Thursday 6 October 2011

Making Your Blog a Bit More Reader-Friendly


When it comes to running a blog, there are a lot of tasks and responsibilities that the creator will have to undertake. Many bloggers want their work to become available to as many people as possible, earning them a rank among the popular and influential blogs on the Internet. If you want your blog to thrive and do well, you are going to have to make it reader friendly.
1. Use Simple, Understandable Links

When a person visits a website, they are going to want to know right away where the links are. If the links are all over the place and require great patience in order to find them, visitors will become frustrated and leave soon after arriving. You may want to be artistic and clever with your navigation design, but you have to keep in mind that not everybody will share that enthusiasm. You want to appeal to as many people as possible, and that means using simple links.



2. Be Reachable

On top of utilizing an easy to understand navigational setup, you also need to make sure that people are able to reach you if they so desire. A reader may have a question after they read an entry, and you should not leave them guessing on just how they can get in contact with you. You may place your email address somewhere visible on the blog, or at the end of each entry if you so choose. Should you receive any messages, reply to them as soon as you can. 

3. Provide Useful Blog Entries

No matter how attractive your layout may be, or how quickly you respond to emails, it does little good if your blog does not have any real purpose. A number of people visit blogs because they want to learn something specific; they want to immerse themselves in their interest or hobby, and blogs should work to be worthwhile for them. If a blog likes to focus on exercising through bike riding, a blog entry about cake recipes will not really be useful to its readers. It may even lead to confusion and complaints. Use common sense when coming up with subjects for entries.

How Selling Affiliate Products Benefits Bloggers


Selling affiliate products offers some significant benefits for any blog builder over and above the obvious source of income they provide! Blogging requires focusing a good amount of time and effort on content creation since this is what people come to see! As an affiliate all a blogger needs to do is select products they wish to offer their readers!

Here are quite possibly the 3 biggest benefits a blog builder can expect to experience by selling other peoples products on their platform!

No Research and Development

The time and investment typically required to research and develop products is not required allowing bloggers to focus on content creation! As previously stated the top priority of any blog builder is supplying plenty of interesting information for visitors to view. This is how traffic builds and of equal importance this is also how viewer loyalty develops! Remember without a steady stream of traffic to your site, you have no one to promote to therefore you have no business. This is why consistently updating your site is of such importance and should always be your top priority!

Wider Choice/Offering of Products

By virtue of having countless product manufacturers to choose from marketers can select a product from any category! This flexibility allows for bloggers to target just about any interests their subscribers may have and once again all without investing a lot of time! This is huge in terms of increasing marketing effectiveness while managing time more effectively!

Always Something New to Offer

Having an enormous 'team' of product manufacturers to choose from also means there will always be something brand new to offer! As far as staying on the 'cutting edge' in regards to what you have available to promote on your blogging platform, working as an affiliate makes it easy! Much in the same way as shopping, you can simply browse through various affiliate programs, select products of interest and you're on your way!

Selling affiliate products allows a blog builder to earn an income while still maintaining their focus on content creation. The heart and soul of any blogging platform is the content it contains which is what gives it life and attracts followers! It is therefore important for the blogger to concentrate on the content creation necessary to develop a successful site! As an affiliate all a blogger needs to do is simple select products they want to offer their readers which takes little time or effort to do. Being an affiliate therefore offers any blog builder the 3 benefits discussed above thus allowing them to maintain what needs to be their primary focus, content creation!

Building A Business Blog - 6 Essential Strategies


Business blogs represent a great way to communicate with customers, share your company's expertise and build web traffic. For small businesses, blogs can be a powerful marketing tool by allowing them to establish a low-cost web-presence while savvy marketers can even turn their blogs into a source of direct income.
Plus, these web platforms let you embark on a sustained campaign towards creating consumer trust and increasing brand penetration. However, the emphasis is on ‘sustained' – blogs take effort and time to become successful. If you aren't able to supply both, I suggest you don't create a blog at all.
For everyone trying to impact the corporate blogosphere, however, here are a few essential strategies:
1. Optimize Your Headers!
While writing a headline for your post, keep two things in mind – users and Google. Most people hit up blogs because they're looking for information, so make sure your header encapsulates your content in an easily recognizable way.
A great way to come up with efficient headlines is to use a keyword tool to isolate the phrases that generate the most number of queries on your topic of choice. Once you've figured that out, you can tailor your title to suit your readers' needs and improve your search engine ranking in the process.
2. Lead in With ‘Who and Why?'
Your first paragraph should detail why the information within the post is important and to whom. Above all, make it attractive. Ideally, your lead should entice a user to read the entire article regardless of whether or not it is relevant to their query. And believe me, they definitely have a query. People rarely read business blogs for entertainment.


