Archive for the ‘Blogs, RSS and Podcasting’ Category

Bloggers Checklist

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Below are some of the crucial items you should have on your Blog. Take a look at this list and your Blog and see how you measure up. I can tell you that I did it myself and I had to create an action plan to fix my own Blog.

You see, just because I know what needs to be done doesn’t mean I always have time to implement it myself.

It is like the shoe cobbler’s children going to school with their shoes falling apart. I am so busy helping clients, I don’t have time to work on my own things.

The same may be true for you. You are so busy but you know you want to, actually you need to, Blog. So you start it and don’t necessarily have everything in place.

That’s OK. The key is to find out where you are lacking and create an action plan so you can take steps towards getting everything in place,

So, here is your checklist. Do you have:

A strategy in place? Do you know why are you Blogging? What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you know how often you have to Blog, what types of posts you need in order to accomplish your objective?

A posting schedule? Ideally you should have at least 2 new posts a week, and up to 5. Less than 2 is too little, and over 5 is often too much (unless you are a great writer and have lots of news and information to share, so you aren’t
just writing fluff).

A comment policy? Do you moderate? If so, how long does it take to approve comments.

An ‘About Us’ section? Since Blogging is about connecting, sharing information and creating dialog to form relationships, you need to be sure to tell people who you are and what you are all about. Including contact
information is a good idea

A Blogroll? Be sure to include NON company links. Point your readers to sites/blogs that you think THEY would be interested in reading. Yes, you can add your website, but please mix in some non-company sites as well to show people you are truly interested in being a resource for them.

RSS subscriber buttons? Give your readers a way to subscribe to your Blog, via a feed reader. Feedburner is a quick and easy way to get this done.

Photos, graphs or charts to create visual interest.

Videos to engage users.

Personality and opinions so people feel they are really hearing your voice and not just some regurgitated industry news.

Links back to relevant pages on your website.

A custom header graphic that doesn’t take up too much space but shows that your Blog is uniquely yours and not just some out of the box Blog platform that has no customization. Some people choose to have their header match the look and feel of their main site.

So go check out your Blog right now and see how you measure up.

About the Author:

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a
downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Check out “Blogging For Dollars” for more Blogging tips and advice.

http://www.searchenginewebpromotion.com/home/a/

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace

Blog Marketing for Small Business

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Blog marketing can be very complicated for someone who has never Blogged before. If you plan to enter the small business blog marketing, you want a blog first and see what what it entails. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You must update your blog regularly to keep their readers interested. This will keep them returning for more and see what is, if anything, new you have to relay.

Blog marketing for small business is all about current, or up-to-date news about your business. It is certainly an excellent tool to use to bring your business to the attention of others. However, you must be patient because it can be a long process that requires a fair amount of attention to detail. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone will find it and read about your business, you need to make your business blog known. If you have a website for your business, you can refer to your blog on the website, therefore, those already knowing about your site will be able to access your blog also.

Blog marketing for small businesses is something that, being relatively simple, anyone can do. Having a blog and keeping up to date with the latest information is not difficult. It is more a case of consistency than anything.

How does one begin this marketing blog for small businesses?
Marketing a blog is more or less the same way that a website is marketed. Keywords and content are the main thing here. It can be you that writes the content, if you are so inclined, or pay someone to write for you. This part is entirely up to you. However, you want to be sure that the content is relevant, actually worth reading and that your target audience will want to read, if you want them returning. You also want to become familiar with SEO, search engine optimization. SEO will help you optimize your blog to get a better ranking in search engines.

After choosing keywords and published relevant content on your blog, you’re ready to start making it known on the internet. Link exchanges are important for your small business marketing blog and exchanging links with similar sites that are relevant to yours, but not in direct competition, is a good way to get noticed.

You can pay some directories to list your blog URL in their directory under the specific category that it falls under. However, many directories have special guidelines you must follow in order to be approved for inclusion, this is fairly straight forward, provided you don’t try to have your blog included for a category it is not best suited to.

Another important thing to remember when you’re in a small business marketing blog, is that if someone leaves you a comment on the blog, you should respond, acknowledging their interest. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, leaving a link to your blog too. This will bring visitors to your blog, and you should begin to see an increase in traffic.

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace

Is your Network Marketing Business Growing As Fast As You Want?

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

If you have researched a network marketing business as a home based business, you know the lucrative income potential that it offers.
However one of the biggest hang ups for people is building their business in a way that will deliver the income that they desire.

