They’ve become mainstream. They’re here to stay. Everyone and his dog is blogging nowadays, including genuinely smart people who teach Princeton and MIT students (Paul Krugman‘s readership is massive).

The real questions are why, and how.

Why is answered easily enough. Most bloggers belong to one or more of several groups:

Those who are write about their every day life. (They should probably twitter instead.)

Those who are run a rumor mill. (A few do this very successfully, e.g., Boing Boing.)

Those who like express their opinion on this, that and everything.

Those who blog to get their site indexed — search engines love blogs.

The two latter groups, to which you probably belong, includes individuals that range from genuine experts who run a site or two on their field of interest, to marketers who run large numbers of sites on topics that they don’t always fully grasp.

They blog to drive more traffic to their site. Depending on their revenue model, more traffic can mean more ad or affiliate revenue; or more prospects. It also means that, in a way, they’re gaining celebrity. More than experts, they’re becoming opinion leaders.

Setting aside those who breed armies of low quality sites, I’ve yet to bump into an internet marketer who isn’t — at least to an extent — blogging to position himself as an opinion leader in his field. As a result, I’ll be assuming your goal is no different in what follows.

A Key Success Factors

The difference between an expert and a non-expert goes down to four points:

Celebrity

Looks

Consistency

Use Of Jargon

When you’re a celebrity, no matter what you write, do, or say, someone out there will mention you, and contribute further press to what you’re writing, doing, or saying. It’s that simple. And there is no such thing as bad press — it’s still press.

From a social psychologist’s standpoint, celebrity goes down to labeling and conformism. In broad terms, Joe labeled you as worth watching. Jack assumes you are because Joe told him you were. Things then conveniently snowball once you beat a certain threshold.

But this is a goal. Probably not an asset you’re starting with. It’s nice to have it in mind, though, because as your site grows, so will your celebrity. Plus, the blogosphere tends to exacerbate the way you gain celebrity.

Research supports that, when it comes to looks, even trivial points count.

The guy on TV who selling you toothpaste is just an actor with a bright smile. Yet, he is dressed up like a dentist. He conveys his message with more authority as a result. Closer to our topic, you’ll find a coder tip on rentacoder.com that goes: Choose a photo of yourself in a business suit rather than one from your last vacation; you’ll get 25% more business.

A professional-looking site is good enough. Perfect-looking is arguably better, but you’ll quickly have more important things to be spending your energy on. In particular, generating new streams of traffic, and increasing your conversion rate.

When it comes to a web site, professional-looking means things like minding your copy, removing animated gizmos, and making your site navigable. Running a mailing list will also help. As might having a few advertisements around.

As you create your site, ask yourself two questions:

If you were a visitor who landed on the site for the first time, would you want to stay on it for more than a few seconds? One sec’… Look at your competition’s web sites. Now answer. (That’s why professional is good enough for our sake.)

Next, consider what else that visitor could possibly be looking for. Can he immediately spot where you’ve hidden it? If not, you might be missing a web page. Or a section. Or some related links within — or immediately after — your content. Or a proper search function. In short, your site could be made more navigable.

Navigability conveys trust. Related Widgets, Silo Widgets and Nav Menu Widgets all contribute towards this. If you’ve a site with moderate traffic, you’ve certainly spotted those exceptional visitors that read 10 pages upon landing on it. Their number is a good indicator of your site’s quality and navigability.

Social psychological research on consistency is both abundant and entertaining.

Of interest to us is that you do not want to be writing everything and its opposite on your site. No expert in his right mind can afford to be inconsistent. If his audience comes to suspect he has a doubt, he looses his status (credible expert) on the spot.

Thus, pick a topic. Try to stay focused as a rule. Pick a position. Stick to it. And write authoritatively.

As you know from watching politicians on TV, you’re allowed to contradict yourself. Just, not on the same web page — and preferably not on the same web site.

While we’re on the topic of consistency, keep our fondness for familiar things in mind. The more visitors read your site, the more familiar they are with the points you’re making. Eventually, they’ll take them for granted. They’ll even find them likable; and, as the conveyor of a likable message, they’ll find you likable.

Also, keep in mind that your visitors — like you and I — are generally consistent with their commitments. The implication for you is tremendous. As a visitor starts reading your site; clicks a link; subscribes to your feed or list; he commits himself to thinking you’ve with some level of credibility.

