to overshadow your content with graphics, but displaying graphics can add a bit of spice to the blog. Be choosy about your graphics and make sure they fit your entry topic. You should add content with the graphic, at least a caption. Original graphics, photos, pictures, and art is recommended.
10) Keep it PersonalA blog is most successful when it is kept personal. Try to include personal experiences which relates to the topic of your blog entry. Stay away from the business style of writing. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives. Do not write any of your entries as sales letters, instead share product reviews and personal endeavors.
11) Interact With Your VisitorsYou now have the traffic you deserve. You should begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: "Monday Money Tip" or "Picture of the Week" which entices your readers to look forward to each week.
Give your readers advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review and then talk about later. If the President was scheduled to give a speech then in your blog you should state that you "will discuss the speech and give your opinion after the speech airs. Comments will be appreciated".Try your best to find exclusive information that not many have. Do not disclose any confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble, but try to get the scoop before everyone else does. Such as: If your blog was about Paris Hilton (the socialite) and you had a blog entry about "Paris Hilton Getting Married" then it would be interesting to your readers if you had a actual picture of Paris Hilton engagement ring.
Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your readers will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. Imagine how many readers will tell their friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.
12) Make Money Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing then it is time to start thinking about turning your traffic into profit. You should use contextual advertising, like Google Adsense or Chitika. Contextual advertising is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for ever click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits. In addition to contextual advertising it is good to also use graphical advertising such as: BlogAds.com, MammaMedia, or General Sponsored Advertising.
13) You're a ProfessionalYou're a professional now! What are you still doing with that free blog hosting service? It is time to upgrade to a domain hosted solution. You need to get a web host and choose a domain name for your blog then check its availability.
Select the blogging software you wish to use, such as: WordPress.org, MovableType.org, etc. When you have your new blog domain setup and ready for traffic then it is time for you to announce your move on all your previous blog accounts. Your last entry to the blog should be a "move" announcement. The title should be "Moved" and the blog entry should state something like "Old Blog has been moved to New Blog please follow and bookmark this link for future reference:
This way all returning visitors and new readers should not have any problem finding your new blog domain.At the level of a professional blogger you may want to team up with 1 or more other bloggers. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog.
The old saying "two heads is better than one", more authors mean more advertising and exposure because each author will have a vested interest in the blog. The idea of a team blog is to make it profitable and rewarding for all authors, while continuing to target the blog topic and keeping the blog interesting for visitors.Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding.
There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility. As well, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will be rewarded with all the royalties of blogging
6 Things to post on your blog when you're running out of idea
There is no doubt that blogs are the "it" thing today in the online world. Wherever you surf, blogs are sprouting everywhere like mushrooms, whether they're used for personal or business purposes. But for starters, what is a blog anyway? It is a diary where you can post your thoughts or feelings or whatnots, except that it is online and the public can read it. But enough of that. Gone were the days when they were used solely for personal reasons. On the business side, they can be a very useful tool to boost your business, and to keep your customers updated on the products and infos you have. But if you're still struggling to catch up on the latest thing these days and you think you're not much of a great writer either, let me give you some useful subjects you can write about to give your customers a lot of reasons to keep coming back to your site.
1. News. Okay, so maybe that's basic. After all, your company or business is the reason you put up a blog, right? Write about the products you sell. Give them a bit of the benefits your potential customers might get for buying them, with a link back to your main site to read the entire sales letter. You can also write about updates to your product. Post news about the industry you're in. If you're selling products that help people get better search engine rankings, write about search engine news. Or, if you or your service has been featured on TV, papers, or notable websites, write about it. Don't forget to post seminars or gatherings where you've been invited.
2. History of your business. Maybe this one has already been in your main website, but who cares? People forget it. They come and go and chances are, when they visit your site, they don't read it. Write about how you began, the reputation and achievements you've earned, and the accolades or awards you received, with a link back your site. That way you'll let them know why they should buy from you, and that you're a real person who's building a reputable business. Add some employee's profile if you have someone working for you, too. If you have nice traffic or site stats, that's also worth mentioning.
3. Customer's feedback. When a raving customer emails you about how your product has helped him, share it in your blog. You're giving your visitors a compelling reason to buy from you.
4. Site of the week / month. Mention a site that doesn't compete with you but complements to your won. Explain to them why you like it, and why it deserves your accolade.
5. Contests, surveys, trivia, questionnaires. If you're running a contest, post it in your blog to encourage visitors to join. Get their attention by including the prizes, a bit of the rules, with a link back to your site for more information regarding it. Or put a survey. That could give you information regarding the product you're selling, as to how you could develop it further.
6. Tip of the day. Write about a new tactic you developed or something you learned and perfected. So there. Whatever your business is, no doubt there's always something you'll definitely want to write about. Give it a try. And it will reward you soon.
1. News. Okay, so maybe that's basic. After all, your company or business is the reason you put up a blog, right? Write about the products you sell. Give them a bit of the benefits your potential customers might get for buying them, with a link back to your main site to read the entire sales letter. You can also write about updates to your product. Post news about the industry you're in. If you're selling products that help people get better search engine rankings, write about search engine news. Or, if you or your service has been featured on TV, papers, or notable websites, write about it. Don't forget to post seminars or gatherings where you've been invited.
2. History of your business. Maybe this one has already been in your main website, but who cares? People forget it. They come and go and chances are, when they visit your site, they don't read it. Write about how you began, the reputation and achievements you've earned, and the accolades or awards you received, with a link back your site. That way you'll let them know why they should buy from you, and that you're a real person who's building a reputable business. Add some employee's profile if you have someone working for you, too. If you have nice traffic or site stats, that's also worth mentioning.
3. Customer's feedback. When a raving customer emails you about how your product has helped him, share it in your blog. You're giving your visitors a compelling reason to buy from you.
4. Site of the week / month. Mention a site that doesn't compete with you but complements to your won. Explain to them why you like it, and why it deserves your accolade.
5. Contests, surveys, trivia, questionnaires. If you're running a contest, post it in your blog to encourage visitors to join. Get their attention by including the prizes, a bit of the rules, with a link back to your site for more information regarding it. Or put a survey. That could give you information regarding the product you're selling, as to how you could develop it further.
6. Tip of the day. Write about a new tactic you developed or something you learned and perfected. So there. Whatever your business is, no doubt there's always something you'll definitely want to write about. Give it a try. And it will reward you soon.
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