Blog Marketing Holds 3 Distinct Advantages

November 29, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Blog marketing has taken the internet by storm and for good reason. Compared to using a ‘conventional’ website a blog platform offers many advantages. But it is fair to note that with those advantages also come drawbacks that discourage many from getting involved in the blogging business. Seasoned online entrepreneurs know that becoming one of the most popular blogs in any niche requires commitment and an abundance of patience. In a society dominated by an ‘instant gratification’ mindset the patience required in the blog building process is not what many are looking for. Nonetheless the blogging business does hold definite advantages for those with the patience and work ethics required to succeed.Here are 3 incomparable and very distinct advantages associated with using a blog platform as your primary marketing site online. Search Engine FriendlyWhether you are a fan of SEO or not ranking higher in the search results is a definite advantage for anyone with an online ‘presence’ they are trying to promote. Blogs are ‘naturally’ search engine friendly due to the fact that the content is updated more frequently than it is on a website.As you post new information for your readers to view you are also inviting the search engines to come crawl your site. The more often they find updated information relevant to the site itself the higher your ranking will climb.Blogs Are InteractiveReaders have the ability to leave comments about your site which empowers them insofar as they feel more involved with the blog itself. Their comments may be in regards to the layout or a post but having the opportunity to participate in this way is a satisfying feeling. In fact it is always a good idea to encourage this activity since it breeds more participation which is a chief contributing factor to the popularity of a blog.Easy to BuildBlog building is a relatively easy thing to do that requires little or no technical skills. Formerly technology was a barrier for many wanting to get more ‘involved’ online but blogging has really helped to ‘bridge’ that divide. Now it is possible to start a new blog site on a whim since the investment of time or skills is no longer a factor.Blog marketing is obviously not a way to do business online that will soon reveal it to be just a passing fad. Both online entrepreneurs and customers acknowledge that the unique ability to interact and share in the blog building process makes the overall experience more gratifying and rewarding for both sides. Ultimately the need for the blog owner to possess the patience it will require to build the blog must exist. Additionally allowing the readers to participate in the building process by responding and reacting to their comments will only help in accelerating the growth of your blog. In the end the net result will be your site becoming one of the most popular blogs in the niche.

5 Things That Will Drive Insane Amounts of Traffic to your Blog

November 25, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Blogging is the biggest trend these days to profit online for free. Blogs can be about anything that you are into or want to promote.

With all of the things we have out there that we can add to our blog to make money with, it should really be done immediately.

I am a blogger myself and have been for about a year now. I love waking up everyday and blogging about things that I am good at and get money in return.

In order for you’re to even get recognized by Google, you must make sure that your blog is updated on a weekly basis. All search engines love fresh, new content that they can deliver to their searchers daily.

These 5 things below will help your blog get insane amounts of traffic:

-Social Bookmarking

-Pings

-Article Marketing

-Press Releases

-Forum Participation

These 5 sources of free traffic are my main sources of which I use daily. Getting traffic can be done easily if there is enough time dedicated to those tasks. The benefits of doing these things are amazing because they are all free to do.

If you need a boost on getting your blogs making money quickly this course helped me build a Blogging Empire

How to Drive Lots of Traffic to your Blog in 1 Day

November 25, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Driving traffic to your blogs these days aren’t as easy as they use to be. When there wasn’t much competition in the internet world, you could get your blog on first page Google results within a day.

I have been blogging for about a year now and have been getting very good results in doing so. I was able to set up multiple blogs and drive traffic to them within only 1 day. Now, you may be thinking that something like that is impossible, but it is amazingly true.

The secret to my success I am about to exploit to you is a very powerful tool to use when you are marketing online. It is a tool that is used by many professional bloggers out there that are profiting big from this simple thing to do.

This tool is known as Social Bookmarking.

WHAT!? I know your thinking I am wasting your time about this simple thing to do, but it is really something that drives traffic up the wall to my blogs.

A very good social bookmarking site I use is Digg.com. Every time I post a new entry I bookmark it, or every time anything is done to my blogs I bookmark it. Not only do I receive a ton of traffic to my blog, I sometimes even get indexed into Google within a couple of days just from bookmarking.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, Just Social Bookmarking alone isn’t going to make your blog produce millions instantly. But, there are other things that you can do as well to make the millions you’re hoping for. That information can be found in my site below.