From that point onwards, the question no longer is “How do I convince this visitor that I might be a credible authority?”. You’ve just succeeded. The question is “How do I convince this visitor that he made the right decision by assuming I am?”.

Surely you’re aware that a TV ad’s purpose has as much to do with reassuring existing customers that they made the right decision than with acquiring new ones. The same holds for web sites. And this is where the quality of your message comes in.

I once came across a surprising research finding. It held that court experts who made the effort to explain their point in layman’s terms were dismissed as less credible than those who didn’t. I found the finding unintuitive, so proceeded to investigate further.

It turned out that other research supports the opposite. When experts use jargon, jurors make less efforts to understand them. Worse, jurors become more susceptible to counterfactual arguments, because the latter offer relief from the burden of having tried to understand incomprehensible garbage.

So the question remains open. Especially given the amusing cases where completely unintelligible copy, generated using SciGen for instance, made it into scientific journals.

My own take on the topic is that the use of jargon will serve you if your audience makes no effort to properly analyze what you’re saying or writing. Research evidence comforts me in this view, too.

Incidentally, that’s exactly what most web visitors do. Research suggests that web pages are scanned more than they’re read.

There is a twist. When you write copy for your web site, you’re not merely seeking to gain the recognition of Joe users. You’re also seeking to gain the recognition of other experts in your field. After all, the more experts link to your site, the more credible you become.

For this, your use of jargon is crucial. Experts use it for two reasons. On the one hand side, it helps them exchange ideas using specialized vocabulary. On the other, it allows them to recognize their peers on the spot. Enter posers.

Posers tend to overrate the use of jargon, because they need to compensate for their lack of expertise. This serves them well, because laymen will assume you’re an expert in a field if you use that field’s jargon. The trouble for these posers is that… so do they! Fact is, posers are probably more impressed by other posers than by real experts. There’s your chance to quickly rise above the crowd.

As you investigate your competition, spot those who know what they’re talking about; and the obvious posers. Go after the latter first. They’ll drive less traffic to your site; but they’re a lot easier impress. As you do, keep Joe users in mind. They’ll stay around if you enunciate your conclusions in terms that everyone and his dog can understand. Things will snowball thereafter.

If what they do is any indicator, successful bloggers tend to keep posts personal, granular, and to the point. It’s not uncommon to see little analysis and argumentation. You’ll find quoted material, images, links to other sites, and cosmetic thoughts on the latter.

There’s arguably nothing wrong with this. It’s a web log, after all; not a newspaper column run by high profile journalists and academics. There are smarter ways to do it, however.

Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when you write blog posts (and static pages):

Good usability guidelines related to writing for the web exist. They apply to blog posts too.

In today’s world of RSS feeds, you’ve a single line to convince your readers. That line is your post’s title; not its excerpt or its meta description tag.

Generating volume works if you’re breeding armies of sites for AdSense clicks; if not, keep in mind that all good writing is rewritten.

Keeping a well-maintained list of quality material in your link manager (use Link widgets) is a great way to generate loyal visitors. Take Bob Bly‘s blog as a great example.

Using static pages to publish in-depth content on your site (or maintaining a separate, legacy site with quality material) is another great way to do so. This is good SEO practice, too. Don’t miss the Silo Widgets feature in Semiologic Pro if you do.

Then again, you may be less interested in generating a regular readership than you are in getting a low quality site indexed. In this case, there is only one guideline: use keywords, keywords, and keywords!

 www.semilogic.com

Â

They’ve become mainstream. They’re here to stay. Everyone and his dog is blogging nowadays, including genuinely smart people who teach Princeton and MIT students (Paul Krugman‘s readership is massive).

The real questions are why, and how.

 

Why Blog?

Why is answered easily enough. Most bloggers belong to one or more of several groups:

·         Those who are write about their every day life. (They should probably twitter instead.)

·         Those who are run a rumor mill. (A few do this very successfully, e.g., Boing Boing.)

·         Those who like express their opinion on this, that and everything.

·         Those who blog to get their site indexed — search engines love blogs.

The two latter groups, to which you probably belong, includes individuals that range from genuine experts who run a site or two on their field of interest, to marketers who run large numbers of sites on topics that they don’t always fully grasp.

