I started blogging in November 2004, It's been more than 3 years for me using blogs as business. Having seen the changes in Marketing and Blogging world, I wonder about this new found complexity in blogging. Earlier all you need a topic and something to talk about. Then came blog and ping, tag & ping, now social bookmarking... So What exactly is correct stand in this confusion? I am going to clear this in this guide today once and for all...
Blogging for business has only 2 key ingredients
If you are blogging for part time income, then you only need to remember 2 key ingredients. They are buyer and seller. That's it. If you are a blogger, you become a medium of communication in between these 2 people. That's where you make your income. If you remember Sony fiasco, when they tried to influence the crowds with blogging. They created these 2 people because they understand that blogging is a medium of communication.
Think of all the pro bloggers are new wave of journalists who writes about the current, past and future on internet.
How to Join the ranks of pro bloggers?
Like I earlier said, You only need to find 2 key ingredients, you'll find things to write about. You should stop worrying about the changes, Web 2.0 is more than just social bookmarking. So here are few key points you should remember.
1. Blog for Fun & Profit : Listen, this might not be for everybody. Some people are suited to become bloggers and some not. So if you don't succeed, may be you are not suited for this, who knows... Why I am saying this? Because if you are not having fun while blogging, you'll have hard time profiting from it. In that case you'll need more marketing experience than blogging.
This activity needs passion of writing and speaking your mind. You'll find some marketers updates blog almost on daily basis.And some do that when they want to sell something... WHY? Because they understand their limitations. I love it that's why I am doing it for more than 3 years.
2. Your content matters : As others are saying, your content matters a lot. That's why I suggested it might not be for you, if you hate writing. But here's the secret, It doesn't matter if the content is unique. What it matters is that your viewpoint in blogosphere. People read blogs for only this reason. They want to find out and confirm their beliefs. That's where blogger comes in.
If you just remember these 2 things, you'll be able to succeed as a blogger and generate a decent part time income. Don't forget the buyer/Seller key points. Don't forget where blogger stands. He's an informer a journalist.
Check out the part 2 of this article on how to tackle the social media beast at my blog post blogging tips. Know more about Strategic Internet Marketing techniques and get access to my blog
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I received a very good question from a subscriber and I wanted to share it with you:
"I have almost 500 people sigend up to receive my newsletter but each time I send it 8-9 open it and 1 =3 click onto the website. Now what do I do?"
Honestly, there could a lot of factors involved in the low open rate. If 8 or 9 actually open it and then you get 1-3 click...that's pretty good. But the problem here, seems to be with getting people to open the darned email.
Here's a couple things to think about:
1. How much of your email is getting through? Could your email or the service you're using be blacklisted by certain ISPs? I would check and see if you can see how many of your emails are actually going through.
2. How about a compelling subject line? Test out different subject lines to see what grabs your subscribers interest. If you're still writing:
"MyDomain.com Newsletter Issue 1 Vol 14"
Then cut it out!:) That's not going to get people to open it. Try to give them a quick glimpse of what's inside and make it interesting. You'll probably find certain things grab your subscriber's attention than others.
3. What are the contents of your newsletter like? Is there a reason for people to open it if they don't have their wallet ready to buy something? I know that many people who sell products only place information about product specials, etc....but if your subscriber is not in a buying mood, they may not open your email.
Go the extra mile and provide them with VALUE in your newsletter. Give them special tips and advice related to your product that will help them solve problems.
For example, if you sell corporate gift baskets - give tips on developing client relationships or anything related to the goal of corporate gift giving.
4. If you reach a broad audience, customize your mailing lists. I happen to know the lady who submitted this question does sell gift baskets...but she sells all kinds of gift baskets. What kind of value can you deliver to your customers / prospects if some of them:
- buy new baby gift baskets
- buy corporate gifts
- buy Valentine's gifts
It's tough. I'd look to Amazon as the ultimate model to emulate -- they customize information for you based on your interests. They know what you looked at when you visited their website and they also keep track of what you buy. Then they deliver relevant products and content to you.You can apply the same plan to your mailing lists.
