3 Overlooked Ways to Get Hundreds of Links and Prospects to Your Blog
by Tinu Abayomi Paul

Did you know that there are free ways that you can get links back to your blog overnight? That after a few days they can number in the hundreds?

No matter what you market on the internet at some point you'll face the issue of increasing the number of visitors to your site.

What most people don't know is that there are literally hundreds of ways to get free traffic. Here we'll focus on three overlooked ways to get additional traffic to your site using a blog.

The third most overlooked way to bring traffic to your site with a blog is to read and comment on other blogs.

Now, maybe you've done this before but stopped, because you're becoming concerned about being considered a link-spammer. In that case, leave a link to your site after your comments, instead of in the comment form that hot links it.

In the near future, blogmasters will be able to use special code to prevent spam in their comments section, so this will become less of a concern.

Besides, getting clicks from people who read comments, or visits from search engine spiders through your comments, isn't necessarily your direct objective, though it's definitely a plus.

What you want to do via commenting is to enter the blog community that corresponds to your target market. Get to know who the players are and make agreements with them to cycle traffic between you.

Or lurk to find out where your target market typically hangs out when they're online - you'd be surprised at how many inexpensive and targeted advertising sources you can find through this method.

(If you're looking to get linked, there's another way that we'll go over next.)

This tip alone has earned me a few dozen links from prominent blogs in the past four days alone.

These links are worth ten times a reciprocal link because they send targeted traffic from established sources, and come from experts with records of proven results.

You can be sure these kinds of people will check you out before they linked to you, since they may be judged by the quality of the information they share.

The second method to more blog traffic is the most confusing for newer people, and this is probably the reason its benefits remain overlooked.

In the simplest of terms, Trackback is kind of a remote commenting system that incorporates linking.

It allows the reader to follow a topic around the web to see other bloggers remark on the same subject. It enables the publisher to remotely cite references to the issue on which they've written.

Once you've made yourself familiar with the blogging community you have entered, you can often pick up the pulse of conversations within your site's theme.

Then, when you see issues that you want to expound on, you can send the other site a notification to let them know you cited them on your blog. That link will appear on their site, and often draws visitors to you.

Bloggers who use Trackback often enjoy greater control over this function in their blogs than they do over linking, as they have the option to reject your reference - so there is a lesser incidence of fraudulent linking.

That also gives your link a greater chance of being displayed.

So why don't more people use Trackback?

One reason is that what is arguably the most popular free blog system, Blogger, doesn't have Trackback. However, Haloscan.com can remedy this with their free service - it's a cut and paste away.

Many new bloggers don't get what it is and how it differs from commenting. And of course, the dynamics of it are a little more complex than I've stated. But learn to use Trackback properly, and you won't need to beg for links to your site ever again.

It's harder to estimate an exact number of visitors that come as a result of trackback links. But if you posted five days out of seven, and was able to get a trackback link to your site three times a week, by the end of the year you'd have almost 150 topical links back to your site, which are more valued by search engines than a typical link trade with an unrelated site.

The most overlooked source of traffic for a blog is through article submission.

To start with, turn your longer posts into articles and submitting them to ezines or directories. Look especially for directories that ask for the direct link to the article on your own site, and input the permanent link to the post on your blog.

Make sure that your Auto-Discovery tag is in place and it can mean hundreds more prospects, links and subscribers.

It's a shame this is the one of the least used traffic methods for most sites, let alone for blogs. In four days, this method generated just over 1000 visitors. 157 newsletter leads, 98 new feed subscribers, and 206 links to my site.

You may not get these same results right away, but using these simple strategies can still get you more exposure than you have now.

These aren't normally the highest quality links, as they rarely make sure of anchor text. However, bloggers are citing me using Trackback, sometimes in lieu of linking to the site where they originally found the article.

To see this in action, do a search on "Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings", the title of an article I submitted earlier this week.

That article was published within a week of this one- the results speak for themselves. Many of these sites aren't the ones where my articles are normally published.

There are, of course, plenty of other ways you can leverage the content in your blog or RSS feed to increase the traffic to your site. The methods outlined here may be a bit outside the norm, but, as you'll soon find, that's part of the reason they are so effective.

About the Author: Still not blogging yet? Don't quite get RSS? Take the free course on RSS and blogging at http://www.freetraffictip.com

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Can A Ping Really Help Your Blog Get Top Search Engine Rankings???
by Tinu AbayomiPaul

It's been all over the SEO-student rumor mill for weeks now, and has finally made it into my Inbox - in droves.

he new get-traffic-quick scheme for search engine results has arrived - flooding ping notification sites with update announcements, even though your blog hasn't been updated.

The question is does this- or some variation of it work? If not, where did this idea come from?

Okay, bad news first.

Pinging sites like Yahoo and Syndic8 every half-hour for several days or weeks, to notify of updates when they haven't been made, does nothing but clog up the system.

It's called spam-pinging and it has been around since 2002.

If you haven't updated your blog, or you're pinging updates of a site that isn't even a blog (or RSS feed, where applicable), in the long run it's just going to make it harder to get listed at these sites.

In the short run, you could get yourself banned from sites like Yahoo, though it isn't officially their policy to drop sites for spam-pinging.

Yet.

True, not all sites that have recently updated lists you can ping to be on are set up to block pings of sites that aren't updated. But they've found ways to block certain sites and users before - it's only a matter of time.

So even in the unlikely event that you could find some way to make this work temporarily, you'd just be setting yourself up to be dropped, in as little as a day in some cases.

So if this method doesn't work, why are there tools available to help you flood these directories?

Well, let's look at the situation logically.

Until the middle of 2004, certain adult web properties were able to create several bogus blog sites - in particular, blogspot.com. They'd found that the links leading back to them from those sites helped their page rank in Google, as well as their search results placement.

Although Google got wise to them and closed this loophole by fall of this past year, several legitimate blog sites have found that they continue to enjoy high rankings for some keywords that are easier to get.

Some people erroneously assume that it's because their updates appear on Weblogs.com and/or in Blogger's Most Recently Updated pages several times a day.

Having noticed that occasionally, they would get spidered around the same time they posted, they realized that there was a correlation between pinging and better search engine listings.

And they're not completely wrong - there is a parallel. But a parallel is not a cause. It's just one facet of the relationship between blogs and getting better results in Yahoo, Google and MSN.

Their frequency of updates had something to do with their rankings, yes. But it is not what guarantees they get spidered - and if the blog isn't set up to take advantage of the visit from the search engine spiders, they don't get listed.

To begin to have an understanding of how to get similar results for your site, you have to look at the bigger picture. Spam-pinging isn't going to do it, and as I've said in other articles, there are other ethical, faster, simpler ways to do this.

So what is this bigger picture?

First of all, blogs have a natural tendency to rank higher in search engines because they

Have well-structured site architecture Make use of anchor text linking Are well linked, Are frequently updated, and, Are focused tightly around a narrow theme, among other things.

Couple this with the ease of being able to get one-way links from several sites favored by the search engines, and you have two-thirds of the formula for a well-ranked blog.

However, just because these sites appear on publicly displayed ping notification lists and other sites that keep abreast of blog updates, this doesn't mean that you can get away with pinging them without updating your site.

It also doesn't mean that sites that have authentically updated and sent pings will appear in Google, Yahoo or MSN simply from being frequently updated.

The good news is, you don't need to deluge the ping sites to get noticed. Doing so is often a waste of time, and may be a harmful one.

Your best bet for now is to continue to achieve your natural search engine position through blogging, basic search engine optimization, and a common sense approach to frequent updates.

And yes, by the way, there IS an ethical way to get into search engines and achieve high rankings with a blog, but it's not a matter of volume.

It's more a matter of timing, supply and demand. But explaining that process takes a level of detail and an amount of space not available here.

About the Author:

Read about real, ethical back doors to higher rankings that the search engines actually encourage you to use, free at http://www.freetraffictip.com/goblog

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Creating Multi Links with Blogs

by Rick Hendershot

In Part 2 of this series I outlined how I decided to create two blog sites using Google's own blogspot.com for the first one, and a new domain of my own called biz-blogs.com for a series of business oriented blogs.

Once I had things set up in this way, I began the process of entering posts for promoting specific products. This process may sound a bit contrived for those of you who think blogs should be spontaneous "top of mind" journals.

What I was proposing was something much more carefully structured and planned — a series of posts highlighting a range of specific features for a number of specific products. If this sounds like an "advertising campaign", that's fine with me, because that is exactly the way I decided to approach it.

When I say "highlighting a range of specific features for a number of specific products" it is important to understand this in the context of my "power linking strategy".

What I am talking about here is creating links to pages within my websites that highlight specific features of the products I want to promote.

So I decided I needed to create some lists. First I needed a list of products. Second I needed a list of features, benefits, and interesting information about each of the products. Third, I needed a list of my own web pages where these features, benefits and information about the products can be found.

(And fourth, as I gradually began to realize, I needed some references to sites other than my own -- especially some relevant blogs -- in order to generate some track back links to my blog entries. I explain this further in another blogging article in this series.)

When I have these all ready to go I should be able to quickly put together a series of posts with lots of embedded links pointing directly at the most relevant pages within my sites.

For example, here is a product offered by one of the companies I do the online promotion for:

Product: PopUp Displays

Features: Low cost, easy to set up, portable, low maintenance, low cost delivery,etc.

Links: pointing to pages highlighting each of these features.

Making the list of products is not problem. Making the list of features, benefits, and interesting tips and tricks for each product is also no problem.

But finding the pages within my websites where these features, benefits and other things are dealt with is a problem, because in many cases the pages simply don't exist.

What I discovered is that I had not structured my website(s) this way, even though -- after the fact -- it seems perfectly obvious that a site should be created this way.

When you put a website together you should say "OK, first, what product(s) do I want to feature? And second, what are the specific features of these products?" And then set about creating pages covering these things.

So you would think your website would have a page for e.g., "PopUp Displays", and then two or three or four pages focusing on specific features of popup displays.

But as I discovered, I had not really done this. Either I simply hadn't had enough time — I've been working on a large number of brand new projects over the last six months — or I hadn't felt it was necessary, possibly because we were mostly working off a few landing pages.

In any event, this little blog promotion effort illustrated that it is necessary, and that I had not adequately "fleshed out" my websites.

Sure, I had created basic sites with product descriptions, photos, ordering information, etc. But I hadn't gone the extra mile and created the supporting pages that do the backup selling of these products.

There were pages missing that should have been created — all the ones carefully and pointedly describing the most important selling features and benefits of the products I was supposed to be promoting.

As a result, before I could finish my blog posts I had to create a bunch of new web pages that I could use my "Power Links" to point to. In the end this was a good thing. But of course it meant a simple little project had just become quite a bit more involved than I had hoped it would.

Here is an example of the kind of "blog post pages" I am creating. I intend to create several "dummy" posts like this and use them as the basis for regular daily posts.

Creating them is a slow process, but I think this is the best way to create keyword-rich posts with the best range of embedded "multi links".

Having them "in the can" ready to go will make it much easier to actually get the posting done. These will not be the only posts I enter, but they will serve as "go to" material with the subject matter and links already in place.

Rick Hendershot is a writer and publisher of the Linknet Marketing Resource Library. He has produced a free course on website linking called SuperCharge Your Website with Multi Linking.

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Multi Linking with Blogs vs Link Spamming

by Rick Hendershot

In this article I point out some of the pros and cons of using blogging as a method of "multi linking".

Here's a brief summary...

§ Blogs are easy to write, are updated frequently, and are considered "content rich".

§ Google holds blogging in high regard. In 2003 they even purchased a major blogging tool (blogger.com), and its hosting site blogspot.com and now make free blogs available to anyone.

§ Google seems to spider blogs frequently and is more tolerant of intensive linking in blogs than they are in "normal" websites.

§ Blogs have therefore become a major vehicle for "link spamming". This involves creating keyword-dense posts with many links just for the purposes of registering links back to sites in order to enhance their Google rankings.

In this article I argue there is a difference between "multi linking" and "link spamming". I claim that "link spamming" is a shady practice* that should not be encouraged, while strategic "multi linking" with blogs is a legitimate tactic for enhancing a website's presence.

Link spamming with blogs

A recent issue of WebProNews focused on how people are using Google's own free blogging service to take advantage of Google's lenient attitude towards link-heavy blogs.

As one poster put it, "people are using Google's Blogger to set up dozens of free blogs and then setting up hundreds of keyword rich anchor text links to point to pages."

What makes this a questionable practice is that content like this is not intended to ever be read by anyone. It is simply a bunch of keywords and embedded links strung together for no purpose other than to impress Google's spiders.

Another term for this is "google bombing", and for years enterprising bloggers have been pushing their sites to the top of the listings for keywords like "Talentless Hack" or "Operation Clambake".

The idea is to get lots of sites creating lots of posts that pack lots of links together in content that focuses on one or two keywords.

It was only a matter of time (probably about 24 hours) before this started to be used for commercial purposes. One of the most striking applications of link spamming is the program called "Search Engine Cloaker".

You can set this program up on any website and it will spit out thousands of pages of jibberish stringing together reams of keywords and building in hundreds of links pointing to exactly the pages you want to promote.

Another example is your typical link directory — page after page of links serving no purpose other than to give outbound links in exchange for inbound ones.

Of course in theory a link directory is a "resource directory" that gives web visitors useful information, and is even a kind of "endorsement" by the webmaster. But in fact, most link directories are never meant to be looked at.

That means they fail the same test we have applied to blogs: this material is not intended to be read by anyone. That makes it spam.

Multi Linking with Blogs

Multi linking is different.

As I point out in my FREE Multi Linking Course, there are quite a few fairly simple strategies almost anyone can implement that will give you lots of high value links on high value sites.

These are sites with real traffic, so this content is meant to be read. You can't post meaningless jibberish on real sites. Webmasters will simply not tolerate it.

Of the four leading multi linking strategies outlined in my course, the second easiest is creating a blog and posting interesting content that is keyword rich and packed with links. (The easiest is buying links from high value sites.)

If you go ahead and try the multilinking blog strategy, just keep this simple test in mind: "Is the material I publish in my blog meant to be interesting to readers?" If it is, then you're not engaging in link spamming. Go ahead and pack it with your most important keywords. And build in as many links as you can.

Rick Hendershot is a writer and publisher of the Linknet Marketing Resource Library. He has produced a free course on website linking called SuperCharge Your Website with Multi Linking.

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If RSS is the Yahoo backdoor, is a Blog Google's? (Part 2)

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Here are the top 8 items you need to be concerned with to get your blog prepared to be recognized and listed well by Google. The 8th item will clarify one of the most important factors if you want to stay in.

1- The Location of Your Blog

Your blog is doing you the least amount of good on someone else's server. If you have Blogger, you can change from the blogspot version to have Blogger FTP your files to your server for free.

2- The Links on Your Blog Template

By links, I don't mean what you link to when you post. I am specifically referring to the links in your blog. If you don't edit your blog template to include links to the main part of your site, you're making a mistake. How is Google going to find a link that isn't there?

Edit your chosen template to make sure there is at least one link from your blog directory to the rest of your site.

3 - The Frequency of Your Updates

A wise webmaster recently said that the best thing you can do for your search engine efforts is to add a new page to your site a day, and to make one change to your site a day.

Why is this such great advice?

Because Googlebot does not need to re-spider your site if it never changes. It probably will - but I've noticed the more there is a legitimate need for it to return, the more likely it is that you'll get re-spidered.

Posting to a blog, or an RSS feed, and leaving it to stagnate will bring you zero traffic. Furthermore, when people see an abandoned piece of web real estate, they leave.

It's like tuning into a TV channel and seeing "snow". Most people can't stand it for more than a few seconds, and will either turn the channel, or turn the television off.

There are even shorter attention spans online, from both search engine robots and people. If you want either to return, update constantly.

4 - The Right Keywords for Your Blog

When you're selecting keywords for your blog, your best bet is to pick keywords that have a medium to high yield and low competition.

The essential difference is this - would you rather be ranked #107 for "internet marketing" and get no traffic, or be ranked number one for "learn internet marketing" and get a few hundred?

5 - The Placement of the Keywords on Your Blog

Here's where your primary keywords need to be :

§ in the title

§ in the description

§ in your post titles where applicable

§ in the name of the links to individual posts

§ in the text that links your posts

If you look at the front page of my blog, you'll see the phrase "Free Traffic Tips" everywhere. And yet, the pages don't sound ridiculous.

