By Denise Wakeman and Patsi Krakoff
You've got your blog set up and you've started posting pithy, useful information that your niche market would benefit from and enjoy. Days go by, you keep publishing, but no one comments and your traffic stats are barely registering. What do you do?
Like any website you own, you must do some blog promotion to start driving traffic to your site. Here are 16 steps, in no particular order of importance, that you can start doing now to get traffic moving to your blog.
1. Set up a Bloglet subscription form on your blog and invite everyone in your network to subscribe: family, friends, colleagues, clients, associates.
Http://www.bloglet.com
2. Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search engine (see tutorial on http://www.biztipsblog.com)
http://www.my.yahoo.com
3. Read and comment on other blogs that are in your target niche. Don't write things like "nice blog" or "great post." Write intelligent, useful comments with a link to your blog.
4. Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
http://www.pingomatic.com
5. Submit your blog to traditional search engines: http://www.submitfire.com
6. Submit your blog to blog directories. The most comprehensive list of directories is on this site:
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55/
Tip: Create a form to track your submissions; this can take several hours when you first start so schedule an hour a day for submitting or hire a VA to do it for you.
7. Add a link to your blog in your email signature file.
8. Put a link to your blog on every page of your website.
9. If you publish a newsletter, make sure you have a link to your blog in every issue.
10. Include a link to your blog as a standard part of all outgoing correspondence such as autoresponder sequences, sales letters, reports, white papers, etc.
11. Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.
12. Make sure you have an RSS feed URL that people can subscribe to. The acronym RSS means Rich Site Summary, or some may consider its meaning as Really Simple Syndication. It is a document type that lists updates of websites or blogs available for syndication. These RSS documents (also known as 'feeds') may be read using aggregators (news readers). RSS feeds may show headlines only or both headlines and summaries.
To learn how news aggregators/RSS readers work, see this site: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-readers.htm
13. Post often to keep attracting your subscribers to come back and refer you to others in their networks; include links to other blogs, articles and websites in your posts
14. Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts. What is TrackBack? Essentially what this does is send a message from one server to another server letting it know you have posted a reference to their post. The beauty is that a link to your blog is now included on their site.
15. Write articles to post around the web in article directories. Include a link to your blog in the author info box (See example in our signature below).
16. Make a commitment to blog everyday. 10 minutes a day can help increase your traffic as new content attracts search engine spiders. Put it on your calendar as a task every day at the same time.
Tip: Use a hit counter to track your visitor stats: how many unique visitors, how many page views, average length of visit. You can get a free hit counter at http://www.sitemeter.com
Denise Wakeman of Next Level Partnership, and Patsi Krakoff of Customized Newsletter Services, have teamed up to create blogging classes and marketing services for independent professionals. You can read and subscribe to their blogs at http://www.biztipsblog.com, http://www.coachezines.com and http://www.bizbooknuggets.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denise_Wakeman
Thursday, November 30, 2006
10 Big Benefits Of A Busy Business Blog (And How To take Advantage)
By Matt Jackson
The blog; what can be said that hasn’t been said before? In all truth, very little, but there is still a seeming lack of businesses willing to take up the “challenge” of running their own blog. Those that have done so often report their findings and invariably they are positive reviews of both the blogging process and the results of their business blog. In a bid to hammer the point home we’ve compiled a list of ten advantages to establishing and maintaining a business blog.
It is important to note the word “busy” in the title of this article. It isn’t there simply because it begins with a B and lends itself perfectly to the alliteration in the title. It’s meant to outline the fact that a blog is at its finest when it is regularly filled with quality content. A blog with no content is just a template.
1 - Quick And Easy
Two words that every business owner and manager loves. A blog is simple to set up even for the technologically challenged. There exist a number of free blogging services, and while these aren’t ideal for a business blog they do offer a way to start. Setting up a blog is not like setting up a website. In the worst case scenario you will need to install a software application on your website and tinker with a few settings.
2 - Inexpensive Setup
The only word more popular than quick and easy is inexpensive. To integrate a blog into the page of your site costs very little money, especially as somebody within your organization can usually do it. Even outsourcing the task will cost only a couple of hundred dollars. Remember that a blog could become one of the most powerful marketing weapons you have in your arsenal and consider that a couple of hundred dollars might just pay a salesperson for one day’s work.