3. Freshen Up Your Perspective!
When writing your posts experiment with unconventional angles while keeping the information relevant. This is especially useful when writing on a topic that's already been covered in multiple other online resources. As long as it holds water, a unique take on an exhaustively spoken about subject generally attracts positive publicity.
4. WIIFT…
…is an acronym for ‘What's In It For Them?' and in this instance, it exhorts you to keep the reader in mind when writing your posts. Since you're writing a business blog your long-term aims should be to create brand awareness and build trust and credibility in the consumer mind.
Make sure your blog puts out genuinely useful information, and keep it unique. Rehashing information that anyone can find anywhere is generally a bad way to start any information portal.
Also, asking a question at the end of your post leaves the topic open-ended and invites interactive discussion - a great way to stimulate interest and generate reader comments.
5. Simplify and Restructure!
Writing that's easily understood by laymen and experts alike is always appreciated, so try and make your posts as reader-friendly as possible. Remember, you are trying to reach out to the millions of web users (and potential customers) with helpful information. That means you keep industry jargon and obscure terminology down to a minimum. Focus on creating a post that even a complete novice could understand.
Furthermore, don't ramble. Write short sentences that deliver concise information. Make your paragraphs compact and leave plenty of space in between them. This will facilitate quick scanning and make your blog posts much easier to read.
6. Interlinking Multimedia!
Relevant videos, images and links can greatly enhance the appeal of your blog posts. Whether you put up embedded YouTube videos, statistical data charts or a quirky picture, it's sure to add considerable value to your content. Even a generic image that has clear connections to the topic at hand can make your post a whole lot more attractive.
Additionally, make sure you add links to related posts within your blog. This turns each post into a gateway to another part of your site, improving overall web traffic.

Resources
http://sbinformation.about.com
http://thomsondata.com
http://www.businessblogconsulting.com/

Is Internet Marketing And Commission Commando For You?

It is not about techniques, strategies and technical skills. All of this can be outsourced or learned. He boldly said "Mindset is the most powerful thing that you need to address to succeed online".

Sean Donahoe coached many people and help them make a lot of money online. Commission Commando is going to be his latest coaching program available very soon. What is interesting is that a lot of his students and followers are asking him the same question, over and over again: "Why didn't I succeeded yet? What am I doing wrong?"

The truth of the matter is that there is a lot of money to be made out there and a lot of internet business models, commission commando being one of them, the almighty package.

Statistics reveal that 95% of people just give up. Between rubbish internet marketing products that exist out there, like the "push button" software that make millions (and that everybody buys surprisingly), we're all confused and after trying a couple methods and seeing no result, we conclude that this Internet marketing thing doesn't work.

He boldly reveals to the world during his Commission Commando pre-launch videos that Internet marketing is first about mindset, about taking action, simplifying, evaluating, automating and being determined.

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These five factors, according to Donahoe, will ensure your success online. He told us that's what he does and that's what his successful students have done and are currently doing to make internet marketing work for them.

Sean Donahoe has put together an excellent new product and is releasing some great content and genuine videos about how to make money with Internet Marketing. This new product is called Commission Commando

Prior to Commission Commando, Sean Donahoe released products such as Video Marketing Goldmine, Extreme Niche Empire, Video Assassin, Backlink Booster and other internet marketing products.

99% of buyers of his previous products have claimed that they are full of marketing tactics that make sense, are simple and get the job done, meaning that once applied, it makes you money.

It is no surprise that Commission Commando is going to be one of the few products of the year that you should check out.

For the release of the Commission Commando coaching program, we've decided to give lots of bonuses, because we feel that Commission Commando is a product that will change lots of lives, just because Sean always overdelivers and his ethics is irreproachable.

If you want to get on the early bird of Commission Commando bonus, we invite you to click and get to our Commission Commando bonus website right away.

We've even created a video explaining all about the great Commission Commando bonus you're about to receive.

You can also follow us on Facebook as we give you real time updates on Sean Donahoe's Commission Commando bonus and coaching program.

Make Money From Online Surveys :Free Wallet Money

Today's era or Net era has totally replaced everything. Although it has lowered the earth, but concurrently it is isolated us getting an individual. Fundamental essentials very challenging parties for more mature people linked with a region. However they perform not need to worry and may expend the amount of period in online survey. What exactly is it and also only how may this support to acquire inspired and stay fit.

Paid survey is usually commissioned by unique providers to advertise the particular launch of the item in order to advertise a strategy. Sometimes an idea's success is examined through this method. Every effective survey pays the person. Which means an individual get taken care of doing online survey.Although the volume is moderate but enough to retain you encouraged and permit a person to acquire began and a person involved yourself.

