One method of marketing your blog is through forums. But forum marketing isn’t an “in your face” blatant advertising medium. In fact, in many forums, if you go in just posting marketing messages all over the place, you’ll get banned. That’s not what they’re there for.
Most forum moderators and participants see their forum as a community. They don’t want it bombarded by advertising messages. That’s what they go to the forum to get away from. People in forums are tired of being hit with advertising messages every five minutes - on TV, radio, billboards, magazine ads, you name it. Online they just want a place to relax and be themselves.
So how do you connect with people online? You join them in community. You enter the forum just like everyone else - as yourself. You can let your hair down and just be your grisly old self. But you are allowed a 2-3 line signature link in most forums. That allows you to link to your blog and/or website and as you carry on conversations with people, you’ll be marketing your business indirectly. Through forum marketing, you don’t need blatant advertising messages. You just need to be a real person who connects with real people.
I like Michael Martine. He’s a competitor, but he’s earned my respect.
Recently, Michael posted a video on YouTube in which he tells his audience NOT to use social media to market their blogs. It seems like bad advice on the surface, but I’ll have to agree with him. The nuance that might go missed by some is that social media is a good tool for marketing, but that using it as a tool to harp on your blog is not a good idea. You’ll have to see Michael’s video to catch the full drift, but do pay attention to what he’s saying because it makes a lot of sense:
If I wasn’t having a bad hair day and wasn’t pressed for time this morning, I’d offer a video response. I would like to address one thing about what Michael says in the video, namely, that he got no benefit out of marketing on Facebook. Frankly, I’m not surprised. Facebook is not a good venue for Michael’s services and it likely wouldn’t be for ours either. LinkedIn, however, is a much better social media choice for Michael, and for us at Blog Content Provider.
Like Michael, I get annoyed with the silly vampire bites, what’s your favorite color questions, super duper walls, and other crap on Facebook. I think a part of that has to do with your choice of friends. But even if you choose good friends, you can still get poked by retards. It can be quite annoying.
LinkedIn is set up differently. There’s no poking, no gargoyles, no silly little high school dating questionnaires or virtual college frat parties. It’s a professional organization that caters to traditional professionals who just want to do business with other mature and professional people online. Much more conservative. That’s why I don’t like it.
Why Social Networks Are NOT One-Size-Fits-All Prom Dresses
Now, wait a minute, Allen. You just said LinkedIn would be a good place to network for BCP.
Yes, I did. And it would. If I had the time to actually get in there and rub elbows with people. But I don’t.
I could make the time. It would probably benefit me if I did it right. But I don’t have the inclination - right now. That could change in the future. But right now, LinkedIn is not the social network of choice for me. I am working on other things.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m totally dedicated to BCP. But I also have my own websites. I’ve been writing poetry for over 20 years and I have a poetry website with almost 100 pages and a blog with 150 blog posts. My poetry blog is on page 1 of Yahoo! and moving up in the other search engines. I have pages on my website that are on page 1 of Google, page 1 of Yahoo, and ranking well at MSN and Ask also. I have discovered that I can bookmark a blog post or web page at StumbleUpon and get massive traffic. I can bookmark the same blog post at Digg and get nothing. On the other hand, I can bookmark a BCP blog post at StumbleUpon and get only meager results, even less at Digg, but if I bookmark it at Propeller or a bookmarking site designed specifically for Internet marketers then I’ll get much more traffic.
The reason why I think that happens is because of the personalities of the different social media sites. People on StumbleUpon are a lot more free wheeling and artsy than people on Digg. There is a type of informational blog that will get a lot of votes on Digg if the information is valuable and those pages don’t do real well at StumbleUpon. When we apply this principle to the social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, it becomes evident that you have to use the networking tool that is most appropriate for your audience.
Which Social Network Is Right For You?
Poets like to hang out at Facebook. When I browse the Facebook profiles, there are so many groups and applications that appeal to people who write poetry, fiction, and other types of literature. There aren’t so many on LinkedIn.
That doesn’t mean that LinkedIn is a bad place to network. It’s just a bad place to network for people promoting themselves as a poet. On the other hand, if you are trying to hire yourself out as a business writer then LinkedIn is the perfect place to network. Facebook may or may not be based on who your target market is.
