Internet Marketing Hints And Tips » more magazine garry knox

What To Consider When Commencing Business Blogging

Gary Knox — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 13:03:55 +0000

If you are already convinced with the potential of business blogs for marketing and targeting an increase in your sales, your are now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an ideaon how your marketing should be structured.
2. Setup several test blogs right away.

If your initial experiment with test blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs for real.

Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
Choose a topic. It is good to have a selection of topics that you want for your blogs but make certain they are relevant to your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results might be going against the set objectives.
Start blogging and complete 20 posts before proceeding to marketing.
Begin marketing.
Regularly monitor the traffic to the site and get updates on what your visitors want. Then, measure your results.
Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs and layouts of each blog site as long as it retains the company’s identity.
Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
Schedule updates regularly.
Remember the following safety measures in blogging:

legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
corporate communication and legal departments are responsible for educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public;
avoid outright marketing blog or you might frighten away your readers;
keep content updated, relevant and fresh;
reinforce the company’s core values; and,
encourage employees to use it.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

Boost Your Business With Blogging!

Gary Knox — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:00:16 +0000

A Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.

Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages:

Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.
Awareness and loyalty. Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.
Feedback. Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.
Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.

For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.

For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well.

Small Business Blog Marketing: What Does It Entail?

Gary Knox — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:08:20 +0000

Blog marketing can be quite complicated for anyone that has never even blogged before. If you are considering getting into small business blog marketing, you will want to first have a blog and see what that is like before you get into something more. Blogging requires dedication and patience. You have to update your blog on a regular basis in order to keep your readers happy. Doing so will keep them coming back for more and to see what you have new to say.

Small business blog marketing consists of blogging about your business. It definitely is a great tool that you should use to get your business out there and known by others. However, you will need to be patient because it is a long process that will require much of your attention. Just because you have a blog does not mean that someone is going to find it and read it. You are going to have to make it known. If you have a website for your business, you can link your blog to it and that will let the ones that know about your business and business website know about your blog as well.

Small business blog marketing is something that anyone can do. Having a blog and keeping it up to date with the latest information is not hard. All you need to have is a plan and you will be set to market any type of business from your blog. Whether you are selling a product or a service, it does not matter. A blog that is marketed the right way will be beneficial to any business whatever it might be.

So you are probably wondering how you are going to accomplish this small business blog marketing. When you are marketing a blog, you pretty much do it the same way that you would market a website. It is going to need keywords, and content. You can write the content yourself, or pay someone else to write it for you. That part is totally up to you. However you will want to be sure that the content is decent and something that your readers will want to read. This will keep them coming back. Make sure that the content is written from special keywords that you choose. You will also want to become familiar with SEO which is Search Engine Optimisation. SEO will help you to optimize your blog to get a better ranking with the search engines.

Once you have chosen the keywords, and gotten some content published on your blog, you will be ready to get it out there some more. Link exchanges are wonderful for marketing your small business blog. You want to try and exchange links with sites that are relevant to yours, but not in direct competition. If you try to exchange links with sites in competition with yours, you are going to find that many of them will turn you down in fear of losing business to you.

Paid directories are a big part of small business blog marketing as well. You can pay some directories to list your blog URL in their directory under the specific category that it falls under. However, some of these even have specific qualifications that you must have to get in. Follow all of the application steps, and you should be ok. Just do not try to submit your blog to a directory that it does not qualify for, or fit in.

Another important thing to remember when you are into small business blog marketing is that if anyone leaves you a comment on your blog, you should acknowledge it and respond. You can also comment on other blogs that are relevant to yours, and leave a link to your blog as well. This will help bring in visitors to your blog, and you will begin to see more and more traffic.

Small business blog marketing is not rocket science, however someone that has never marketed a single thing before in their life may have problems. Just be persistent, and don’t give up.

Blog Marketing: How Much Money Can You Make?

Gary Knox — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 13:06:58 +0000

When you are using blog marketing to make an income, really the amount of money that can be made is something that you determine. You are in charge of the amount of work that you put into it, and therefore in charge of the amount that can be earned. Of course, the more you do, the more you can possibly make. The old saying, “If you build it, they will come”, is one that is not true in the marketing world of the internet. Not only do you have to build it, you also have to market it and promote it. You have to get your blog out there so that people can find it and know that it exists.

Blog marketing is not something that will give you a limited income. The more you promote and market, the better your chances of making money or more money. Lets say you all ready have a blog set up. You are promoting some services and products through your blog, and you are making a nice little effortless income. Well you want more income; you want to make more money with your blog. What do you do? You promote it more. Maybe you can start with the paid blog directories and submit your blog to those. Investing some of the money that you make is a great idea, especially if you are looking to increase your income.