This is because I set up my blog so that every page and every post utilizes these words. If you set up your blog correctly, and get in certain habits when you post, you'll find that your site will begin to rank for the term that best matches your topic.

6 - The Length of Your Blog Posts

Always remember this. "Posts are paragraphs, sentences are spam." Your posts should be at least two paragraphs.

If there is little to no content on a page, there's no reason for it to be indexed unless it is the only page available for that term.

The only time your post can be shorter than that, and still be effective, is if you're linking to something else.
It won't always work out that you'll have several paragraphs worth of content to discuss. But do your best to stay above 90%.

7- The Frequency of Your Archives

Remember the wise webmaster's quote earlier? Well, here's a question - if one new and updated page on your site is good, do you think creating or updating three pages of your site can be better?

It sure can.

Daily archiving makes a huge difference. If you have this option, use it. If you don't switch. If you need more room on your server, get some. It's worth it.

When you combine daily archiving and having individual post pages, each time you post, your site generates a new page for your post, updates the day's archive page (or creates it if it's the first post of the day), and updates the index page of your site.

Combine these date-stamped pages with real content and you've got great spider bait.

8 - When, and Where You Are Linked

If you have Blogger, you'll want to make sure your blog is listed as "public", so that it will appear on Blogger's recently updated blogs pages whenever you make a new post.

There is some speculation that this is what gets your blog spidered so quickly by Google if you use Blogger to post. And the answer is yes, if you are willing to wait about 48 hours, this will get you spidered.

Once.

And IF your site is indexed, it will probably be dropped out the next day, if this is all you do. This has been documented in public on other sites.

What hasn't been made public yet is that your best bet for staying spidered is frequent and regular updates.

Let Google know that you're not trying to use Blogger to spam its database. Provide useful content that updates at regular intervals.

All these tips help you get ethical attention from Google. You don't need to do anything dishonest or underhanded to get your site spidered, or listed.

So, if your site fills a need that Google has for sites, and you have a quality site, you can get listed.

With just these tips. you have enough to get a good blog into Google.

It'll be up to you to stay in.

Can you really get spidered by the Googlebot in less than 24 hours? Is there more you can do to get your blog into shape for inclusion? What if you're using another blog system? Find out more at http://www.freetraffictip.com/bizblogs

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If an RSS Feed is the Yahoo Backdoor, is a Blog Google's???

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Though the answer is in a book I wrote this July, the question is still asked of me repeatedly. Why does it work for some sites and not others? And how come some blogs get indexed in a day and then are dropped, and others stay in Google indefinitely?

Well, let's take one question at a time. The answer to whether you can blog your way into Google search results is yes, sometimes in six weeks, often in 24 hours.

Yes, you read right, in less than 24 hours. Under certain conditions, the search engines actually want you to succeed at this.

I'm aware that these statements may cause some controversy, but that won't make them any less factual. Since September, Google has been set up to show you proof of this, which we'll go over in part two. My new blog has been spidered and indexed daily since it was created.

Not only is this possible with your blog, the way that blogs are set up make them one of the most conducive web site mediums to attract more traffic from multiple sources quickly. The trick to getting this to work for you, is in understanding which conditions have to be met first.

And we'll come back to that shortly. First let's talk about what's typically wrong with the process most people take to get their sites listed.

Most people submit their sites to Google and wait six to eight weeks to see if they were included. Other people know that the fastest way to be spidered is to leave your link at a site that is already getting spidered.
But even among those people, when they don't see their site in Google exactly the way they'd like, they give up, and say it didn't work.

So what went wrong?

The place that the majority of people go wrong is in trying to trick the Googlebot into thinking their site matches its standards for inclusion for their desired high traffic keyword, instead of aligning themselves with the purpose that the search engine fills.

You may think that if you study all the search engine tricks, you'll have the traffic from the search engines and it will then follow that yours will be the site people come to for the keyword they want, which in turn, will get 1% of those people to buy what's at your site.

If you think that, I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong - sometimes that works. I'm just saying that there are other easier, faster, less expensive ways. Some of them only have subtle differences from the way you know.

The truth is, even if we could somehow reverse engineer the secret Google algorithm, it periodically changes. So mastering that system would be temporary, even if you could do it.

Did you know that you don't even need the traffic for your most desired keyword to be successful? You just need some targeted traffic that converts well.

Some of the most financially successful sites generate amazing profits in the tens or hundreds of thousands with a few hundred or thousand visitors every month.

The method I most suggest to get the kind of search engine results that can power those kinds of sales, is aligning your site with the purpose the search engine seeks to fill. It is faster, more effective and involves far less effort.

You should still make sure your blog meets all the basic search engine optimization guidelines. However, the very nature of a blog makes it easier to meet more of these requirements with less continual struggle.

Let's look at the facts, and see how blogs align themselves more closely with one of Google's purposes as a search engine.

Here's what you need to keep in mind:

1- if you get your site's link in the path of the search engine spider or robot of your choice, in this case Googlebot, it may follow it.

2- the way to get it to follow the link is to make sure it can "see" your link.

3- if your content fills a need that the search engine's database of links has, it will include your link, and,

4- if your link fills a deficit better than any other site, in accordance with Google's secret formula or algorithm, it will rank your page well.

So now, the only missing component necessary to our success is finding out how to be the best site Google finds for a category that has a deficit.

One of the strengths of Google, as perceived by people who like it, is the vast amount of fresh content it contains that is relevant to almost any topic, or keyword, typed into it, no matter how narrow or broad.

It follows then, that one purpose of this database of links is to provide fresh, relevant content on topics its users desire.

The freshest, most relevant, most topical information found on the web today are in blogs, as well as their corresponding RSS or Atom feeds.

A blog's very function is to contain constantly updated focused content, on one topic or field.

When blogs first started, the topic was often a person's life. Business blogs, instead, are updated records of a certain kind of information relevant to an industry, a company or a topic, aligned with the interests of their visitors.

So you need to know the following things in order to get your blog included on Google's search engine results pages.

§ Where to leave your link so that it will get spidered

§ How to make sure Googlebot sees your link

§ How to set up your blog so its content fills a deficit

§ The best way to make sure your blog does this better than other sites.

There's a specific formula of success for this, one of many that will work not just one time, but repeatedly.

We've run out of space for the moment, but part two picks up with the specifics of how your blog needs to be set up and how to determine exactly where Googlebot can find your link.Article by Tinu AbayomiPaul. Learn more about the Google - Blog connection at http://www.freetraffictip.com/gb

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Use Blogs and RSS Feeds to get your New Sites and Pages Indexed Fast
By Craig Desorcy

They say it's a dog eat dog world out there. Everyone is fighting for their right to lead the pack. Cyberspace has its own virtual rendition of this cliché...search engine optimization.

Marketers around the globe are struggling to get their products at the top of search engine listings. They go to great lengths to produce material with high keyword density in an attempt to entice robotic spiders to visit their sites.

Robert was in over his head. He'd posted projects on freelance websites hoping to hire writers to supply him with keyword dense content. This was his fourth attempt.

Good writers were worth their weight in gold. The only problem was that he didn't have much of the gold stuff to throw around. He'd taken a chance, and accepted the bid of someone he knew wasn't top-quality, but hey, they fit his budget.

Two weeks later he was still editing and rewriting...and grumbling and growling. Where did these people learn to write anyway?

The ring of the telephone interrupted his fuming. It was his long time friend Dave...excited and ready to talk. Dave had discovered the backdoor into search engines...

Imagine yourself an old-time bank robber appearing at the bank's back door only to find it wide open and a welcome sign attached. Wow! How much easier can it get? ...no risks, and nothing to keep you from making a quick getaway with lots of cash.

RSS feeds and blogs are exactly that...an open door to search engines like Yahoo! They costs you nothing and present a no-risk invitation for quick results!

Did I mention quick results? We're talking really quick results! Compare the time and effort Robert invested into getting his site recognized by search engines to what RSS feed and blog users are spending...minutes, yes minutes!

Bloggers spend a short time creating a few paragraphs of content that is quickly broadcast around the world with RSS feeds, and get better results than other SEO methods. People everywhere are saying, "WOW! MY site was indexed within hours after I employed RSS feeds!"

How much time have you wasted in your attempt to increase web traffic to your site? That's what I thought...too much. I won't bother to ask how much money you've wasted - we'll try to keep things on a more positive note.

You really don't need to employ an SEO company, or - like Robert - attempt to do it yourself. You can have your site indexed and sending traffic your way today!

Hang on just a second...before you get started, there are a few secrets to making your blogs and RSS feeds more effective. SHHHH...if you can slip keywords from the news headlines into your daily blog...nod, nod...your blog will be sure make more appearances around the world. Now, go make it happen!

For A Complete Step By Step Guide on How to Blog and use RSS feeds. Click here> http://www.effective-info.com/blogs2.html

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Will Spam-Blogging Be The Death Of Blogging???

by Priya Shah

Technorati reports that 30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created each day.

According to David Sifry, part of the growth of new blogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs.

What are spam blogs? They are fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.

They contain robot-generated posts made up of random words, with the title linking back to the blogger's own pages.

Many bloggers see them as a way of getting their pages indexed quickly by Google and other search engines.

Sifry estimates that about 20% of the aggregate pings Technorati receives are from spam blogs. Most of this fake blog spam comes from hosted services or from specific IP addresses.

Those in the SEO world are well aware of this. There are even services like Blogburner that encourage creation of spammy blogs and spam-pinging to get your sites indexed quickly.

As a blogging evangelist, I wholeheartedly recommend blogging as an SEO tactic. But I also emphasize that you should use your blog for more than just SEO.

At the Spam Squashing Summit, blog services decided to collaborate to report and combat blog-spamming.

Technorati currently claims to catch about 90% of spam and remove it from the index. They also notify the blog hosting operators.

But I believe that they are fighting a losing battle. As I write this there are software and robots being created that will create spam-blogs more efficiently and in ways that will be harder to detect.

The SEO "black hats" are always far ahead of the technology and safeguards that these services can put in place.

Take down a few spam-blogs and hundreds more will arise.

Blogging evangelist and PR guru, Steve Rubel, sums up this dilemma rather well on his Micropersuasion blog.

He believes that its human nature for people to exploit new technologies, and that it's really up to the search engines to help put a stop to these by undercutting the economics of blogspam, much like they did with nofollow and comment spam.

But the trade-off is that such a move would also reduce any impact that blogs have on search results.
Fact: The more you abuse a technology, the less effective it becomes.

Spam blogging will force search engines like Google to change their ranking algorithms and eventually assign less value to links from blogs.

Unless they put in safeguards to prevent robots from taking over, its safe to assume that blogging will become less effective as an SEO tactic over time.

Of course, the spammers will then just have to find new avenues and means to spam the engines.

But why ruin a good thing in the first place? Blogs are much more than just tools for search engine optimization.

A blog can be a great tool for personal branding and building relationships with your website visitors and customers.

Instead of using blogs for spam, focus on building content-rich sites and getting high-value links to them.
Don't restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging.

Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used.

Priya Shah is CEO of the blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.

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Blog Wars: Attack Of The Splogs

by Priya Shah

The search engines, namely Google, are striking back at sploggers and their malevolent creations, the splogs.

According to media reports, Google has taken measures to impede those attempting to use its Blogger service to create and maintain fake blogs.

Blogger's official corporate blog mentioned the "spamalanche" that has search engines, blog search engines and net advertisers in a tizzy. They are now working together to eliminate the economic incentive for splogs by identifying them at their source - by domain - and not indexing them.

Can CAPTCHA Stop The Spamalanche?

The "CAPTCHA" test is a method by which automated programs that post or create blogs can be foiled--where the user is asked to type in a sequence of letters from a line that people can read, but computers can't decipher.

Blogger is currently working on ways to reduce false positives and ensure that once a blog with word verification has been established as legitimate, the blogger will no longer need to solve the CAPTCHA.

Why Create Splogs In The First Place?

Splogs generally fall into one of two categories, notes Mediapost: Link farms, which pack hundreds or even thousands of blogs with gibberish or recycled content, and contain multiple links to a particular Web site, which allow them to game Google's PageRank algorithm, creating artificially high organic search rankings; and spam blogs that simply recycle content with AdSense or other advertising on them in the hopes of making money from errant users clicking on the ads.

Splogs most often get their content by scraping - the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimited number of instant documents, writes Jim Hedger. Literally millions of instant sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites.

Why Splogs Are Evil

An article by the Wall Street Journal notes that the splogs are a big source of frustration for several search-engine start-ups that focus on blog searches, such as IceRocket.com LLC, Technorati Inc. and Feedster Inc.

Jim Hedger makes some excellent points about why splogs are a menace to genuine bloggers.

§ Splogs are content thieves and can cause honest webmasters to get caught up in technical and financial issues by losing search engine listings and advertising revenue

§ Splogs use up blogging resources, especially those of Blogger and Blogspot

§ Splogs clog up the search results with crappy and irrelevant sites.

§ Splogs devalue the legitimate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools

§ Splogs might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere.

Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a firm that monitors and searches blog content, said that spam blogs make it harder to convince companies to blog.

What Can You Do About Splogs?

It’s not just the engines that are fighting back. There are a few knights in shining armour out there, like Frank Gruber, a blogger in Chicago who became frustrated while encountering splogs in search engines, and recently launched a site called SplogReporter, reports the Wall Street Journal.

SplogReporter lets anyone submit the Web address of a suspected splog. Gruber has created an index to rate how "spammy" a blog is, and is building a database of splogs that he may share with search engines.

Google engineer, Matt Cutts, provided tips on how to report spam to Google on his blog. Use his tips to report spam and do your bit to clean up the blogosphere.

I first wrote about spam-blogs here, and recommended that instead of using blogs for spam, marketers must focus on building content-rich sites and getting high-value links to them.

Don't restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging. Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used - as cutting-edge and "cool" tools for communicating with your target audience.

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BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network: World’s First ‘Paid To Blog’ Network

by Jim Kukral

Bloggers finally have a new way to make a buck with their weblogs. BlogKits.com has launched the BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network. The BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network is an opportunity for anyone who owns a blog to be matched with businesses, marketers and/or advertisers looking to partner with niche-filled, content specific, quality blogs.

“Until today, bloggers primarily embraced tools such as Google Adsense or Henry Copeland's BlogAds.com to generate revenues,” said Jim Kukral, Blogging Guru and founder of BlogKits.com. “While both excellent solutions, the fact remains that both of those tools rely on a blogger's ability to generate large amounts of web traffic for any real income opportunities, leaving 99% of all blogs out in the cold.”

The BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network will allow all blogs, even those without high levels of visitor traffic, the no-cost opportunity to earn revenues in a multitude of ways by matching them with advertisers/marketers that care more about reaching the right target audience, not just necessarily the biggest one, and not necessarily through only traditional methods like banner ads.

Blogging has recently begun to draw the eye of online advertisers. BusinessWeek online reports that “the growth in regular online advertising is estimated to be about 35% this year…Add to all this the fact that about 11% of Internet users today are inveterate blog readers, and the blogging scene starts to get mighty compelling for marketers.”

“For bloggers, a network approach like this makes more sense because it gives them direct exposure to businesses and advertisers that have money to spend to reach a niche audience, even if the traffic levels are average or below.” Kukral continued.

“For advertisers, it’s all about a positive conversion ratio and return on investment. For example, as an advertiser, would you rather put your message in front of 10,000 people that aren’t necessarily your target market, or 500 people that fit your target perfectly? Which will convert more? Which will be more effective? Marketers know this already, they just need a better way to get it done specifically with blogs.”

The BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network will facilitate partnerships in many forms, not just through traditional methods like banner ads and links.

“Last time I checked, banner ad conversion rates were less than spectacular. So why do we see them everywhere still, and more specifically why do we think they will work on blogs? Good blogs are content delivery machines. That’s what blogs are made to do.”

“It seems silly to me to think that we can’t find other ways to deliver a marketing message in a way that fits directly into each blog’s individual niche delivery, while still keeping an ethical line between paid advertisement and blog commentary. After all, in essence, a blog IS content, and good content is powerful, especially if it’s niche specific. So as long as the content is on target and provides quality information, there’s no reason a blogger shouldn’t be able to mix in a marketing message or two, assuming they want to.”