Since I only have so many hours a day that I can devote to social networking activities, I’ve decided to spend my time on Facebook instead of LinkedIn. I’m not worried that my blogging business is going to suffer if I don’t network. On the contrary, BCPs blogging business is steadily growing. But if I don’t spend a little bit of time each day promoting my poetry then it won’t get promoted. That’s why I make the point to do a little bit of networking and content creation each day, usually in the evening.
The Right Way To Use Social Networks
Now that you understand where I’m coming from, what’s the best way to use a social networking site? I believe that Michael Martine has hit it on the head. Instead of promoting your blog or your website, which people don’t really care about, promote yourself. People join the social networks to make friends, not to find material that they can read. They have plenty of that. What they don’t have plenty of are friends who take a genuine interest in them and what they have going on in their lives.
When I was an active user at MySpace, I got frustrated at all the comment spam that came across my profile. I, like a lot of other users, would accept any and every friend request without considering whether or not that person would truly be of benefit, or whether I could benefit them. I was going about it all wrong. I ended up abandoning my MySpace profile because of it.
Social networks are not friend collection receptacles. They are places where you can find people interested in the same things that you are interested in. If you do it right, you’ll make friends and those friends will eventually turn into business partners, customers, or other people who can benefit your business (and your business theirs). Do it wrong and you’ll end up frustrated, on the outs, and wondering why no one likes you. I hope this improves your social karma.
Blogging isn’t rocket science. As the business becomes more competitive and more and more bloggers enter the “blogosphere,” the competition for your important keywords will get stiffer and stiffer. There are some things you can do to give you the competitive edge. The first among these is to be the first to start your blog.
Age factors are important and if you get a leg up on the competition you’ll be doing yourself well. Also, the more often you blog the better your advantage. The next thing is the length of posts - but only if the posts are optimized well. The more content you have on your website - any website - if the content is optimized properly, the better your chances of ranking for your important keywords. That doesn’t mean you have to write a book. It just means you need important and valuable, unique content. Are your blog posts long enough?
When I say “long enough,” I’m simply talking about more than just a couple of sentences. Every blog post doesn’t have to be 1,000 words. But neither should they be a mere 200 words. Optimally, all of your blog posts will be between 300 and 500 words, but longer posts to give you more potential. If you write really long posts, break them up into sections. Each section should have a subhead that includes your keyword. That will further optimize your blog post and give you another advantage. When it comes to competitive blogging, every advantage counts.
We’ve grown increasingly frustrated with GoDaddy here at BCP. We tried to work with them, but their service just isn’t real conducive to blogging. I think it might have something to do with the fact that GoDaddy has been around long enough that they didn’t consider blogging platforms and the needs of bloggers before building their service offerings. How could they have known we’d need certain features?
The problem with GoDaddy as a web host is that their system is not friendly toward WordPress, our preferred blogging platform. WordPress is open source. You would think that it would be compatible with any host. Not true.
When it comes to web hosting, there are a ton of features that vary from host to host. Some offer dedicated servers and some only use shared servers. Some have rotating IP blocks, which is an irritating nuisance if you are trying to write a blog because you never know where you’re going to be in cyberspace from one day to the next. Some support MySQL and others don’t. I could go on and on about the variations you’ll find, but I don’t want to bore you.
Suffice it to say that GoDaddy is not a good web host for setting up a WordPress blog. You need a host that offers dedicated servers. Ideally, you would have your own dedicated server for your blog. But if you can’t have a dedicated server then you at least want to share a server with other blogs of a similar type. By similar type, I mean business blogs. That’s an important distinction because you could just as well go to Blogspot and most of your neighbors will be personal blogs, or poetry blogs. Most likely, they’ll be spam blogs. Blogspot is, after all, the biggest neighborhood for spam on the Internet.
That’s why we always steer our customers away from Blogspot. From here on out, we’ll attempt to steer them away from GoDaddy as well. You might pay more for a dedicated server, but it’s worth it. You want a host that will protect your blog’s IP address and keep the riff raff out. You also want the added security that comes with certain types of hosts. Finally, if your web host makes it difficult for us to SEO your blog properly, and GoDaddy does, then the performance of your blog will be diminished. We’d hate for that to happen. We do, after all, pride ourselves in producing the best results online for commercial and small business blogs.