3 - Provides Easy Access To Company News
A business blog can be written in one of numerous styles, or a combination of these. One huge benefit is the ability to inform your customers of any changes, new products, latest offers, and much more. This, in turn, can lead to direct sales. People love to frequent blogs and pass their time reading the same ones on a regular basis. Captivate your audience with compelling content and you will receive a growing list of market leads. Remember that individual blog readers generally prefer a personable style but if your operation is a business-to-business one then you will need to vary your style accordingly.
Typically, companies have used newsletter and e-newsletters to offer this kind of regular contact with their customers and potential customers. Using a blog is easier and it can be updated much more regularly than when offering a weekly or monthly newsletter.
4 - Search Engine Friendly
Search engine optimization is a particularly beneficial form of online marketing. It can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your website for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords. Search engines particularly like promoting blogs because they offer a large amount of content that is updated and added to on a regular basis.
5 - Appear Accessible
It doesn’t matter whether you are not, but you and your company will appear to be more accessible especially if you allow freedom for all your visitors to post comments. Accessibility is often a stumbling block for many potential customers that still prefer to deal with companies offline. A blog makes you more approachable and so alleviates this concern.
6 - Appear Authoritative
The appearance of authority is also important to online businesses. Customers will be much more likely to use your service or purchase your goods if they see you as an authority on a particular subject. Give your views on the latest events in your industry, offer reviews of related items and comparisons of several items. Do anything, within reason, that makes you look like an authority on your topic area.
7 - Brand Awareness
The more a customer hears the name of your company the more likely they will be to remember it. It takes, on average, around seven items of direct communication between you and your customers to make a sale. A blog with hundreds of posts gives you the opportunity to name drop your company occasionally and ensure that your readers think of you next time they are looking for a particular product or service.
8 - Relationship Building
Another difficult aspect of building a relationship with your customers online is building a rapport with them. Because a blog enables you to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style than your website does, your readers will soon feel like they know you. The more they know, like, and trust you the more likely they are to visit your main site, click your links, purchase your product, and line your pockets with virtual gold.
9 - Gain An Insight Into Your Customers
A business blog enables you to gain insight into your customers. It does this in several ways. Predominantly, by allowing your customers to leave comments on your posts, you get a good feel for how they take to everything you say. You can also track which posts are being read more often and which generate a greater number of clicks, emails, and much more. As far as market and customer research goes this is hugely beneficial information.
10 - Reduce Calls And Emails
OK, this isn’t one to tell your readers but you can use a blog to pre-empt questions that customers might have. By sending readers to your blog you can gain all of the above benefits and you may reduce the amount of niggling questions that you get asked by customers. Of course, you might also receive a lot more orders by email, but nobody wants to reduce those emails.
Maintaining A Successful Business Blog
While there are free blogging services available they generally offer ad-supported blogs with a restricted amount of templates and options. To truly take advantage with a business blog your best bet is to use a commercial application or pay for a commercial service. These enable you to integrate the blog into your own domain incorporating your own design. This ensures that you offer the full benefit to site visitors while making it easier to point blog visitors toward the appropriate pages of your site.
Regular content is imperative to the success of any blog. This content needs to be informative, accurate, and written in a way that will appeal to your visitors. Every blog demands different content and by producing the right content on a regular basis it will pay dividends.
In some posts you should try to find an opportunity to link to at least one page on your main website. Try not to get carried away by placing too many links or linking from all your posts but if you mention a particular product, link the name of that product to the corresponding page on your site. Alternatively include a paragraph at the bottom of the page that includes a link to a related resource (on your own page, or an affiliate link). If you are using a blog to make money through affiliate links then you should be careful to only use affiliate links in a relatively small proportion of your posts.
Matt Jackson is a blog writer, website content copywriter , and a big fan of alliteration in article titles. Through his website, WebWiseWords, he offers a full blog writing and posting service for businesses of any size and industry.
Article Source: Matt Jackson
The blog; what can be said that hasn’t been said before? In all truth, very little, but there is still a seeming lack of businesses willing to take up the “challenge” of running their own blog. Those that have done so often report their findings and invariably they are positive reviews of both the blogging process and the results of their business blog. In a bid to hammer the point home we’ve compiled a list of ten advantages to establishing and maintaining a business blog.