About Jim Kukral & BlogKits.com

Jim Kukral created BlogKits.com and the BlogKits BlogMatch™ Network to help bloggers around the globe find ways to generate revenues with their blogs by matching them up with businesses, marketers and/or advertisers who realize the growing power of blogs as a marketing tool. Kukral has also written an ebook entitled 'Blogs To Riches - A step-by-step guide to Blogging Your Way To Riches'.

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How To Profit From Your Home Business Blog

by Ian Canaway

A blog is a simple tool which all affiliate marketers should be utilising to explode their affiliate sales.

I set up my blog in about 15 minutes at http://www.blogger.com it’s a completely free service, and it’s really easy to set-up. I followed directions on an excellent article on getting a new website listed in Google in 48hrs check it out here,. I just followed the advice in the article and got started with no problems in no time.

I've been doing a lot of research with regards to blogging and came across a case of a 19 year old kid who was making something ridiculous like $50,000 a year with a blog on mobile phones, from his bedroom! So clearly there is a good earning potential through blogs, but they do take time to grow and build up a readership. Treat your blog as a marathon not a sprint, because it will take time.

Blogs provide a very simple, quick and easy means to add fresh content to your website. As I’m sure you’ve heard many times over ‘content is king’ in the search engines eyes and if you can provide high quality, regularly updated content your website should benefit with regards to your search engine ranking.

By providing fresh, high quality relevant content you will gain an increase of both first time visitors and repeat visitors, they will come back to check out your new content. Providing it’s interesting, relevant and useful to them. You will begin to build relationships with your readers, increasing your credibility and building their trust in you.

These repeat visitors will be exposed to your messages more and begin to trust you and your recommendations. This in turn will fuel sales and referrals. Just make sure you don’t recommend a product you haven’t tried because if it is bad you will lose all credibility!

Never recommend something you haven’t tried and tested your self.

You want to send traffic directly to your blog, do it through multi-dimensional strategies. Have a subscriber box for your newsletter to build your list from your blog. Use it as an exit pop-up from your main site or thank you page for new subscribers, directing them to relevant content immediately. As once your prospects have got to know you through the blog they are much more likely to explore your website and check out whatever you are offering.

Whenever you sign-up for an affiliate program or buy a product, review it in your blog and be brutally honest, your readers will love you for it. Take a completely unbiased view point and talk about both the positives and negatives of each product. In essence you are providing more of an insight into the product than the sales page itself, almost a sample, this will help convert those prospects that are ‘sitting on the fence’ so to speak. Obviously when you review your affiliate products, make sure that you use your affiliate links.

It has been shown that prospects are 7-10 times more likely to buy from a blog recommendation than from other sources!

Other ways that you can generate extra income through your blog are through the Google ad sense program, selling banner/link space as your traffic increases or as I mentioned earlier by adding you own opt-in sign up form to which you send your newsletter or other targeted offers.

Your blog can be syndicated using RSS, which I won’t go into here, that’s another article. But savvy webmasters can use your blog content on their web pages. This benefits them as they have regularly updated fresh content for their website and benefits you through increased exposure and free targeted traffic.

Be passionate about your blog, love your blog. If you do not then it will become obvious through your posts and you are unlikely to be anywhere near as successful as you could be.

Add to your blog regularly provide good quality content and reviews and you will be on your way to blogging success.

“A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done”. -- Cardinal Newman

Get that blog started today!

Ian Canaway is a home business entrepreneur and the owner of http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com and also a home business based blog providing high quality information and resources. Check us out Now!

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Blogging for Dollars

by S. Housley

Blogging for dollars might sound like the latest game show or some new drinking game, but it's the latest craze to hit the Internet.

Bloggers began blogging for a number of reasons, but as the blog movement has increased in popularity, they have found ways to monetize their blogs and are seeing their commitment pay off.

Whether a blogger's focus is to communicate with customers or just to have fun, they have begun looking at ways to earn revenue from their blogs. The most popular ways for bloggers to earn some added cash for their pet projects are:

Google Adsense in Blogs

Google AdSense allows webmasters to dynamically serve content-relevant advertisements in blogs. If the visitor clicks one of the AdSense ads served to the blog, the website owner is credited for the referral.Webmasters need only to insert a Google-generated java script into the blog or blog template. Google's spider parses the AdServing blog and serves ads that relate to the blog's content. Google uses a combination of keyword matching and context analysis to determine what ads should be served.

Affiliate Programs (Product Endorsements)

Affiliate Programs work when an affiliate web site receives income for generating sales, leads, or traffic to a merchant website. Generally, bloggers will mention or endorse specific products and if site visitors purchase the product, bloggers will receive a portion of the sale.

Product Promotion

Businesses use blogs to detail how specific features or product add-ons can increase functionality and save time. Content-rich product promotion will help with search engine placement.
Banner Ads

While less popular than in the past, websites with high traffic levels can still earn decent revenue by selling banner space.

As the Internet evolves bloggers will continue to seek out ways to monetize their opinions and thoughts. Daily journals and online blogs have become more than just a communication means to many.

About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage and FeedForAll product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com , and http://www.small-business-software.net

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What Every Blogger Needs To Know About Their Target Audience

by John Taylor

It doesn't matter what kind of web site you have you must understand your target audience and know what it is that they want. Please notice that I used the word want and not the word need.

There is a world of difference between wants and needs. For example you might need a means of getting from A to B and almost any vehicle would fulfil that need; but what you really want is a top of the range BMW!

I write my blog with just one person in mind. In my minds eye I have come to know that person intimately, I understand his goals, his dreams and his aspirations and I know the things that really interests him. He is my ideal reader, he soaks up every word and he clicks every link I include in each blog post.

Clearly, you can't please all the people all of the time. So, the best strategy is to focus on pleasing the people you can influence. You don't want passive readers, you want people who will take action.

Readers who will click a link because you have recommended a new eBook or a new software product. Readers who will click the "Buy Now" button and earn you an affiliate commission.

So, what do you need to know about your target audience?

You will get two types of people coming to your site... People with whom you have built up a relationship and who like to read your blog. People who have come to your site for the very first time.

You have two jobs to do. You have to keep the first type of people coming back and you have to grab the second type of people's attention, persuade them to stay long enough to engage their interest and to convert them to loyal readers.

Just think - when you are online what is it that you want to achieve? The majority of people online are looking for something. It's unlikely that they are just surfing in a random fashion, although some people will do that. When online people are usually looking for specific information or seeking the solution to a problem.

Your job as a blogger is to make that information, and those solutions, available so that they can be found. In other words your content must closely match the wants of your target audience.

Make sure that your blog has a well defined theme and try to stick to making posts that stay on topic. Keep up to data with the news within the theme of your blog and provide your readers with your opinions on relevant and interesting items. Encourage feedback and always respond to questions from your readers.

Use a blog script or service that allows the easy addition of RSS feeds so that your blog site has fresh new content as soon as it is available.

Above all remember that each and every visitor to your site is a real person with feelings and emotions and be prepared to reveal something yourself in your posts. Your readers are much more likely to trust you if you allow them to get to know you.

John Taylor - November 2004. John is a prolific writer and is the author of several books including "Testing & Tracking". John's http://www.MarketersBlog.com weblog provides insightful comments on all aspects of online marketing and is well worth a vist! For information on *How To Get Paid To Blog* click here now to visit... http://www.Blog4Cash.com

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How to Build a Niche Site With a Blog

by Linda J. Bruton

Building niche sites is all the rage these days.

The basic strategy is very simple. Find a niche market that isn't oversaturated. Develop a list of related keywords people are searching on.

Then write an article optimized for each one of your keywords. Once you have your articles, upload them to your site. Monitize your site with affiliate links and Adsense.

For this kind of niche site to be effective and make money, it is imperative that you get free traffic, and a lot of it. And that's exactly where a blog can be your best friend.

At its very simplest, a blog is just a structure. It's the bones of a web site. A blog is a simple way to publish and display your content online. Most of us think of blogs as a chronicle of news events, or commentary on news and items of interest. Or personal diaries.

Few people stop to think that you can build any kind of website with a blog. In reality, a blog can be used very effectively to build a niche site.

The fact of the matter is, a blog is the easiest way to publish your niche site content. But the biggest reason to use a blog is that it can drive traffic to your site a lot faster than a statically-built site. A niche site built with a blog is a very powerful strategy.

First, choose your niche and research your keywords. Write your first article based on one of those keywords, just as you would when building a regular site. Then set up your blog and publish that article. Your niche site is now live.

To make your site structure the most effective, be sure to choose a blog that allows the use of Categories, such as Word Press or Moveable Type. Use your 10 most important keywords as the name of your Categories. Then file all your secondary keyword articles under those Categories.

Why is this so important? If you keep building your site with keyword-rich articles, eventually you could have hundreds of pages.

Each of those pages will have a link to your 10 Categories. And each of those links will use the anchor text of your most important keywords.

As a result of all those internal keyword-rich links, your site will end up ranking very well in the search engines for your Category names.

Now it's time to set up your traffic strategy. This is where a blog can really shine. There are many special RSS/blog directories that are hungry for feeds.

By submitting your new blog to these directories, you can start getting traffic almost immediately. Quite often these feeds will result in a lot more traffic than all the major search engines combined.

This is why it makes so much sense to build your niche site as a blog. You can have twice the traffic, and get it much faster than with a static site.

Here is a list of some of the top RSS/blog directories you should submit your site to: http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/

Once you've submitted your site to the directories, you can get it indexed by Yahoo almost immediately by adding your RSS feed to your MyYahoo page.

If you don't have a MyYahoo page, just go to http://www.yahoo.com. Now click on the MyYahoo link at the top and set up your free account.

Once you have your account set up, click on Add Content, then add the URL of your blog RSS feed into the Find Content box.

When you go back to your MyYahoo page, your blog plus your first post should be shown. If you go look at your web stats for your site, you'll find that the Yahoo spider has already made a visit!

Your new site should be indexed in Yahoo in just a couple of days. This is a strategy that some marketers were selling for $50 just a few months ago. And it works like a charm.

Every time you add a post, you can alert the RSS/blog directories by "pinging" them. There is a wonderful site at http://www.pingomatic.com that makes this very easy.

You just have to type in your blog URL and Pingomatic will send your ping to Yahoo and about 15 other large directories. That will bring the spiders back to your site almost immediately!

During the first month, I would suggest that you write and add a new article every day. Blogs that are frequently updated get the most traffic. And you'll find that the major search engines will spider your site every day.

At the end of a month, you'll have a 30-article niche site that is already getting a lot of traffic. If you've monetized your site with Adsense and related affiliate programs, you should also be making money already.

Once you've started building your niche sites with a blog, you'll never go back to doing it the old way again!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

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How To Make Money With Blogs And RSS
by All Blog News Formerly Marketing Basics

Are you confused about blogs And RSS? Guess what? You're not alone. Most people are, even if they don't want to admit it.

Well, it's time to clear up that confusion. It's time you learned about the awesome potential of blogs and RSS. And once you discover how simple and easy it really is, you're going to kick yourself for not trying to profit from this technology sooner!

First of all, what's a blog? Well, According to the dictionary, a blog is:

"A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links."

In simple terms, a blog is a web site, where you write content on an ongoing basis. As you add content to your blog, new posts are automatically positioned on top of previous posts, so your visitors can see "what's new." Then they can comment on it or link to it or e- mail you if they choose to do so.

A blog can be a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts.

Your blog is whatever you want it to be. There are millions of them, in all shapes and sizes, and there are no real rules.

Next, what's RSS? "RSS" stands for Really Simple Syndication. RSS is a standard for publishing regular updates to web-based content. Using this standard, web publishers provide updates, such as the latest news headlines or weblog postings.

Consumers use RSS reader applications, or one of a growing number of online services to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one place. RSS content from a publisher, viewed in one of these readers, is often called a "feed."

For consumers, RSS makes it possible to review a large number of sites in a short amount of time.

For publishers, RSS allows instant widespread distribution of content updates to consumers.
And here's the most exciting part: You can actually have your own blog up and running in less than 10 minutes, and you can create an RSS feed in about the same amount of time--plus, have your site indexed and crawled by Yahoo within 24 hours.

Speaking of Yahoo, did you know search engines and directories love blogs and RSS feeds?
Yes, the secret's out! Search engines love blogs and the content of RSS feeds. Why? Because blogs and RSS feeds provide fresh content to search engines.

As long as you keep posting relevant content and update your blog which you can turn into RSS feeds, search engines spiders will visit your site again and again.

Do I still have your attention? Good! How would you like to learn:

* The 3 easy steps to create your blog.

* 9 ways to make money with your blog.

* How to create a blog on your own website with a few simple mouse clicks.

* How to brand yourself as an expert with blogs.

* How to increase your search engine ranking within 24 hours by putting a blog on your website.

* Discover what a "ping" is and how you can use it to instantly let the world know when you

post a message or new content.

* Learn the difference between a blog and RSS feed.

* Announce your blog to millions of people with just one click of your mouse.

* How to post photos to your blog with a few simple mouse clicks.

* How to create your RSS feed in less than 10 minutes...Guaranteed!

Aren't you tired of sitting on the sidelines year after year, watching other people get rich off of the latest technology, when you could easily be getting rich yourself?

Well, here's your opportunity to finally do something about it!

Discover how anyone can easily get more sales, leads and subscribers using blogs and RSS feeds! Do it today!

Make Money With Blogs And RSS! Confused About Blogs And RSS? Discover How Anyone Can Easily Get More Sales, Leads And Subscribers Using Blogs And RSS Feeds!

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Blogs - Diamond in the Rough for your Marketing???

by Richard Zwicky

Blogs are a potential goldmine of insights for readers, provided by business leaders, market leaders, innovators, philosophers, marketers, political commentators, and many other opinion makers who never before have enjoyed such easy access to a simple and unmoderated public forum in which to share their opinions, ideas and insights.

These leaders have taken to using the Internet to publish their thoughts for the same reason they make public speaking appearances; to build credibility for themselves and for their company, and to become recognized as a resource, usually with the expectation that it will lead to sales.

Blogging presents them with an easy, non-time consuming, and inexpensive way to quickly reach thousands of interested parties all around the world.

The effect that these leaders have had in posting their thoughts and musings online has helped evolve blogs into powerful viral marketing tools. Blogs allow you to quickly and easily reach people who are not in your direct network, and greatly expand the number of people you and your company reach.

Are you an expert in your field? Do you know things about your favorite subject that you would like to share with others? Do you write articles for newsletters, like this one, and want to help the publisher expand their reach? Then blogging may be right for you.

Have you never looked at a blog? Are you sure? A lot of articles and content on web sites is currently blogged. But if you are looking to see what a blog is, here are some interesting ones to look at.

Blogs.Sun.com

SemanticBlogging.org

BlogHerald.com

If you want to start your own, and your company doesn't offer one, try these tools, and link to them from your site:

Blogger.com

Blogware.com

While sometimes you can find blogs that are interesting, some of them simply are not. This happens when the author / contributor either has nothing of interest to say, or has nothing to add to the facts they are recording.

However, blogs that are maintained for extended periods are usually filled with interesting and often humorous commentaries. That's to be expected; the person blogging is enjoying seeing the world, and allowing you to share in their vision; it reflects a joy for living.

So how are blogs a diamond in the rough, ready to be polished and turned into a gem, capping a marketing goldmine?

You might be surprised, but many people have found ways to make money off their blogs, just by making sure it's up to date, interesting and relevant.

Just like any other web site, blogs allow for traditional Internet revenue streams such as affiliate programs and banner advertising, etc... Now, I don't know that you can add a Google adsense banner or any other banner for that matter to your blog if it's third party, but if you are hosting your own, the possibilities are enormous. But that's just one way to earn money from a blog. The best way, is to have it lead to new sales for you and your business.

But for any of these monetary systems to work, you need people to find your blog first.

How Visitors Find Your Blog i.e. How You Can Make Money Off a Blog

As you are building your blog, you need to be conscious of other web sites, and blogs. Remember, yours is not alone. If you read something interesting somewhere then "blog it." In more traditional terms, just link to it. Link to a lot of other blogs and news sites. The people who run blogs, also tend to read their own web site traffic reports, and will notice the traffic your blogs are sending. They will read your blog, and if they find it interesting, they will blog it. If you see a news story in another blog, link to it as your link to the article.

Some people maintain a list of their favorite blogs within their own blog. It helps paint a picture of what the author finds interesting, and also helps your blog gain goodwill from other blogs.

