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If you’re like me, you sometimes have a hard time explaining to people what a blog is. They don’t quite get it. Especially if they don’t spend a lot of time online. But it really isn’t hard and your customers can benefit if you tell them just what to expect from a blog.

First, you have to get them to understand that it isn’t illegal or unethical. It’s simply a daily tip sheet or communication tool to bring you closer to them without having to speak directly face to face or by phone every single day. You can communicate with all of your customers at one time, and even potential customers, through your blog. Once they understand that concept then they will be interested in reading your blog.

But how do you get them to subscribe? Well, that’s a different question altogether and if they didn’t understand what a blog is then they definitely won’t understand RSS. You’ll get frustrated trying to explain that one. But everyone understands e-mail. And if you want your customers to be able to read your blog posts in their e-mail inbox and they’re interested in the convenience of doing so, rather than try to remember your blog’s e-mail address every day, then a blog promotion newsletter just might be for you.

Find out more about blog management and blog promotion newsletters from Blog Content Provider.

You may feel that a blog is, well, just a blog. In fact many business professionals view a blog as being a toy. In reality, with the right content, a blog can be one of your businesses greatest assets.

Blog content is the single most important aspect to getting well rated, not just in the search engines, but in every aspect of the online world.

In simple terms, if people don’t like your content, they wont come back. Not only that, they will not recommend you, particularly when it comes to any of the social bookmarking sites and it’s through these sites that web pages can become viral, or at least increase in popularity.

Having content that not appeals to the masses but also satisfies a need within the online community is a must. Ensuring the content is also optimized for search engines means that searches can find it.

One of the realities in life is that many people can be experts in a given field, but find it difficult to put their knowledge into the written word. Take a motor mechanic. They may be able to pull a motor apart (and put it together again) totally blindfolded, but ask them to write an interesting article on the subject and they may struggle for hours putting it together.

Situations like this require the services of a good article writer. They can take the knowledge and turn it into well optimized user and search engine friendly content that the site owner could be proud of. The added benefit and the outcome you are looking for is increased readership and possibly increased sales.

If you are an expert in your field but struggle to get your knowledge onto paper, consider an article writer who can provide that blog content for you. With good quality content, your reputation will grow and your expertise will be acknowledge. Remember, it is your expertise on a subject that is important, not your writing skills - you can leave that to us at Blog Content Provider - you can also give us a call at 786-317-8774.

Many small businesses and companies entering the blog marketing arena for the first time are a little bit confused about the purpose of blog marketing. While it possible, and we’ve had some success with it, that blogging can lead to sales, that is not the primary purpose for starting a company blog. Most consumers are not going to make a purchase from a blog. That’s not what they read blogs for.

Blog marketing can be seen as a lot of like TV and radio advertising. No one buys an ad on TV or radio expecting the ad to sell their product - that is, unless they are in mail order. Local businesses that have a service or product to sell - especially retailers - use TV and radio to drive consumers to their businesses, either in person or by phone call, to discuss business opportunities. That’s when the sale is made - in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice meeting over the phone.

Blogging is a lot like advertising on TV or radio. The purpose is not to close the sale right then. You really just want to spark enough interest in the consumer to drive them to your website and that’s where you’ll close the sale. So what needs to happen before that?

How A Blog Fits Into Your Sales Cycle
Successful companies build their sales funnel then chart their strategy for making sure the sales process is followed. Do you have your online sales funnel drawn out? If not, then isn’t it about time?

For most businesses, the company website is the place where the sale is going to be closed. If you have a local retail store then you might use your website to provide information to people in your community who will drive to your store to purchase an item, or they may place the order online and pick it up in person. You may want them to call you to place the order. That’s fine. Whatever your sales cycle is, you need to define it and make it work for you. But where should your blog fit in?

Your blog should be seen as a pre-sales tool. Whether you close the sale on your website, use the website to drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar store, or have your customer call you, you’ve got to get them to the website. A blog is a great tool for driving customers to the website. Here’s why:

1. Your website is a static tool that doesn’t change often
2. Your blog is updated every day, increasing your chances of getting your website crawled daily
3. A blog can be used to add new pages with fresh content to your website every day; that in turn brings the search engine spiders back to your website to crawl it more often
4. An off site blog can be used to build link popularity for your website, which in turn affects the search engine rankings and authority of your site within its niche
5. The longer you keep your blog running, the more effective you’ll be in gaining a loyal readership over time; that loyal readership can translate into increased links and traffic for your website
6. Your blog can drive targeted traffic to your site as the traffic to your blog increases

So, to boil it all down, your blog can be used for three overarching purposes:

• Search engine saturation
• Link popularity
• Traffic

And, of course, all of that translates into branding.