However, there are also many free tools that you can use to promote your blog as well as techniques. There is the comment section that is on just about every living blog on the internet. The comment section is a very useful and powerful tool that you can use to get visitors back to your blog. For example, lets take a market like model airplanes. You have a blog on model airplanes, and you want more traffic. Well, the first thing that you would need to do is to find a blog that is about airplanes, or models. You can even use your direct market if you wish which are model airplanes. Once you have found an authority blog that gets traffic, and comments on a regular basis, you can leave comments as well. Leaving comments with a link back to your blog will give others that read the high authority blog a way to get to yours. If your blog is of interest to them, they may even bookmark it, and become a regular reader.

If you are not all ready, be sure that you update your blog regularly. Doing so will allow your readers to know when they can come back to your blog for new content. Let them know how often you are going to update, and stick to it. If you tell them you will be updating once a day, do so. Or you just might end up with readers that will not follow you because they can not depend on you to give them what they are looking for; new fresh content.

When you use blog marketing to make money, the sky is the limit. The amount of money that you can make is determined by you, and something that you set. The more work and patience that you put into it, the more money you will get out of it. Whether you are promoting your favorite things, or someone else’s, do it with a passion for the best results.

Beginners Guide to Blogging

Gary Knox — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:05:39 +0000

A blog is basically an online journal wherein you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, opinions and practically anything that you want people to read. Blogs come in different styles, formats, and settings, depending on the preference of the user. Many blogging sites, offer built in features such as hyperlink, straight texts, pictures etc. Some blogging sites, even allow you to put video and mp3′s on your blogs.

Instead of writing texts, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly, by using spoken word entries. This is called audio blogging.

Basically a blog contains these features:

Title – which allows you to label your post
Body – this is the content of your post
Trackback – other sites can be linked back to your blog
Permanent link – every article that you write has a URL
Comments – this allow readers to post comments on your blog.

One of the advantages of blogging, is that it is made of only a few templates. Unlike, other websites that are made up of numerous individual pages. This make it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fixed setting that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc.

This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can chose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.

Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they’ve become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other bloggers pages, and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members’ blogs.

Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs espouse on their specific themes. This way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.

Some bloggers even use their blogs as a means to advertise. Some authors advertise their books on their blogs. While other bloggers, use their blogs to shed light on currents issues, events, news and catastrophes.

Nowadays in education, blogs also play an important part. Tutors use blogging to document the lessons that they have discussed and taught. This way, students who who have missed classes, can easily catch up with their assignments.

A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs, with millions and millions of people logging onto the net everyday, blogging has become a lucrative move. Some bloggers who run online businesses promote their merchandise online. While others profit through advertisement.

But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, poems, rants, opinions, find that blogging offers them a medium in which to express themselves.

One of the appeals of blogging is that it creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other.

Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. First time users who want to get an idea of what the blogging world is all about can browse through a number of blogs using these directories. This way they’d get an idea of what these blogging communities are like.

Blogging is popular all over the world. Blog is short for the term weblog. There are no rules when it comes to blogging. Bloggers have the freedom to express themselves how ever way they want, and the best thing about blogging, is that most blogging sites are free.

There are numerous blogging websites to choose from in the net. This give first time users the option of joining a blogging community that appeals to their interests.

Just search any blogging directory and you’d get a listing of a lot of blogging sites that are available on the net. It’s easy to search a blogging directory, because it is organized according to category. This way you would get exactly what you are after. Blogging is really for everyone. It is fun, simple and easy.

Getting Started With Blog Marketing

Gary Knox — Wed, 26 May 2010 13:05:58 +0000

Blog marketing is quite easy to get started in. If you all ready have been blogging, you will more than likely pick it up very easily and naturally just as if you have been doing it all along. Also, if you all ready blog, you might find out that you have been marketing the whole time anyways, and just not realizing it.

For anyone that has never blogged before, you will of course want to start a test blog just to get the feel of how it is. You want to become familiar with the blogging platforms that you will be using and know how to make a post. While most blogs are free, you are also going to see that many of them are quite different. You will have to get to know the kind that you are using, and want to use. Otherwise, you might get lost along the way. So starting a blog and just blogging for a little while will help you with this. You can blog about anything that you want to. Maybe journal for a few weeks, or talk about your favorite movies. The sky is the limit.