When I first created my blog, one thing I did was submit it to a bunch of blog search engines. I used:

Blog Search Engine

Daypop

Blog Catalog

Feedster

Ice Rocket

Bloogz

blogstreet

Blogwise

Some of these tools crawl the blogs hourly - so your content will get out there quickly. Others take longer; just like the mainstream search engines!

Many independent blog tools, automatically offer RSS/XML feeds of your blog. You just need to ensure that they are turned on. They make it easy for you to get syndicated.

I saw a note recently that there are now over 4 million blogs around the world with a new blog being added every 10 seconds or so. By comparison, there are 10 million new web pages being added to the Internet daily - or 116 a second. This means that blogspace is less crowded than the rest of the Internet.

So, what are the disadvantages to building and maintaining a blog? Well, they vary from individual to individual, and company to company. But here are my thoughts:

1) You need to contribute regularly. I notice some people make updates many times a day. That's wonderful, but it's also a time commitment.

2) You better have something relevant to say. If you don't keep it interesting, people will not keep coming back for more!

3) Does the person writing your company blogs have good writing skills? Are you happy with the quality of grammar and vocabulary?

4) Are you, or is the person writing the blog for your company, representative of the company's perspectives? Do they enunciate a coherent vision of, and for, your company? That's a risk you take when you assign a blog to someone else. If it's your own blog, are you the right person for the job?

5) Does the blog offer a valuable perspective, or just some ramblings?

In the end, the value proposition in a blog is the same as in any other content you or your company publishes. Is the content valuable? Is the information worthwhile? If not, if you have nothing to say, or add to a conversation, don't speak. Do you enjoy the company of people who just speak to hear themselves? Probably not. If a blog leaves you with that same feeling, then it's probably not going to be successful.

But, if you consistently maintain an interesting blog, people will recognize it, and you. That's where the real value proposition, and the opportunity to make money off a blog lies. The real value in blogs is in getting your word out. If you have something meaningful to say, and the better you do it, the more likely someone is to reference your blog, and eventually your corporation's web site. This will lead to increased sales. Just don't expect it to happen overnight.

I would highly recommend that you have some sort of publishing strategy for your business. Whether it ends up being a blog, or writing newsletter articles as I have done here, sharing good, coherent information with interested parties will help you and your business build credibility. Publishing will go a long way towards building your professional reputation, one word at a time.

Richard Zwicky is a founder and CEO of Metamend Software and Design Ltd. Metamend's cutting edge Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology and software has been recognized globally as a leader in its field. With successful clients on 5 continents, and over 50 countries worldwide, the company has experience in a broad range of markets and marketplaces. Metamend's client web sites rank near or at the top of the search engines for their respective search terms.

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3 Reasons To Publish An E-Newsletter AND A Blog

by Debbie Weil

With spam filters on high alert, delivering a newsletter by email is not as easy as it was even one year ago. Should it reach your subscriber's inbox (without getting siphoned into a junk folder), it still has to vie for attention amongst dozens – or even hundreds – of new messages.

1. A blog is not "email"

A Weblog or blog, on the other hand, is a page on your site that can be updated several times a week with fresh content. If a reader has “subscribed” to your blog, he or she gets an alert (consisting of the headline and brief summary) every time you post new information. i.e., much the same way you can include a teaser paragraph in your e-newsletter with a link back to the full article on your site.

If you're thinking that subscribers have to proactively "visit" your blog (a "pull" tactic) vs. having an ezine or e-newsletter delivered to them (a "push" approach) there's good news.

You can subscribe to a blog using downloadable software called a newsreader. NewsGator www.newsgator.com is a popular one as it integrates seamlessly with Outlook. There are lots of newsreaders to choose from, many of them free. Once installed on your desktop, the newsreader (also called a news aggregator) grabs the latest updates to your blog via an RSS feed.

No need to worry what RSS is (it stands for Really Simple Syndication). Just have faith that RSS is a new way to publish and distribute content on the Web without using email. And that’s the point. No email. So, no worries about spam filters or delivery problems.

2. A blog is an instant publishing tool

A blog is an easy-to-use content management tool. When you “blog,” you are instantly adding new content to your site via a Web interface. No technical or programming skills are necessary. Anyone can update the copy and content on your site. In fact, think of a blog as just another page on your Web site.

Key point: a blog doesn't have to be “cool.” A steady stream of short tips with links to other sites or articles can be extremely useful. (See my article 5 tips for a useful resource blog.) In fact, this is the same kind of useful information you may be cramming into each issue of your newsletter. With a blog, you can parcel it out in digestible bits - with more impact.

3. A blog makes your site search engine friendly

Search engines love blogs and will index individual entries (no matter how short) if you've got your blogging software configured to create a separate page for each new post. In other words, think of each blog post or entry as a Web page with its own title.

By incorporating a blog into your site you are creating multiple new mini pages. Search engines crawl sites which are updated regularly with fresh content. So “blogging” raises your site’s rankings in search results.

OK, but are blogs a fad or a trend?

I love this question. Here's my answer:

Newsletters or ezines are still the e-vehicle of choice for most marketers. Two things are slowing the adoption of blogs as a channel for business communication:

1. The term blogging is associated with online journals; personal, unedited writing; and, er, needless bloviating.

2. Most folks don't know what a news reader is and why you need one to subscribe to a blog or any other RSS feed. (Again, don’t fret over RSS. Visit www.newsgator.com for a good explanation and to see how easy it is to download a newsreader.)

Use a blog to extend the reach of your e-newsletter

My advice for now is to continue publishing an e-newsletter. If you're sending it in HTML, trim your design down to the bare minimum and make the file size as small as possible. This will give you a better chance of getting past the spam filters and other blocking tools being used by major ISPs like AOL.

Of course, don't forget to link back to your blog through each issue of your e-newsletter. You'll probably need to explain to your newsletter readers what your blog is, where to find it and how to subscribe to it.

If you think your email subscribers are not ready to embrace “newsreaders,” then don’t mention this downloadable software - or RSS for that matter. Simply include a prominent link to your blog in the layout of your newsletter and remind readers to “visit” often for updates between issues.

Bottom line, consider adding a blog to your site for two reasons: as an instant publishing tool and as an adjunct to your email marketing efforts. You may find you can use a blog to trim down the extraneous information that's clogging the regular issues of your newsletter and making it less effective.

Useful Resources
Good explanation of RSS
Using RSS Feeds to Promote Your Website by Ralph Wilson
Quick explanation of RSS (from my article "5 key questions about business blogs")

Popular Blogging Tools
Blogger (free tool; now owned by Google)
Movable Type (software you install; it powers many professional-looking blogs)
TypePad (hosted version of Movable Type; easier to set up)

Debbie Weil is the publisher of award-winning WordBiz Report, read by close to 15,000 subscribers in over 80 countries. She is also an Internet marketing & communications consultant. She sells special reports & award-winning starter kits , and produces audio conferences on topics related to marketing with e-newsletters or ezines... as well as blogs. Download your free copy of her mini guide to online copywriting (value $10) instantly when you subscribe to WordBiz Report.

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Top 10 Reasons to Use a Blog to Publish Your Ezine

by Denise Wakeman

Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a delivery medium. Here are 10 reasons why you should deliver your ezine articles via a blog.

1. A blog is web based so you can update and post new articles anywhere, anytime. It's a dynamic medium that can be updated on a moment's notice.

2. Subscribers can subscribe to your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feed and have your content delivered straight to their desktop. This delivery system bypasses spam filters and readers get exactly the content they want.

3. No web site to mess with. It's very inexpensive way to set up a web presence for your ezine. There are several sites where you can set up a free blog and others are very reasonably priced for the massive exposure you can get.

4. You can set up links for ads and your affiliate programs in side columns so you don't have to include them in your ezine format.

5. You can set up a subscription form and send emails to your subscribers when new content is added.

6. Blogs link to other blogs which helps you create a viral marketing system and increases your exposure in search engines. Search engines LOVE text based, fresh content that is highly focused (key word rich).

7. You can use your ezine blog to become a trusted expert for your subscribers, by filtering content for them so they don't have to visit hundreds of web sites.

8. You have an instant archive of all your articles. When you post an article, a new page and permalink is created. People can share that link with others and be sent directly to the article being referenced.

9. Readers can comment on your articles, which creates rapport and trust between you and your subscriber. Comments also add rich content to your site and again, helps your ranking in the search engines.

10. The bottom line is this: using a blog can help you attract more visitors who become subscribers and then eventually become clients.

For an ezine publisher, a blog compliments and can significantly ease the delivery of your ezine content. Essentially, like any web site, you have to promote it and encourage people to add your site to their RSS reader or subscribe for updates through a subscription form.

That's why I put a subscribe form on my site - subscribers and get updates in anyway they want. You still need to submit to search engines and directories to drive traffic.

If you already have an ezine subscriber database, my advice would be to post everything on the blog and then send a weekly email, or whatever your normal publishing schedule is, informing your subscribers when new content is posted.

Marketing is done in a conversational way and via the links on your blog. Announcements can be posted on the blog and to one's list.

I see the blog and ezine database as complementary... working together to increase your exposure and make it easier for people to get your information and build relationships.

About the author: Denise Wakeman is Chief Implementor of Next Level Partnership, a company dedicated to partnering with you to take your business to the next level. Visit Denise's blog at http://www.biztipsblog.com to get tips and tactics for taking your business to the next level.

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It's A Blog, Not A Sales Letter

by Priya Shah

The recent spurt of interest in blogging has begun to ignite the hope that people can make a full-time income from blogging.

Although there are a few people actually doing this, there aren't too many business models yet that can support someone making a full-time income from their blogs.

I believe that blogs should be an important part of any traffic-generation plan for a website, but don't depend on the blog itself to do much selling.

Blogs are best viewed as an addition to site content, in reality, a very simple content management system that helps you update your site more frequently, so your search engine listings and traffic increase.

Email campaigns are still the best way to produce sales on demand and to announce specials and time-limited offers, because blogs do not yet have the immediacy and reach of email.

Blogs are not about selling anyway. As an internet marketer and publisher, I find that blogs can be an excellent tool to support your main business, to provide value, build relationships with prospective customers and to build your personal brand and image.

For corporates and small businesses, blogs can help put a human face on an otherwise bland business site. In the corporate world, blogs are being for internal communication and knowledge management, and for brand building and public relations campaigns.

Nike's Art of Speed blog is an excellent example of subtle brand building using blogs.

As an internet marketer and publisher, here are some ways you can use blogs to support your business.

1. Write reviews of products in your field

Writing reviews not only allows you to benefit from improved search engine listings for the product you are reviewing, but allows you to provide your subscribers with information that contributes to their purchase decisions. That makes it an ideal way to earn affiliate income.

2. Direct traffic to your articles

If you've written an article and published it online, use your blog to post a teaser, perhaps describing what made you write that particular article, and then link to it so you get your readers to also visit your website and check out your other offerings.

3. Direct traffic to your ezine archives

Post a few paragraphs or the editorial of your ezine or newsletter issues on your blog and link to the archived issue on your website so that your readers can read the rest of the issue there.

4. Talk about what's going on in your life

People buy from those they like and trust. As an online journal or diary, a blog is the ideal medium to share details of your holiday, the things that made you laugh (or not), your own humorous take on life, anything to let your prospective customers get to know the person behind the website better.

5. Comment on developments in your industry

A blog is an ideal place to post your personal opinions, favourable or not, about the developments in your industry. If you are not happy with someone's customer service, or have been defrauded, they are also a good way of warning other potential victims. Becoming a source of industry information is part of the process of branding yourself as an expert.

There are many more ways that you can promote yourself, your products and services using a blog, but the ones above should get you started for now.

Just remember to use your blog for the purpose it was meant to be used. To brand, to communicate, to connect.

Leave the selling to your sales letter.

Priya Shah publishes an internet marketing ezine by day and doubles as a Blog Maniac by night. Blog Brandz is the legitimate offspring of her affair with the blogosphere.

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Can Blogs Be Useful Marketing Tools???

by Rick Hendershot

Blogs (web-logs) have become very popular. If you are not up to speed on what "blogs" are, just think of them as online journals.

The owner of the blog makes regular posts on whatever topics he/she chooses, and readers are free (or not) to make comments.

If you think blogging is symptomatic of a youth culture enamoured of brainless activites like "reality" TV shows, text messaging and endless cell phone chatting, you are only partially right.

Like your typical teeanage cell phone conversation ("Hi. Where are you now? I'm at the mall. We're gonna hang out for a while. Got to go...") blog content can be nothing more than navel gazing:

"Well, I'm back after a couple of days. Don't really have much to say, because not much has happened. Think I'll go for a drive to the mall and wander around for a while. Need some underwear and might pick up a pizza. G2G..."

It is probably true that the immediacy and regularity of blogging lends itself to this kind of empty content...

Ooops. Time to make my blog entry. What's that? Can't think of anything to say? Well then, I guess I'll just talk about that... OK... "Here I am again. It's time to make another entry in my blog, but I can't think of anything to say. I hate that. Life can be so boring. Don't you agree? Well, G2G..."

Writing about nothing

That reminds me of the time back in Grade 12 English when I couldn't think of a topic for an essay due the next day. Out of desperation, that became my topic.

The title was something like "An Essay About Nothing", and it started out more or less like this "I'm suppose to hand in an esssay tomorrow, but I can't think of anything to write about, so that is what I am writing about."

I thought I was being pretty clever, and it was probably as good as most of my essays. But the teacher, expecting the usual earnest effort handed in by Grade 12 students, wasn't amused.

On the other hand, Jerry Seinfeld, turned this concept into the best sitcom ever produced (quite a few years later, I might add). Which only goes to prove that writing about nothing isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Sometimes it can be much more.

So it is with blogs. Blog content can be empty and pointless, or it can be interesting and thoughtful.

Just like ezines and those things we internet marketers pass off as "articles". Some of my content for this and other sites comes from submissions made to article newsgroups.

Everybody who joins the group can send out their "articles" to the entire group. So I receive a hundred or so articles every day. Some of them are interesting, original, informative, and very well written.

But, alas, most of them harp on the same old boring marketing themes: "10 Ways to Super Charge Your Response Rate", "5 Tips for Writing Dynamic Sales Copy", "How to Find the Perfect Work at Home Business", on and on it goes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This stuff would be right at home in most mind-numbing blogs.

Good things about blogs for marketers

On the whole, from the publishing and marketing points of view, blogs have a lot going for them.

First of all, everything gets posted right away in a blog, so they have a sense of immediacy and a more conversational tone than even your typical online forum or newsgroup. This also makes them much more "interactive" than many other web communication media.

Certainly blogs are more interactive than traditional websites. And they make email-based ezines seem downright old fashioned. But are blogs likely to replace traditional websites and ezines as the go-to formats for online marketing?

No and Yes.

There are things we can do with ordinary static websites that are not suited to

blogs. Catalogue or reference material, for instance, must continue to contain reliable, stable and therefore relatively static detail. The same goes for much product description material, legal mumbo-jumbo, and technical information.

But blogging is ideally suited to ongoing communication with clients, customers and prospects. And it is particularly useful for "excerpting", "citing", or commenting on other articles, blog posts, or websites.

Blogs are at their best when the posts are short and they link to some other resource as a point of reference.

That is why blogging is particularly important for internet marketers. For instance, say (like a client of mine) you are a Waterloo Ontario real estate agent. And say you want to make new listing updates available to subscribers.

A blog is a perfect place to do this. You can post your regular listings on a daily basis, and mix in other news and promotions along the way.

Regular email messages can be sent out to your subscriber base reminding them to "check today's new listings in my blog".

You can even turn it into an "RRS Feed" and syndicate your blog information so clients can pick it up on a feed reader, or other webmasters can post it on their sites.

The blog experiment. I jump in up to my neck

But I must admit, my real interest in blogs has to do with their potential for influencing search engine rankings. Google thinks blogs are great. They seem to like the simplicity and down home "everyman" character of blogging.

And they certainly like three other facts about blogs: they are constantly changing, they are "content-rich" in a very focused way — even if that content isn't particularly profound. and they are often extensively interlinked with other websites and blogs.

In fact Google seems to be neutral towards the relatively mindless content presented in many blogs. And this has opened up an interesting "window of opportunity" for search engine optimizers.

Experiments have shown that it is much safer to "spam" Google with blog content than with other static web pages.