They blog to drive more traffic to their site. Depending on their revenue model, more traffic can mean more ad or affiliate revenue; or more prospects. It also means that, in a way, they’re gaining celebrity. More than experts, they’re becoming opinion leaders.

Setting aside those who breed armies of low quality sites, I’ve yet to bump into an internet marketer who isn’t — at least to an extent — blogging to position himself as an opinion leader in his field. As a result, I’ll be assuming your goal is no different in what follows.

 

Key Success Factors

The difference between an expert and a non-expert goes down to four points:

Celebrity

Looks

Consistency

Use Of Jargon

Celebrity

When you’re a celebrity, no matter what you write, do, or say, someone out there will mention you, and contribute further press to what you’re writing, doing, or saying. It’s that simple. And there is no such thing as bad press — it’s still press.

From a social psychologist’s standpoint, celebrity goes down to labeling and conformism. In broad terms, Joe labeled you as worth watching. Jack assumes you are because Joe told him you were. Things then conveniently snowball once you beat a certain threshold.

But this is a goal. Probably not an asset you’re starting with. It’s nice to have it in mind, though, because as your site grows, so will your celebrity. Plus, the blogosphere tends to exacerbate the way you gain celebrity.

Looks

Research supports that, when it comes to looks, even trivial points count.

The guy on TV who selling you toothpaste is just an actor with a bright smile. Yet, he is dressed up like a dentist. He conveys his message with more authority as a result. Closer to our topic, you’ll find a coder tip on rentacoder.com that goes: Choose a photo of yourself in a business suit rather than one from your last vacation; you’ll get 25% more business.

A professional-looking site is good enough. Perfect-looking is arguably better, but you’ll quickly have more important things to be spending your energy on. In particular, generating new streams of traffic, and increasing your conversion rate.

When it comes to a web site, professional-looking means things like minding your copy, removing animated gizmos, and making your site navigable. Running a mailing list will also help. As might having a few advertisements around.

As you create your site, ask yourself two questions:

If you were a visitor who landed on the site for the first time, would you want to stay on it for more than a few seconds? One sec’… Look at your competition’s web sites. Now answer. (That’s why professional is good enough for our sake.)

Next, consider what else that visitor could possibly be looking for. Can he immediately spot where you’ve hidden it? If not, you might be missing a web page. Or a section. Or some related links within — or immediately after — your content. Or a proper search function. In short, your site could be made more navigable.

Navigability conveys trust. Related Widgets, Silo Widgets and Nav Menu Widgets all contribute towards this. If you’ve a site with moderate traffic, you’ve certainly spotted those exceptional visitors that read 10 pages upon landing on it. Their number is a good indicator of your site’s quality and navigability.

Consistency

Social psychological research on consistency is both abundant and entertaining.

Of interest to us is that you do not want to be writing everything and its opposite on your site. No expert in his right mind can afford to be inconsistent. If his audience comes to suspect he has a doubt, he looses his status (credible expert) on the spot.

Thus, pick a topic. Try to stay focused as a rule. Pick a position. Stick to it. And write authoritatively.

As you know from watching politicians on TV, you’re allowed to contradict yourself. Just, not on the same web page — and preferably not on the same web site.

While we’re on the topic of consistency, keep our fondness for familiar things in mind. The more visitors read your site, the more familiar they are with the points you’re making. Eventually, they’ll take them for granted. They’ll even find them likable; and, as the conveyor of a likable message, they’ll find you likable.

Also, keep in mind that your visitors — like you and I — are generally consistent with their commitments. The implication for you is tremendous. As a visitor starts reading your site; clicks a link; subscribes to your feed or list; he commits himself to thinking you’ve with some level of credibility.

From that point onwards, the question no longer is “How do I convince this visitor that I might be a credible authority?”. You’ve just succeeded. The question is “How do I convince this visitor that he made the right decision by assuming I am?”.

Surely you’re aware that a TV ad’s purpose has as much to do with reassuring existing customers that they made the right decision than with acquiring new ones. The same holds for web sites. And this is where the quality of your message comes in.

Use Of Jargon

I once came across a surprising research finding. It held that court experts who made the effort to explain their point in layman’s terms were dismissed as less credible than those who didn’t. I found the finding unintuitive, so proceeded to investigate further.

It turned out that other research supports the opposite. When experts use jargon, jurors make less efforts to understand them. Worse, jurors become more susceptible to counterfactual arguments, because the latter offer relief from the burden of having tried to understand incomprehensible garbage.