It is important to note the word “busy” in the title of this article. It isn’t there simply because it begins with a B and lends itself perfectly to the alliteration in the title. It’s meant to outline the fact that a blog is at its finest when it is regularly filled with quality content. A blog with no content is just a template.
1 - Quick And Easy
Two words that every business owner and manager loves. A blog is simple to set up even for the technologically challenged. There exist a number of free blogging services, and while these aren’t ideal for a business blog they do offer a way to start. Setting up a blog is not like setting up a website. In the worst case scenario you will need to install a software application on your website and tinker with a few settings.
2 - Inexpensive Setup
The only word more popular than quick and easy is inexpensive. To integrate a blog into the page of your site costs very little money, especially as somebody within your organization can usually do it. Even outsourcing the task will cost only a couple of hundred dollars. Remember that a blog could become one of the most powerful marketing weapons you have in your arsenal and consider that a couple of hundred dollars might just pay a salesperson for one day’s work.
3 - Provides Easy Access To Company News
A business blog can be written in one of numerous styles, or a combination of these. One huge benefit is the ability to inform your customers of any changes, new products, latest offers, and much more. This, in turn, can lead to direct sales. People love to frequent blogs and pass their time reading the same ones on a regular basis. Captivate your audience with compelling content and you will receive a growing list of market leads. Remember that individual blog readers generally prefer a personable style but if your operation is a business-to-business one then you will need to vary your style accordingly.
Typically, companies have used newsletter and e-newsletters to offer this kind of regular contact with their customers and potential customers. Using a blog is easier and it can be updated much more regularly than when offering a weekly or monthly newsletter.
4 - Search Engine Friendly
Search engine optimization is a particularly beneficial form of online marketing. It can be used to gain search engine traffic for given keywords or search terms. Your blog offers the opportunity to promote your website for hundreds or even thousands of different keywords. Search engines particularly like promoting blogs because they offer a large amount of content that is updated and added to on a regular basis.
5 - Appear Accessible
It doesn’t matter whether you are not, but you and your company will appear to be more accessible especially if you allow freedom for all your visitors to post comments. Accessibility is often a stumbling block for many potential customers that still prefer to deal with companies offline. A blog makes you more approachable and so alleviates this concern.
6 - Appear Authoritative
The appearance of authority is also important to online businesses. Customers will be much more likely to use your service or purchase your goods if they see you as an authority on a particular subject. Give your views on the latest events in your industry, offer reviews of related items and comparisons of several items. Do anything, within reason, that makes you look like an authority on your topic area.
7 - Brand Awareness
The more a customer hears the name of your company the more likely they will be to remember it. It takes, on average, around seven items of direct communication between you and your customers to make a sale. A blog with hundreds of posts gives you the opportunity to name drop your company occasionally and ensure that your readers think of you next time they are looking for a particular product or service.
8 - Relationship Building
Another difficult aspect of building a relationship with your customers online is building a rapport with them. Because a blog enables you to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style than your website does, your readers will soon feel like they know you. The more they know, like, and trust you the more likely they are to visit your main site, click your links, purchase your product, and line your pockets with virtual gold.
9 - Gain An Insight Into Your Customers
A business blog enables you to gain insight into your customers. It does this in several ways. Predominantly, by allowing your customers to leave comments on your posts, you get a good feel for how they take to everything you say. You can also track which posts are being read more often and which generate a greater number of clicks, emails, and much more. As far as market and customer research goes this is hugely beneficial information.
10 - Reduce Calls And Emails
OK, this isn’t one to tell your readers but you can use a blog to pre-empt questions that customers might have. By sending readers to your blog you can gain all of the above benefits and you may reduce the amount of niggling questions that you get asked by customers. Of course, you might also receive a lot more orders by email, but nobody wants to reduce those emails.
Maintaining A Successful Business Blog
While there are free blogging services available they generally offer ad-supported blogs with a restricted amount of templates and options. To truly take advantage with a business blog your best bet is to use a commercial application or pay for a commercial service. These enable you to integrate the blog into your own domain incorporating your own design. This ensures that you offer the full benefit to site visitors while making it easier to point blog visitors toward the appropriate pages of your site.