So once you have become familiar with blogging and what it takes to post and make changes, you are ready to go further. The next thing that you are going to want to do is choose a niche market. You will want to choose something that is low in competition, but yet is something that people are searching for. If you happen to have a hobby or something that you love to do, there you go. Otherwise, you may have problems coming up with topics.

Now that you have your topics in place, it is time to begin blogging. When you are blogging for the purpose of marketing, you want to give your readers something that they have to keep coming back for. You want to peak their interest and make them want more from you. This will keep your readership base up and will allow you to have followers that will follow you anywhere to see what you are going to say next on their favorite topic.

Now that you have a topic, you want to determine just how much time you are going to spend updating and posting in this blog. If you tell your readers that you are going to post on a daily basis, do so. If you let them know that you will be blogging weekly, you should also stick with that do that also. Whatever you tell them, be sure that you do not let them down. Otherwise they will find another blog to read in the place of yours. Which is something that you will not want.

Learning SEO and applying it to your blogs is something else that you may want to do. This will help you as far as search engine rankings are concerned and will allow you to go further up the page. After all, that is the point to all of this, right? If you do not have time to learn what SEO also known as search engine optimization is all about, you may want to hire someone to apply it to your blog for the best results. You will find that some SEO gurus are quite affordable.

Picking The Best Free Blogging Site

Gary Knox — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:04:32 +0000

Choosing a free blogging site can feel somewhat overwhelming because there are numerous options. There are several, large free blog-hosting sites that dominate the blogosphere, but there are also some smaller sites. Whether you decide to join up with an established site like blogger or whether you choose to sign on with a relatively new venture depends on what your priorities are.

Reliability is perhaps the best reason to opt for a large and well known free blogging site. When you decide to have an established brand host your blog, you can feel secure that your blog will not crash often and will not disappear in the middle of the night. A company that has been around for a while is likely to have the resources to make certain that its clients aren’t unpleasantly surprised by any technical glitches. However, many bloggers decide that this isn’t enough of a selling point. The bloggers who choose to go with smaller, newer blog hosting sites do so for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the number one advantage is a fairly abstract one. Bloggers tend to relish the fact that the internet is a place where the underdog has a strong chance of success, and by choosing to have a small company as a blog host, a blogger is casting his or her vote for David against Goliath.

Whatever your reasons for selecting your chosen site make sure that they provide you with what you want and need otherwise you may be searching for a new site soon rather than later.

The Most Important Aspects of Blog Marketing

Gary Knox — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:12:58 +0000

Blog marketing is a combination of several things all put together to construct one great blog that is successful and that has numerous readers. However, if you think that you have done everything possible, chances are that you have not. Or that you should do more. When you are working on marketing a blog, you never get to the finishing point. There is always something that you are able to do to continue to grow and make your blog well known. What are these things you ask? Keep reading to find out.

Blog marketing will keep you very busy. If you have more than one blog going that you want the highest and the best rankings for, you may have to hire some help. However make certain that you have good content. If you do not have good content, there is no reason for your readers to come back to your blog after their first visit. Keep writing good content as well. If it starts to go down hill, you may find that your reader status does as well and that could hurt you in the long run. Good content is key.

Something else that many blog owners do not realise when they are marketing their blog is that it needs to be updated. Post content on your blog regularly for the best results. Maybe once a day is good for you? Perhaps you are more comfortable with one post a week? Whichever it is, be consistent with it and know that it will pay off.

Simply having a blog about anything, or random subjects is not always a great idea. You have to have a niche market in order to market your blog successfully. Find your area of expertise and run with it. You can be an expert on that market in your blogging community. Readers will go to your blog daily to find out what it is that the expert is going to say next. It really does work this way.

Make certain that your blog design stands out. You do not want your blog to look and feel like everyone else’s, so make it different. Having your own look is a huge plus in the blog marketing world. You will find that most blogs all look the same and you can have your own look by just using HTML and adjusting the code to suit your taste. You are going to see that this will truly make a difference with your blog as well as your readers. Try to get a theme that is going to match the market that you are promoting in your blog. Doing so will make it look even more professional.

Do you know SEO? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. If you are not familiar with SEO, you need to learn the basics fast. Using SEO will help you to market your blog to the fullest extent possible. Optimising your blog posts as well as the HTML will get you results that you will love. Studying everything that you can find on SEO will help you immensely. You will find that there is so much more to bog marketing than just making a post on your blog everyday.

If you don’t all ready, be sure that your blog has the RSS feeds. Having these feeds will allow others to be able to link to you blog. Having many links a huge part of blog marketing that you want to take advantage of as well. When someone uses the RSS feeds from your blog, they are able to get the posts that you make, and will give you a link back from their blog, or website, whichever they posted it on.