These experiments have shown that blog content that is essentially just a bunch of jibberish with hundreds of embedded links and strategically placed keywords is often given the royal treatment by Google.

The same sort of content in a "normal" website (for instance the kind generated by a program like Search Engine Cloaker) is absolutely verboten.

In a series of articles within the Linknet Marketing Resource Library I discuss other blogging topics, and share some of the tips and techniques I have discovered along the way.

Rick Hendershot is a writer and internet publisher whose major project is a series of Linknet Resource Libaries: articles and discussions on tightly focused topics such as Marketing, Linking, Search Engine Optimization, Real Estate, Golf, and many more. He currently publishes a number of blogs including Marketing Bites, e_Marketing, Trade Show Buzz, The WEG, and Inside Real Estate.

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6 Ways That Blogging Can Save You Money

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Even though I've had several personal blogs for years, I've only been officially business blogging since 2003.

So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when I realized that my overall business costs were down about 19%. What saved me so much money? Surprisingly, blogging.

How can you save money with your blog? It's pretty simple, so I'll be brief.

Attract search engine traffic without paying the big bucks

If you want Google, Yahoo and MSN to pay attention to you, blog.

It doesn't have to be a whole new site, just add a directory to your existing site and start blogging. Most blog software solutions are either cheap or free.

And you can find out most basic blog information online for free (really, sometimes just typing your question into Google will do it.) by people who've actually done it. For less than $100, you can build a small library of blog tips and secrets, written by successful business bloggers.

Instead of buying links, get one-way links from blog search engines and directories, as well as getting your RSS feed content displayed at other sites.

Linking is a great way to get search engine attention and click traffic. Some people get links by trading; others by including their links at the end of freely distributed articles. Others pay to be listed, or to get linked.

In each of these scenarios, some type of trade takes place, money, free content, or a link back.

When you blog, you'll find plenty of search engines and directories that are willing to list you free of charge. For the most part you won't need to link back - you'll get a one-way link from site favored by search engines, often using text that you select yourself.

If 90 or more of these free, legitimate links back to your site is worth your time, then get you blog in motion.

Not only that, if you update frequently, other sites may want to display your RSS feed content on their sites. To encourage them to do so, put a link on your page with instructions on how to do so. Ever since I put one on the front of my site, various feeds from my main site have turned up in the most unexpected places.

Cheaper way to study your audience.

As your blog gets more popular, you may start to find that on any given day, you have a representative cross-section of prospects and clients at your site. If you have a question for them, you can just... ask.

True, you can post a link to a survey in your newsletter or on your site, but these are not as interactive as the ability for your audience to comment. They will comment, and you can reply to ask them to expand, or clarify. Conversation gets going and before you know it, a bond is formed, a much stronger bond than occurs in a one-way conversation.

Cheaper (and faster) way to start a resource or authority site.

Five years ago, if you wanted to start an authority site, your best bet was to build a portal with a specialized directory at its core. Three years ago, you were better off starting a forum with a resource section attached to it. Last year, your top bet was a feed-enabled content management system, especially as more parts of content management systems began to have content feeds related to them. (I have 12 feeds for each of my PHP-Nuke based sites, though they don't work as well with Google Tap.)

Now, if you want to be the expert, you want to start a blog.

If you're blogging consistently, you have a hub of information collected that will inspire return traffic. You have a collection of links to articles, sites, and tools. You can constantly write up your own opinion editorials on each of these items, as well as fact-based analysis of news and events that can help your audience make better choices.

As blog software matures you can now categorize, and alphabetize your links, and with the ability to ping multiple sources as well as leave trackback links to other sites, you can send your readers through a ring of related, freshly updated information that ultimately leads back to you.

Spend less money on advertising as your blog becomes more popular

I can't promise you that you'll never spend another red cent on advertising costs. However, the amount of free advertising you get from having your blog link or RSS feed listed in dozens of search engines and directories, and popping up in feed readers is not to be underestimated.

You'll probably still want to do some ezine advertising when your new ebook or software release is debuted. But you may not need to buy as much advertising or purchase as often.
Then there is the fact that many newsletters that are also published to RSS feeds have wider reach. I've found that it's worth the extra money to appear in both versions - ask your favorite publisher for details. For publications that allow this, it's normally only 20% extra

Save money by retaining visitors

You've probably heard a thousand times that it is easier to sell repeatedly to an existing client than it is to find a new one. So how do you get that visitor to come back, and possibly buy again?

A constant stream of new information on a particular topic work is enough to keep people buying a daily newspaper, subscribing to a magazine or viewing a television series.
Frequent updates can work the same way for your site.

With bloggers being named People of the Year by Time magazine last year, if you're not blogging in 2005, you're going to be left in the dust by other sites in your industry that do. It doesn't have to take up a lot of extra time, and the time it does takes is made up for in the money you can save.

About the Author: Read more about how a blog can help you get spidered by search engines within 24 hours at http://www.freetraffictip.com/gbc

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Cash In Your Blog - 4 Ways to Profit From The Hidden Revenue In Your Blog
By Tinu AbayomiPaul

Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there's the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects.

But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?

The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience.

In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they'd never catch up to reading it all.

This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers.

If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy.

Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products

As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you'll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be.

For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I've noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they'll be able to use as a reference guide.

Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response.

Method Two: The Subscription Model

When you're blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this.

Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they're looking for at your site, but you'll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time.

Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a "Best of" compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution.

Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer

them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine.

Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook

With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information.

There are a couple of tricks you'd have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you'd be surprised about how easy this process can be.

Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book

I know what you're thinking. "Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it's free at my site?"

Under certain circumstances, you'd be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services.

For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as "overwhelming". It's one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it's not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home.

Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs.

If you're still not convinced that it's not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this.

On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It's almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer.

Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look.

About the Author: You can learn low-cost ways to turn your blog into an ebook or preview Tinu's 400 page Free Traffic Tips printed edition and ebook

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Marketing With Blogs - Part 4

by Priya Shah

In the first three parts of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips on using your blog to brand yourself, boost your reputation and sell your products and services online.

In this article, I provide specific tips on using your blog help you boost your marketing ROI and visibility online.

#7: Use Good SEO Practices

Besides using keywords appropriately, take the time to learn about using trackbacks, pingbacks, good linking practices and basic SEO techniques.

Remember that in blogging, public relations equals PageRank. The more you link to others, the more they will link to you.

Submit your blogs and feeds to directories and search engines.

#8: Track Your Results

Keep track of your sales, inbound links, citations by using tools like adtrackers, Blogpulse and Marketleap. Also offer your readers incentives to participate in surveys.

This information is very valuable because it will help you understand what your market needs and how to give it to them.

It will also help you understand how much your blogging is helping your marketing efforts so you can tweak your methods and get more out of them.

#9: Listen And Learn

When we’re blogging we usually stating our opinions openly. As bloggers its alright to be controversial and frank while blogging.

But what happens when a potential customer posts a nasty or rude comment? Some bloggers think its OK to be rude right back, and even go so far as to call that person names.

I don’t believe that’s the way to treat someone who take the trouble to sign-in and post a comment on your blog. For all you know they may have a genuine problem and could be speaking for others who have experienced the same.

Being rude will not only lose you a customer, it will also expose you as someone who is too immature to handle customer complaints.

Granted, some customers can be a pain in the butt, but everyone deserves to be heard. And handling nasty or rude comments with restraint will not only demonstrate your maturity, but build your customers respect for you.

People prefer doing business with someone they like and trust. So if you want your blog to be a place where your potential customers can interact freely and openly, I suggest you learn how to handle brickbats as well as bouquets with grace and maturity.

It used to be said that the internet was the great leveller because it empowers small businesses to compete with big businesses. But blogs have completely levelled the playing field for marketers.

Anyone with an internet connection can now sell their products and services solely on the basis of the quality of information they provide.

And that is the reason blogs are creating a revolution in marketing online.

Priya Shah is CEO of the blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.

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Marketing With Blogs - Part 3

by Priya Shah

In part 1 and part 2 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips for using your blog to sell your products and services online.

This article continues with more tips on using your blog to brand yourself and boost your reputation online.

Tip #4: Use Your Blog To Inform, Share and Entertain

The reasons why people read your blog is because they want three things.

1. They want information

2. They want to be entertained

3. They want to get to know you better

Blogs allow us to combine all these possibilities in a single medium.

Use your personality, opinions, expressions as a way of drawing readers to your content, and create good information to keep them coming back.

Multimedia blogs are especially good for this purpose – because they entertain and that adds a viral component to your marketing.

Remember to always be yourself. Don’t put on a fake persona. If you hire someone to blog for you be upfront about it.

#5: Become A Source Of News In Your Industry

Blogging culture thrives on linking to other blogs or news sources.

If you want to be part of that culture, benefit from it and grow with it, you need to listen to what others are saying, form your own opinions and comment on that.

Your readers will start looking at you as a resource of news and opinions about the industry you represent and that will build your brand equity.

But always remember to give proper attribution to your sources and be clear when you are quoting from someone or you could get into trouble.

#6: Use Your Blog To Network

Networking helps you build up a list of people who know and trust you enough to refer business to you.

By linking with others, whether A-list bloggers or your own peers, you can build your own influence and reputation in your blogosphere.

In part 4 of this article series, I provide tips on using your blog help you boost your marketing ROI and visibility online.

Priya Shah is CEO of the blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.

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Marketing With Blogs - Part 2

by Priya Shah

In part 1 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing.

In this article I outline some tips on using your blog as a good vehicle for your marketing communications.

Tip # 1: Choose The Topic Of Your Blog Well

Make sure you are targeting the right audience for your products. You might love golf, but you can’t use it to sell your products unless they’re meant for golfers.

You generally wouldn’t write about something like golf on a marketing blog, unless you’re using it as a metaphor.

Pick the topic that will attract the right audience – people who are looking for your products, but more importantly, people who are willing to actually spend money on them.

If you’re not an expert on your topic, but are learning about it, blog about your learning process. There’s no shame in being a learner, in admitting that you don’t know everything.

In fact you journey could even teach others who are learning and help them relate to your experiences. Products you recommend would then be easy to sell to this group because you’ve established the emotional connection that makes selling easier.

Tip #2: Spend Some Time Learning The Basics Of Blogging

You need to learn how to use your blogging software, which blog engine will give you the results you need. Decide how much time you want to spend on your blog.

Hire a blogging coach or buy a blogging tutorial. Spend some time learning about trackbacks, pingbacks, keywords and how to use them, linking, blogging etiquette.

When you know how to use the tools that are available to you, it becomes that much easier to focus on your goals and save time in the actual process of blogging.

Tip # 3: Don’t Sell

When you start writing a blog, forget about selling. Too many people use their blog like a sales letter. Those people just don’t “get it.” That’s not what a blog is about at all.

Blogs are about communicating – connecting with your audience. Use your blog to build relationships with your audience. State your opinions whether they are popular or not. Politically-correct or not.

A while ago I wrote an article on this titled “It’s a Blog, Not a Sales Letter” in which I recommend using your blog for branding yourself, building your reputation and communicating with your audience - and not just for making a sale.

As marketers we aim to sell. But when you blog, you have to forget about selling and focus on sharing. That doesn’t mean you give away all your secrets on your blog.

But it does mean that you should not use your blog for in-your-face marketing.

Your readers will be very put off if all they read on your blog is one sales pitch after another. People are not stupid. They know when they’re being sold.

The most unobtrusive way to sell is to write reviews about products and link to them, mention products in passing, write articles or tips and recommend products (yours or other people’s) and services on your blog.

Part 3 of this article series discusses more tips on using your blog to market your products and services online.

Priya Shah is CEO of the blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.

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Marketing With Blogs - Part 1

by Priya Shah

Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.

Corporates like Nike are using blogs to build branding. Microsoft and Sun are using them to communicate with the developer community.

Blogs have a number of advantages that make them excellent tools for communication.

They are cheap to install and require little or no technical expertise. So the entry point for blogging is very low when compared to the expense of hiring a website designer.

While building a website is often out of the reach of most solo entrepreneurs, anyone can start a blog. If you can’t write or hate to write, you can start an audio or video blog. The possibilities are endless.

Blogs also help you create content that search engines love, and encourage linking from a number of other bloggers who write on similar topics. This makes them excellent tools for getting high search engine rankings and boosting your visibility.

They also encourage immediate responses from your readers and customers, so you can get feedback, tweak your campaigns and respond better to the market’s demands.

Blogs, and the RSS feeds they come with, help you syndicate your content online, boost your reach and influence and allow readers to control their communications with your company.

Your blog can be your selling point and help your prospects opt for you and your services over those of others.

Whether you’re an individual, entrepreneur, small business, consultant, coach, book author, independent filmmaker, actor, model, travel guide, work-at-home mom - someone who wants to promote their individual skills and talents or interests – there is immense potential in using blogs to promote your business.

In part 2 of this article series I cover some tips that will help you ensure your blog is a good marketing vehicle.

Priya Shah is CEO of the blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

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Business Blogging: Where Do I Start???

by Denise O'Berry

The new hot commodity is a blog for your small business so you've decided you must have one.

Before you begin think about it long term. Where do you think the blog is headed? What is the objective? Do you want it to be found by the search engines for specific terms? How often will you post? Who will the audience be? What will it look like a year from now? Five years from now?

If you think you may have this blog for a long time, consider hosting it with your own domain name. Blogger provides you with a free domain name (name.blogspot.com), or the option of ftp to your own domain.

If, at some point in time in the future you want to move the blog and you've been using the blogspot name, you won't be able to take it with you. This means that all of the people who have your blog in their reader will "lose" you. It also means that you'll have to start from ground zero with the search engines.

Do some digging before you jump. A couple of good networks where you can get some education are:

Blogging for Business

Make sure you sign up for the "Blogging for Marketers" email course. Priya has loaded the course with good blog information (and it costs you nothing).

Blogger Forum

The Blogger Forum is very welcoming to newbies. Browse around and just by looking at previous posts, you can learn a ton. they also have a section on blog platforms which talks about the different options available.

Once you're ready to go, what are you going to write about? Make sure you've brainstormed ideas so you don't run into the inevitable writer's block. You can always start with what you've written before.

Do you have a newsletter? Look through your archive and "refresh" some of those old topics as a blog posting. How about your website?

Do you have content you can turn into a blog topic? Do you participate in online forums or discussion lists? Find some advice you gave to someone there and turn it into a blog post.

This should get you started. Remember that small business blogging is a long term activity. Be ready.Denise O'Berry is a small business expert who helps small business owners take action to grow their business. Don't know what to write about? Get the cure for blog writer's block at http://www.whatspossible.com/blogidea/

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Business Blogging 5 Tips to Help You Barrel Through Writer’s Block
by Tinu AbayomiPaul

It’s inevitable. Everyone hits the wall. Whether you’ve been blogging ten weeks, ten minutes, or ten months, eventually you’ll find yourself with absolutely nothing to say.

Or so you think.

So what in the world do you do when you’re stumped?

1- Talk about what you’ve already talked about

Pick a topic you’ve gone over before and give it some spin.

Try a new angle, like playing devil’s advocate. For example, if you are a search engine journalist, and last week your position was that most mainstream sites need Google traffic to survive, try proving your point from the “con” perspective, instead of the “pro” position.

There are dozens of ways to write about the same thing. By putting your point another way, you might give someone in your audience what a client of mine referred to as an “Ah-ha!” moment. That's when they realize the true value of the items for sale at your site to them and their business.

2- Talk about what someone else is talking about

If you want to have a popular blog, find other bloggers in similar areas, and talk about what they said in their posts. Friendly debate can often spark the soap-opera like drama that will have both your audiences visiting both blogs to see what “the other fella” had to say.

As an added bonus, if both of you are using Trackback in your blogs, you’ve got yourself a mini-link party that other people who are speaking on similar topics will want to join..

3- Have yourself a good rant

The intimate nature and voice of blogs lends itself well to the opinionated, angry ramble. But as a professional, don’t let yourself get too unfocused, and remember to back up your opinion with facts.

4- Feature someone, something or somewhere

I like to call mine “of the Day”.

As I zip around the Net conducting my business and research, if my attention is called to a resource or tool that my audience might find useful, I hit my blog bookmarklet and save that bad boy for later.

Then when I get too busy for a full blown tip, I’ll crown the resource, feed, tool, download or freebie the featured “Deal of the Day”, changing the word deal to something else more appropriate as needed.

