Blog Your Way to the TOP
So you’ve heard that having a blog is a good idea for your business, but are you sure WHY it’s important? Understanding how blogs operate and how to use them for your business will give you great payoffs for your investment of time and energy. Not using your blog effectively will simply waste this fantastic resource.
WHY SHOULD I ‘BLOG FOR BUSINESS’?
Blogs are a great method for giving your business credibility. Whether you post about industry news, recommend links to related topics or post valuable inside information or experiences, your audience will view you not only as a commercial venue but as a business interested in its community.
You can also use your blog to build traffic to your commercial site and to build a list of interested prospects. All of these issues are solid tools for marketing your product or service online.
WHY BLOGGING IS GREAT FOR CUSTOMERS
Blogs are not viewed the same as a typical website or sales page. The postings are often less formal or are presenting readers with interesting tidbits that entertain or inform about your topic or industry. Regular postings that draw the attention of your target market will build interest in your product and establish you as an ‘expert’ as well as create a good relationship with your prospects.
Your prospects can easily receive notice of your recent postings right in their email inbox. By regularly posting relevant information your prospects will look to you first when needing the service or product you provide.
Since many blogs offer readers the ability to post comments you immediately provide an opportunity for feedback or questions. This can clue you in to what your market needs or thinks, which can quickly be responded to in your next post.
BLOGGING FOR TRAFFIC
There are several methods of traffic buildings with blogs. One method is through the blog provider. Often the provider offers readers the option of searching for blogs with a word or phrase. Using that phrase in your blog or title will bring interested visitors.
The other method is through search engines. Search engines love fresh content and blogs make this easy. Simply ‘ping’ your blog to other media (this announces your update) and the search engines will pick it up. Using commonly searched words and phrases may give you the top ranking you were looking for. You can also link to your business website with the phrase and increase traffic directly to your sales page.
Finally, you can add an RSS feature to your blog. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) allows other websites to run the content from your blog. Every time you make a post the information will be automatically updated on sites featuring your RSS. This is attractive to sites with topics related to yours since they will benefit from the fresh content and you will benefit from the exposure.
If you haven’t jumped on the blogging bandwagon yet you’ve been missing out on one of the cheapest and smartest marketing tools available. Creating a blog is easy and profitable – so make yours today!
8 Resources To Build A Money Making Blog Quickly
Building blogs quickly is an essential skill to have if you are creating a virtual internet empire. The quicker you build a money making blog the quicker you can start earning money from that blog from adsense, affiliate products, or flipping the blog. I’m going to share with you some resources you can use to build your blogs quickly.
Resource 1
DomainTools.com is an essential tool to have in your niche blog building arsenal. DomainTools has too many tools to name in this article, but one essential tool is the “Domain Search” tool. The domain search tool will check to see if a domain name that you would like to use is available on any of the popular top level domains. DomainTools.com shares valuable information that you can use to your advantage. It will let you know if the domain name has been previously registered, allow you to look up the current owner’s information if it is public, and it will even make suggestions for other domain names you can consider using if the name you want is not available.
Resource 2
The next resource that you need is a reliable domain name registrar. GoDaddy.com is one of the best registrars around. Not to mention they have great advertising. GoDaddy.com is not the best web host. I’ll tell you whose the best in the next resource tip.
Resource 3
If you want reliable, up-to-date, and flexible hosting then HostGator.com is the domain host for you. I’ve used HostGator.com for two years now and I’ve never had a major problem of any kind with them. If you do have a problem simply get on the phone anytime day or night and give their customer service a call. Their customer service is excellent. HostGator uses the latest versions of PHP, cPanel, and WordPress. Installation of WordPress takes a few clicks of your mouse button.
Resource 4
Once you have WordPress installed you will need to customize the look and feel for your specific needs. The best way to do this is to use find a custom blog theme. You can hire a designer to create one specifically for you. You can find them at SitePoint.com, Forums.DigitalPoint.com, and the WarriorForum.com. Use Google.com to search for premium themes or free themes.
Resource 5
Once you find a theme that you would like to use you will want to use it for more than one blog or simply change a blog’s appearance over time. The easiest way to do this is to change the header.