These kinds of online surveys online are of two styles. You will find some analysis organizations who obtain for any fixed one-time cost to get you authorized. While others never want will need any payment of your stuff. While you get recorded by obtaining an online research websites, you're mailed surveys online nearly each day and inside a phase of time you're desired to transmit back the finished survey. Paid survey is regarded as the convenient and great technique to make money online.


The actual only issue is to locate a authentic study team and be aware of solution that may enable you to find money. Sometimes you will find offers too while using the online survey. These surveys online provide the period to recognize of the product prior to it staying published available on the market. From time to time you may find survey on videos and food items.

Online surveyis a fascinating approach of making instant money but be chary of having cheated and it could be recommended when you become a great connect of an individual which staff you understand. By performing this the share of having duped reduces. It is really a style of connect promotion and furthermore you even receive by recommendations. So it's a multi-layered and when channelized appropriately it may perhaps fetch you sufficient cash.

Lots of individuals, who have been in a placement to make a foothold on paid survey, have managed to find a full period work instead of part-time work. They've finished towards the higher by looking into making recommendations and dedication. Therefore regardless of the particular choice, only devotion can present you with better and results. Yet it is even great for individuals those who cannot give major time. It's anyway will offer income and show effects.

Keep relaxed and patient know more about the ways from the trait. Every single home based business needs love and care this is also true paid survey! It isn't really that you'll start attaining from the very 1st day, however the revenue may come. Again I'll advise attempt to receive documented with someone that will help you grow and succeed. Contacts are the only strategy by that you may attain the best research engines.

Wednesday 22 September 2010

25 Tips for Marketing Your Blog

With so many blogs being created every day, it’s a mystery to many bloggers how to make their blog stand out. There are many types of blogs or purposes for blogs and a certain number of tactics are applicable to just about all of them.Some companies choose to hire a blog consultant, but others like to try things internally. For those “DIY” companies and individuals interested in practical tips for marketing and optimizing a business blog, try out the following list of blog marketing and optimization tips:

  1. Decide on a stand alone domain name www.myblog.com or directory of existing site www.mysite.com/blog. Sub domain is also an option blog.mysite.com. Avoid hosted services that do not allow you to use your own domain name!
  2. Obtain and install customizable blog software – WordPress and Moveable Type are my favorites.
  3. Customize blog look and feel templates – aka design.
  4. Research keywords and develop a glossary – Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, SitePoint, SEOBook Keyword Research.
  5. Optimize the blog:
    • Template optimization – RSS subscription options, social bookmark links, HTML code, Unique title tags, URLs, Sitemap
    • Add helper plugins specific to WordPress or MT
    • Create keyword rich categories (reference your keyword glossary)
  6. Enable automatic trackback and ping functionality.
  7. Create Feedburner Pro account and enable feed tracking.
  8. Setup a Google account for Sitemap, validate and prep for future submission.
  9. Identify authoritative blogs, web sites and hubs for outbound resource links and blogroll.
  10. Format archived posts, related posts.
  11. Enable statistics for tracking – Google Analytics, ClickTracks.
  12. Submit RSS feed and Blog URL to prominent RSS and Blog directories / search engines.
  13. Engage in an ongoing link building campaign.
  14. If podcast or video content are available, submit to Podcast and Vlog directories.
  15. Submit blog url to paid directories with categories for blogs – Yahoo, BOTW, bCentral, WOW, JoeAnt.
  16. Optimize and distribute a press release announcing blog.
  17. Request feedback or reviews of your blog in relevant forums, discussion threads. If you have a resourceful post that will help others, point to it.
  18. Research and comment on relevant industry related blogs and blogs with significant centers of influence.
  19. Post regularly. If it’s a news oriented blog, 3-5 times per day. If it’s an authoritative blog, 3-5 times per week, but each post must be unique and high value.
  20. Monitor inbound links, traffic, comments and mentions of your blog – Google Alerts, Technorati, Blogpulse, Yahoo News, Ask Blogs and Feeds.
  21. Always respond to comments on your blog and when you detect a mention of your blog on another blog, thank that blogger in the comments of the post.
  22. Make contact with related bloggers on AND offline if possible.
  23. When making blog posts always cite the source with a link and don’t be afraid to mention popular bloggers by name. Use keywords in the blog post title, in the body of the post and use anchor text when you link to previous posts you’ve made.
  24. Use social networking services, forums and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers. If they like your stuff, they will link to you.
  25. Remember when web sites were a new concept and the sage advice to print your web address everywhere you print your phone number? The same advice applies for your blog.
    =============
  26. If your blog’s goal is to promote you as an authority, interview other prominent bloggers in your industry. Your own credibility will improve by association.
  27. Build out your online networks through services such as MyBlogLog, Twitter and Facebook and leverage them to promote particularly useful content on your blog.
  28. Once your blog has 1000 or more subscribers, show your Feedburner badge
  29. Host images with Flickr making sure to include an anchor text link in the image description back to the post where the image is used.
  30. Use your blog to gain press/media credentials at relevant industry conferences and use the event to create content, connections and increase your knowledge.