So the question remains open. Especially given the amusing cases where completely unintelligible copy, generated using SciGen for instance, made it into scientific journals.

My own take on the topic is that the use of jargon will serve you if your audience makes no effort to properly analyze what you’re saying or writing. Research evidence comforts me in this view, too.

Incidentally, that’s exactly what most web visitors do. Research suggests that web pages are scanned more than they’re read.

There is a twist. When you write copy for your web site, you’re not merely seeking to gain the recognition of Joe users. You’re also seeking to gain the recognition of other experts in your field. After all, the more experts link to your site, the more credible you become.

For this, your use of jargon is crucial. Experts use it for two reasons. On the one hand side, it helps them exchange ideas using specialized vocabulary. On the other, it allows them to recognize their peers on the spot. Enter posers.

Posers tend to overrate the use of jargon, because they need to compensate for their lack of expertise. This serves them well, because laymen will assume you’re an expert in a field if you use that field’s jargon. The trouble for these posers is that… so do they! Fact is, posers are probably more impressed by other posers than by real experts. There’s your chance to quickly rise above the crowd.

As you investigate your competition, spot those who know what they’re talking about; and the obvious posers. Go after the latter first. They’ll drive less traffic to your site; but they’re a lot easier impress. As you do, keep Joe users in mind. They’ll stay around if you enunciate your conclusions in terms that everyone and his dog can understand. Things will snowball thereafter.

How To Write Blog Posts

If what they do is any indicator, successful bloggers tend to keep posts personal, granular, and to the point. It’s not uncommon to see little analysis and argumentation. You’ll find quoted material, images, links to other sites, and cosmetic thoughts on the latter.

There’s arguably nothing wrong with this. It’s a web log, after all; not a newspaper column run by high profile journalists and academics. There are smarter ways to do it, however.

Here’s a list of things to keep in mind when you write blog posts (and static pages):

Good usability guidelines related to writing for the web exist. They apply to blog posts too.

In today’s world of RSS feeds, you’ve a single line to convince your readers. That line is your post’s title; not its excerpt or its meta description tag.

Generating volume works if you’re breeding armies of sites for AdSense clicks; if not, keep in mind that all good writing is rewritten.

Keeping a well-maintained list of quality material in your link manager (use Link widgets) is a great way to generate loyal visitors. Take Bob Bly‘s blog as a great example.

Using static pages to publish in-depth content on your site (or maintaining a separate, legacy site with quality material) is another great way to do so. This is good SEO practice, too. Don’t miss the Silo Widgets feature in Semiologic Pro if you do.

Then again, you may be less interested in generating a regular readership than you are in getting a low quality site indexed. In this case, there is only one guideline: use keywords, keywords, and keywords!

 

www.semiologic.com

 

 

 

 

A small business could create websites for each of its product lines, and build each site with blogging software, then link them all together to a main sales site. New product announcements,a FAQ, customer support, description of features, etc, is all handled in a snap…

Somebody wanting a quick and easy mini-site to sell products could easily do this. It would also be a great way to do a content or informational site that links to an actual product sales site, or promotes products through affiliate links.

The thing doesn’t even have to look like a conventional blog, if you don’t want it to. You can structure it to look like a standard website, but get all the benefits of having a blog, like frequent visits from the search engine spiders, quick indexing, and the ability to announce it on all kindsof blog announcement sites…

That is creative internet marketing at the cutting edge!

People are already doing this. I’ve visited several sites that are constructed this way using either WordPress or MoveableType. They can be made to look just like regular websites. In fact, the first time I visited one, I didn’t have a clue that it was done that way, until I corresponded with the webmaster, and he told me how his site was constructed.

The blog is embedded into the website seamlessly, and retains the ease and functionality of a blog, without looking like one. The site retains all the benefits of a blog – easy, frequent updates, a conversational tone, the ability to interact with site visitors and customers right on the site, and the ability to use pinging and blog directory announcements, etc.

Another such site combines a home page, sales pages for an ebook, and two blogs. The whole thing is constructed using blogging software, which makes it a snap to update. As with the first site I mentioned, it looks for all the world like a conventional website, but gains many of the advantages of a blog.

This is the wave of the future, folks, and it’s happening now.

