Blogging - Everyone else is doing it, so why can't I?

The Internet and the software which has been developed to run on it have made it extremely easy for anyone to publish content and have it accessible to millions of people. In effect, consumers have been given a voice to air their views to a massive audience. Something which before the Internet, they could never have done.

In recent years one of the biggest examples of this has been the massive growth of weblogs (blogs), wiki's, podcasts, vlogs and moblogs - together they form what is loosely known as social media; the ability for anyone to publish almost any content without the typical costs and hindrances associated with traditional media.

This new publishing freedom has resulted in an explosion of new content. However the term social media, or citizen journalism as it is sometimes called, may be a misnomer as many companies can do it as well!

What is Blogging?
Blogging is currently the most common form of social media, in fact as of October 2006, about 100 000 new weblogs are being created each day - that's more than the number of books published in the US each year!

The word blog is derived from the term "weblog" which was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997. We started using blog over weblog when Peter Merholz broke the word weblog into the phrase "we blog" in the sidebar of his weblog in 1999.

A blog is essentially a website typically driven by a content management system which features articles (blog posts) and comments on the blog posts. They come in all shapes and forms - from personal diaries shared with friends and family, to arms of political campaigns, media programs and updates on current affairs. They also range in scale from the writings of one blogger, to the collaboration of a large community of writers.

The world of blogs, bloggers and blog posts is commonly known as the blogosphere which has evolved rapidly since its inception. Blogs have given consumers and companies a voice and blogging has opened up a world of information sharing possibilities.

Blogs are not a fad that will lose popularity any time soon - they are here to stay and companies who want to be taken seriously by their consumers need to consider the benefits of starting a corporate blog or at the very least listen to what is being said about them in the blogosphere.

Blogging and RSS
Pioneered by Dave Winer, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has taken blogging to a whole new level. An RSS feed is an XML (eXtensible Markup Language) file automatically generated by a blog or indeed almost any website or Internet service. Users are then able to "syndicate" or subscribe to this feed using a feed reader or aggregator. When a new post is available, the reader fetches its contents and puts the headings and usually some or all of the content of the post into your reader or directly onto another blog. When a blog is updated, its RSS feed is as well so information spreads very quickly and automatically.

In layman's terms, RSS eliminates the need for the user to constantly check a site or blog to see if it has been updated. Their feedreader automatically does this for them and presents fresh information as it becomes available. This means that a user can constantly monitor potentially hundreds or even thousands of blogs and websites without having to spend the time visiting each one to check for fresh content. Some examples of feed readers include FeedDemon, Newsgator and RSS Bandit.

Understanding the subject of blogging is made far easier when one immerses oneself in it, so set up a feed reader and get to it. You'll soon lose yourself in this fascinating world of content sharing and strong opinions.

Better Blogging
By October 2006, Technorati, a blog tracking engine, registered 57 Million blogs tracked. They also acknowledged a consistent pattern whereby the number of blogs doubles every 236 days. However despite the massive growth of blogs, most do not make it past 3 months. According to Technorati, only 55 percent of bloggers are still posting 3 months after starting the blog with very few in comparison updating their blogs weekly or more.
Whether one is starting a blog for personal or corporate marketing purposes, there is no guarantee that anyone will ever find it. In order to ensure a blog's success it needs to be marketed. Here is a list of suggestions on how to go about doing so:

Search engine optimisation: By ensuring that your blog is search engine friendly, search engines can be a major source of traffic. It is important that your chosen keywords are used in your blog headings, content and meta tags and that the search engines are able to spider all aspects of your blog.
Comments and trackbacks: By treating the blogosphere as a series of ongoing conversations and actively being a part of these conversations through comments and trackbacks, other bloggers will get to know you, link to your blog and a gradual stream of visitors will result.
List your blog in blog directories: Similar to search engines, directories are human edited and managed. Although the traffic volume is not as massive as search engines, many users do visit directories and this could be a great place for them to find out about your blog.
Ping web services with your updated content: Sites like ping-o-matic and FeedShark offer a service whereby they ping multiple web services, blog directories and search engines to let them know that your blog has fresh content.
Content - know your audience: Your blog posts must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don't be afraid to post things others will not agree with.
Frequency: The regularity of posts is important, as there is a direct correlation to blog repeat visitors and the number of times it's updated. Post 3-5 times per week at a minimum. Web sites and blogs that are updated often get spidered by Google more frequently.

A Holistic Approach
Blogging works in synergy with other eMarketing services, once again proving that a holistic approach is vital to ensure success on the World Wide Web.
Blogs and SEO
You've heard it a million times… Content is king! Because search engines love fresh, relevant content, blogs are a great way to give them exactly this. Essentially by writing one post a day, a blog allows you to add a fresh page of content to your website each day. The nature of blogs also makes them an excellent source of links to your website. Provided your content is engaging, other bloggers will link to it and search engines view these links as popularity votes thereby assisting in improving your rankings.