This post was originally published on June 15, 2006 and has continued to receive many inbound links. As time changes, so do some tactics, so we’ve added a few tactics (after original 25) that have emerged in their usefulness. What would you add to this list?

Thursday 16 September 2010

49 ways to build your brand using online marketing

Building a brand from scratch is not an easy thing to do, especially if you are in a market that is very competitive. How does one start to rise above the noise to distinguish themselves as a heavy hitter? What techniques and tricks can you use to reach your brand awareness goals? Below I have outlined some of the most effective ways to build your brand using online marketing techniques.

Video Marketing:

1. Create videos that research proves will do well on the sites you are marketing to. Usually funny videos and tutorials tend to do well.

2. Decide what video marketing stance you are going to approach with your video marketing: Cut the video and add branding before something funny or interesting happens to redirect the viewer to your site. Or allow the entire video shown to allow for more viewers and impressions.

3. Initiate streaming rich media ads on videos.

4.Purchase pre-roll or post-roll ads on videos.

5. Distribute your video across these multiple video sharing sites.

Conversational Marketing

6. Leverage sites like Sponsored Reviews in order to create a viral buzz online regarding your brand.

7. Join as many forums as you can adequately sustain a quality contributor.

8. Get to know who the industry voice is for your niche and post comments on there blogs.

9. Contribute to online groups like google groups and myspace groups.

10. Market yourself by adding a blog.

11. Use advanced techniques to gain RSS subscribers for maximum exposure.

Pay Per Click

12. If you have a larger budget create an account on the top tier pay per click networks, Google, MSN and Yahoo!.

13. If you have a smaller ad budget go with Google and some tier 2 and tier 3 networks.

14. A great way to get branding is to get those impressions. Try giving 3rd tier networks a try but know that conversions may be lower on 3rd tier networks.

15. Utilize keycompete to get a good base on competitor PPC advertising.

16. Do extensive keyword research to find optimal exposure and converting keywords.

17. Try to find niches and keyword markets to target that are not as heavily competitive but are highly trafficked so your cost per click will be way down.

18. Mind your ad quality.

Social Media Marketing

19. Stay as ethical as you possibly can.

20. To successfully leverage your social media for online marketing you need to really be active in your communities, ergo is best to have power accounts on a few social media sites rather then trying to manage many of them across multiple networks. Find your niche.

21. Initiate social bookmarking campaigns online.

22. Create content to support edits in wikipedia.

Email Marketing

23. Team with companies with double opt in lists

24. Sponsor mailing lists with companies who have a wide subscriber base.

25. Try to leverage DBA lists

26. Setup a network of sites geared towards lead generation. By capturing these leads you can use them for yourself or sell them to leading lead brokers.

Mobile Search Marketing

27. Create a click to call campaign

28. Develop a mobile version of your site.

29. Include jump links below your content as normal navigation on a mobile search page can cause problems when viewing on mobile devices.

Search Engine Optimization

30. Optimize all title tags and meta data according to your rev mix.

31. If you are having problems ranking internal pages for there given keyword terms consider developing an effective silo.

32. Develop search engine friendly html sitemap.

33 Develop quality internal linking structure.

34. Create optimized html source code.

35. Create optimized robots.txt

36. Create optimized XML sitemap.

Affiliate Marketing

37. Create accounts in the 2 major affiliate networks, link share and commission junction.

38. Evaluate your competitions affiliate program

39. If you do not have an affiliate option for your services or products then think about creating one because the chance to have others advertise your products and services is a great way to get exposure and build your branding.

40. Incentavize your affiliate deals to attract the affiliate and the consumers.

Banner Advertising

41. Examine potential sites demographics.

42. Get media break outs

43. Consider Portal Advertising

44. Weight your cost per acquisition model between the cost of CPM and CPC banner advertising.

Application Marketing

45. Create a marketing campaign on Instant messangers

Contextual Advertising

46. Initiate a PFI (pay for inclusion) campaign for in bound links with sites like Text Link Brokers.

47. Consider Pre Sale pages or Hosted Marketing packages.

On to offline Marketing

48. Clothing is one of the best ways to market a product and service on and offline. By creating clothing that is branded with your logo and services you can ad this clothing line to online shopping sites and having people wear your clothes with your branding obviously increases your brand awareness.

My last and final tip is to make sure that everything you do can be tracked and measured via an accurate web analytics system. If you can afford it I would recommend click tracks. If that is to expensive for you then you might consider web trends. Many of these tips can not only improve your online marketing success but can increase the value of your own site allowing you to be paid much more for your