Blogging

Those of you who aren’t ready to wade into the Blog pool are taking your time for several reasons, according to my informal interviews with people before and after they blog. Others start blogging and then abandon their projects too soon, unaware of the benefits.

Whatever your reason, you should get started now – or get back to blogging as the case may be. Here’s some motivating enlightenment that you may find surprising.

Reason # 1 that you aren’t blogging – You don’t realize how huge the benefits are, and how much they may outweigh any monetary or time costs involved.

I think number one may partly the fault of people like me, who have a foot in the marketing arena, and don’t explain the idea in detail.

We tend to tell you how great blogging is, but we don’t tell you why, or better yet, show you. Or we tell you how to get the best results with your blog, but don’t tell you where to start. Let’s talk about some of the basic facts.

If you’ve ever dreamed of going from getting 10 hits a month to getting a few dozen visitors a day from search engines, blogging can make it possible, if you do it right. The structure of a blog, and the fact that most of them automatically generate content feeds, also make them the best food for your friendly neighborhood search engine spider.

If you would like to have visitors come back to your site over and over again, until they buy, you may want to be a blogger. An informative blog that engages your audience shortens the sales cycle. It also creates a courtship period. They can subscribe to your thoughts, see if they like you, even get to know you a little.

People buy from people they like. I don’t remember who said it first, but I’ve learned that it’s the truth.

If your visitors don’t feel like they are getting a personality vibe from you, they are often less likely to buy. Vibe = buy. Remember that, and that blogs make it easy for you to vibe.

If you’d like to create new targeted search engine pages for your site without needing to hand-code a new page, or fire up your HTML editor every time, you may enjoy blogging. You log in to your blog admin panel, type your thoughts, proofread, press publish.

Presto. You’re a blogger.

If you’d like free one-way links back to your site that contain your lucrative keywords, blogging helps with that too.

Even if you’ve made a mess of your SEO efforts, or been the unsuspecting victim of an algorithm change, as long as you aren’t banned by a search engine, blogging can help bring you back into top results. Because they have a search engine friendly architecture, and can make use of your keywords automatically, without being gratuitous, they are an easy way to get into a search engine and stay in.

Reason #2 That you aren’t blogging – You think it’s hard and expensive.

Granted, especially if you’re busy, or have a medium sized to large business, it may be in your best interest to hire one of the few consultants that works on these types of issues.

But if you’re a small business owner or home business owner with an online element, you can get away with firing up a free blog and paying for an inexpensive custom template if you can’t install one on your own. Most blog consultants will do all the keyword research, etc for you, so that all you’ll have to do is log in and blog.

Many of the most common blog software systems are free or inexpensive, especially when weighed against the cost of only using paid methods to attract visitors.

Reason #3 That you aren’t blogging – You don’t think of yourself as a writer.

Not only can you get away with a few paragraphs, you don’t have to write in professional-speak, or use industry jargon to blog. By nature, blogging is done in a casual, conversational tone.

And your blog posts don’t have to be long article-type entries like mine are. I’m used to writing articles, and I’m just naturally verbose. My audience is used to my mini-brain dumps, just as your blog readers will likely be happy with, or adapt to, whatever your style is. Your audience will be thrilled with a few paragraphs every day, as long as they’re informative and consistent.

So take the plunge. Start blogging today. If you’re already a blogger and didn’t see the benefits the first time around, try making it a part of your routine – and have a little fun. Give it time to work for you.

You’ll be glad you did.

Tinu is a web site promotion specialist who writes about many different ways to get more visitors to your web site. If you want better search engine results, more visitors and return traffic she invites you to take a free ecourse on blogging at http://RescueYourBlog.com .

Literature is the soul of the wit. The best source of literature can be now found in blogs. The growing trend of ‘blogmania’ is slowly sweeping the netizens. Every person aspires to have a blog as a platform to publish his thoughts and be heard and read.

General surveys undertaken on blogs and bloggers shows a rising trend in blogging. A parallel platform for literary endeavor, the blogs are overthrowing the traditional journalistic norms. Publishing of news and views no longer remains the privilege of an elite minority. Anybody and everybody is free to get in touch and explore the writer within himself. The anamorphic nature of the human soul is best reflected in the blogs.