It is important however that the blog is set up to be as search engine friendly as possible. Start by ensuring that all blog posts are assigned a unique page which is easily indexable by the search engines. This can be achieved by ensuring that each page has a link to it which the search engines can find and follow. Pages must be tagged with keywords relevant to your SEO strategy. This means putting important keywords in your post headings, page URL and meta tags, particularly the title tag.

Blogs and Viral Marketing
In a similar vein to blogs being used as a natural link attraction tool, they can be extremely useful as a viral component to your online marketing strategy.
With valuable and engaging content, people will begin talking about and linking to your site. The blogosphere is an interconnected environment and as a result items which are interesting or remarkable are talked about and shared amongst bloggers. Over time this interest brings eyeballs to your site and ultimately awareness to your brand.

It's Not Always Happy Day's and Sunshine
Although word of mouth can have a tremendously positive impact on a brand, it can also cause immense damage. One of the best examples of the blogosphere influencing brands negatively is the now infamous "Dell Hell" scenario.

It all started when blogger, Jeff Jarvis had a terrible customer experience with Dell Computers. In true blogger style he documented his experience on his blog and word quickly spread to the point where it was even covered in print by Business Week. However Dell failed to respond to his musings and the bad customer experiences continued as did the negative comments on the blogosphere. Jeff's rantings become known as Dell Hell and a recent scientific study by responsesource.com showed first that Dell has sustained long-term damage to its brand image and secondly that the cheerleaders for the poor reputation of Dell's customer services, are bloggers.

With blogs wielding this level of power, it is critical that brands understand how to manage their reputation online and if necessary take proactive steps to limit the damage which can be caused by negative word of mouth. Online Reputation Management is something all companies need to be considering.

On a final note, a great thing to remember about blogs is that a blog is simply a method of publishing content on the Web. Calling something a blog now is a focus on the technology used on the server, the content management solution. Of course, there's a significant culture that's grown around this particular technology, but that culture is bound to remain a subculture. Not because the number of people who are involved in blogging is going to shrink but rather because the number of people reading content published using Movable Type, Blogger, or any of the other tools is going to grow. Fast.

About the Author:
Rob Stokes
This article has been taken from Quirk eMarketing's complete guide to eMarketing – eMarketing 101. The services offered by Quirk eMarketing range from the conceptualisation of a comprehensive online marketing strategy to its implementation.
Added: 08 Dec 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/45428.html

Blogs vs. Content-Sites

Now, I build content-sites, and in my free time, I still build more and more. To my definition, a content-site is more or less like what James Martell does. I would research for keywords, define my topics, list the content that I want to have in my site, and then start writing (or get somebody else to write for me).

Done with that, then it’s about building the site, putting web pages together and getting a domain name and web hosting.

After that, you go around looking for link partners.

I suppose most people understand what a blog is. But just in case for some newbie readers, I’ll try to explain what it is. A blog is a site that contains articles after articles written one after the other. The content is not being written all in one go upfront. But it is rather being updated along the way.

A blog lists the articles in a chronology manner, being the latest, the first. MoneyClicking.net is a blog. A blog is normally supported by a system or a script. You can use Blogger.com (remote hosted), Wordpress (PHP script), Movable Type (Perl script), etc.

Anyway, back to the topic. I was on the phone with my friend, we concluded it’s better to have a blog because it’s easier to get traffic with it.

Why? Well, there are some mechanics of a blog and also the culture of blogging that makes it much easier.

For one thing — it’s easier to get incoming links. Let me tell you how.

Reason #1: Blog Ping

First of all, there’s this thing called - PING. With a blog ping, when ever you write a new article in your blog, you can set addresses to a few ping sites to tell them that you just updated your blog. When you do that, you’ll get a link back to your site. Ping sites are like Technorati.com and BlogRolling.com. News sites like MSN News, Yahoo News and MoreOver, also have ping addresses.

Now, maybe you won’t be listed very long on that page, because many other blogs are also pinging to those sites. But more or less, it’ll help. I’ve gone through my web statistics and traffic do come from the sites that I pinged.

Reason #2: Trackback

Secondly, there’s also TRACKBACK. Now, I was with a friend explaining how trackbacks work last week. Now I’ll tell you. With blogs, for every article that you write, there will be a unique URL for it. And for each article, there’s also a unique trackback URL. Whenever you are at another person’s blog, look for trackback URL, and you may want to copy it.

Now here’s how you use a trackback URL. Let say you are at somebody else’s blog. And he just wrote about something about cat grooming. And somehow, you feel that you have something to say about what he wrote — and you know, what you want to say will be very long which may not be suitable for a comment. So you write your own message at your blog, and lower down the interface, you enter the other guy’s trackback URL, and then you hit the Submit button.