After a while, my audience started to look for it as a feature, as opposed to being upset at the interruption in my mad, mad rambles.

5- Let someone else talk for a change

Invite a guest blogger, or post an article that offers free reprint rights, the same way you would in a newsletter. Of course you want to leave the resource box intact, or let the guest promote their site, which brings me to the most common complaint about this tactic.

“But I don’t want to send people away from my site.”

Guess what? You’ll never believe what I found out. Ready?

In a recent startling discovery, I’ve found that 100% of my visitors eventually turn off their computers or take otherwise drastic measures that cause them to leave my site. Apparently this is beyond prevention, though you can stall them for hours sometimes with good content.
Of course you don’t want to send them on their way prematurely, but if you’re a good blogger, and have done what you can to make sure they sign up to your blog email updates or site feed, they’ll be back. Just be sure that you’re giving them a good enough reason.

In the meantime, since they’re going to leave anyway, it might as well be somewhere that gives you some direct or in-direct benefit.

So there you have enough material for five more days.

Happy Blogging!

Need more than five days worth of blogging posts? Get more at Blog About This: 75 Business Blog Topics

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Business Blogging for Search Engine Traffic

by John Jantsch

As more and more blogs go commercial, more and more folks want to know how and why they should blog for business. While there are any number of reasons, one of the most compelling is this: search engines seem to love blogs.

So what is it about blogs that those little spiders love so much?

Here's a little secret: search engines crave content.

Okay, so maybe that's not such a secret. But to look at many websites you would think it is.

The fact is too many websites do nothing to attract search engines. Providing content, not to mention fresh content, is one of the toughest chores of anyone who maintains a website. But when it comes to generating traffic it is the most important job.

Blogs, by their very nature, are all about content. In a commercial environment every blog entry is fresh content. Get in the habit of making two, three, even four entries a week and you've got a content building bonanza on your hands.

Everyone knows you need new content to give visitors a reason to come back; blogs just make the task so much easier.

Lack of competition

Another advantage that blogs currently possess over traditional web pages and sites is lack of competition. While the number of bloggers grows daily, there are still relatively few commercial blog sites.

When I created my blog I found that it showed up in the number one spot in Google for the term "Marketing Weblog" within about three weeks of launch. Not bad considering I did nothing to make it happen.

There are a couple of other things you should do to make your weblog a traffic magnet. They aren't really that different than traditional search engine optimization (SEO) tactics but the names and faces are unique to the blogging world.

Use targeted keywords in your entry titles

No rocket science here but this tip can't be stated enough. Forget cute. Go for titles that fit your targeted keywords and phrases even if they seem a bit awkward. (You do have targeted keywords and phrases, don't you?)

Register with blog search engines

Search engines that specialize in blogs include:

http://www.daypop.com

http://www.blogsearchengine.com

Register with tracking services

These services note when a blog has been updated and publish an ongoing list. They even keep track of the most updated and most visited weblogs. Plus you get to learn what pinging is.

Two tracking services are:

http://blo.gs

http://www.pingomatic.com

Trade some links

You don't need to get out of control on this one but a few "relevant" swapped links to related blogs can boost your traffic.

Syndicate your content

This tactic is too technical to cover here but I promise to come back to this in another issue of Duct Tape News. For now, do some research on the term RSS and you may discover ways to have your content and entries fed to sites that are hungry for the type of stuff you write.

Many of the popular weblog software packages have this capability built right in. People are flocking to software and browser based programs that allow them to look at all of the blogs they want to view in one place.

Make your content available in that place and it will be seen. Here are some of the bigger RSS aggregator programs.

RSS Search Engine

http://www.feedster.com

RSS Aggregator Programs

http://www.newsgator.com

http://www.pluck.com

http://www.feedburner.com

John Jantsch is a small business marketing coach based in Kansas City, Mo. He writes frequently on real world small business marketing tactics and is the creator of "Duct Tape Marketing" a turn-key small business marketing system. Check out his blog at http://www.DuctTapeMarketing.com/weblog.php

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Blog for Business: Is It Right for Your Company???

by Barbara Payne

If you haven’t yet looked at blogging as a potential marketing tool for your business, now’s the time.

Last spring, I wrote to all my customers to suggest that it was time for them to start letting at least their salespeople write blogs for their customers and prospects. It sounds radical to many managers, but there’s no denying the power of authentic communication when it comes to building loyalty between people—and clearly your customers are people first.

Let’s evaluate this idea using the PPC technique (Pluses, Potentials and Concerns), as described in Roger L. Firestein’s Leading on the Creative Edge.

Idea: Let Your Customers Read Blogs Written By Your Salespeople

Pluses

Customers will feel special (always a good thing).

Customers will learn about your company in an authentic voice from the people whose main concern is helping your company make money (so they can make money)—not a bad motivation for creating positive content.

Salespeople enjoy the process and feel good about being able to be in touch with customers more frequently.

Potentials

Your customers are so in touch with you that they think of you instantly when a colleague needs a referral for your product or service.

Your customers feel so attached to you (through your sales reps) that they don’t hesitate to share important information about developments in their own company—which means you can become proactive (perhaps way ahead of the competition) about responding to their needs.

Your customers become even more excited about your R&D process and are more willing to help test new products/services.

Your customers complain less because they really know and trust your processes and are more inclined to be understanding about any glitches in service or problems with products. Concerns

How might you control any tendency for salespeople to write content that might appear negative?

How might you let go of any fear that someone will say too much?

What review process might you institute so that trade secrets and other intellectual property items are protected—clearly understood as off-limits for blog content?

Remember… your salespeople are out there with your customers every day—in their offices and plants and at conferences and in hotels. You have even less control over what they say in those situations than you do in a blog, so think trust.

It Works

A recent Harvard Business Review article recounted how the CEO of a midsize corporation stood up at a big company meeting to introduce a new product they’d developed, only to find that most of the audience already knew about it.

Why?

Because they’d been reading the blog of one of the company’s junior associates—who chronicled the progress of the development. Not surprisingly, HBR heralded this as a wakeup call to corporate marketing folks.

The effectiveness of blogging as a marketing tool is no longer in doubt. In addition to all the advantages of a newsletter, it has the added power of the fact that people choose to come to it and read it.

More than three billion blog pages are indexed on the Google search engine, yet people will find yours if it’s a topic of interest. What’s more, they’ll pass the word to others! That’s virtually free promotion and the kind of unsolicited third-party endorsements every business owner dreams of.

Calculate the potential gain—both to your company and to your customers—against the potential risks. Be creative about ways to minimize or eliminate perceived risks.
Once you’ve developed confidence in the power of sales blogging and are comfortable with the process your people follow, don’t hesitate to expand your target audiences to include vendors, trade and business editors and all prospects.

It’s free to start. Try services like www.bloghosts.com, www.blog-city.com, or www.blogspot.com. There are many choices. Or you can set one up on your own server with CGI scripts.

No matter what size your business, this new Internet tool is a mighty one. Don’t waste any more time.

Barbara Payne is managing principal of ReallyGoodFreelanceWriter.com. Read her blog at http://www.reallygoodfreelancewriter.com/getmorecustomers

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Is a Blog Right For Your Business???

by Meryl K. Evans

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content.

Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I've been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl's notes, you'll notice they're more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late '90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn't work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return.

The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they're getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It's much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn't black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

§ Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?

§ Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?

§ Do you read other blogs or feeds?

§ Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?

§ How large is your newsletter subscriber list?

§ How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours.

Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that's where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog's comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog's trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you'll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do.

There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl's notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much.

What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl's notes. It's about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it's a personal blog and doesn't belong in meryl's notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogging tools aren't just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites.

Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn't a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don't have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won't help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization's mission, needs and goals along with its target market's desires and needs.

A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net who increases conversion rates by writing and editing content so organization can focus on their core business. She is the editor-in-chief of the eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik's The Remediator Security Digest. Visit her Web site at http://www.meryl.net/blog/

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Blogs Still Mystify: Ten Companies That Missed Great Blog Opportunities
By B.L. Ochman

It doesn't matter whether companies are big, with benefit of PR agencies, or small - many are missing opportunities to integrate blogs into the marketing mix. The following are 10 examples of sites and campaigns that are crying out for blogs. If they had them, they could dialog with customers, sell product, and also have some fun.

Newman's Own Organic Dog Food

Difficult economy? What difficult economy? You'd never know it from what dogs and cats are eating. And now they'll have Newman's Own Organic Dog Food at $39.95 for a 25-pound bag, according to USA Today.

Oddly, there is no Newman's Own Dog Food Website, blog, or other online marketing effort. A missed opportunity! The topic of pet nutrition cries out for a blog where holistic vets could answer nutrition questions from customers.

Teva Makes Sandals For Sore-Footed Elephant

Teva, the company that produces sport sandals and footwear is designing a new line of shoes made especially for an elephant named Tina who lives at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee.

Tina, who is 9 foot tall and 9100 pounds, is a 34 year-old Asian elephant suffering from a debilitating foot disease. She's the only elephant at the sanctuary who was born in captivity.
The Teva design will protect the bottoms of Tina's feet so she can navigate throughout the habitat pain-free. When she gets her new shoes you'll be able to watch her on the sanctuary's way cool Elecam

Will this sell Teva shoes to humans? You bet! But Teva is missing a big opportunity by not integrating a photo blog, tracking the elephant's progress, into its http://www.teva.com Web site.

Starbucks Misses Perfect Opportunity for Moblog

Starbucks celebrated its 10th anniversary in New York City with a summer campaign surprising New Yorkers with random acts of kindness. For example, they gave a free tank of gas and a hot cup of coffee to customers at a Manhattan Mobil station, giving away 690 gallons of gas, 12 gallons of coffee and 2 gallons of Frappuccinos.

The company missed a perfect marketing opportunity by not having the events on a moblog. That's a mobile blog that people could post their photos and first-hand accounts to for the rest of the world to see. Right now, the promotion is invisible - not even mentioned on the company Website.

Rowenta Sponsors Extreme Ironing Sport and Website

German iron maker Rowenta has brought the sport of Extreme Ironing to the US -- the only global sport that combines a household chore with an extreme sport. Participants, according to the Rowenta press release like to mix the thrill of danger with the satisfaction of a well-pressed shirt."

The US tour began in Boston and concluded on Memorial Day with a grand finale in Times Square. Meanwhile, extreme ironers are ironing while rock climbing, boating, parachute jumping, and scuba diving. (Since extreme ironers must wait for the invention of solar- and battery- charged irons, they heat their irons with portable gas burners, campfires and

generators. I have no idea how they iron under water.)

The Extreme Ironing Website uses the tried and true PR gimmick, the information bureau in the form of the Extreme Ironing Bureau. It features a photo gallery to which ironers can upload photos and stories and videos and FAQs, news of events, competitions, and proof that it got into the 2004 Guinness Book of Records. But all of this would have been much better - and more inexpensively - done with a mobile photoblog which would automatically archive and categorize posts and images.

Pomegranate Juice Misses Blog Opportunity

An article in the Wall Street Journal http://tinyurl.com/2wyqn marvels that pomegranate cocktails "suddenly abound." Drink trends, the writer muses, "just seem to arise out of nowhere."

Ah, but those of us who have ever done PR for a beverage company know better, don't we. :>) The PR agency had street teams all over the place and they could have been blogging about the responses of consumers tasting the products, uploading recipes, photos and coupons.

DaimlerChrylser Xmas Stunt Makes the NY Times and Misses Multi-Media Opportunity

Dan Barry reports in the New York Times that DaimlerChrysler has created what it called the "first ever" living window display by challenging a family of three to live for five days in a 2004 Dodge Durango SUV that was parked in Times Square.

Just a silly PR stunt? Maybe, but it got a full column in About New York on the cover of the New York Times Metro section.

That's no small feat, but they've missed a great opportunity for multi-media promotion. A blog of the family's experience would have been great. Although streaming media from the site, or even a web cam would be perfect for this stunt, there was not a word about it on the Dodge Durango site or the Chrysler site.

WD40's Anniversary Site

Aunti Goodie bags is a member of the WD40 Fan Club Board of Directors . Members point out that WD40 has thousands of uses, from keeping pigeons off the terrace (they hate the smell) to keeping toilet bowls clean. You can suggest your favorite uses at the site.

Unfortunately the uses aren't searchable so you can't look up a WD40 cure when you're in need. This site would have been a perfect use for a business blog, making the Fan Club interactive and allowing for automatic searchable archiving of uses.

The site even has a downloadable WD40 Spray Game that you just have to try.

Ditties: Dumb Name, Smart Tampon Marketing That Needs a Blog

Long overdue, Dittie LLC of Orinda, CA, has launched a line of feminine hygiene products that don't treat menstruation like an ailment, or as something to hide.

Founded by Barbara Carey, President, Dittie's products are stylish and, well, feminine. The Dittie Website features the Dittie Pledge to always pass one on to any woman in need, funny stories about tampons, and goofy Tampon Bowling, with tampons for pins.

More than $1 million was spent on the launch, which included an extensive sampling program in schools, doctor's offices and boutiques, as well as ads in the girls' bathrooms, school newspapers and hallways. There is also a junior marketing program, in which girls can be part of street teams or buzz squads.

The site cries out for a blog and user forums, perhaps password protected to keep out mischief makers.

Trojan Condoms Boring Site, Missed Opportunity

Pretty boring home page, given the subject matter. The information center cries out for a blog. As Rick Bruner pointed out in Business Blog Consulting, "Imagine all the legitimate condom, STD and sex-related news they could report on, not to mention more interesting Fark-ish naughty, funny and incredible-but-true sex-related stuff."

Spiderman

Here's a mystery Spider-Man: The Peril of Doc Ock featuring animated LEGO toys, is a brilliant, action packed, 4-minute comical take on the Spider-Man movies commissioned from Spite Your Face Productions Ltd. by Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios.

Yet the movie is nowhere to be found on the sites of marketing titans Sony, Lego and Marvel. (Or it's quite hidden.) Surely it will spread virally, if only by six-year-olds sending it to their friends.

Where's the hype? Where's the blog? Why isn't anyone making noise about this film? It's clever, funky, funny, true to the movie. And it represents a most unusual collaboration between the three companies.

What opportunity to integrate blogs into the marketing process is your company missing?

B.L. Ochman of whatstnextonline.com, is an Internet marketing strategist, journalist and speaker. She publishes What's Next Online marketing tactics newsletter, and What's Next Blog and is the author of Press Releases From Hell and How to Fix Them

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The Rise of Business Blogging

by Steve Rubel, CooperKatz & Company

Despite its long history of innovation and track record for producing one product marketing success after another, by the turn of the century Microsoft had developed a negative reputation.

In 1998 the Department of Justice initiated a protracted public relations and legal war that branded the company and its top brass as bullying monopolists. By the time the case was settled in late 2001, the Microsoft brand was beaten and battered.

Three years after the case was settled, however, Microsoft has completed a sweeping organizational and image overhaul. It now is perceived as friendlier, more open and trustworthy.

What’s also notable is that this transformation - led by CEO Steve Ballmer – took place while the company continued to face an increasing barrage of daily attacks from hackers, spyware, and viruses.

Look beneath the surface, however, and you will find that Microsoft’s softening image was actually molded from the bottom up, by ordinary employees like Joshua Allen.

In 2001 Allen, a program manager, signed on as the company’s first unofficial corporate employee weblogger. His personal site, called “Better Living Through Software,” chronicles life inside the Redmond, Washington software giant – warts and all.

Today, Microsoft has more than 1200 corporate bloggers – more than 10 times the number it had just last year. They have the company’s blessing to write about whatever they want, provided they adhere to some basic guidelines.

As a result, virtually overnight the bloggers have become one of the company’s greatest marketing assets, generating incredible online and offline word of mouth.

In fact, Microsoft has even began to embrace them as a company. The software giant now links to all its bloggers right on its corporate web site and even launched a special sanctioned blog-like community for developers and partners called Channel 9.

Most Microsoft bloggers write passionately and candidly about the company’s technology, hiring practices, marketing, culture, and more. They even discuss company and product strengths and weaknesses in vivid detail

Some of Microsoft’s more prolific bloggers, such as Robert Scoble, attract thousands of readers daily, including competitors, customers, partners press, and analysts. Scoble’s blog has even turned him into a minor celebrity.

He is often cited by many as the most authentic voice inside Microsoft. The technical evangelist has been invited to speak extensively at dozens of industry confabs and has been even profiled extensively in Newsweek, Time, Fortune and BusinessWeek.