The Importance of Blog Design

Gary Knox — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:10:29 +0000

If you have informative or amusing content and good blog layout and design you are likely to recieve an increase in traffic to your blog. You may develop your blog’s content or you can also acquire the services of a web content writer to provide you with the blog articles.

The blog’s layout and design also plays a large role. While most of the companies offering free blog hosting offer pre-selected templates, there are also some that allow customisation that if you employ this feature correctly can increase your blog’s traffic.

Here are a few tips to make your blog stand out from the millions of blogs out there that have standard designs.

* Customise the banner

The banner usually has the most generic designs that are common to the blogs from a blogging company or service.

You can personalise this banner by having a graphic with the dimensions of the banner. You can also edit the graphic so that it will also include the title of your blog.

In this case, you can create your own graphic or you can purchase professional looking graphics online for less than $10.

* Personalising photos

Of course, most of the photos that you will be posting will be your own. However, if you do not customise the photos before posting them, you may miss maximizing the enhancing benefits graphics can add to the page. Adding photo borders can help the photo stand out from the page.

It can also add to the design of your blog. You can choose a standard border or you can also create your own border which can be associated with your blog’s templates.

* Add a favicon

Don’t you think sites with icons on the address bar before the website’s URL are cool? Many people do. These favicons add a professional look to the URL. These are easy to produce using photo or graphic editing softwares.

* Check out blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins from sites

There are sites that offer free blog templates, layouts, backgrounds, textures and skins. You can make use of these so your blog will not look generic like most of the blogs hosted by the service provider.

* Include RSS feeds

This is a cool way to inform people with newsreaders about your blog headlines. Tutorials on RSS feeds are available on the internet.

* Audio makes your blog more personal

Not only does audio personalise the blog; it can also keep your visitors coming back. You can try having streaming radio stations, mp3 file or playlists loading with your blog.

* Advertisements

If you have signed-up with Google Ad-Sense, which I am sure you would like to do, make certain that the adverts are conveniently placed that these will not hinder your readers’ ease in accessing the information on your blog.

Try using these tips and you can definitely increase and retain traffic on your blog.

Great Blog Marketing Techniques

Gary Knox — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:14:21 +0000

Marketing your blog is not all that hard to do. You have to be persistent if you want your blog to do well. You cannot just make a post and forget about it. You have to continue updating your blog and marketing it so that it will become popular and one that everyone wants to read. There are other ways as well that are good marketing your blog. Keep reading for more information.

Interviewing people and posting it on your blog is an excellent way to market it. Just make certain that the people that you interview relate to the market of your blog. You want all of your posts to be relevant, including any interviews that you might do.

If you hear any news on the niche of your blog, be sure that you post it. Everyone loves news. Something to keep in mind when blogging about the news is the more current the news, the better. No one wants to reread old news, so it is a great idea to try and stay as current as possible when you are blogging about the news.

Contests are another way that you can effectively market your blog. Having contests on various things would be a lot of fun, and something that will keep your readers coming back. Everyone loves to win things, and you can also make the prize that you are giving away relevant to the market you are promoting on your blog.

While good content is something that you will need for your blog, you also want to ensure that it is original content as well. You can market a blog with something that is copied and that you do not own the rights. Plagiarism may get you in trouble with Google as well as the person that originally wrote the content. Be sure that all of your posts are ones that only you own the rights too. This is a great thing to know and do when you are marketing your blog.

Press releases are also an excellent way to market your blog. Sending out a press release or having one made for you is a great idea. You will find that they are even affordable for most budgets, and some companies offer a package deal for example, if you let us write your press release we will submit it for half price. Who could resist a deal such as that? Especially when you are budgeting and trying to get the most from your funds.

Comments on a blog are also a very important aspect of blog marketing. You will want to be sure that you always answer and acknowledge the comments that are made to your blog as well as others. When you show that you are an actual person that can hold a conversation, you are showing others that you are real and that you really and truly have the best intentions for your blog. Make sure that no comment goes unanswered.

Marketing a blog comes naturally for some and can be a little harder to focus on for others. Another important thing that you will want to do for your blog is to be sure that you find links. Exchange links, get one way links, and ask for more and more links. You will never have enough links to your blog. The more links the better in this case.

Blog marketing is not hard to do. Just be sure that you follow all of the proven and tried techniques that others are talking about and you wont go wrong. Just don’t give up and keep on marketing because it will pay off sooner or later.