Now, that new article will appear on your blog. And because you put in a trackback URL, a part of your article will also appear in the other guy’s article as a comment. And that comment links directly back to your article. So that’s how trackbacks work.

Reason #3: Blog Comments

Now, my third point on why blog is better than content-site — Blog Comments. This is where you able to go around at other blog sites and write some comments on articles. And you even leave a link back to your site. But here’s the thing, just make sure that your comments are genuine, because now days, there are too many people spamming blog comments just to get a link back.

Reason #4: Bloggers’ Linking Habit

OK, here’s some more. This is more a blogging culture thing — bloggers like to link to each other. If your blog is interesting, it’s easy to get other bloggers to link back to you. Whether you ask for it on your website, or sometimes they just simply give you a link back. I’ve got this many times, and most of the times, they link back write to a specific message. And sometimes, they just list blog sites that they like on their website.

Reason #5: Faster SE Indexing

This is getting quite long already. But I am not done. When it comes to getting traffic, you may not realize this, but it’s easier to get indexed in the search engines with a blog. I don’t know why — perhaps it’s because incoming links are more natural and you don’t really go around asking for them. And when the incoming links are more natural, I think search engine will prefer it a lot more.

I myself have experienced where new content on my blog was indexed in under seven days.

Reason #6: Repeat Visitors

Now, after you get traffic from search engines, ping sites, and other blogs, later you’ll start to realize that 80-90% of your visitors are repeat visitors. It’s common with a blog. So the point is with this one — it’s easier to retain visitors with a blog.

You get huge traffic from multiple sources — and the ones you already have you get to keep. This is different from content-sites, where you really so much on search engine traffic.

Blogging Seems Much More Fun ...

In my experience, starting from scratch, in six month, a content-site may or may not reach to mark of 1000 visitors per day. And it takes serious hours writing content and building incoming links. I have multiple sites consistently doing 100-200 visitors per day, after six month. But with a blog, it’s not unusual if a blog reaches 3000 visitors per day, provided you give good content.

But I suppose, it all boils down to which you are comfortable with.

Realizing this, I may be planning differently in the future — but I am not certain on that yet. From the looks of it, blogging seems much more fun. You write about what you like, and you network with other bloggers. And the writing part becomes much, much easier with scripts like WordPress and Movable Type. Not much designing, no uploading files, less link building, etc ...

With building content-sites, you still have to build the website again, upload them up to your web hosting, build incoming links, etc ...

This is my opinion. And you may not think the same way I do, based on your personal experience and knowledge. I respect that.

About the Author:
Iszuddin Ismail publishes the 10 Untold Blogging Secrets e-course. Get the $97 e-course for FREE, filled with advance blogging tips at MoneyBloggingSecrets.com
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

The Importance of Blogging

Blogging has become a very important part of running an internet business. It is very important to constantly update your blog and to ping the relevant sites that you have infact updated your blog.

I try and regularly update my blog with articles and helpful hints and tips and free giveaways to increase traffic to my website. You can use a variety of ways to ping your blog. Pingoat.com and pingomatic.com are two of the best ones that ping a multitude of sites that your blog has been updated.

Your blog is another way of generating traffic to your website, when you blog it is important to make it count. You should have a signature file with a link back to your site with your chosen keyword. An example is if your chosen keyword was say Make Money Online then you would hyperlink that word with your website address.

You should try and update your blog at least once a day and ping it, if you can it is great to update at 3 different times ie morning afternoon and night. You can ping after each update but you must update you cannot just ping for the sake of pinging, if you havent updated your site and you ping then this is considered spamming. So to be safe only ping after adding to your blog. The more you ping and update the more traffic you will receive.

Everyone wants more traffic right so the best way to get it is to go out and update your blog regularly and ping away. There is no point in updating your blog if no one knows about it right? this is where pingoat.com and pingomatic come into it they are there to let everyone know you have updated so use them as they are free. Please ensure you do not use both services at once as you may infact be pinging the same sites and then you will get blacklisted for spamming.

Blogging is a great free way of generating traffic to your site. Blogging can be about anything and everything. I have about 80 or so posts on my blog up to date and ive only had it for 3 months and im only just getting into it. My site has increased in traffic tremendously thanks to blogging and then pinging.

About the Author:
Lyn Leckie
Visit My Site Make Money Online
For Affiliate Marketing Info CLICK HERE
Article Submitted On: September 11, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

How To Successfully Market Your Business Weblog

Have you ever thought of the tremendous possibilities offered by business blogs? A content that can be spread through the entire network or an audience and that can be built overnight seems like an impossible feat. Marketing just got a little more exciting with the advent of blogs for business use.