Most importantly, however, Microsoft’s corporate blogging army has in a short time opened a transparent window onto the most financially successful company that ever existed. They have accomplished the impossible by putting a human face on a gigantic monolithic company – a giant with a bad rap.

At the same time, they strengthened the company’s position as a thought leader and generated incalculable online word-of-mouth. Blogging can do the same for you – no matter your target audience or your goal. The key is to listen, learn, and then get started.

Unlike corporate web sites blogs directly reflect the individual personalities who pen them. That’s what made them such a success for Microsoft.

Blogs – short for the words “web” and “log” – consist of short or long-form “posts” on a specific topic that are organized in chronological order. Most weblogs are written by one or more individuals, either as a hobby or in an official capacity with the blessing of their organization.

Weblog postings generally consist of short-form op-eds that link to and comment on industry issues, news and content found on other web sites and blogs. The result is that on any given day in the “blogosphere” you can easily find thousands of conversations, discussing everything from technology to politics, sports, music and even knitting.

What makes blogs unique is that they are easily discovered and social in nature. Weblogs facilitate transparent dialogue by incorporating tools that encourage readers to give feedback through comments and emails. In addition, since many blogs link to each other, they are often found engaging in an exchange across the Internet, just like two friends conversing on a street corner.

According to PubSub, a service that tracks weblogs, there are approximately eight million weblogs in the blogosphere. The number is doubling every few months as businesses increasingly discover weblogs’ potential for driving marketing ROI. Several CEOs have even taken up blogging. These include Mark Cuban of HDnet and Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems.

Weblogs have exploded in part because they are extremely easy and cost-effective to launch. They also can generate significant ROI. Several tools, such as Google’s Blogger service, are completely free. While others, such as TypePad, add more robust tools and cost less than $200 per year.

What the services all share in common, however, is that they require virtually no technical expertise to set up and maintain. If you know how to use a browser and Hotmail, you can easily create blog. No HTML knowledge is necessary.

Blogging really first began to take off in 2002. However, in the last two years, it has moved more mainstream, even given rise to emerging companies like Gawker Media and Weblogs Inc. that are launching blog media networks for mainstream audiences.

In 2004, many bloggers began to also compete in earnest with journalists for scoops – particularly in the political scene. In a landmark moment for blogging, last summer The Democratic National Committee opened up its national convention to a handful of influential political bloggers – many of whom have had no journalistic training.

Over the summer it was the conservative bloggers who uncovered certain inaccuracies in Dan Rather’s report on Bush’s’ military service that later led CBS to admit it erred. Some have even speculated that the flap – called Rathergate – may have even lead to the anchor’s recent decision to retire.

In 2004 businesses and marketers also began to fully embrace blogging as a marketing tool. The New York Times Magazine even noted last December that “Blogs are known for their brutal honesty, independence of spirit and genuine emotional conviction. None of these attributes play much of a role in corporate advertising, of course, but they are values that corporate advertisers strive to imitate -- and, where possible, co-opt.”

Dozens of organizations including Stonyfield Farms, Yahoo, Maytag, and even Nike launched weblogs. Each of these blogs had different goals. In some cases- such as with the ANA’s own blogs - the sites are written by corporate executives in an effort to advance industry issues. Others, such as GM’s blog, are building word of mouth among auto enthusiasts. Intuit’s blog showcases real-world customers using their products.

Although each of these blogs is serving distinctly different audiences, they all share some things in common. They are authentic. They are written by real individuals who have a passion for their causes. They solicited feedback from readers. And they are conversational, engaging readers and even other bloggers in a dialogue.

By now you might be enthusiastic about getting started. But before you jump into the blogosphere, here are some initial steps to take.

Step One – Listen:

The best way to become acquainted with the power of blogs is to read them and see what they’re talking about. Using tools like Google, PubSub and Feedster, you can find easily blogs that are already discussing your company/brand and its industry. Also be sure to check out sites like BusinessBlogConsulting.com and Adrants.com, which include examples of blogs done right and wrong.

Step Two – Reach Out:

Once you have identified influential blogs, reach out to them by carefully posting comments on their sites. Let them know you’re listening. Some may invite you to sponsor their blog, which also can often offer a high ROI. Blogs can help your company build awareness among influencers who will talk about you to others. Marqui, a telecommunications company, recently began experimenting paying bloggers $800 per week if they mentioned their product. While the results aren’t known, blog advertising is certainly going to become a lot more prevalent in the years ahead.

Step Three – Launch Your Own Blogs:

Finally, once you feel you have a firm grasp on the medium, roll your own weblogs. This can range from everything from a CEO blog to a product team site and more. Figure out first who you’re trying to reach, who will have the most time and what people in your organization are willing to be the most transparent.

While some might dismiss blogs as a fad, I can assure you they’re not going away. And right now they are one of the most cost effective tools you can use to reach influencers who will recommend you to others.

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How To Avoid Blog Burnout

by Priya Shah

Blogging is a time consuming process. It involves the process of gathering, reading, digesting and compiling information into a nice, meaty post that gives your reader an insight into the unique way you see and understand issues.

Most serious business bloggers have at least two or three blogs that they write simultaneously. I have ten, but don't update all regularly.

Bloggers are also extremely passionate about what they do. Their blogs are a labour of love and they often tend to lose track of time, reading, writing and updating their blogs.

But there's only so much time in the day and only so much abuse a body can take. So how do you avoid becoming a burned-out business blogger?

Here are a few tips to help keep you and your blog(s) fuelled up and running for the long haul.

1. Get your priorities right

Is starting a new blog really going to help your business (or personal) objectives? If not, then don't. Simple as that. Save your energy for the tasks that help you achieve your objectives.

2. Discard the chaff

Do you have blogs that are not "hot" anymore? If you have a blog that's not getting much traffic or is about a topic that no one wants to read about anymore, give it a quiet burial.

3. Grow up

Are you continuing to blog (whether it serves your purpose or not) out of some misplaced emotional attachment to your blog? Then you probably need a 12-step program.

Lots of blogs are abandoned everyday because they stopped serving their purpose, or more often, because the bloggers just grew up and moved to greener pastures. Find more appropriate ways to spend your time or promote your business.

4. Get a life

Blogs are a poor substitute for family and friends. We bloggers tend to take our loved ones for granted because we work from home (and anywhere else we can). Its important to schedule our day to make time for family, especially when there are children around.

5. Get "un-wired"

In order to keep the ideas coming you need to do things that nurture your mind and body. Shut down your PC and get away from it for a while.

Go for a movie, take a walk in the park, workout in the gym. Get out of the house and get some fresh air. You'll be amazed at how easy (and fun) it can be it to get your creative juices flowing again.

6. Give yourself a break

If you missed blogging about something important because you had something else equally pressing to attend to, don't beat yourself up over it. Stick to a realistic blogging schedule.

Nothing is so important that it can't wait a day or two. Sometimes procrastination is not a bad thing at all. If it helps, write a bunch of posts at a time, so you can take a break and attend to other matters when you need to.

7. Quality, not quantity

Blog frequently, but not too often. Most bloggers will agree that two or three posts a week is a pretty good frequency. I usually manage to make that grade, but never push myself more than I have to.

The key is to make your posts count. Don't post about anything and everything in your field just because you have to.

Posts that are original, meaty and full of opinion are more likely to get read and linked to than posts that are just a few words with a link to the news source.

So if you're beginning to forget what your family looks like, if you think blogging is taking over your life, and your sanity, step back a bit and get things in perspective. Stop letting your blogs rule your life.

As for me, when it's a choice between the blog and the beach, the latter wins hands down.
Priya Shah is Editor of Naaree.com, an online magazine for the new Indian woman, and CEO of blog publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing With Blogs email course.

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Writing Good Blogs

by Jesse S. Somer

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.

Jesse S. Somer

M6.Net

Jesse S. Somer is a writer hoping to help potential bloggers to write interesting and informative on-line journals.

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Top 10 Blog Writing Tips

by Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman

Most of the "rules" about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences.

Keep these 10 tips in mind and you'll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.

1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It's marketing jargon for What's In It For Me? That's what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what's in it for them.

2. Make it valuable and worthwhile. Don't waste people's time. If you don't have anything to say, no problem, plenty other people do. So share their articles, do an interview, review a book.

3. Proof-read for typos and glaring grammatical errors. You wouldn't go out of the house with dirty hair or missing a sock, so why would you publish spelling mistakes? Respect your readers by polishing up your stuff.

4. Keep it short and simple, sweetie (KISS). Most people are scanners. You may have a lot to say and think it interesting, and it may be. But people are reading online and out of time. Get to the point quickly. Publishing short posts more frequently is a better format than publishing lengthy articles every few weeks.

5. Keep it lively, make it snappy and snazzy. Even if you aren't a natural born writer, you can write for your blog. Just write like you're speaking to your friend.or to yourself! Remember though, get to the point quickly. Keep in mind the journalist's rule of 5 W's in the first paragraph: who, what, why, when and where.

6. Link often. This builds credibility and positions you as an expert in your field. People don't have time to know what others are doing, you should tell them. Linking to other blogs and websites also helps you build a network of associates who will in turn link to your blog.

7. Use keywords often. This will help you stay on purpose, and the search engines will love your blog. Your rankings will go up. This is one of the reasons we haveyou write out your purpose statements before beginning your blog. The clearer you are about your purpose, the more consistently you will deliver messages that are on target. And the more often your keywords show up, the better your search engine results.

8. Write clearly (short sentences, only one concept per sentence). No double speak or jargon; no more than one idea in one sentence- don't make your readers have to think about your meaning. Spoon feed them. Use commas and dashes liberally.

9. Write like you talk. It's okay to use common expressions from speech. Examples:

Go figure.

Don't even go there.

Now, I ask you.

Gotta love it.

(And, remember the age group of your readers.)

10. Use a clear headline, and don't be afraid to make bold statements (but don't mislead people either). Make it snazzy and use key words. Example: Ex-Techno-Weenie Masters HTML Code

BONUS: After you write a post and BEFORE you hit the save button Use this checklist to ask yourself a few questions as you are reading through for typos and grammar:

§ Is the topic clear to someone who only reads the headline?

§ Does the lead paragraph tell who and what the story is about and why the reader should care about it?

§ Is the angle you've used likely to seem newsworthy?

§ Would someone who knows absolutely nothing about this topic understand this post?

§ Is the post free of jargon?

§ Is it written in journalistic style and does it make an effort to be objective?

§ Have you peppered the headline and the post with keywords and phrases that will be attractive to search engines?

§ Did you remember to ask your readers a question at the end, or something to stimulate readers to comment?

§ Did you remember to write with the reader in mind, always keeping in mind WIIFT? (What's in It for Them?)

Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, and Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at

http://www.coachezines.com,

http://www.bizbooknuggets.com,

http://www.biztipsblog.com

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How to Write A Blog... And Survive

by Priya Shah

The question of the day is "Should you start a Blog?"

People all over the planet are blogging. Companies, CEOs, lawyers, journalists, stewardesses. Even dogs and babies.

Why? Because they can. It's that simple.

Blogging requires little or no learning curve. If you can type, speak into a phone, bark, chew, record a holiday movie, you can blog.

Blogs have taken publishing out of the domain of those who know HTML and designing, to make this powerful tool available to the rest of us.

That holiday in the Far East, your grandma's birthday, you company's latest product offering, your new recipe for rum cake, your daughter's first step, your pet's antics, what you thought of the Garfield movie - you can blog all this and more.

A blog is an online journal or diary. Which makes it ideal for voicing your opinion, recording your pregnancy blahs or announcing your company's latest acquisition.

People are using them to communicate with family, for education, for business, and almost anything else you can think of.

But one thing not all blogs get is a readership.

Unless your blog is only for your family or your business colleagues, you're probably writing with the hope that someone will read about what you think.

So many blogs are started with little or no purpose. If you want to blog and survive, first start by answering your why.

If you're writing only for the search engine spiders, then be prepared for no one but them to read your keyword-rich spam.

Blogs demand a readership. And for that you have to write about something worth reading.
Here are some tips to follow if you want human beings to read your blogs.

1. Stay on topic

Opinions are fine, but unless you're the CEO of Microsoft, very few people will want to know what you ate for breakfast. If you started your blog to air your raves and rants about the latest movie you saw, better mention movies in at least every post you write.

2. Write in a conversational tone

Forget what your English professor taught you. Write the way you speak, or you'll end up sounding uptight and unnatural. And no one reads tightass copy... even from the CEO of Microsoft.

3. Be opinionated

Your blog is not a company brochure or a press release, but a way for people a.k.a. your target audience, to get to know the real you. The worst sin you can commmit is to bore your readers. Most people respond better to an honest airing of views than pleasant platitudes. And if you get a few rude or nasty comments in response to your posts, just accept the fact that you can't please everyone

4. Be funny

Infuse your posts with your natural wit for a better response from your target audience. And if not everyone appreciates your particular brand of humor, read the last sentence in the point above.

5. Stay informed

If you're writing about your profession, you'd better know what you are talking about. Word spreads at the speed of thought in the blogospere and if you're trying to become an authority on something you know very little of, prepare yourself for the brickbats.

6. Stay current

Write about the latest developments in your field. No one wants to read stuff that has been around for a long time, or that hundreds of other bloggers have chronicled.

7. Update frequently, but don't burnout

Most blogs die because of blogger burnout - bloggers trying to update too frequently. Stick to a publishing schedule that is humanly possible for you. If you've just updated your blog and find a story you want to share, save it for later.

On the other hand, don't post just because you think you have to stick to a schedule. Going a few days or even weeks without posting is fine if you really have nothing worth sharing.
So are you still wondering if you should blog?

If you think you can meet the requirements above, and know your why, then like the shoe people say - just do it.

Resistance is futile.

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Top 10 Tips for Creating a Blog

by S. Housley

Tips for creating a blog. There are no hard and fast rules on how to blog. Having said that, bloggers will likely increase their exposure by following some simple blog guidelines.

1.) Stay on topic.

Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items in the blog should all relate to a general theme. Unless you have an uncanny knack for wit, humor or cynicism, the majority of your readers will be interested in the content that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined area of interest.

Most readers won't care that you eat Cheerios for breakfast. They may, however, be interested in the fact that vinegar takes out stains and that toilet paper rolls make great wreaths. Define a topic and stick to it. This will ensure that you create a loyal following of interested readers.

2.) Stay informative.

If you are attempting to create the impression that you are knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. If you are endorsing a product or voicing an opinion, be sure to check your facts; your reputation is at stake. If you are offering an opinion, be sure to qualify your post, making it clear that the content is intended as an editorial.

3.) Old news is not news.

While blogging every day can be a drain, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate, writing an article or blurb about something that happened 6 months ago, will not be of interest to many. Telling your audience that Martha Stewart was convicted and will be going to prison, after her sentence is completed will make people question the value of your columns.

4.) Adhere to a schedule.

Create a schedule and stick to it. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort, don't create unrealistic expectations and be unable to deliver. An occasional lapse or holiday is generally understood but readers returning to find stale, out-dated content are going to find another blog with similar content.

New blogs and RSS feeds are popping up on a daily basis. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don't want to lose them due to lack of communication.

5.) Clarity and simplicity.

Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Remember, the web is global and expressions, idioms and acronyms don't always translate. Sometimes a little explanation goes a long way.

6.) 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 post should have a title that will attract attention but still be relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than 10-12 words.

7.) Quantity matters.

In order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to develop content and substance. A headline or simple sentence is not going to generate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a large portal of similarly-themed content.

8.) Frequency.

If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals.

9.) Spell checking and proof-reading.

It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. Remember that whatever you publish on the Internet can be found and archived. Think carefully about what you post before doing so.

10.) RSS.

RSS will increase your blog's reach. It is important that you include your blog's content in an RSS feed to increase readership and distribution.

Most weblog audiences are small, but with time and regular updates audiences grow. Bloggers may never have more than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to regularly are generally interested in what you have to say.

About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds and NotePage a wireless text messaging software.

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How to Read Blogs Using Free RSS Readers

by Rob Taylor

In my quest for true mobility I've explored reading blogs using numerous different RSS readers. That's the techie name for a blog reader.

If you prefer to watch my multimedia video tutorial on how to set up and use a free blog reader,

please go to: http://www.megastep.com/videos/20050221/

Personally I use Bloglines to read all my blogs or feeds as they are known. I like it because it's free, I can access it from any computer in the world... yes even in Mongolia... it's unbelievably easy to use, and has a refreshingly clean interface.