If you need a boost on getting your blogs making money quickly this course helped me build a Blogging Empire

How to Get your Blog Ranked in the #1 Position in Google

November 23, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Every where you go these days, everyone is talking about blogging. There are even people out there that are getting famous from their blogs.

Blogs can be very powerful when you are trying to get your word out there about what you’re good at best.

Search engines thrive for new content constantly, so with that said let’s get started on driving your blog some traffic!

When trying to learn about Search Engine Optimization, you might get pretty confused if it is your first time reading about it. It gets even tougher when you think you have got it right and then you come to find out your not even indexed in Google yet.

Here I would like to give you a few pointers which I use to get #1 ranking in Google for each of my blogs. This is what should be done:

-Make sure that you have your blog optimized with the proper keywords in which you want people to search for that will bring your blog up. Just mentioning the keywords about 4-6 times on a page should be plenty.

-As soon as you’re done setting your blog up, ping it at pingomatic.com

-Social Bookmark your blog with the following directories: Del.icio.us, Digg, Reddit (Will drive almost instant traffic!)

-Write Articles about what your blog has to offer and be sure to leave your blog web address in your signature.

These simple things have driven insane amounts of traffic to my blogs. If replicated you could have the same results to get your blog in Google. Make sure you put a side sometime to write the articles and do all the other stuff to.

If you need a boost on getting your blogs making money quickly this course helped me build a Blogging Empire

Blogging your Way to the Millions

November 22, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Yes! I said Millions…These days it is actually possible to make millions from your blogs and it is quite simple too. With so many different ways to make money with your blog out there right now, it should be something that everyone can profit from.

Blogging is very fun and easy to do. When Blogging you can talk about things that you’re good at, offer tips, or even do some reviews on things you have used. The Blogging world is open to express anything you want too.

You’re Key to the Millions:

When you blog you must make sure that you are using the proper keywords in order to target your right audience. Meaning the words people type into the search engines. When you are explaining what your blog is about, make sure to bring up these keywords about once every other paragraph or at least no more then 6 times in a blog.

After you have your blog optimized and ready to be seen, you can now starting driving multiple streams of traffic to it. Some of these things you can do to drive traffic to it are:

-Articles about Your Subject Area of Blog(s)

-Social Bookmarking

-Ping Your Blog constantly (every time you post something new to your blog)

-Write a Press Release (Which can be done Free) to tell people that your in business

-Write Classified Ads. A good site to use is USFreeads.com

-Use viral marketing techniques

-Opt in List

-Set up a MySpace account and advertise your blog on it

-Participate in Forums related to the content of your Blog

All of these things done will surely get you the traffic and money you are looking for. Millions is definitely possible if all the things are done above every single day. Remember that marketing your blog is easy but also time consuming, especially if your goals are to hit the million marks.

If you need a boost on getting your blogs making money quickly this course helped me build a Blogging Empire

The 10 Essential Steps in Creating a Cash Machine Out of a Blog

November 16, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

So, you want to make your blog into a cash machine do you? Well, your in luck because I am about to let you in on the important steps you need to take in order to rake in 100% pure profit from your blogs. So, we all know how powerful a blog can be in creating a lot of money for someone.

Sometimes blogging can even get someone recognized and possibly even famous! Trust me; if you have heard of YouTube, the place where you can basically blog over video, then you know how many people are becoming famous off of their videos.

Well, the same with blogs. Here are the Essential 10 Steps you need to take in order to create a profitable blog:

1. Create a Blog from at the site Blogger, don’t worry it is totally free.

2. Create a Blog by choosing the name and the template.

3. Next, sign up for Google Adsense. (Free As Well)

4. Once you have your Google Adsense approval you can ad these Google Ads to your Blog which you will profit from every time they are clicked.

5. Choose a specific Niche that you are familiar with. One that you can talk about that you already know about.

6. Research Organic Keywords for your Niche and optimize them through your blog. Using the same keyword 6 times through your blog is plenty. Feel free to ad multiple Keywords.

7. Drive Traffic to your blog!

8. Create Back links to your blog in order for it to get ranked in Search Engines.

9. Always Ping your blog whenever new posts are added.

10. Always update your blog with fresh and new content. Search engines love it when information is always being updated that way they can deliver reliable updated information to their searchers.

So there you have it! Get started right always on these essential 10 steps and you should be on your way to making lots of money from your blogs.