Blogs in Relation to Business

Blogs or weblogs are dated journals on the Internet that play a huge role in search results. Based on the concept of free flow of information, the Internet has produced blogs that are basically opinions on a wide range of topics intended to educate the readers. Its ability to leave instant feedbacks has caused these sites to have a certain degree of influence in the web community.

Search engines are partial to fresh content and would visit frequently if the update on the weblog is done everyday and if the site has a strong link with the blogging community. For websites that are either not indexed or suffer from low link popularity, a personal weblog serves as an avenue to present your point of view to the world and a way to build a well indexed site with strong link popularity. It is not uncommon for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) websites to improve their PageRank in a matter of months through having a weblog.

Most people who ended up blogging for a living just came to it accidentally. It is possible that blogging which was initially started as a side project can be more lucrative than the main business. Blogging can be an effective marketing tool for your company as it allows you to connect with others minus the corporate edge that can be alienating to some people.

Blogs are of use both to the writers and readers with everyone having a say on the blogosphere’s growth and changes. Business people find new ideas and affirmation of existing ideas through blogs. They are effective sounding boards for your business plans as fellow bloggers give their own views and comments to the matters you have set forward in your blog.

A good number of blogs of varied topics provide a wider perspective as different options. Ideas and alternatives pour in from others. Blogging is much more beneficial when you involve yourself in it by not only reading blogs but by joining a blog and commenting and voicing an opinion. Participation is what gives a blog its value.

Every business has its own tools of the trade. Blogs are considered tools of various businesses that are used to achieve its marketing goals. It can support a company’s on-line strategy in selling or supporting a product or service. However, not all kinds of business would need a blog. There are businesses that would not benefit in any way from blogging particularly those who have a target market that need not use the web to shop for services or products.

Blogs are in the company of direct mail, print advertising and other marketing means which all serve a particular function. It is not a requirement for every existing business but is admittedly a great success booster for those who need it. Information, advice, tips, resources and other things worth sharing can be maximized in blogs. Whereas a website may already have a great mechanism in place, doing business with the use of blogs as you write, update and dialogue with your readers can be very fruitful.

Effective Marketing of Business Blogs

The quality of content and its execution are both largely related to a blog’s success as a communication medium. Expertise or the lack of it would show thus it is highly recommended for any aspiring blogger to focus on topics that relates to work or to subjects of which adequate knowledge is possessed. Blogging for business requires both personal and corporate credibility to attract customers.

A blog should be frequently updated (daily if needed) so that information remains current and applicable to the specific industry it pertains to. Relevancy of any blog is measured on its ability to provide information of interest to its target market at the soonest possible time as well as the posting of any related breaking news as they come. It would be wise to ask for feedbacks as successful blogs are known to encourage reader participation. Concentrate on publishing informative articles if you are not open to criticism or a debate with regards to your ideas or policies.

Linking to numerous outside sources as well as other weblogs with related content sends a good message to your readers. It shows commitment in maintaining relevant and updated information from all possible sources. Simplicity as to graphics and color schemes combines best with good content. The text is the main reason why searchers read your content. Organized presentation is much preferred by users over glitzy but cluttered look. Categorical sections of topics should be provided if there is a wide range of topics covered while keeping an archive for older materials.

Patience is a virtue that should be practiced especially during the early stages of introducing a blog. A small initial readership is to be expected but an audience tends to grow organically as better content is provided. The potentials of blogging with respect to your own company will soon make itself known.

When a business has posted so much information online, it could be very difficult to provide new items to post regularly. Competition has required websites to continually strive to look fresh and attractive to encourage repeat visits from searchers. Blogs can make the difference as your observations and commentaries are unique only to you. A good commentary or analysis will set your site above the rest which could ultimately lead to being categorized as an authority in your specific field. Blogs at work are potential marketing goldmines.

Marketing efforts that are geared towards having a successful business blog include having a compelling title, an exceptionally good content and relevant links. All these require time and genuine interest to make a go out of your weblog. As in all things, knowing what your business is and what it can offer shall guide all your actions and decisions. You cannot honestly have a successful blog if you yourself don’t understand what message you would like to convey to your readers.

This brings us to the most important element of a blog – you! General information can possibly be accessed from other sites but information as you know it can only come from you. Readers are sophisticated enough to detect the real good sites from among a bunch of choices. Various opinion makers such as market leaders and innovators continue to use this public forum to share opinions, ideas and insights to build credibility as a good resource and use it to increase sales.

About the Author:
Danny Wirken www.theinternetone.net
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com

The World Of Blogging

Do you have your own blog? Have you cottoned on to the benefits that having your own blog can bring? In this article I am going to write about the crazy world of blogging and about the ways in which it can help an online business to attract continued and repeat traffic. This traffic of course is what most webmasters strive for and a good blog which is well optimised can help them to attain their goals.