I love minimalism and Bloglines appeals to me on that front.

I've tested some paid RSS readers but unfortunately they all suffer from the same problem...

You need to download them to your computer. Well not to put too fine a point on it, my computer is already loaded up with so many "must-have" tools that having to install more just doesn't do it for me, not when I've been trying to de-clutter my old digital darling.

Plus in my quest for mobility and minimalism, downloading anything these days makes me sigh. It seems everyone wants you to download their toolbar or some other piece of kit.

You can just see the future can't you, your viewable web browser window being 1"x1" and the rest all those toolbars. And each toolbar has a pop-up blocker... I mean man, how many do you need!?

But I digress... OK RSS readers... below is a list of the various ones available...

Bloglines
A free, cool, simple, user friendly service that you can access from any computer in the world. It also has a notification tool you can download to your desktop.

The other useful feature is that Bloglines allows you to set up your own blog. BL also has a great feature called "Clippings", which allows you to clip an article while you're reading your blogs and then retrieve it later on. You can also dump your clippings into your blog.

OK not to get too ravved up over 'ole BL, there is a downside as with anything that is web-based instead of desktop-based, and that is... being web-based it does have less features than say an RSS reader like Feed Demon. But personally I can live with that, only time will tell.

Feed Demon

I tried it, didn't like it, and got swamped with all the features that it had, see the feature list at http://www.feeddemon.com/feeddemon/readme/readme15.asp

Less is more in my opinion. But then if you're a serious geek, I suspect you won't mind paying to get your hands on FD, becase it will be right up your street.

My Yahoo

Back in 2004 Yahoo decided to integrate RSS into My Yahoo, so if you have a free account with them, and use it, this is a good option for reading your RSS feeds.

Pluck

I've used Pluck for sometime now, they offer a desk-top edition that only works with IE, and a web-based version.

Although Pluck is also free and has some pretty neat features I found that it took over my browser in a way I didn't like. Too invasive. That being said one of the features that I find invaluable is the ability to set up a "Perch".

A perch is a customized search. For example I can enter in a keyword phrase and select eBay, then whenever an item appears that matches my eBay perch I get notified in the same way I would if I was reading my RSS feeds. Very nice, and worth it just for this feature alone. Do the words "competitive intelligence" mean anything to you?

The web-based version of Pluck is excellent. A good, clean interface that rivals Bloglines for minimalism, but unfortunately you can't create perches.

Before I finish here's a list of other RSS readers you might want to take a look at: http://blogspace.com/rss/readersRob Taylor has been marketing online since 1996. He's sold anything from books, debit cards, security products to art prints. Take advantage of his battle tested marketing strategies that could quietly make you five figure cash profits every single month. Subscribe now to his free newsletter at http://www.megastep.com

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Blogger Secrets: Things You Probably Didn't Know
By http://MCPromotionsPress.com

Blogging is a pretty popular activity online these days. It's a great way to connect with your audience on the Web and create a sense of community.

There are many ways to start your own weblog but one of the easiest is with a free service called "Blogger." Owned by Google, it's a feature-rich service that makes it simple to start a blog of your own.

If you think blogging is just about typing text, think again. There are many fun things you can do once you're up and running withyour very own blog.

1) Photo Blogging:

Post photos to your weblog with this free software called "Hello." Get it at http://hello.com. It makes it easy to upload photos to your blog.

2) Audio Blogging:

Post to your blog by phone. Once registered, you'll receive a special number. Call it, leave a message and it's immediately posted to your website as an MP3 audio file. To sign up, go to http://www.AudioBlogger.com

3) Email Posting:

Post to your blog by sending an email from any email application. To set it up, you'll need to log into your blogger account and go to "settings" then "email." You must specify if you want your posts to publish automatically or saved as drafts for later publishing. The subject of your email will be the title of your blog post, with the email body making up the rest of it.

4) Team Blogs:

This allows groups of people to contribute to one blog. One person must create the blog, then invite others to join in.

5) Templates:

Blogger has over 30 templates to choose from. Make sure you back up your blog before attempting any changes. There are also third party template providers you can choose designs from, See:

http://BlogSkins.com

http://BlogDesigns.com

6) Blogger Toolbars:

Google has one built into its toolbar that makes it a snap to post to your site while visiting any webpage you might want to comment on. Firefox also has a toolbar of its own with blogging components. See it at http://FireFoxToolbar.com/blogger or Google's at http://toolbar.google.com/

7) Feeds:

Blogger users can syndicate their content via an Atom Feed. Former Blogger Pro suscribers can choose between Atom and RSS formats. You can find this feature in your Blogging account under "settings," then "site feed." If you'd rather syndicate in RSS, your only choice is to use an outside service like http://FeedBurner.com

8) Comments:

If you'd like your readers to participate on your Blog, you'll want to turn on "comments." Found under "settings," you can choose from preferences like allowing anyone to post a comment, allowing only regular users to post comments, or allowing only members of the blog to post (if it's a team blog).

9) TagBoards:

Different from comments, TagBoards also allow your blog readers to post comments. These act more like a discussion board or chat room for your blog. However, they're not aimed at individual posts but attached to your entire site. You'll find free providers of this service at:http://Tag-Board.com http://ChatterBox.com

This is a great way to add a feeling of community.

10) PhotoBlogs:

If you'd like to share a lot of photos with your readers on a regular basis you may want to add a "photo album." You'll find many sites that offer this free service such as:http://Shutterfly.com http://Ofoto.comhttp://DotPhoto.com

11) Polls:

Do you know what your readers think? Running polls on your site is a great way to get inside your readers minds and get them involved with your blog. A few free poll service providers are:

http://FreePolls.comhttp://PollHost.com

http://BraveNet.com

http://WebPollCentral.com

12) Advertising:

If you'd like to run ads on your blog and get paid per click, you'll want to look at Google Adsense. Since Google owns Blogger too, they make it simple to add their advertising to your site. See http://tinyurl.com/3j3k8

13) Camera Phones:

If you have a SrintPCS cell phone with a built in camera you can send your pictures directly to Blogger. You'll need to set up an "email address" to post to. For instructions, see Blogger's Help section on "posting via email." On your phone it works like this: you snap a picture, select "share," pick your specific blogging email address, then ok. Your picture is uploaded.

14) Keyboard Shortcuts:

Blogger has many different keyboard shortcuts you can use while making a post.

cntrl + B= Bold

cntrl + I= Italics

cntrl + shift + A= Link

cntrl + d= Save as draft

cntrl + s= Publish Post

cntrl + shift + P = Preview

15) FTP:

You can host your blog on Blogger's server, or host it on your own via FTP access. You'll find this option under "settings" then "publishing."

16) Email Posts to a Friend:

If you'd like to allow your visitors to email your interesting posts to their friends you can enable this feature under "settings," basic tab, then where it says "show email post links?" say yes.

If you'd like to watch some free tutorials on "Learning Blogger," see these by Molly Holzschlng at http://movielibrary.lynda.com/html/modPage.asp?ID=113

So what are you waiting for? Now that you know all of the really cool things you can do with Blogger, why not experiment. Who knows, maybe there's been a "born Blogger" hiding inside of you all along. Blog away my friend; the world is waiting.

Merle of WebSiteTrafficPlan.com offers a Free ebook and an e-course that will teach you how to promote and market your website. Grab your copy now at http://WebSiteTrafficPlan.com

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Starting Your Own Blog

by John Taylor

I was sitting in my local Internet Cafe yesterday, I like to get away from my "home office" from time to time and it's a great place to go for a cup of Espresso and to meet interesting people.

The rather attractive lady sitting next to me was typing away furiously and, when she had finished, I asked her what she was writing - I'm interested in learning how other people use the Internet... some people call that being nosey!

It turns out she was a "Blogger" and she was updating her web site through a web browser. She was really interested in vegetarian cookery and she was adding a new restaurant review to her blog.

If you spend any time at all online these days you simply can't avoid reading something about blogs, they are becoming increasingly more popular; and they are a great way of building an online presence without the need for any technical knowledge. A blog is an abbreviation of the term 'web log' which is a relatively simple content management system.

Quite a few years ago, web surfers began collecting information and interesting links that they encountered during their online travels. As time passed they started to create logs of the information that they collected and they soon started to develop their own web logs. These web logs enabled them to update the information and links as often as they wished.

Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online forum or to a discussion list, they are much more dynamic than the traditional style home pages. They are also more personal than standard journaling, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

There are a few common characteristics of a blog, but there may be slight variations within the classification. Some blogs provide succinct descriptions of links within the chosen theme of the blog. Some others contain commentary and links to the news of the day. A few are endless stream of blurts about the writer's day. Others are - political blogs, intellectual blogs, some are hilarious and some topic driven. They are all - Weblogs.

As mentioned earlier, blogs are posts that are short, informal and sometimes deeply personal no matter what the topic of discussion is. They can be characterized by their conversational tone.

If a person has a web presence but is disappointed with static homepage - if an elegant treatment of posts on a global platform is what they want, then 'blogging' provides an ideal platform. They may also consider blogging if they are seeking feedback from their chosen audience.

Weblogs are definitely the mavericks of the online world. Two of their greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.

There are many different options available to the new and seasoned blogger alike. Some blog scripts are available for you to install on your own domain and these require at least a basic understanding of FTP and HTML. There are many hosted blog services available some free and some paid. If you are serious about blogging then I would strongly recommend that you use the best system that you can afford and that meets your needs.

I personally have used the "Moveable Type" stand-alone script and although quite complex to install, I found it very easy to use. My recommended choice of hosted blogging service would have to be the Blog4Cash.com system that includes a wide variety of high quality features and has a built in two tier affiliate scheme that enables you to generate a recurring income from all your referrals!

John Taylor - November 2004. John is a prolific writer and is the author of several books including Testing & Tracking . John's weblog provides insightful comments on all aspects of online marketing and is well worth a visit! For information on *How To Get Paid To Blog* click here

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Why Wordpress is Now My Blog Software of Choice

by Linda J. Bruton

The more I use Wordpress, the more I love it. It has 2 very important features that Blogger doesn't yet support.

Number 1, you can set up Wordpress to automatically ping all the RSS and blog feed directories every time you make a post.

This is a very powerful feature if you want your blog to get a lot of traffic right away. On top of that, you'll be quickly developing backlinks to your blog almost automatically.

Think about how long it can take you to build a regular site, get the search engines to index it, get backlinks to improve your listings, and then start getting traffic. A blog like Wordpress can do all that "grunge" work for you automatically.

Number 2, Wordpress allows the use of Categories. Categories are a very powerful way to improve the structure of your site both for human visitors and for the search engines.

Let's say the topic of your site is Widgets. You could create a Category for black widgets, one for orange widgets, and one for green widgets.

Now when you add posts to your blog, you can choose which of your categories your post belongs to. Now your blog will archive your past posts not only by their month and date, as Blogger does. But also by Category.

So if you have a visitor who is especially interested in green widgets, they can easily find all your posts on green widgets. They don't have to go through your entire archives to find them.

With a blog that has been around for awhile and has hundreds of posts, that would be pretty discouraging. Using Categories makes it very easy.

Categories are also very search engine friendly. When you use Categories in your blog, there is a link on every one of your pages to your categories. Think about this: would you rather be #1 in the search engines for March 2003, or for green widgets, one of the main keywords of your site?

By using the Category feature, you will eventually have hundreds of pages on your site with links to green widgets, black widgets, and orange widgets. All those backlinks to those keywords can result in much higher search engine rankings.

Another neat feature is that you can easily create an RSS feed for each of your categories. Then every time you post to your blog, it could be pinging the Blog/RSS directories for each feed!

Compare that to putting up a new page on a traditional website. Even if the search engines find your new page right away, it might be a month or two before it actually gets indexed and starts drawing traffic. It might be a long time before it enjoys a first page position for its keywords.

It's almost amazing how easy all this is with a well-structured blog like Wordpress with Categories enabled!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

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How to Get Started Blogging in 5 Minutes or Less

by Linda J Bruton

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought I'd have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work.

At that point, most of what I'd read about blogs and RSS was just so much geek-speak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn't a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, I've started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up.

If you're a technophobe or don't have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging - and enjoying the benefits - almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is Wordpress. This blog is my first Wordpress blog, and I'm very impressed with how powerful it is - as well as simple.

Wordpress is installed on your own website, but don't let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have Wordpress ready for you to install.

Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose Wordpress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn't already include Wordpress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at: http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the Wordpress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes.

Wordpress is free, open-source software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free Wordpress add-ons and templates. I'm using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex King's site

The Wordpress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things Wordpress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you're a Wordpress user, another place to visit is the Wordpress discussion forum

If you're a new blogger, both Wordpress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn't a long learning curve. And you won't have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else) http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

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Why It Took Me So Long To Blog

by Linda J. Bruton

When I saw my first blog, I wasn't impressed.

The first blogs I ever read were embarrassing tales of teenage angst better left private, political diatribes from both the rabid right and the rabid left, and jargon-filled tech rags that made my eyes glaze over.

And yet everyone was talking about blogs and that I would soon be left behind if I didn't have one. But they never gave me a simple explanation of how it would benefit me.

They talked about RSS - you know, the obligatory "real simple syndication" - followed by a long, boring, techie article filled with jargon that wasn't simple at all. They talked about syndicating my site, but not how that would benefit my business.

No one ever told me, "Hey, fool, listen up! How would you like a 3 or 4 line text link to your site on thousands of other sites getting you tons of traffic and backlinks like crazy on all the SE's?"

If they had, trust me. I'd have been blogging my heart out!

Eventually I did start a blog simply because it was getting harder and harder to get my ezine delivered. This particular ezine delivers tips to network marketers.

Now if you've had any experience with spam filters, you know that any email with the "M" word (MLM) or the "N" word (network marketing) practically lights up the scoreboard!

I even tried using "MLM" or "network marketing." But that got old real fast. Trying to sound like a halfway intelligent professional while writing like a first grader on their first day of school just didn't cut it. I was starting to confuse even myself!

So I decided to start a blog, and then just email my list with the link to the article every week. Not only has that greatly increased the day to day traffic to my site, but I discovered a couple of interesting benefits along the way.

One big bonus was how easy it was to publish to my site. Doing things the old way, I wrote and delivered my ezine. Then I converted the article to html and FTP'd it up to my site.

Then I had to download and update my article archive page. Then I had to download and update my sitemap. Then I would download my index page and add a little blurb about the new article to get it indexed faster. All told, several hours of mind-numbingly boring work.

Not so with a blog. I just write my articles in NoteTab, then copy and paste them into my Blogger control panel. It adds all the HTML and places it into my chosen template, FTP's it to my site, and updates my archives - all in the blink of an eye! Talk about an easy-to-use content management system. Even a 10-year-old could have done it.

After I posted my first article on my new blog, I realized I could get some new backlinks to my site by submitting the blog to some of the many blog directories. So I spent a few hours sumbitting my blog.

But my eyes didn't really open until a couple of weeks later. I started realizing I was making more sales than usual and popped in to check my web stats. To my astonishment, I realized I was getting 50-100 more visitors per day. I checked my referrer logs and then my backlinks on Yahoo and found over 100 new traffic sources and links!

I clicked through on some of those links and then a big lightbulb lit up in my head. Those new referrers were from the many people using RSS feeds on their sites. And their site visitors were actually clicking on those links and finding my site.

Now I was hooked!

Think about that - 50-100 more visitors per day, and 100 new backlinks. All from one article that I posted to a brand new blog that took 5 minutes to set up on Blogger.com for free!

How many free marketing techniques get those kind of results right out the door? And how much better would my results be from regular posts to my blog and submitting it to even more blog directories? Or from simultaneously posting those blog posts to article directories?

That was 2 months ago, and I'm discovering that the answer is every bit as exciting as I had hoped! Not only that, but I'm discovering more and more ways to improve my results. And ways to use blogs in new and exciting ways that I don't hear other people talking about.

I know that many marketers are under the impression that blogs are just for geeks, or that blogs are just some new toy everyone is getting but no one knows what to do with. If that has been your belief, I hope you'll take a second look!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog

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7 Questions To Ask Yourself BEFORE Starting A Business Blog
by Priya Shah

Blogging is the latest buzzword in online marketing and PR.

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 "