Regular content is imperative to the success of any blog. This content needs to be informative, accurate, and written in a way that will appeal to your visitors. Every blog demands different content and by producing the right content on a regular basis it will pay dividends.
In some posts you should try to find an opportunity to link to at least one page on your main website. Try not to get carried away by placing too many links or linking from all your posts but if you mention a particular product, link the name of that product to the corresponding page on your site. Alternatively include a paragraph at the bottom of the page that includes a link to a related resource (on your own page, or an affiliate link). If you are using a blog to make money through affiliate links then you should be careful to only use affiliate links in a relatively small proportion of your posts.
Matt Jackson is a blog writer, website content copywriter , and a big fan of alliteration in article titles. Through his website, WebWiseWords, he offers a full blog writing and posting service for businesses of any size and industry.
Article Source: Matt Jackson
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
AdSense Money Maker through Blog Niche Marketing
By Michael Kralj
You too can build a money making site from home, that will earn you extra money for that vacation you want to take, for that car you need to purchase or those inflating credit card bills.
First step: you need to pick a Niche market. What is a Niche market you may ask? It is a topic that is more focused, and does not take the general aspect of a topic. You want to pick something that is out there, but is focused so you can get up there in search engines and build traffic to your site.
Want an example of a Blog with Niche Marketing?
Mesothelioma Info and Updates at http://mesotheliomainfoupdates.blogspot.com. This site taylors to Mesothelioma, a rare disease caused by Asbestos, and the site goes in depth about the Niche Market of "Peritoneal Mesothelioma". Asbestos would be more of a General Blog without Niche marketing, while drilling down to "Peritoneal Mesothelioma" is a niche market.
Another example of a blog that is not Niche Marketing is the Domain Names and Web Design Info blog at http://domainnamesatretail.blogspot.com. This blog is maintained in a general sense that it discusses topics from Web Design, Web Hosting and Domain Names to Money Making strategies. It is not focused to one single topic.
Once you have picked your Niche market, you have to find out if it pays well through advertising, and has actual advertisers willing to pay you to advertise the site!
The Overture bidding tool will tell you just that! Go to: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/
Type in your niche market term, and it will tell you how much people on overture are willing to pay for each term. If it pays well, and is worth your while, then that will be your niche market you want to pursue.
Now you need to find the keywords you want to target and rank high for in Google. The suggestion tool located at will help you find just that: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Type in a keyword and it will show you what people search for and how many times per day. Pick a keyword that has a good daily search, but does not have too high of a number. This will allow you to have a fighting chance to cracking the top position for this search term. For example you may want something with about 100 searches per day.
Once you pick one, go to http://www.google.com, and search for that term and see how many results show up. If you have less than 1 million results, then that is ideal. Now take a look at the current #1 spot. See their page rank and how many links they have. If you think you can outrank them, then you are good to go. Target that keyword with your Niche market, and your site research is done.
Once you have the research complete, you set up a blog or web site.
To Set up a blog, go to one that I use Blogger at http://www.blogger.com. Set up your blog and begin posting in no time. This is a good and quick setup for getting your site started and getting searched by Google. However, your own site with its own domain name and hosting, tends to come up higher in search rankings. Also, having your own unique Blog Design as opposed to using a Blogger template, will help your site stand out from the rest. Emenki Web Solutions can provide you with such a custom template.
To set up your web site, purchase a domain name and web hosting. Download the Web Site Startup Handbook Ebook to learn more at http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf. Then get free Blogging software and begin to run your site. Search on http://www.hotscripts.com to find Blogging software that you can use for Free.
Run your said Blog for about two weeks with at least 1-2 posts per day to develop enough content for search engines to consider placing you site in its rankings and for you to build traffic.
Once you have done this, set your site up for Google Adsense (http://adsense.google.com). Remember to follow the Google Adsense Terms of Service.
Once your site is approved for Google Adsense, place the AdSense code and begin to market your site through SEO software like Traffic Blazer and One way Link Building Strategies!
Read up on SEO techniques to get your site to the top! Once you are there, you will generate traffic and if you have enough click through on your ads, you will make money!