Blogging is not exactly a new concept, it has been around for a couple of years now. I must admit I was a bit slow to join the bandwagon of blogging. I thought it would be one of those overnight crazes but it looks like it is here to stay. I have read many of these blogs and in my opinion most of them are quite poor in quality. They did not really inspire me to come back and were seemingly only there to make money from programs such as google adsense. There were however certain blogs which did inspire me to return, blogs such as the one Matt Cutts runs. This is a blog that I will read whenever I have the time.

Around a year ago I decided that it was about time I had my own blog. I did not want it to be just an average run of the mill blog, I wanted it to look very professional and for it to be of value to the people who visited and read it. In this way these people are likely to return time and time again and other webmasters are also more inclined to add those all important links to the site.

My area of business is based around speech therapy, basically helping people who have a stammering or stuttering problem. I had a stutter for eighteen years before finally managing to achieve fluency at the age of twenty-two. The stuttering blog that I now have receives a lot of traffic and is very well placed in the major search engines for its keyword phrases such as stuttering blog.

I have heard that some bloggers find it a bit of a hassle to keep posting to their blogs. This in my opinion should be seen as a kind of hobby rather than a choir.

The huge advantage of a blog is that content is constantly being added to the site. This is for obvious reasons a lot better than having just a static site.

My advice would be to get your blogging shoes on today.

About the Author:
Stephen Hill helps to promote a number of websites including:
speech therapy blog
hgh human growth hormone
Added: 08 Dec 2006
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/45411.html

RSS, Blogging and Publishing

RSS Publishing: Not Just For Blogging Anymore
By Trina L.C. Schiller

Web logs, channel ezines, what's the difference?

Web logs, or blogs, are a communication medium, gaining in popularity, through which RSS [Really Simple Sydication] technology has been introduced to the populous. However, blogs and RSS are not synonomous. RSS technology is what gives life to the blog. and, has been around for awhile. Blogging is a relatively new use for the system.
RSS has been used by the media for quite some time, to bring Internet travelers the news, stock updates, and such. But blogging has brought it into the mainstream, making it a bit more user friendly for the average traveler.

Put simply, a web log is a interactive, virtual diary, that can be read by anyone, and commented on, by its readers, as well. The technology, driving the blog, is capable of so much more.

Publishing an ezine through a channel feed is another use that is picking up steam. Seeing the benefits of channel publishing, more and more ezine publishers are either supplementing or replacing their email systems of distribution.

Since channel subscription is not subscriber bot friendly, and requires that one physically subscribe to the channel of choice, without email reliance, it is the only true 100% opt-in method for receiving information. Subscription forgeries cannot occur. Opting out is as simple as deleting the channel from your computer. It is instant and non-publisher dependent.

Channel publishing also makes permanent, what used to end up in the trash. Even ezines that manage to make through the filters and into the inboxes of readers, eventually wind up at the virtual curb, when it has been read. Not so with channel publishing. Articles published on a channel are given an item number and become a permanent archive of the channel. This allows the reader to refer back to it, should the need arise, at any time, without having to store the piece on their hard drive.

Another plus to itemization and archiving, is that these articles, being rich in content, are easliy spidered by search engines. This feature offers the publisher to gain new subscribers based on keyword searches made by John Q. Basically, people who have never heard of my own zine, can find out about it, just by searching for a term contained within one of the articles I've published, and Hello... New Subscriber!

Best of all, ezine publishing via RSS channels, allows the publisher a simple method of syndicating their publication on any web site wanting to add content. This is free exposure to the nth degree! We're not talking about adding a link to someone elses web site, we're talking about running a list of recent headlines, that redirect to its point of origin. Consider what syndication meant for Ann Landers and Dear Abby, in print. Syndication is what has kept Star Trek alive and well, through four decades.

Lastly, where email gets information lost among the spam in the reader's inbox, channel publishing puts you right on their desktop, where you can't be missed or accidentally deleted. You'll never trip another autoresponder again either.

Web logs exist because of RSS, but the technology itself is so much more than that. It is the foundation upon which limitless applications may be based. Ezine channel publishing is but another extension; there are still more to come.

Copyright © 2004
The Trii-Zine Ezine
http://www.ezines1.com/triizine

About the author:
Trina L.C. Schiller is a professional network marketer, the publisher of the Internet marketing ezine, "Trii-Zine" and owner of TLC Promotions, as well as a founding publisher at Quikonnex.com, and President of AdsOnQ.com, the Internet's first syndicated advertising agency.
She has also authored the following ebooks: "Your Beginner's Guide To Syndication"
RSS, Blogs and Syndication... The Facts vs The guruese"
Circulated by Article Emporium

Links From Blog Comments

Earlier the blogs were synonymous to the personal weblogs or online diaries. But this is no longer the case. Yes, the horizons of blogging have taken an all together new facet today. A number of professional or business blogs are published these days by various web masters. These blogs are especially written to raise the links on their websites. Moreover, these blogs successful attract the visitors and direct the targeted traffic on the official sites of the blogger.