Get on board before the train leaves the station…

John Barbour, Ph.D. owns and operates a number of blogs and websites devoted to making money online. His latest projects include a site devoted to blogging guides and software, and his own blogging advice ebook.

The average blogger makes around $20 to $50 per month. So, if that is the average, it stands to reason that some people make less than that and some people make more. The amount of potential income that can be generated by blogging depends entirely upon your ability to build a loyal audience of people who have money to spend.

There is no point in creating a blog and then looking for an audience. Your first task is to identify a hungry market and provide it with high quality information. Once you have established your blog and created some interesting content, your next task is to attract your hungry audience to your blog. There are many ways of attracting traffic to a blog site including banner adverts, ezine advertising, pay per click traffic, links fro other web sites and submitting your site to the specialist blog search engines.

There are literally hundreds of blog sites that lay desolate and abandoned like an old frontier town with tumbleweeds blowing through on the breeze. Their owners failed to identify a hungry market, they failed to attract visitors or they simply gave up posting fresh new content to their blogs.

Blogs are dynamic web sites, they require time and attention. Search engines love them because they are frequently updated with fresh new content. People love them because they regularly provide new and interesting information. But you have to persist, just like any other business, online or offline, you have to work at building up your content, building up an audience of loyal readers and creating a portfolio of products and services that will appeal to your readers and generate some income.

There are many ways of generating income from your blog. Several people have created successful niche sites that offer product reviews including books, software, videos, DVDs and other popular products. Other bloggers earn their income from the sale of advertising space and yet others generate income through pay per click systems such as Google’s Adsense programme.

There is now another way of building a profitable blog. A brand new hosted blog service – http://www.Blog4Cash.com has married a fully featured blogging service with a two tier affiliate programme thus allowing you to build up a residual income from everyone who signs up through your referral. This provides a great opportunity to build up a regular income to supplement your regular blog profit.

So remember, to become a truly successful blogger you must take a long term view and seek to provide interesting content for a hungry market with money to spend. Don’t expect to achieve profit overnight and plan to build a portfolio of income streams some of which have a residual element that will provide you will a recurring income.

Copyright 2007 John Taylor

About The Author

John Taylor – November 2007.

John is a prolific writer and is the author of several books including “Testing & Tracking” (http://www.Test-and-track.com).

For information on *How To Get Paid To Blog* click here now to visit… http://www.Blog4Cash.com

This article may be reprinted online, within ezines and newsletters on the condition that this resource box remains intact.

So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

Reason #1: More free traffic to your site

I’m not exaggerating when I say that a frequently updated feed can bring you massive amounts of traffic in a short time period. This won’t be true forever.

Here’s a snapshot in PDF format, of just the feed-originating traffic to a new page of my site for the first 24 hours it opened.

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/2-rss-marketing/screenshot.pdf

Not exactly a stampede, but here’s the good part.

On the fourth day, the feed traffic doubled, and all other traffic continued to rise at the same rate.

That’s my fifth active feed of the twenty I have spread out over four sites, and I get similar results each time. In thirty days, that would be at least 5,000 new targeted visitors – again, this is not counting my present traffic, or those who try my feed and stay subscribed, nor does it factor in what happens when the traffic doubles again..

I can’t promise you the exact same results, no one can. But you should know that my feed is targeted towards a crowed market – if you know how to set up your feed properly and correctly apply your keyword research, you could have better results..

Those visitors, from the first hour of traffic to today, resulted just from submitting my feed to the list of directories I compiled from many sources and studied. Some bring great free traffic to new feeds, some are better for once your feed has matured.

You can often get better placement in feed directories and in Yahoo’s RSS Directory than you could from your results in a regular search engine, and often, inclusion is instant.

Reason #2: It’s a hands-off way to update your audience

What if you could run your newsletter without the hassles of maintaining your list, removing bounced addresses, finding new subscribers, formatting the content you find, altering your content to keep from being blacklisted, and after all that, wondering if all the various blockers mistakenly kept your message from getting through?

If that sounds like heaven, you can be one of the angels as soon as an hour from now.

When you supplement your current newsletter with more frequent updates via feed, you will be able to push out updates to subscribers to your news channel or feed more frequently and more efficiently.

With all the new free tools available, even if you’re all thumbs when it comes to making a web page, if you can fill out a form, you can create a feed.