If you need a boost on getting your blogs making money quickly this course helped me build a Blogging Empire

7 Key Benefits to Blog Marketing for Your Business

November 1, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

While Experts predicted that blogging as a whole would slow down in 2007, it is evident that Blog Marketing for web businesses continues to emerge as an increasingly powerful tool for dialoguing with prospective customers and increasing audience reach on the Net.
Many business owners may have uncertainties or misconceptions as to the value of business blogging. Some believe that too much time and effort will be required to effectively implement a blog marketing platform into their existing promotional efforts, with little return on investment.
Those business owners who use blogs regularly will concur that they are simple to create and relatively easy to maintain once you gain an initial comfort level and identify your blogging persona. It typically will only take 10-30 minutes out of the day to properly submit a blog post. The results, however, are far-reaching and surprisingly effective.
So,
What are the major advantages of blog marketing?
1. Low Cost Marketing Channel
Blogs are cheap – even free. Blogs are easily built into an existing website. Blogs can also be maintained at dedicated hosting sites all over the web for low or no cost. Typically it would be recommended that a web business create their own blog domain for brand awareness purposes. It also looks that much more professional in my opinion.
2. Excellent Avenue to Build a Network
Every business needs a network; an internal network between divisions and an external network with other companies and customers. Staying in contact with so many individuals, however, takes large investments of time. A regular blog on the other hand is quickly written (particularly when you are close to and well versed in your subject matter). Blogs can reach thousands of targeted readers at any time in any place.
3. Enhanced Company Visibility
Closely related to networking, Blog marketing benefits a company by keeping it visible. The next time a customer or collaborating company is in need of your product or services, your business will be foremost on their minds.
Part of the benefits of blogging visibility has to do with links. On-site blogs can link to other areas within your site, but off-site blogs can link directly back to it. As you build your blog presence, you may eventually swap links with other high-traffic blogs further adding to your traffic and search engine results.
4. Increased Product Exposure
Blog marketing is extremely useful for gaining mainstream visibility for your products. Your product line may be the focal subject of your company blog – a place where you educate consumers or prospective customers on product features and use, or a place to debut new additions to your line.
Product advertising is of course not limited to company blogs. Blogs on every imaginable subject span the net. Paying high quality bloggers to speak about your products or review your company is another effective blog marketing technique. There are Blog networks like Loudlaunch.com or Sponsoredreviews.com where you can tap into a network of bloggers that work on a pay per post model. This can be a low cost and effective way to grow your product awareness.
5. Enhanced Company Persona
Blog marketing is one way to come down to a more personal level with customers. The voice and style of the blog lets customers get a feel for who you are as a company and whether you are the kind of person they would like to be involved with.
When one individual regularly maintains the blog, customers get to know that person, and feel they have built a relationship with them. The result from this aspect of blog marketing is a more trustworthy, lasting relationship.
6. Improved Customer Interaction
Comment features on blogs are ideal ways to get to know your customer base. An engaging business blog is a place to hear kudos and complaints, as well as conduct informal focus groups, determining how else customers needs might be fulfilled. In this new Web 2.0 frontier, healthy customer dialogue is a key ingredient for successful web endeavors.
7. SEO Optimized Content
We have all heard it said, “Content is King” on the Internet. Adding a blog to your site adds to your featured content, providing yet another indexable content source. It is essential to employ tools like Wordtracker.com and Hittail.com to identify targeted keywords that you want to write some blog posts on. The key is to include the keyword in the blog title as well as in the post and technorati tags.
Blog marketing is quickly becoming known as one essential wave in a progressive web company’s future. The minimal cost, both financially and time-wise, coupled with unlimited potential for exposure and connection make business blogging a no-lose proposition.

Don’t Forget a Blog Strategy – ‘free People’ Didn’t!

October 11, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

Blogs.

As an Internet strategist – my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution – all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research – taking notice of the growing digital space around me – thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry – allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly – through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis – blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.

Now, another aspect of blogs I enjoy are creating them, not only content strategy, but programming and designing them on a unique level.  One aspect of ‘branding’ a blog is considering the number of possibilities you have when actually build the blog.

These are all important questions you MUST think about before diving into the blog space – thinking you know what to do, when you might need a refresher.

And always remember that blogs vary, depending if you are in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business parallel – but your Plan of Action (POA) should always remain the same.

Case Study.