Thus getting links and posting links to the blogs have become an important part of the blogging today. To understand how does the links from blog comment work for your link promotion, read the article further.

Let’s begin with the basics. Blogging is an interactive activity on the internet. Any one can write any piece of information, commentary, article or any other form write-up and get it published on a common web page as a blog.

The other bloggers post their comments or reply to the posted blog or forum and thereon begins a chain of replies as a thread of comments. People from all over the world share their views and reviews via blogs on the diverse subjects all over the planet. The blog can include their hobbies and interests, marketing strategies, business related discussions, language, country or the culture related issues and everything else.

Simply because the blogs cover every variety of subjects, they have become a good source of link for many websites. A good comment for a blog encourages a person to add your link to the other website. By indexing links from blog comments you can draw huge attention on your website.

Apart from the regular written blog comments, you will also find some audio comments for a blog. No matter what your profession is, you will find links from the blog comments for all kinds of blogs. The blogs are even written for a particular profession.

You can also get the blog comments for your business field by writing articles on that theme. You can expect the blog comments from all sorts of people. By posting a blog you invite other people to comment on your idea or piece of writing. If your writing is good then you can expect great comments from highly skilled people. This increases your chances of getting good links from blog comments.

Always remember that your blog must be interesting. Write what people want to read. Make the people to follow your blogs. Write interesting articles, so that no one misses it. Superior content will attract people to recommend you. Do not forget to mention the signature at the end of a blog. Carefully add a signature link to your blog so that the interested people can revert back to you.

Blogging is a marketing strategy where you get personal with your clients or the readers. When you reply to the feed back received from the other people, it opens up the line of communication further. A greater number of positive comments will attract the other websites to add a link to your website.

Links from blog comments is one of the three sources of links from the blogs. The blogs further contain a link list called blog roll and internal links to the other weblogs.

About the Author:
Henry James
Discover advanced link building and link popularity tools and resources as a Member of: www.Link-Advantage.com
Article Source: http://www.articles411.com

BlogBiz

How do you know if your blogging is a hobby or a business? Consider the following:

Are you behaving in a business minded manner when you blog?

Does your blog, even if silly or comical, have a purpose to draw readers or traffic with the intent of creating an income?

Are you putting in enough time and energy into blogging to make it profitable, or are you half heartedly approaching blogging as a side hobby?

As you increase your income, are you investing, reinvesting or utilizing the income for livelihood, or are you considering it 'mad money'.

There is a difference in how you perceive your income and how you will behave. If you feel it’s just extra money to have fun with, you may not be taking a serious business perspective of blogging that you need to take for profit long term.

As you increase your business, you need to be flexible and grow with the business. This means that what worked in phase one may need to be upgraded or changed in phase two, and phase three and so on and so on.

In the past, have you followed through with goals and activities? If the resounding answer is no – then beware, being self-employed, even a blogger business, may not be right for you. However, if you have a support system, a partner or a plan B, where if you start to fall downward you have a way upward, then blogging as a business is certainly a possibility.

Some real positives of having a blog as a business is that it is easy to start up, and easy to maintain, especially if you use a service to help you glean the most from your business as you can.

Another great thing, if you are not a people person, that is fine! If you are, good – communicate more with your fans! Having positive working relationships is very important and yet, with blogging, you can make money and not really have to develop super close relationships. Many people find close relationships, especially working relationships, to be very stressful. Again, if you have a service to help you, this is two-fold easier.

Blogs are great because as far as a business goes, there are minimal decisions in this line of career. Most business owners make decisions constantly, have a lot of overhead and are under pressure. However, with blogging you have minimal overhead if any, and your big decisions are often simply when to renew your service contract with your supplier/manager. Usually the partner/manager/supplier in blogging makes all the nuance decisions that can drive you crazy.

If planning and organizing are not your strong suits, never fear… you can certainly hire someone to do this for you; again there are organizations that take all of that nitty-gritty stuff away from you for a small fee. But you can also learn how to organize yourself but realize this can mean you may be working at your blog a few hours at a time when you’d normally be spending time with family or friends. Again, blogging will make you money if you go toward this goal as a business, not a hobby.

Make sure you survey family, friends on peers in what they may enjoy seeing or having in a blog. Maybe they will voice that they’d like to have a place to write in themselves about their experiences, or just read inspirational experiences or informative comments. Perhaps, they want an informative site where they can both interact with others and, purchase equipment or books. Figure out what you like, then start seeing how you can tie your interests in with other’s desires.