Two More Tools To Make Your Blog More Effective
Your blog fits into your overall sales funnel by being a conduit between the search engines and your website. As more and more websites compete for your key terms due to more and more businesses going online, adding a blog can give you an added advantage in your niche. New businesses entering your niche to compete are less likely to start a blog so you’ll be ahead of the game. Your blog can be most effective in achieving the three stated purposes above if you make it effective in these three areas:

• SEO
• Social Media Marketing
• Viral Marketing

We’ve talked about SEO - remember? Search Engine Saturation and Link Popularity? - but what about social media and viral marketing? The key to social media is to use sites like Digg, Technorati, and StumbleUpon to reach traffic that you might not find through SEO. Plus, SEO and social media marketing reinforce each other. When fellow Stumblers and Diggers see your website in the search engines, they’ll recognize it because they’ve seen you on the social sites. Again, that’s branding. That’s why we offer the additional service of social bookmarking, to add to your edge.

Viral marketing is a bit different. Social bookmarking can be a part of that, and so can SEO. But viral marketing involves giving your customers a reason to do your marketing for you. One term that is used is customer evangelism. It’s a term that encompasses the idea of customers talking you up and driving traffic your way. One tool that is excellent for doing that is a newsletter. Some of our customers use a blog marketing newsletter to keep loyal readers. The newsletter goes out weekly and highlights that week’s blog posts so that busy professionals who don’t have time to stop by your blog every day and haven’t quite figured out the RSS thing (which is most small business people and new Internet consumers) can receive your newsletter in their e-mail inbox and visit the blog posts that interest them based on this unique viral marketing tool - and you can make it easy for them to share your newsletter with their friends!

So, you see, it’s all about your marketing funnel. If you have not added a blog to your sales cycle or you’re not quite sure what a blog can do for your company, find out more by paying a visit to Blog Content Provider or give us a call at 786-317-8774.

Blogging about the news as it happens is one of the most exciting and controversial forms of blogging.  As a writer, there is nothing like being the first to get into print. As readers, we want to read and see what is happening as soon as it happens.  You can update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television - unless they have a live feed.

The online world has taken to this form of posting with relish, an event in one part of the world can be broadcast worldwide in a flash including photos and perhaps audio. You can now use a mobile phone to record images and broadcast live to the web from that mobile phone.

To blog news stories as they happen requires the ability to quickly convert what you see and hear into words that accurately describe the events. Accuracy is important if you are going to build a reputation for providing valuable content. You also need to be dedicated and ready to act at a moments notice.

Sports blogging is a niche that is slowly growing using a combination of RSS feeds and written blog post that provide updates and final results. A lot of sports bloggers develop affiliate links with many gambling sites.

Being able to type quickly and accurately is a must if you want to blog news stories as they happen. It also helps to know where to find the news. If you want to be first online, it is no good looking online for leads. Radio and television can provide a good source of information.

If this sounds a little to difficult then perhaps reporting on the news could be effective. If you get stuck for content at any time you can at least find a ghost writer to fill write articles for you.

I have often been asked to write keyword rich content that will get the page ranked highly in the SERP’s.  I cannot help but say, “no, sorry, cannot do - tell me who your target audience is and I will write content to satisfy them”.

The bottom line is that all content should have a keyword and search engine optimization slant; but that is after it has been written for your target audience. So who is your target audience? You could possibly use the following as a guide:

• Sales: This is a blog designed to provide information about products or services with the aim of encouraging the reader to visit your web site or sales pages.
• Affiliate: This type of blog is only slightly different to a sales blog. The end result is the same, getting your reader to your sales page.
• Newsletter: Blogs that are promoting newsletter subscriptions do so in a variety of ways. One popular method is to write content that is short with the promise of longer or more in depth articles in newsletters.
• E-books: Similar to newsletter campaigns. Articles are short and to the point with the promise of more in depth content through an e-book.
• Income: Blogs that are developed purely for income are often trying to target high priced Adword keywords. The intent is to encourage visitors onto your blog and have them leave by clicking on any of the pay-per-click ads that are running on your site.

