Friday, September 25, 2009

5 Reasons Why Blogging is the New Internet Marketing Tool


Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marking tool.

1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tool and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

4. Blogging builds creditbility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.

5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

-By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail’s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

-By using subscription . An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer.

-By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

-By joining a blog network –A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

-By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool .

Using social bookmarking sites to promote your blog


Often you come up with a great blog story. You know it'll drive you plenty of traffic but you've got a problem. None knows about your great blog post. To get maximum attention you must spread the gospel around. This is where the social / bookmark networks come handy. What's a social / bookmark network? it is a place where you can share your stories or bookmarks with others. Take blog hack for instance. You submit your blog story to the network, permitting other members to vote and comment on it. More preferred stories that receive a particular number of votes get promoted to the front page. Most social networks are dissimilar. Some even let you export a big number of bookmarks straight from your browser. So why social networks?

1 - Social networks get lots of traffic due to their nature. Users regularly return to read the newest stories and share their own.

2 - Readers are sometimes just one click away from your blog. A popular submission can bring you thousands of daily visitors.

3 - Most social networks are free and take seconds to register and submit your first entry.

4 - You'll be stunned when you see the quantity of other web sites that use feeds from numerous social networks. A good story can spread across the network like wild fire.

5 - If your story won't get to the front page you can always submit another one. In most situations there isn't any limit on the quantity of stories you can submit.

6 - Most social networks are search engine friendly. Not just your story will get picked up by big search engines in almost no time, usually you may also get a reciprocated link.

Some social networks have superb google page rank tips:

1: An interesting, familiar story is usually a must have. Your most important target is to get promoted to the front page by getting plenty of votes. You must convince other readers to vote for your story. Unusual , surprising and arguable stories frequently do well.

2: You can always ask your buddies to join and vote for you to get more votes. Don't create fake accounts as you will simply get banned.

3: The more stories you submit the better. If you would like a stable flow of traffic you'll need a regular flow of submissions.

4: Just enjoy your experience. I actually find it more fascinating compared to other techniques of blog promotion , for example link development.

There are a large amount of assorted social networks around. Easy search on google should do the job. I actually counsel blog correspondent because it's the first private publishing network designed particularly for blogs.

Building a blog ping list


Ping lists for blogs.

If you have a personal or business blog, it is necessary to ping after you post a new article. Pinging a blog will contact Yahoo and other search bots that a new article has been added to your site. When they are notified, the ping service providers will send a spider to read your new post within seconds depending on their traffic load.

Blog ping definition.

By definition, a blog ping is a notification to a search provider that a blog has been updated. A ping is basically an XML message that contains the url address of the blog. Most blog news sites have separate internet addresses for accepting pings, so testing your ping list is very important.

The Good Versus The Bad.

The Good News: Pinging a blog is often good, because the more you ping, the more exposure you'll get to your blog post. As a result, many of the ping service providers will remember your URLs listed on their service and republished them.

The Cons: The more you ping your website, your server will become slower. If your blog ping list is more than fifty providers, your server load can get really high. Another downside is that most of the providers ping the same search bots. This can be bad for your site because you can potentially ping Google too many times and it looks like your a spammer. So a good blog ping list is important to your site.

Wordpress Blog Pinging

As a default, the WordPress engine pings one service automatically called Ping-o-matic. Ping-o-matic is not a good provider by itself because it is simply outdated. This is because it does not ping all of the newer services you need to syndicate your blog and get it spidered right. Wordpress also pings every time you update your site, revise a post, which isn't good because you could potentially look like a spammer and get blacklisted.

How To Build A Good Ping List.

Here are a few things you need to take note during the building of your ping list. Keep in mind that a ping list doesn't last an eternity, so you should check and update your list as often as possible.

Note 1: Find a base ping list. I found a great recommended providers list located at this site. Ping List For Blogs

Step 2: Find new ping providers.