As you initially start your business you can add ideas or subtract things that don’t seem to be working, but in whole marketing research will give you a nice, firm foundation; if nothing else, it gives you a target starting point which is easier for you to focus on.

This actually takes you to the next subject of thought, which is a strategy to market. Once you know what your survey tells you, you can easily, as outlined above, develop a strategy. Again, it’s knowing how to take an interest of yours and make it marketable.

In your blog, don’t just write! Sell! Sell a product or service. Although some people can make money just from writing, through banners and such, you will have more success actually offering a bit more. However, if you have a service working with you, they can certainly help to promote you as well as place banners and other marketing tools in to help you get your business off the ground.

Think of unique promotion strategies. Though if you have a service, again, you will not have to worry as much – it still is a good idea to create promotions yourself that are highly unique to your specialty. Make sure your prices are competitive or at the least, considered well within your target market. The moment the Blog is up to the moment the client or consumer has what they want from you; and the entire process should be quite enjoyable!

About the Author:
Michelle Bery is a bona fide professional blogger. If you're aiming for six figure online profits then you NEED her fresh, upbeat advice! Read the full CRAZY version of this article here.
Article Submitted On: September 09, 2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/

Setting Up a Successful Business Blog

Whether you own an off-line or on-line business, you can not truly succeed until you have harnessed all the opportunities offered by the Internet. Nothing proves this fact as clearly as the power of business blogs to bring your products to the attention of millions of online users who can skyrocket your sales. A business blog is a cheap, user friendly and flexible marketing tool by means of which you can advertise your wares and gain a distinct advantage over your competitors.

Creating a business blog with an effective review of your products/services enables their almost instant promotion, as millions of bloggers spread the word to their readers about what is on offer. Nowhere else would you be able to get such a degree of free publicity with so little effort and expense. With brand recognition, comes brand loyalty as customers realise that here is a businessman/woman who wishes to communicate with them and to respond honestly to their concerns, queries and suggestions. This type of direct feedback from potential buyers would in turn help to improve the quality of your products/services as well as monitor their buying patterns. Incorporating this information into your marketing strategies will further increase your sales figures.

If you decide that your business will merit from having a blog, the first thing you should do is research the whole concept of blogging as it relates to consumer based enterprises, the do's and don'ts of blogging and a realistic evaluation of the expenditure in time, effort and money as well as the projected increase in sales and the time scale when this should occur. Try out the various blog hosting services available and test drive those that you think would best suit your enterprise. Once you understand exactly how blogs work and how you can optimize them for maximum profit, it is time to set out your official business blog.

But first there are certain steps to be taken if you want to maximize the benefit of your business blog to your enterprise, whether it be online or offline.

1) Blog Design - All free blog hosting services provide templates that can be customized. But if you want your blog to accurately reflect the nature and requirements of your business, you can opt for paid blog service and hire a design artist to create a layout that is compatible with your specifications. Have a few extra designs developed and rotate them so that you can experiment and see which one has the best pulling power in terms of increasing visitors to your blog.

2) Select Topics - While the overall theme of the blog reflects your business strategies, you should have a number of topics on related matters to post to your blog. This way your readers will get to understand you and your overall thinking on general and specific business practices. This will help them to decide how much trust to place on you, your recommendations and finally but most importantly on your products/services. Writing on matters other than your own enterprise prevents your blog from being too much of a marketing ploy, so your readers will not be put off when you do mention your own merchandise.

3) Formulate Blog Policies - Set policies in place that take into account any legal issues that maybe involved. Take legal advice on what to include under disclaimers and limitations of liabilities. Decide who gets to blog and what information is allowed to be made public. Since business blogging is a comparatively new phenomenon, perhaps the staff needs to be educated on how it can positively impact on your enterprise.

4) Follow Up - Once you start your business blog, you must have at least 20 - 25 posts before you launch your marketing campaign. Update the content at regular intervals, always making sure that it is original, relevant and emphasizes your company's core values. If you regularly track feedback from your readers, you will be able to fine tune your marketing and advertising campaigns to attract more dedicated customers. Finally, add your website URL to your business blog before you start submitting it to blog search sites and directories. In order to increase your ranking on search engines and get a regular flow of visitors, use keyword phrases that are most effective and relevant to your blog.

These simple and easy to follow tactics should help you in setting up a business blog that complements your other business practices and make your endeavors even more successful and financially rewarding.

About the Author:
Naresh Belliyappa
Do you want to know more about how Blogging can help you make money on the Internet? If you do, download the Free Report: Blogging For Profit and apply the info found in it to succeed in your business. For e-books and articles ranging from parenting to web designing, visit www.ebookmall4U.co.uk.
Added: 21 Jan 2007
Article Source: http://articles.simplysearch4it.com/article/48725.html

How To Eliminate Wordpress Blog Comment Spam

One of the most serious problems with any blogging system, including WordPress, is that the comments area is wide open to that scourge of the Internet, spammers. In this case, it's comment spam.