The number one mistake people make is trying to run their business with a direct sales model.
In fact many people believe that there is little point in running a network marketing business now that the internet is able to provide instant contact with the products that you are looking for.

The real success with a network marketing business comes from connecting with people that are looking for a business of their own.

Success in this age of Twitter, Facebook, and blogs is more about building you personal brand than promoting the products of your network marketing company.

Your chosen product company is a means to your financial freedom, you should not limit yourself to just being their representative.

I view the products that I receive every month on auto order as an added benefit to myself as I build my business. However, when it comes to promoting my business, I aim to connect with like minded individuals who wish to make money online.

Network Marketing Pitfalls:

It can be hard getting qualified network marketing leads for your business.
In order to find and contact qualified leads for your network marketing business, it is important that they are well informed before you ever actually talk to them.

The old techniques of buying network marketing leads and “dialing for dollars” just will not get you the results that you need to build your network marketing business into a raging success.

In fact you can waste all of your time and money going about building your business in this way.

What You Need:

In order to build an amazingly successful network marketing business, you need a way to find and sort applicants.

This way you only actually talk to people who are informed and motivated to take action on your offer.

You do not need to waste time with in house presentations or expensive meetings. Doing these things can squash your chance at building a network marketing business before you get it off the ground.

If you are serious about building a successful network marketing business, learn how to find network marketing leads today!

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace

Blogging Passive Income?

Monday, April 6th, 2009

To answer this question, first of all, we must understand what is blogging.

To me, blogging is just another traffic strategy, something like article marketing.

Assuming you have not done anything to your blog, no link, no promotion, no JV, a blog post is just another piece of content lying somewhere on the net. If you’re lucky, someone may find the post through the search engine and read it. If not, it will just be another digital dust.

When the gurus tell you that you can make money from blogging, what he is really saying is you can make money by leaving tons of ‘content footprint’ on the net. The more ‘content footprint’ you have on the net, the more traffic you are likely to attract.

(Sidenote: That’s the reason why I started LeadsLeap Blog – to create a large content footprint so as to attract more traffic and benefit our members who show their ads in this blog.)

As I’ve said, blogging is just another traffic strategy. It’s what you do with the traffic that determines whether you can create a passive income from it.

So can blogging create passive income? My ‘immediate’ answer is – it depends on what you do with the traffic to your blog.

Blogging Myth 101

Many years back, when the idea of internet marketing first started, there was a myth that says “Built it and traffic will come”. ‘it’ refers to a website.

People started building different kinds of websites, only to realize that their websites are only visited by ghosts.

Years later, history repeats.

The concept of blogging was introduced and everyone starts to blog. The myth now becomes “Blog and traffic will come”.

People started to blog about different things under the sun, only to realize that they are just talking to themselves.

So can blogging create passive income? My ‘better’ answer is – it depends on whether you can generate ‘passive traffic’ to your blog and what you do with the ‘passive traffic’.

What Should You Do With The Traffic So As To Create Passive Income?

Assuming you know how to generate passive traffic to your blog, the next challenge is how to monetize the traffic so that you can earn passive income.

Here is what you can do:

1) Sell advertising space

Unless you have a very popular blog, chances are no one will advertise directly with you. The easiest way to start selling your advertising space is by putting Google Ads on your blog.

As your blog becomes more popular, you can find your own advertisers and earn more.

2) Sell affiliate products

I’m not talking about selling ebooks. If you want to build a passive income, you should promote products or services that can earn you recurring commissions.

Some examples are web hosting services, autoresponder services, network marketing products and membership programs.

For non-internet marketing niche, try to promote membership programs that can generate recurring commissions for you every month.

3) Sell your own products

Eventually, you want to sell your own products through your blog, preferably a membership program so that you can build another recurring income.

Selling your own product has another advantage because you can recruit affiliates and generate more traffic to your blog.

4) Position your blog as a brand

This is the ultimate thing you should do with your blog to create long term passive income.

Do you know why companies spend so much money on branding? Because people prefer to buy from brands that they are familiar with.

Once your blog becomes a brand by itself, every other things will fall into places. Your traffic will increase beyond your wildest dream. Advertisers will be queuing to pay you. Your sales will soar. And more importantly, you can employ people to produce the content.

This is when your blog truly becomes a passive income source for you.

By Kenneth Koh |

Share and Enjoy:
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • NewsVine
  • Reddit
  • StumbleUpon
  • Google Bookmarks
  • Yahoo! Buzz
  • Twitter
  • Technorati
  • Live
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace
  • MySpace