Blogging

In case you haven’t heard, the net is buzzing with talk of blogging and RSS. Once the province strictly of people who got a kick out of publishing online diaries, and later of political and social commentarists, blogs and RSS are being adopted by the internet marketing community.

This is the hot new trend for 2005. The word “blog” was actually selected as the word of the year for 2004, and 2005 promises to be the year of the blog.

So what is all the fuss about? Well, especially with the increasing restrictions on email marketing, including ISP blocking of mail amounting to estimates of 40% of all email never getting delivered, marketers began to look for new avenues to get their message out. Enter blogs and RSS.

Delivered straight to a user’s desktop, the content of an RSS feed is unfiltered by anyone. Users can subscribe and unsubscribe anonymously, with the click of a mouse, and have no fear that their personal information will be shared. RSS is “pull” technology, meaning that the user asks for it, in contrast to email, which is often unasked for, and thus is often “push” technology.

Blogs, which are usually publicized by way of an RSS feed, among other venues, are the current darlings for the search engine spiders. Search engines love blogs, because they are full of content, are frequently changing, are devoid of “flash”, graphics, and other distractions, and are full of outgoing links.

If you know anything about search engine optimization, you know that those are the characteristics that should you strive for when optimizing a conventional page for the search engines. The pages in a blog are that way by their very nature, and thus attract the search engine spiders.

Why do marketers love blogs? Numerous reasons.

They are simple to create and maintain. They afford the opportunity to publish links to other sites, and to the interior pages of other sites. Their popularity with human visitors makes them natural targets for traffic. Their constantly changing content attracts the search engine spiders, which then follow the links that they find, and index the pages of other websites.

Many savvy internet marketing experts have suggested that the best way to capture an audience of potential customers is to provide them free information, either through a “content site” that does little direct selling, or through publication of an informative email newsletter that gives free information and at most employs a “soft sell” when endorsing products.

A blog is the perfect blend of the two. It has often been suggested that the best way to start an online business is with a free newsletter, which allows you to develop your “list”. While a blog doesn’t develop your “list” in quite the same way, it does afford you the opportunity to develop a loyal following among your readers, which accomplishes much the same purpose as having a “list”.

Whether you announce or endorse a product through an email list or a blog, you are announcing it to people who want to hear what you have to say. Your blog readers are probably more eager, in many cases, than are readers of your mass emails.

I could go on and on about the merits of blogs. If you are promoting any product or service online, you owe it to yourself to check out what can be done with blogs and RSS.

John Barbour, Ph.D. is the author of a new blogging guide which teaches people how to promote any product or service online using blogs and RSS.

John also maintains several internet marketing educational websites, and manages a new directory for blogs related to internet marketing. Visit the emarketing blog directory and find an interesting blog, or submit your own for inclusion.

Blogs as an online promotional strategy if done right could save you huge dollars in reaching out to people. This is also a medium where you need have absolutely no dependence whatsoever on any professional help and you can do everything yourself. That is money saved right from the beginning.

So what is a blog and how does it work? Blog is simply a web log or a diary which you maintain online posting various comments every day or even several times a day. In all aspects it is like a web page. With small differences. No more the fancy html pages, page links, graphics etc.

While you can have all these, the purpose is not show design excellence but to provide juicy information, news, and happenings from your specific industry. Each posting is like a web page technically atleast as the the Search Engines looks at it as a separate page. We will see more on search engines later. The posts also carry links to other similar pages where you can direct people who visit your blog. Your visitors too can post comments and you have the option of editing it or even deleting it.

How does one use a blog as an online promotional tool?

You are a specialist in the area of your business. You also have people working for you with specialized domain knowledge of that particular area. You make hundreds of observations during the course of a week, you come across useful news and articles, websites, all which if collected in one place could act as the source of information for your customers, your public and even the trade and competition.

All you need to do is write a couple of lines in a conversational tone as if you are speaking to someone close about what you feel and think about anything you come across and provide the links for more details.

There you got a web page rich in key words! Key words to put it simply are a lot of specific words about your trade which is how the search engines find you and list you.

Blogs offer features like linking, pinging, RSS feeds etc. which are very simple features about which you can learn as you build your blog. However the idea is not to get technical. Remember we are here to talk about promotional strategies that could save you money and explode your sales.

Blogs are a comparatively recent phenomenon. There are an estimated 5 million blogs growing by the thousands every hour. Donโ??t despair. 5 million is nothing compared to billions of web pages and website available on the www. You are still far ahead of your competition. And in your area of business or profession you may be the first. That means you just occupy the top slot in search engines.