Comment spam is created by people seeking to boost their Google rankings by having lots of links pointing to their own websites. This causes a wide variety of problems:

• When Google detects content spam, they will often block the site it's coming from because it messes up their ranking system.

• It takes up your valuable time and bandwidth to eliminate these posts.

• If the onslaught of spam is heavy enough, it may result in a denial-of-service attack, intended or not, which is a situation in which the server tries so hard to post bad information and/or deliver notification emails to you that it denies service to the legitimate requests. In at least one case, a blogger received over two thousand email notifications of comments that needed approval; as he dealt with these, he continued getting more, ultimately crashing his mail server.

As you can see, even if you have your comments set to post only upon approval, this can be a serious problem. One solution is the Akismet plugin for WordPress.

Akismet Plugin and Other Plugin Options for WordPress

Akismet is designed to help you filter out those nasty spammers, and it's not hard to get it installed into your WordPress system. Download the plugin, and upload it to the blog directory on your server in the plugins subdirectory under wp-content. Activate from the WordPress plugins menu. If you have a notice that you need the Akismet API, go to the WordPress website and look or ask for one.

Here's the magic: the only instruction in Akismet is "forget that spam was ever a problem." You don't have to do anything else at all – the spam will simply be bounced. You will not receive a notification, nor will you have to go out and delete spam.

Another plugin for eliminating spam from bots is the "Did You Pass Math" plugin. This one makes the user perform a simple math problem before submitting a comment. As most humans can handle this and most spambots can't, it's pretty likely that a comment posted through this is a legitimate comment. You should add a note of caution that your comments will be deleted if you answer the math wrong, though; a wise commenter will use an offline composition tool, not post directly to the comments area.

If This Still Doesn't Work

If you still can't eliminate spammers with these plugins, you can eliminate them by denying them access to your comments area. This does not mean you have to disable your comments section, only that you need to set up a filter.

It's not usually as simple as just blocking their IPs. Serious spammers use random IPs, while blocking IPs may get rid of them for a short time, it will ultimately prevent legitimate comments from being posted. Spammers are also notorious for hijacking other people's IP addresses. But as a short-term emergency solution, you can try it. The IP address is included in the information packet for the comment; it's similar to a traceable phone number. Look for clear patterns in your IP numbers.

Use the .htaccess file to block unwanted IPs from even seeing your blog. For instance, these lines can be added:

order allow,deny
deny from 123.123.123.123
deny from 456.456.456.*
deny from 789.789.*.*
allow from all

IPs are four-part numbers, such as 192.168.0.1. Typically, if you see a pattern with the first two sections being identical, you can block all IPs of that type by simply listing them as 192.168.*.*, as you see above. This screens out all these IP numbers. Blocked IPs will get a 403 error page; customize yours so that your contact details are listed in case you're blocking out a legitimate user. Don't use your regular email; a spammer can harvest that too, for a whole new set of problems. Instead, encode your email so that it's not automatically readable.

When you think you have your problems addressed, you can remove the block from your .htaccess file. If it still doesn't work, or if you don't see an IP pattern, it's likely that spambots are hijacking someone else's machine to attack your site. In this case, do not use the IP block.

Again, if you don't have an IP pattern of attack, this may not be worth doing. Remember, too, that with IP addresses, the first numbers affect the largest number of computers, like a reverse address: USA, California, Sacramento, X Building, Ste. 101, Joe Schmo. An IP follows roughly the same pattern, with the last of the four sections referring to the specific computer it is attached to.

Google's Nofollow Attribute

Of course, if it's a waste of their time to spam you, spammers may just skip you altogether. For this reason, you can use the Google Nofollow attribute for links: . This attribute is embedded automatically by modern versions of WordPress.

It does not eliminate links, which is what spammers are working on adding to your site. Instead, it makes those links irrelevant to Google. The end result is that it doesn't hurt your rank in Google, and it doesn't help a spammer to send data to your site. It also marks you, for spambots looking for an easy target, as a waste of time.

This is not an immediate fix. But it is a way to make your blog resistant to spammers in the future. If you're already a target, you'll have to work with it slowly, incorporating all these fixes. If you aren't a target, the very least you should do is turn on the nofollow option in your WordPress system; this will deter any hungry spambots. Upgrade your version, or look for one of the plugins that provides this service for you.

About the Author:
Danny Wirken
www.chauy.com/2006/07/how-to-eliminate-wordpress-blog-comment-spam/
Content Provider: http://www.my-articles.com