Free People. A blog that does it Right.

Free People is a ’boutique’ style of women’s and young girl’s clothing – offered both online and in brick and mortar stores around the world.  It is a sister-brand to another well-known bohemian-type clothing, accessories and furniture store – Anthropologie.

Now, the Free People store design is a very creative, bohemian look that stylizes the brand well, and does many good things as far as marketing the brand on the main website – but their blog page does an even better job in terms of look, strategy and content.

First, when you come upon the page – you have a nice flash banner on the top portion of the blog that draws instant attention.  It’s 3-D style and moving parts, keeps the user engaged enough to move the mouse over the falling curtain rod and press it – which then drags the screen over, as if you were in puppet show – making note of their blog’s name “Caravan of Curiosities” – to keep the user engaged enough to follow through the blog to discover its true meaning.

Another side point here – naming your blog something different and marketing that along side your main brand is a nice change of pace on occasion.  But it won’t work for everyone – so carefully think about that before you go off and name your blog something completely different.  The nice touch here is that ‘Caravan of Curiosities’ still has an engaging tone to it, and how they display it in the blog is effective as well.

Working your way down the page – you recognize the 3-D style curtain outline the navigation header, which is simple – and elegant. And then just three blog pages dress the navigation header:

 

 

And from a design aspect – you have to appreciate the look with drawn curtains going down the sides of the pages – very instinctual and effective.

Now, the opening page here is the blog homepage – which after the navigation has your standard blog format and layout with a search box, archives, categories, and a blog roll entitled ‘favorites’.  They also added a store locator and 6 products that are simple photos and text that link back to the main store. The column layout is a three-column layout morphed into two columns, and in that side right column they squeeze in the blog widgets.  All of this is complimented by a great ‘notebook’ style background.  As complex and rich as this design is overall – remember, it is their content that gets the job done…not the design.  Even though I truly applaud them on such a layout – very engaging for a user to traverse through.

Finally, at the bottom of the page — a nice connection with the footer, in relation to the header — similar to how you tie any story together — you must connect the beginning with the end of a story…as you do a website — design and content including.

Content of Free People.

Now, with any website, content is king, always will be king, and on the Free People blog – it is King.  Content on blogs are crucial for search engines because you can create thousands of keywords, all of it search engine friendly, and all the content you create is new and updated – so search engines will love you for it.

Free People does a fantastic job with approaching the all around marketing term – “On Target, Off Topic”. Free People have a target audience, girls, young women ages tween to 45; easily, and for the more trendy women who may breach beyond that age – even an older woman can wear their clothing.  With that target audience in thought – as a marketer – go ‘off topic’ for a bit, and consider talking about content that is not directly related to you, but still, in a way, is connected.

Free People’s breaks up its blog into 26 different categories; topics such as art, books, decor, crafts, food, home office, magazines, polls, music, and so on.  At the same time, they intermix direct categories related to some of their external social media tools, such as their flickr, myspace, facebook, and download pages.

The point is, their content is intellectually placed, and interesting…which is even more important!  They do occasionally drop in content that will push a new outfit, piece of clothing and so on…but not as often as you think.  And they are blogging everyday – with NEW content, and using this to their advantage.

Video.

Another aspect of their content they included was a blog page devoted exclusively to video.  This custom designed video player they added features behind the scene videos of their monthly catalog shoots, as well as a video featuring their 2007 holiday party.  These simple videos are barely 1:30 minutes long, edited with appropriate music, mostly indie stuff, and cut to look a bit grainy and eclectic, as their brand appropriately exhibits now.

This simple idea of placing video on the blog is a great marketing tool.  First, the video takes an editor, all of about an hour to edit and post.  From there…he can take this video – submit it to any external video channels, i.e. YouTube, Viddler, and so on.  They can then upload them to their Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr pages – only enhancing their exposure – through something as simple as video.

For those who don’t know what this is or means; essentially this creates secondary brand exposure that allows you to initially reach out to possible consumers who might not have seen your brand before, allowing them to now find you.  It also allows you to create ‘backlinks’ to your website – this all counts in that SEO puzzle so many clients and people I speak to are always trying to solve.

Final.