You should add to your base list by doing some research based on your market niche, language, and country online. You can also email other established sites within your market and ask them for advice. If you search the right places you should be able to find more information on available ping service providers to add to the base list.

Step 3: You should remove any non-working services from your list.

This step is very important. You should begin by checking each provider by visiting their site. Pay attention to the service and area they provide to. If you have found that the website is no longer in service then simply remove it from your list.

It is recommended that you pay attention to your service list and regularly and check the providers websites to make sure they're working. Proper maintenance of your provider list will keep your content spidered and increase your blog's visibility in the search engines.

Sell Articles To Other Bloggers


Did you know that some bloggers online don’t actually write their own blogs? Not all of them of course, but some certainly farm out their writing requirements to expert writers on their particular topic.

And that presents a great opportunity for you as a writer if you want to increase the amount of work you do. There are plenty of websites which provide leads for bloggers and blogging jobs, so you won’t find it hard to get started in this particular line of writing work.

Blogging jobs tend to be advaantageous too because they are more often than not regular. You might be asked to provide two, five, ten or more blog posts a week. Each one will bring in a set fee, so you can look forward to a weekly or monthly pay day that is pretty steady alongside your other writing work.

Some people focus only on these particular jobs, and don’t write articles for anyone else at all. If this idea appeals to you it is good to be able to show your own blogging skills to potential clients. Make sure you create a blog for yourself if you haven’t already done so, in order to demonstrate that you are capable of writing regularly, on topic and on time.

Different blogging jobs will have different ways of working as well. You might have to submit a single post to the client each day (or whenever it is required). Alternatively some prefer receiving a batch in advance every week or two. This is better for you because you can fit them in whenever it suits you.

You might also find they give you access to the blog itself. You can then post directly whenever necessary, and they will simply check to see that it has been done.

So you see, blogging for other people is an excellent way of earning a steady living as a writer. Work at building up your client base and very soon you will have a nice income you can rely on while you build up your other online writing jobs.

Promote Your Blog In Five Great Ways


If you are a blogger and want to drive more traffic to your blog to make more money, I think there are many ways for you. But we will not use all the ways, we should use some easy and more useful way to do it. So we will talk about the five most useful ways. With these ways, you would not need to use paid advertising methods to get more traffic to your blog. You could promote your blogs in these five ways for free.

Promoting with Twitter As a micro-blogging platform, Twitter is the most popular in the world. Where users post updates otherwise called ‘Tweets. In Twitter, you can follow others and others also can follow you. If you write an article in your blog, and do post an update on Twitter at the same time, maybe your followers will visit your blog to read your newest post. The more your followers, the more traffic you can get. Once you start getting more people on your blog you can start making money using Internet marketing techniques.

Promoting with MySpace MySpace is a social networking site and very popular among teens. It’s a social networking website where you can create a free account and start posting about you or any topic that interests you. From time to time you can mention about your blog. For example if you have a blog about making money blogging you can write some tips on making money blogging and mention your blog at the end.

Promoting with Squidoo You can create ‘lens’ in Squidoo. The lens is similar to building a site. And it is more easier then you building a website with your domain and hosting. It has a user-friendly WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor that allows you to create your lens without any coding experience. If you want your blog to be shown when people search for related information on Google then it’s a good idea to create a lens on Squidoo and mention the link on your lens.

Promoting with HubPages In my opinion, HubPages is like Squidoo. You also can write sth that is related to your blog and add a link to your blog. The back links from them are good for SEO. At the same time, we also can make money blogging with them. They will add advertisements into our articles. When some one clicks the ads, we can get money.

Promoting with YouTube This is a popular video sharing site which allows users to upload videos for free. You can record yourself speaking with a flip camera about a subject that is related to your blog and mention the blog at the end of the video. Another option would be to record a short tutorial using a screen capture program like Camtasia or Camstudio and upload that recording to YouTube. But don’t forget to mention your blog in the video.

If you haven’t found a good way to promote your blog, maybe you can try these five ways. I think they are good for your blog.