All content should be optimized for search engines including appropriate use of keywords. The aim of is to get to the top of the search engine results pages so that searches see your link and click through to your site. The question is, what do you want them to do once they arrive on your site?

Create content that promotes that action and you will have achieved your desired results. Adding fresh content daily is the easiest way to achieve this.

That is a little like asking, “do you need a truck?”. The answer will depend on what you hope to achieve from a video blog and whether or not you have the skills required to produce the video.

I know a lot bloggers just don’t feel comfortable with idea of appearing in a video on their blog. In fact many bloggers don’t feel comfortable having a still photo of themselves on their blog. Video blogging is not necessarily about you. Video blogging can include many different topics and can make ideal ‘how to’s’

If you have a particular skill or trade, then video posts could be ideal. Having a short video on how to fix, service or upgrade something will certainly prove to be popular with many visitors who are interested in that topic. There are however a few areas that should be noted when publishing a video post.

First, ignoring the actual quality of the video, how often are you going to post? Many blogs work well with plenty of written content and the occasional video. Other blogs are devoted to videos with little in the way of text. The choice is yours.

If you are going to have the occasional video, are you going to provide a written summary or transcript. Being a scanner, I prefer the written summary. I will only view the video if the summary sells it to me - you have to give me a reason to view the video, after all it takes time to load, time I could be elsewhere.

Time is the third consideration. Will your blog service cope with a 100 visitors all wanting to watch the video? Hosting the video offsite through YouTube or similar is a sensible way to go. The visitor is then receiving the video direct from YouTube and not using any bandwidth from your site.

Without a doubt, video blogging is the future. Are they a part of your future? Only you can tell. One thing you should not do is rush in and produce poor quality videos on topics that have little public interest. Like any blog content, provide some value to your visitor and they will come back for more.

In the meantime, visit as many other blogs as possible and check out their video blogging. Note what works and doesn’t work for you. Learn from their efforts. If you come across a technique that interests you, don’t be afraid to ask. Asking a blogger how they did something is a compliment to them and they will normally provide whatever help they can. Video blogging - it is part of the future. Until your ready, continue to provide the best quality content you can.

BCP is always happy to discuss any of your daily blog content needs if you have difficulties finding that quality content every day.

It’s true, many people online do not know about or understand RSS (Really Simple Syndication). They wonder if it’s called RSS then why isn’t it really simple? Well, it really is, but you have to put your mind around it. It can be a challenge at first if you aren’t real sure about it.

Really Simple Syndication started as a way to help content readers get the content they want on a regular basis without having to visit every single website that produces content. If you are a content producer or content publisher then you can expand your readership by offering RSS feeds. But what does that mean?

RSS feeds deliver content to people so that they can read that content in the format in which it was produced without visiting the original source. Content that can be delivered through RSS includes website content, blogs, articles, podcasts, videos, and any other digital content that can be produced in this millennium. So how do you do it?

Well, there are a number of ways, but I’m going to recommend one simple way to do it that doesn’t require a lot of technical knowledge. Open up a Feedburner account and they’ll provide you with code that you can include on your content sources in order to be delivered through RSS. Your subscribers will need a feed reader in order to read the content that is delivered by RSS. But that’s free and easy too!

Of course, they can also subscribe to your content by e-mail - if you offer that (and I recommend that you do). Wouldn’t you know it? Feedburner offers code for e-mail subscriptions as well.

If you really want people to read, listen to, or watch the content that you produce then open up a free Feedburner account and offer your content by subscription.

Many good bloggers focus too heavily on keywords. While keywords are important, you can emphasize them too much. What is more important is quality content. Here are some rebuttals to the arguments made in this article.

Getting Your Blog to Rank Highly In Search Engines

There is little point in writing a blog if no one comes to read it. Blogs are automatically search engine friendly because of their fresh content and clean formatting, but there are a few easy techniques you can use to improve your rankings.

A few words about keywords:

1. Choose your Keywords wisely.

You can choose to write on a topic, or for a key word or phrase, that is immensely popular and has a ton of competition, and never stand a chance of getting in the top page or two of rankings. Or you can choose similar but more targeted keyword or phrase with less competition be in the top 10 listings.