Here is the point about all this – what this blog does right is pretty much EVERYTHING. What they do wrong, next to NOTHING, nearly.  And let’s be clear on this, they have people who are supposed to be blogging and acting as community managers to maintain this blog, and update their external social networking profiles, and so on.  This all takes time, and we all know what time ends up being — $$$.  But, the effect of what they have created has allowed them to ‘connect’ with their consumers, and harness new customers, and so on.  Their blog has been around since November 2006, and has amassed a huge amount of traffic daily to the blog.  Agreed – they are a major brand and can spark that type of traffic, but honestly, the simplicity behind their blog strategy only enhances those numbers.

Any company or brand that is thinking of starting a blog strategy need to follow a similar model in structuring their content and direction when beginning or ‘changing up’ a blog for your brand or product.

If you need help in developing a blog strategy for your business, feel free to contact me @ anytime. nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com

Mastering Blog Marketing Means Building A Rock Solid Base

October 6, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

When it comes to blog marketing, the old saying, “Build it and they will come” isn’t exactly relevant. Sure, starting and writing a simple blog will probably attract a handful of visitors every now and then, but what about bloggers that really want to step it up and make their blogs completely rock? It all starts by building a rock solid base.
Write Good Blog Posts
First things first, mastering blog marketing means writing good quality blog posts. After all, it does little good to promote a bad product. Writing quality posts does take time, plenty of research, good planning, and a commitment to providing value to the readers, but the payoff potential in the end is fantastic. Focus on quality and many other aspects of blog marketing will happen automatically.
Work The Niche Network
Network, network, network! One of the most simple and natural methods of blog marketing is making friends with fellow bloggers. And making friends is easy for bloggers. The best thing about the blogosphere is that those that would normally view themselves as arch-rival competitors find they have something in common and something worth sharing. Marketing blogs by working together to better serve the readers of a niche is a great thing. Go ahead… get blogrolled!
Support The Community
Popular blogs generally have very loyal visitor communities based around the posts and their commentary. Savvy blog marketers learn how to encourage comments on their own blog posts and also how to leave valuable, traffic building comments on other blogs. The key to blog marketing through comments is to only say something if it’s insightful, positive, and completely relevant. Low quality commenting that’s just intended to lure traffic is almost always seen as spammy behavior and will only hurt an overall blog marketing strategy.
Don’t Overlook The Obvious
Taking a multi-faceted blog marketing approach is the best way to score the best returns on the effort put forth. A large portion of any blog’s new traffic will come from various online sources. Because of this fact, many bloggers simply choose dismiss the notion of promoting their blogs offline through word of mouth. Give organic offline blog promotion a chance. Getting the word out is all part of building a blog’s solid foundation.
Spending some serious time and effort blog marketing is absolutely worth the effort. Thanks to the very nature of the blogosphere, once visitors begin to catch on to a blog, the traffic and subscribers really start to snowball rapidly from there. So for every potential visitor reached by a blog marketing campaign, five more might be waiting to make the discovery.

7 Quick Tips Toward a Successful Blog

October 5, 2009 · Posted in Building A Blog · Comment 

If you want to Position yourself to be successful in blogging, The first thing you must have is a successful blog and here is 7 top tips that enable you to moving forward. From my past blog teaching experienced, Not many people have the right concept of blogging with blog, they started blogging and thinking that with an hour or two a day they can become famous and earn several thousand dollars a month or more. I advocate part-time blogging with a successful blog for a full-time income, but that is not an overnight outcome. If you think it will happen to you within a week, a month, you are going to be disappointed. It takes work, especially at the start, to build a successful blog, but the rewards make it worthwhile. If your timetable is presently full and you are not prepared to make room for regular, and I mean regular work on your blog, you probably shouldn’t jump into the game just yet without building a successful blog. Here what you need to follow toward a successful blog in your blogging life.

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  • Whether you re an experienced blogger or an absolute beginner, you can make money with your blog. Simply follow the step-by-step advice of two expert bloggers and industry insiders who have launched many successful sites of their own. They ll walk you through every step of the blogging process, and they ll even share their most profitable tricks of the trade. I picked up this book based upon its cover, but there is nothing in it about career building through blogging. Rather, it reads like an introduction to blogging, but without a clear audience. The paltry offerings seemed to be aimed at older readers unfamiliar with the web, but the content is written in an overly simplistic style, as if for young teens. Robert C. Walker's review echoes my thoughts: don't waste your time or money on this book. This digital document is an article from Indiana Business Magazine, published by Thomson Gale on August 1, 2007. The length of the article is 1407 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
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