So get in right away and post all the rants, ravings and all that you ever wanted to say but couldnโ??t.

How does a blog help you earn revenues or improve your sales?

Now let us say you have set up your blog. Ask yourself as a person of the trade or as a customer what all you would like to know everyday. Whatever is your answer is what you post every day. You also come across news or websites which you think might be useful to your customers. Simply make a mention of it with a link to the news or website. The idea is to make people come to your blogs every day seeking information. So you become famous as a specialist in that area. All your visitor are in a way interacting with you everyday and begin to accept your words and your recommendations if they see the benefits. But be sure to be very honest and transparent. It is like your personal or social relationships where any dishonesty would make people shy away from you.

You can always put in a few posts about your work, your employee who got a promotion or birth of a daughter or anything which also makes it a little warm and personal. You can post about your launches, your predictions, products which are running out, and even promote products not moving well but you feel can benefit the customer.

What you blog can reach millions globally within hours. As an illustration take the example of the recent Tsunami which hit parts of Asia. I am from the southern part of India which is one of the worst affected areas. While the conventional media was struggling to reach their reporters all over within the hour bloggers flashed the news including the details of the people lost and found, mobilized resources for the affected and the world wide web was abuzz with all the bloggers picking up and linking and connecting everything and everyone. This is an illustration of a social cause for which blog was put to good use.

Similarly there have been many instances when business news have been picked up by the industry and consumers through the RSS feeds.

The possibilities of using a blog is endless. The key to building a successful blog is listed below.

Remember to be focused on a topic that relates to your area of work.

Your entries must be in a conversational tone speaking directly to them as if you are sitting across with a friend in a restaurant or playing golf to add personalization to your marketing effort.

Post entries or comments which would benefit people.

Post as often or frequently and keep the blog updated.

Encourage visitor participation. Ask for comments and feedbacks.

Create a huge web of outside resources and other similar blogs to help you achieve both outgoing as well as incoming links to enhance search engine popularity. This also shows your customers that you are widely knowledgeable and clued in on your field of expertise.

While it may be a good idea to post a few photographs to break the monotony keep the blog simple and straight without too many graphics and photos.

Content is the key to making your blog successful and encourage repeat visits. In the beginning you may not have many visitors but as the content improves there would be a lot of traffic as well as inbound links.

This is truly a gorilla marketing tool that can make a huge difference to your total marketing efforts.

R.G. Srinivasan is a Certified Trainer, Writer and author of eBooks with more than two decades of managerial experience. He is featured as an expert author by leading content syndication sites. You can view his home-business resources blog at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com for online marketing tips, resources, opportunities and online promotional strategies.

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The popular blogger.com owned by Google, Inc. has been around the internet for a while.

But still no matter how appealing a Blog may seem now a days there are still a few people that does not actually get to know what really a Blog is.

Well, a Blog is a type of website that allows you as its owner to easily put in your messages and publish it online.

It’s more like a journal or a diary type of site, but what’s interesting is it’s not hidden from others like a normal diary where in only you can write and see it.

A Blog is your personal site and your online diary at the same time. It is a place where you post something and other may post a comment about your post. It’s actually a great site to publish your own opinion and “what you think”? thingy.

Now, with all those features how come it’s also a marketing tool? For some it may seem to be a diary or a journal but for some it is more likely to be a place to advertise products and market them.

Why? Because of the ability of Blogs to be crawled easily by search engines and because of the nature of a Blog that makes it look like an e-campus class that consist of a teacher and students. Advertisers, marketers and even programmers can make use of a Blog to post in messages about their products and users could post in their comments too.

A Blog is easily crawled by search engines because it is a content based site and search engines loves sites with great content volumes. I have a Blog my self at http://prialde.blog.com and with in 24 hours I can already search my Blog at Google Search.

A Blog is a great tool indeed. The answer now to the question, “Do I Really Need It??” is up to you to answer. Just remember no site is great without others knowing it.

Here are some of the Blogs I love to spend some time on.

http://prialde.blog.com
http://www.elf-ideas.blogspot.com/

http://ezinearticles.com/blog/

And here are some of the sites offering free Blogs.

http://www.blog.com/
http://www.blogger.com/
http://www.blog-city.com/
http://www.blogdrive.com/

http://www.tblog.com/

And try this site http://simpleads.net/ to advertise your Blog.

Glenn is the owner and creator of iSnare http://www.isnare.com a free articles site that offers unlimited free article submission and free reprint. iSnare can also write great contents for your site, visit http://outsourcing.isnare.com/?p=3

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