Actually, you should choose popular keywords or phrases. Don’t waste a lot of time looking for all the “long tail” keywords so you can rank for them. Keep a list of important keywords for your business and run through all of them - long tail and broad search. You don’t have to rank on page 1 of Google for every single keyword or phrase. Some of your best traffic will come from your pings.

2. Key Word or Phrase? That is the next question.

Most people do not use a single word for a search engine query. The often search a phrase or even type an entire question. This is not necessarily the most efficient way to search, but it is the most natural. So do not think you need to limit yourself to single key word. A key phrase of three - five words is entirely appropriate.

It is difficult to optimize a blog post for keyword phrases longer than three words. When you optimize a blog post, your three keywords or phrase do not even have to be contiguous - one right after another. You can split up the phrase several times in your blog post and still rank for the phrase because most search engines these days are using semantic language algorithms. Your phrase does not have to remain in tact for every usage.

3. Choose your URL wisely.

Once you have chosen your keyword, it is time to choose your URL wisely. Whether your blog is hosted by your blogging software, on your own domain or subdomain. You want your primary keyword to be in your domain name (URL).

If you use WordPress, which I highly recommend, all you have to do is include your specific keyword or phrase in the title of your post and WordPress will automatically include that in your URL. It’s called a permalink. Of course, you have to change the default settings in WordPress to format your permalink properly. That isn’t hard to do if you know how. A one-hour tutorial can help you get your permalink set right, or a professional WordPress expert can do it for you.

4. Keyword Placement

Besides having your primary key word in your URL, you also want it to appear the header tags and titles of your posts.

Yes, I recommend adding a title and description tag at the very least to your header.php file. Again, a one-hour tutorial can help you do that, or a WordPress expert can do it for you.

5. Keyword usage in the body of your post

When writing each post you of course want to use your primary keyword(s) in the text, but don’t over do it or you’ll sound like spam. Always write in a natural, reader friendly manner. This is also the place put a few secondary keywords as well.

This is where a lot of bloggers go wrong. Don’t overdo it. Blog spam is easily detected by the search engines and if you litter your blog posts with your keyword over and over again then it won’t rank the way you want it to. The search engines will discount it as spam. Use your keyword phrase, but use it sparingly.

6. Keywords in Links

Keywords that appear in links are more important than those in plain text. So where appropriate, when linking to another blog or website, use your keywords in the text of links.

Do it once or twice. I’ve seen bloggers use six or eight links in a 300-word blog post. That’s spam. It doesn’t help you. Search engines will only count the first instance of your anchor text. After that, strategically place your links for driving traffic where you want it to go. Otherwise, you’ll be guilty of overkill, aka “spam”.

7. Keyword Categories

Another natural place to put your keywords in your Category names.

Yep. I agree. And be sure to include tags with each post. The latest edition of WordPress has a field for you to enter your tags.

Keywords are not the only thing search engines consider when ranking your blog. Here are few other areas to consider:

Links

Links that point to your blog and posts are very important to building pagerank.

1. Search Engines and Directories

Being listed in search engines and directories provide great single direction links. So make sure you submit your blog, first of all to dmoz.org. This is end all, be all to internet directories and is a place that most search engines pull from to find websites to spider. After than submit directly to the major search engines, that way they know you exist. Finally, submit to the blog search engines and various free directories.

This information is so outdated. First, DMOZ is not the end-all be-all of directories. It could take as long as a year to get listed there AFTER you submit your blog. By that time you could 365 blog posts, or more, and already have top 10 listings with single blog posts. Sure, submit to DMOZ, but even if you don’t, do other things right and you’ll have a blog that you can be proud of.

You don’t have to submit your blog to search engines any more. That’s why they have spiders. The most important thing to do to get your blog crawled by the search engines within 72 hours is to get at least one inbound link. Find a local directory and submit your blog to it. Open an account at Google Webmaster Central and verify your blog. Also, verify it with Yahoo! and MSN. Once you do that, you’ll be crawled.

Here is a well respected list of Blog Directories by Robin Good.
http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

2. Articles

Turn some of your blog posts into articles and submit them to the article directories. This will get you more linkbacks.

Yes, this is a good long-term strategy.

3. Comment

Leave appropriate comments on forums and other blogs with a link to your site in the comment.

This is a great way to get quick back links to your blog. Find two or three forums and blogs in your niche and leave a comment. Don’t spam them. Find an appropriate topic and join the conversation. Make it seem natural and people will love you.