Thanks for coming out and learning how to become an AdSense money maker!
Purchase your Blog Domain Name and Web Hosting at Domains at Retail (http://www.domainsatretail.com).
Learn what else you may need to start up your Adsense Money Making Web Site in the Web Site Startup Handbook (http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf)
Need a custom Blog Template for your Money Making Site? Contact the professionals at Emenki Web Solutions (http://www.emenki.com)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Kralj
You too can build a money making site from home, that will earn you extra money for that vacation you want to take, for that car you need to purchase or those inflating credit card bills.
First step: you need to pick a Niche market. What is a Niche market you may ask? It is a topic that is more focused, and does not take the general aspect of a topic. You want to pick something that is out there, but is focused so you can get up there in search engines and build traffic to your site.
Want an example of a Blog with Niche Marketing?
Mesothelioma Info and Updates at http://mesotheliomainfoupdates.blogspot.com. This site taylors to Mesothelioma, a rare disease caused by Asbestos, and the site goes in depth about the Niche Market of "Peritoneal Mesothelioma". Asbestos would be more of a General Blog without Niche marketing, while drilling down to "Peritoneal Mesothelioma" is a niche market.
Another example of a blog that is not Niche Marketing is the Domain Names and Web Design Info blog at http://domainnamesatretail.blogspot.com. This blog is maintained in a general sense that it discusses topics from Web Design, Web Hosting and Domain Names to Money Making strategies. It is not focused to one single topic.
Once you have picked your Niche market, you have to find out if it pays well through advertising, and has actual advertisers willing to pay you to advertise the site!
The Overture bidding tool will tell you just that! Go to: http://uv.bidtool.overture.com/d/search/tools/bidtool/
Type in your niche market term, and it will tell you how much people on overture are willing to pay for each term. If it pays well, and is worth your while, then that will be your niche market you want to pursue.
Now you need to find the keywords you want to target and rank high for in Google. The suggestion tool located at will help you find just that: http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/
Type in a keyword and it will show you what people search for and how many times per day. Pick a keyword that has a good daily search, but does not have too high of a number. This will allow you to have a fighting chance to cracking the top position for this search term. For example you may want something with about 100 searches per day.
Once you pick one, go to http://www.google.com, and search for that term and see how many results show up. If you have less than 1 million results, then that is ideal. Now take a look at the current #1 spot. See their page rank and how many links they have. If you think you can outrank them, then you are good to go. Target that keyword with your Niche market, and your site research is done.
Once you have the research complete, you set up a blog or web site.
To Set up a blog, go to one that I use Blogger at http://www.blogger.com. Set up your blog and begin posting in no time. This is a good and quick setup for getting your site started and getting searched by Google. However, your own site with its own domain name and hosting, tends to come up higher in search rankings. Also, having your own unique Blog Design as opposed to using a Blogger template, will help your site stand out from the rest. Emenki Web Solutions can provide you with such a custom template.
To set up your web site, purchase a domain name and web hosting. Download the Web Site Startup Handbook Ebook to learn more at http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf. Then get free Blogging software and begin to run your site. Search on http://www.hotscripts.com to find Blogging software that you can use for Free.
Run your said Blog for about two weeks with at least 1-2 posts per day to develop enough content for search engines to consider placing you site in its rankings and for you to build traffic.
Once you have done this, set your site up for Google Adsense (http://adsense.google.com). Remember to follow the Google Adsense Terms of Service.
Once your site is approved for Google Adsense, place the AdSense code and begin to market your site through SEO software like Traffic Blazer and One way Link Building Strategies!
Read up on SEO techniques to get your site to the top! Once you are there, you will generate traffic and if you have enough click through on your ads, you will make money!
Thanks for coming out and learning how to become an AdSense money maker!
Purchase your Blog Domain Name and Web Hosting at Domains at Retail (http://www.domainsatretail.com).
Learn what else you may need to start up your Adsense Money Making Web Site in the Web Site Startup Handbook (http://www.domainsatretail.com/DomainsAtRetail.pdf)
Need a custom Blog Template for your Money Making Site? Contact the professionals at Emenki Web Solutions (http://www.emenki.com)
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Kralj
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