Reason #3: Get visitors to click through to your site whenever you update

If you haven’t used a feed reader before, you might be confused about the connection between the feed and your site and why it can result in an increase in traffic. I’ll attempt to explain this to you in words, but I suggest downloading a news aggregator (also known as a feed reader), and looking at the results of your favorite site’s feed through a reader after you read this for the full effect..

You can use my main feed here if you don’t have one to view:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeTrafficTips

If you don’t want to have another application up while you’re surfing, you can try Pluck , a free application you can use for more than just feeds that integrates with Internet Explorer – get it at http://freetrafficdirectory.com/pluck – it will take you right to the downloads page.

You can also do this from My Yahoo!, by changing your page to include their RSS Headlines console, still in Beta testing at http://my.yahoo.com.

To summarize, a visitor sees the headlines they want to read, view the summary, and click through to your site to read the rest of the news, either in a new window, or without having to leave the application they are in.

And when you update again, the reader will notify them that you have new headlines, and/or populate the list of items you have available. This can keep your audience coming back.

If you had trouble following that, come to this page for a one minute tutorial: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/postt95.html

Reason #4: Recycle old content.

If you have a list of your older articles, some older product reviews, site suggestions, or archived newsletters, you can use those to build content to populate your feed with information. As long as this news is still relevant, you can recycle this content to attract new visitors

Reason #5: Its so easy it’s crazy not to do it.

Before the last few months, there weren’t as many free tools online that made the process of starting and publicizing a feed so effective and user-friendly.

The bottom line is, now that you can get all those benefits from filling out a form, saving the file, uploading to your server, promoting it once, and updating it from time to time, it’s insane not to do so.

You already have to update your site from time to time. You might as well get all the benefits of having a news feed too.

Copyright © 2007 Tinu AbayomiPaul

About The Author

Tinu currently wanted by Secret Hoarders of America for spilling free traffic tips: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

Let’s get to the point.

Every business has the same process. That is, make potential customer come to you and sell your product, service or information.Paraphrasing it into blogging term, let the readers come to your blog and make them click the link like “Buy now”, “Join Now”, “Adsense Ads”, etc.

We call readers as traffic. And about how many out of your readers click the link refer we as conversion rate. Of course, the higher the conversion rate, the better.

Specifically, make-money blogging follows for steps:

About author
Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of Blog Sites and running Hom Based Affiliate Business web site.

Ryen Kim is an MBA, specialized in marketing research and analysis. His current focus is blogging and home based affiliate business as a work-at-home scheme. He is a founder of and running web site.

There are no hard and fast rules on how to blog. Having said that, bloggers will likely increase their exposure by following some simple blog guidelines.

1.) Stay on topic.
Opinions are generally accepted but the content of the items in the blog should all relate to a general theme. Unless you have an uncanny knack for wit, humor or cynicism, the majority of your readers will be interested in the content that relates to a specific defined theme or loosely defined area of interest. Most readers won’t care that you eat Cheerios for breakfast. They may, however, be interested in the fact that vinegar takes out stains and that toilet paper rolls make great wreaths. Define a topic and stick to it. This will ensure that you create a loyal following of interested readers.

2.) Stay informative.
If you are attempting to create the impression that you are knowledgeable about a specific industry or sector, be sure that you stay current on news. If you are endorsing a product or voicing an opinion, be sure to check your facts; your reputation is at stake. If you are offering an opinion, be sure to qualify your post, making it clear that the content is intended as an editorial.

3.) Old news is not news.
While blogging every day can be a drain, it is important that the information presented is current and accurate, writing an article or blurb about something that happened 6 months ago, will not be of interest to many. Telling your audience that Martha Stewart was convicted and will be going to prison, after her sentence is completed will make people question the value of your columns.

4.) Adhere to a schedule.
Create a schedule and stick to it. Realizing that blogging requires time and effort, don’t create unrealistic expectations and be unable to deliver. An occasional lapse or holiday is generally understood but readers returning to find stale, out-dated content are going to find another blog with similar content. New blogs and RSS feeds are popping up on a daily basis. If you have worked hard to develop an audience and a community you don’t want to lose them due to lack of communication.

5.) Clarity and simplicity.
Keep your posts and blog entries clear and easy to understand. Remember, the web is global and expressions, idioms and acronyms don’t always translate. Sometimes a little explanation goes a long way.