Updates

1. Update your blog.

The more fresh content you have, the happier the spiders are. Some blogging software will even let you write posts in advance and schedule them to be posted on certain days.

You can timestamp your blog posts, but I don’t recommend it. We found out that WordPress pings your blog posts when you publish them, not when they go live. That means that if you timestamp a blog at 5 p.m. to go live the next morning at 10 a.m. then it will notify all the ping directories at 5 p.m. on the day that you publish, a full 17 hours before you want the post to go live. You’ll likely get visitors to that blog posts too soon and if it contains information that you don’t want to go public before 10 a.m. the next day, you’ve breached your own security.

Blog directories like Technorati index blog posts by listing the latest one at the top and the oldest ones below it. If you want your post to go live at 10 a.m. the next day then when 10 a.m. comes around, because you pinged when you published, that blog post will be at the bottom of the heap. The people you want to read it when you want them to read it will not get that chance. I don’t recommend timestamping. A better solution is to write the post ahead of time and save it as a draft. Then when it comes time to publish it, you can login and publish it in a few seconds.

2. Ping

After you update your blog, you’ll want to “ping” the search engines to let them know you have new content. That will get your site spidered more often. You can us the Ping-O-Matic Tool (http://pingomatic.com/) to ping a lot of search engines all at once. Alternately, if you use Feedburner, for your RSS distribution, they have a tool that will automatically ping the search engines when you update your blog.

Yes, Feedburner does have a ping tool. So does WordPress. I recommend getting a list of ping directories and insert that list into the ping field of WordPress. Alternatively, you can use Feedburner’s distribution model. One or the other is fine.

Other words on Feedburner, even if you use WordPress to ping the directories, I still recommend Feedburner for RSS distribution.

Follow these few easy guidelines and see your blog listed in the search engines in no time.

Cheryl Hartzman is a successful work at home mom who specializes in providing advice and opportunities to others who want to earn a living working at home. For more information about working at home, visit her blog at http://wahcenter.blogspot.com.

Copyright © 2008 Cheryl Hartzman. All Rights Reserved (Article may be reprinted if all text and links remain intact and unchanged.)

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Cheryl_Hartzman

Cheryl Harzman has some good advice for you here, but some of it is outdated and incomplete, or inaccurate.

Find out more about professional blog management at BCP.

Blogging is virtually free advertising. For $10 per year for a domain name (or $0 if you put your blog on your already existing website) and the cost of a ghostwriter, you can have a great blog. Don’t want to hire a ghostwriter? Do it yourself for less. But a ghostwriter can make your blog special.

Here are some of the benefits of blogging that other forms of advertising don’t offer:

• More personal medium than print advertising because you can infuse your personality into a blog and your readers will appreciate that.
• You can write every day and gain loyal readers.
• Because of the way search engines rank and categorize information, you have multiple chances of reaching your target market.
• Your readers can help you market your services through social media like Facebook, BlogCatalog, and Digg.
• Due to the fleeting nature of information today, you can quickly respond to breaking changes in your industry through your blog.
• A blog is relatively simple and inexpensive to set up.

For more information on blogging and blog ghostwriting, consult with a blogging expert.

If you use social bookmarking and social networking sites for very long then you’ll eventually run into a situation where you are banned or threatened with banishment for not following the website’s guidelines. It behooves you to learn the guidelines of the sites that you use before that situation arises. I myself have been banned from one site and I have a friend who was banned at the same site just a few weeks later. Neither of knows what offense we committed to be banned.

Propeller is one site in particular that will ban you for offenses and not give you any indication as to what the offense was that got you banned. If you inadvertently break a guideline or someone reports you for behavior that you thought was acceptable then you have no recurse for appeal. They make it difficult for you to contact site administrators to inquire about your dismissal. Your account is simply closed and the next time you go in to log in you find that you can’t. All you can do is go back and read the site guidelines to try to figure out what you did wrong. And in many cases it is simply an innocent mistake that could have been avoided by being more familiar with site guidelines.

Every social site has its own guidelines and they vary from one site to the next. What may be acceptable at one social site may not be acceptable at the next one. If you are going to be active at the social sites then you need to familiarize yourself with the guidelines at each site and make sure that you behavior on the site conforms with their policies, guidelines, and terms of use. Otherwise, you could find yourself on the outside looking in.