You can give opt-in subscribers tell you what topics they are interested in or if you are putting your customers on your follow up list -- make sure that follow up list is related to what they bought.
Keep working at it and learning what your subscribers WANT and deliver it to them. Don't give up...just get better. Also, do yourself a favor to help you in this process. Sign up for Alexandria K. Brown's (The Ezine Queen) Free Report:
"3 Simple Secrets to Publishing an Ezine That Makes You Money"
===> http://www.aliceseba.com/ezinequeen.html
About The Author
Alice Seba is a full-time online business owner that thrives on helping others say good-bye to their J-O-Bs forever. Sign up for her "Internet Marketing Prescriptions" to cure what ails your online business:
http://www.AliceSeba.com
One of the most powerful driving forces in human nature is competition. The desire to overcome something or some company, the need to win, the cause, can in many cases be more important than the day-to-day work of the company.
If your company and your people are to ever reach some level of greatness, you must identify and focus on beating something, on creating and communicating a reason for being.
If your reason for being is that you got fired, so you decided to go into business for yourself, then maybe all you will ever create is a job.
Now, understand that when I say enemy or competition, I’m not necessarily suggesting something negative. While the folks at Apple Computer will tell you that their reason for being is often rooted in beating Microsoft, many organizations also draw motivation from saving things, ridding the world of things, creating peace, making life more enjoyable, teaching, sharing, spreading and a host of other very positive things.
And that’s the point. Small business owners often have no readily identifiable group of competitors or Goliath to aim at but they may find motivation in a great cause or reason for being and connecting that that great cause can become the drive to play the game at the highest level.
Your cause can be grand or it can be humble, but find it and you will be much more prepared to market your business, run your business with passion, hire people who support the cause and create a vision for your business. Great causes possess the power of attraction.
Think what you do isn’t grand enough to call a cause?
I will rid the world of bad advertising, one ad at a time. We will prove that tax preparation can be fun. We will empower anyone to buy a home. I will make my customers so overwhelmingly thrilled they will refer their friends and neighbors willingly. I will ensure that no one will ever be afraid to go to the dentist again.
Are you starting to see how this kind of thinking and the notion of focusing on competition could help drive your actions?
What if you could actually connect your beliefs and values to your reason for being? Would that provide motivation to do more? Would that start to feel like more than a job?
So, what is your organization’s cause for being? Aim high and let your cause guide you, your people and your clients to greatness.
Copyright 2004 John Jantsch
About The Author
John Jantsch is a marketing coach and the creator of Duct Tape Marketing. Find out more and recieve you free small business marketing guide at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com.
You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?
Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.
1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.
Http://www.bloglet.com
2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)
http://www.my.yahoo.com
3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
http://www.pingomatic.com
5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com
6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.
7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.
9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.
11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.
12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm
13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts
14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).
16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.
Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com
Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Wakeman
What Makes BlogCatalog Different? - Blogging Mix Review
- Don't use a lot of animated graphics. In fact, don't use any at all because it makes the site look unprofessional.
- Don't use frames to design your website. You will be in for a lot of code redundancy and it causes the page to load slower.
- Use graphics at the lowest density possible. This allows the page to load faster.
- Try to get most of the content on one page preventing the user from having to scroll down to get the important information that your first page needs to prevent.
- Use links to navigate to the various sections of the site at the top, side, and bottom. Doing this allows a visitor can get to anywhere in the site from anywhere in the site.
- Always have link to get back to the home page on every page of the site.
- Use tables to lay out the sections on the site. This way, when one adjusts the size of the browser window, it does not alter the positioning of the paragraphs or sections on the page.
- Use headers and footers common to all pages and include that header or footer each time a new page is rendered. This way, if you have to change header or footer information, you only have to change it once.
- Use a white background for the main content of your page. The reason is that it looks much more professional and it is easier to read.
Andrew Smith is a co-webmaster of HowToAll, a site providing well researched information on accomplishing tasks on various topics. http://www.howtoall.com.