Interested in making a living as a writer or a blogger? If you are a writer, are you going to wait until that big writing gig comes along someday before you make any money writing? If you are currently writing a daily blog, are you making any money? Are you going to try and wait until that big blogging deal comes along before you accept work as a blogger?
I ask these questions because I talk to a lot of bloggers and many of them are very proud of their writing skills and they should be. However, many of them are after the pie in the sky. They have seen a few bloggers get bigger jobs. They have seen some blogs really take off and become popular.
But remember, there are millions of blogs out there and most of them want what you want. They want their blog to become extremely popular. They want to make a lot of money blogging. They want someone to come along and hire them for that big writing gig.
It could happen to you. Yes, you should go after your dreams wholeheartedly. But what are you going to do right now while you work on your dream job?
Most movie stars played a lot of bit roles before they became well known or got that big movie deal. Bloggers who want to make it big need to do the same thing. Take any blogging gig that comes along and make some income while you continue to shoot for your dreams.
We hire bloggers. We have blogger job openings. We will not make you rich. But some of our bloggers are making a decent income doing what they enjoy. They are making money online. They are making money from home.
We use wordpress for all of our clients, but many times we get questions about different blogging platforms. My answer has always been simple. We have had great results for our clients and our own blogs by using wordpress as our blogging platform, so we don’t fix a wheel that isn’t broke.
Matt Cutts from Google was asked this same question. Here and watch what he has to say about wordpress and a couple of other seo tips as well.
Currently hiring 20 bloggers to review a website. Your blog must be related to online games, online poker, online bingo, online casinos, or something related to online betting in general.
It pays $10 to do one blog post on your blog. We may do more with you if you have the right blog. UK and European Blogs even more welcome on this blogger job because the website you will be reviewing is a UK and Euro Betting website.
If interested email info@blogcontentprovider.com and include the url to your blog and any other relevant information you can provide.
This video is about a tool you can use to social bookmark your blog posts more effectively. It’s not an autosubmitter. There is some work involved. You have to join the social bookmarking websites. You have to join social poster as well. Above all, you do have to follow directions because there is some setup involved.
But in the long run, once everything is set up, this tool could save you a lot of time with your social bookmarking duties.
Come grow with Blog Content Provider. We are always looking for good blog writers. If you write a personal blog that isn’t making you any money, we will teach you valuable SEO skills that will help you make your personal blog better - and you’ll get paid a guaranteed amount every month for your faithful writing ability. We seek the following skills:
Ability to communicate clearly in the written word
SEO knowledge is helpful, but we do train
Previous writing experience is a plus but not required
Experience working with WordPress.org will be in your favor
Must be willing to learn and conform to our standards
This is commercial blogging. Creativity is a plus, but the technical aspects of blogging and SEO are emphasized. If you think you have the skills and want to learn and grow with a fast moving company with plenty of opportunity for growth and advancement, Blog Content Provider just may be for you.
As much as Net citizens like to create new words out of the fusion of older words, I’ve got a new word for blog spam - it’s Blam. This is when another blogger scrapes your blog posts and reloads them onto his own blog for one of the following purposes:
Sell advertising alongside your content with no attribution
Attribution may be given for your content, but it sits right beside AdSense ads, the other blogger’s primary source of income
The blammer, blog spammer, and gratuitous traffic whammer, steals your content only to redirect your traffic via trackback to his blog so that he can then channel into another blog that sells similar services to yours (I love this one!)
He’s promoting his affiliate programs
She’s a kleptomaniac and just can’t help herself - you see, I’m an equal opportunity spam blam hater (at least I didn’t say she was a nymphomaniac - but then again, maybe she’s that too!)
She’s got a lot of time on her hands and really doesn’t know what to do with it and it sounded like a good idea to use it to design a website, steal someone else’s content, and try to earn two cents with it because - hey, she’s a web designer, not a writer (give her a break)
He’s just playing around
Just goofing off
I could have titled this blog post, “Top 8 Reasons Blog Spammers Steal Your Content,” but see how boring that is? If you see this blog post on another blog somewhere it’s because you’ve encountered a blammer. Leave a comment for me (if they allow comments): Just say, “Spam, Blam, Thank you Ma’am” and link back to this post. Thanks.