My favorite FREE resource to do this is XHeader. You can go to XHeader.com and pick up this tool for free. XHeader allows you to create professional looking headers in minutes without having to use expensive graphic design software.
Resource 6
If you consider writing content for your blogs to be a chore rather than fun you will want to outsource the task of writing your blog content. Shelancers.com provides an excellent resource for hiring free lance writers. You can hire writers to create forum posts, blog posts, articles, and even sales page copywriting.
Resource 7
You’re creating these blogs to make money if you are creating a blog strictly for adsense income then you know where to get the information to implement adsense. However, you may want to market affiliate products on some of your blogs. Finding the best affiliate products at ClickBank.com can be a time consuming chore.
The resource you’ll want to use to speed up your research is CBEngine.com. CBEngine.com will allow you to search for ClickBank products based on a wide variety of search criteria that is much more comprehensive than ClickBank.com offers.
Resource 8
Finally you will need a good keyword research tool. Google’s free keyword tool is one that I use quite often. But most of the time I need to do more in-depth research than Google’s tool provides. I then turn to Market Samurai. Market Samurai is an awesome niche research tool that gives you an incredible amount of information on a group of keywords. Check it out at MarketSamurai.com
5 Brand-Building Secrets Through Blogging
Technorati recently completed its 2008 State of the Blogosphere report, which contains some interesting information about the correlation between blogs and brand building. The report shows that bloggers are interested in talking about brands. So if you’re looking for ways to build your brand, make friends with some bloggers!
Blogging is, at its heart, a place for people to share information about themselves and about their lives. If people have good experiences, they blog about them. If they have bad experiences, they blog about those, too. This includes experiences with businesses both online and in real life. If bloggers encounter a product or service that they find phenomenal, they will blog about it. Same goes for products or services that they find abysmal. In fact, nearly 80 percent of bloggers talk about brands and/or products that they love or hate, and 37 percent of them do so on a frequent basis. Many businesses have taken advantage of this publicity. In fact, one-third of all bloggers have been asked to act as brand advocates.
This may seem silly given that anyone can maintain a blog. Why should internet users trust a blog over any other source of information? Why are bloggers any more credible that anyone else? The truth is that bloggers primarily look to blogs for information rather than to other sources. In fact, 49 percent of bloggers believe that blogs are just as reliable as mainstream media for getting information.
The point here is that blogs are a great resource to explore when you are trying to build your brand. Here are 5 things to keep in mind regarding blogs and brand-building.
1. Blogs are Credible. Some marketers are concerned about the possibility of having their brand show up on a blog because they are afraid that the blog might not be credible. Rest assured that, although they are often informal, blogs are often seen as legitimate sources of good information. In fact, many large corporations include blog-mentions among the press included on their websites.
2. Blog Discussions are Natural. If a brand or product makes an impact on a blogger, he or she will probably mention it on a blog. Some companies even ask bloggers to review products and introduce new products. Many bloggers already include ads on their blogs, so they will probably be happy to include information about your product or service as well, given that they find it worth mentioning.
3. Bloggers are Bright. As a whole, bloggers are both educated and affluent. In fact, 75% of bloggers also graduated from college and 42% have attended at least some graduate school. More than half of them are part of a household than brings in over $75,000. These are good people to know from a marketing standpoint. They’re savvy and they have a lot of money to spend. These are people you want on your team.
4. Bloggers Read Other Blogs. Bloggers get most of their information from other bloggers; so if you want to get noticed, you need to make sure that you become visible on a blog. Keep in mind that, not only do bloggers read other blogs regularly, bloggers also use blogs as their primary source of information about brands and products. This is obviously a great way to make yourself visible and to attract the attention of potential customers.
5. Your Competitors are Doing It! Since so many companies are already asking bloggers to act as brand advocates, chances are that your competitors are already among those taking advantage of blogs as brand builders. Do yourself a favor and start using blogs to build your brand or you could find yourself out in the cold!
If your image of a blogger is a pimply-faced teenager sitting in his basement writing about his latest conspiracy theory, you need to update your perceptions. Bloggers are a bright group who look to each for information. Use them in your brand-building efforts and you’ll see results!