6.) Keyword-rich.
If the goal of your blog is to increase your visibility, include related keywords in the title of the blog. Use the title as a headline to attract interest. Each item post should have a title that will attract attention but still be relevant to the post. The title should be no longer than 10-12 words.

7.) Quantity matters.
In order to attract the attention of search engines, you will need to develop content and substance. A headline or simple sentence is not going to generate the interest of readers or help with search engine ranking. Be sure to archive old blog posts to develop a large portal of similarly-themed content.

8.) Frequency.
If your blog content is updated frequently, search engines will tend to spider the pages at regular intervals.

9.) Spell checking and proof-reading.
It only takes a few extra moments and can save you from having to make embarrassing explanations. Remember that whatever you publish on the Internet can be found and archived. Think carefully about what you post before doing so.

10.) RSS.
RSS will increase your blog’s reach. It is important that you include your blog’s content in an RSS feed to increase readership and distribution.

Most weblog audiences are small, but with time and regular updates audiences grow. Bloggers may never have more than a few hundred readers, but the people who return to regularly are generally interested in what you have to say.

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing and publishing RSS feeds and NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software.

There are several reasons why you should consider using blog pages to run your entire web site. These include:

* You can make changes to your web site content without the need for specialist software

* You can make changes to your content from anywhere you can access the web; you don’t need to be at your PC.

* You can make changes to content quickly ? more quickly than with software.

* You can make changes to content without incurring cost ? unlike using a web design agency.

* You can use blogs to create content with colleagues, working as a team ? something that’s more difficult and more costly with software.

All of these benefits can be obtained free of charge using Blogger.com to run your pages. To use Blogger.com as a content management system, take the following steps:

1. Create a web page template for your entire site.

2. Include Blogger.com ‘tags’ for each blog entry within your template. The key tags you will need are: and . These tags will insert the title and the text for each item you enter into your blog.

3. Set up each page of your web site as a separate blog using the ‘advanced’ settings.

4. For each blog, use your template code as the template within Blogger.com

5. Post a single entry into each blog, which is the main content for your page.

6. Publish your blog! That’s it!

In the future, you will be able to change the content or add to it, simply by logging onto Blogger.com, choosing the appropriate blog (or page of your web site) and then editing the post item.

People are beginning to realize the potential for content management using blogs. You no longer have to see blogs in terms of a single page that is added to your web site. Instead, you can view blogging as the way you run your web site.

If you want answers to the top blogging questions you can get a free guide to the Top 15 Questions on Blogging from: http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an author of 27 books and thousands of articles. He runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own information products, ebooks, reports and articles online.

http://www.infoselling.com

‘Blogging’ is a fairly recent addition to our vocabulary, and it’s exactly what you’ll be doing if you pursue budget marketing via blogs. In the exact same way that email, chat rooms, instant messaging, and Internet personals have revolutionized human relationships, web logs or ‘blogs’ are widely used journal-type sites for people online, giving anyone with web access the ability to view or post ‘entries’ in a diary format to share their personal experiences.

Budget marketing using blogs, forums and message boards is also being utilized increasingly ? and very effectively ? in businesses like the stock market, as well as the technology sector and science industries offering Internet marketing for products, business services and B2B information.

Search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves have expanded their weblog services and marketing capabilities so practically any savvy businessperson, large or small, can capitalize on the benefits of budget marketing via blogs. The best way to discover the advantages of web logs is to subscribe to a free service like ‘Bloglines’ which launched recently. Whether you’re interested in news, business, travel, entertainment or cars, this site delivers you the best blogs on your favorite topics via ‘RSS feeds’, which are computer files specially formatted to bring you just the content you’re looking for, without the excess bother that spam blockers were designed for!

If you are excited about your company or new business, be it a large, medium or home-based and you want to let the world know, then the great news is that the World Wide Web is at your fingertips. Even better news, it won’t cost you a bundle to get on board! The Internet has opened up incredible possibilities to market yourself and your business in ways that were unheard of just a decade or two ago, specifically budget marketing via blogs.

Other avenues that you should be researching in addition to budget marketing with blogs are, using message boards for your press releases, and using reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking is cross linking for promotion between websites. Ezines (electronic newsletters) and direct email (not to be confused with spam) can also be used in conjunction with budget marketing via blogs to really get your business out in to the world!

Written for – internet marketing news