A survey in the United States brought out a startling fact the 30% of the surveyed people read blogs. Also, 52% of the surveyed people advocate equal journalistic rights and freedom for the blogs. And the most striking fact is that 31% of the surveyed people revealed that they found blogs to be more credible than the newspapers.

The growing popularity of blogs can be gauzed from the fact that Yahoo, Google, MSN, Rediff and all the other bigwigs of the cyber world are experimenting with blogs and bloggers. Both free and paid blog hoisting sites have come up which offers a plethora of tools to make blogging a breeze.

MSN has even gone to the extent of making a common ‘passport’ database across all its services. So now, a MSN user can use his own personal ‘id’ across MSN messenger, Spaces and hotmail. Also, MSN has integrated its Spaces with MSN Messenger 7.0. The users of MSN Messenger 7.0 will have a tab labeled ‘gleams’ which will inform them when their contacts have updated their individual blogs.

Recent statistics from MSN shows that MSN has 170,000 daily blog updates. This number is huge considering the fact that most of the bloggers do not update their blogs on a daily basis.

The Literature of the new era is no longer limited to books. From Poems to Features, from Humor to Short Stories, everything can be found in the blogs.

Though good blogs are a trifle to find, yet close scrutiny will reveal every blog to be good in its own personal aspect. After all, blogs are a slice of the blogger’s life and every one’s life is a good source of learning experience.

This also opens up the teaching value of blogs. Blogs can be a mirror of life, culture and society. What can be a better teacher than one with a plethora of experiences to offer on a silver platter?

Abhishek Sarkar works as an Executive Content Developer and Analyst. He is currently associated with Alpha Blog. http://alphablog.rediffblogs.com/

You Might Be A Snob-Blogger If?

According to Jupiter Research, about 2 percent of the online community has created a blog. That works out to millions and millions of blogs, and in turn, millions and millions of snobs who publish them. That’s an awful lot of Snob-Bloggers!

You see, in order to care enough to publish a blog, you really need to be somewhat of a snob. Before we get into the reasons why, let’s look at the definition of snob.

Snob ? 1. One who tends to patronize, rebuff, or ignore people regarded as social inferiors and imitate, admire, or seek association with people regarded as social superiors. 2. One who affects an offensive air of self-satisfied superiority in matters of taste or intellect. (As defined on Dictionary.com)

Combine that definition with the definition of a blogger, and you get a Snob-Blogger, defined as ‘anyone who blogs, period’. Yes that’s right, bloggers by nature are snobs.

Not me you say! Yes, you too! ALL bloggers are Snob-Bloggers! Do you publish a blog? Don’t believe it? Take this handy dandy quiz to see if you fit the mold.

1. Have you ever commented about someone or something in a negative or superior manner on your blog? If so, you just might be a Snob-Blogger.

2. Do you and your blog readers commiserate about topics together on your blog comment system? If true, it’s possible you might be a Snob-Blogger.

3. Does your blog link to all of your other blog friends who link back to you? On that occasion, you are most likely a Snob-Blogger.

4. If you have ever ranted about something that is only interesting to you and your blogger friends, you, I’m afraid are a Snob-Blogger.

5. If you know what RSS means, I’m guessing you are a Snob-Blogger.

6. If you would stop publishing your blog because you knew nobody was reading it, you my friend are most likely a Snob-Blogger.

7. Do you recognize Wil Wheaton as someone other than the geeky kid from Star Trek: The Next Generation? If so, you are certainly a Snob-Blogger.

Other Snob-Blogger characteristics include:

· Writing rants and opinions about things you never bothered to learn about first

· Thinking that your blog is just as, or more powerful than the mass mainstream media

About The Author

Jim F. Kukral is the author of the book, BlogsToRiche$ – A step-by-step guide to using your weblog to make money online. The book can be purchased for instant download at www.blogstoriches.com. You can read Jim’s blog at www.jimkukral.com.

jim@jimkukral.com

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