Article Categories

SiteProNews Blogs

Why You Need Static Blog Pages

01 2010 Monday

By Kathy Dobson in Blogs & Podcasts

WordPress offers bloggers two choices in publishing their material. They can choose to publish it immediately as a blog post, in which case it will appear as the first post on your homepage with others following suit.

Or, another choice is to publish it as a ’static page’…a page that stands on its own…meaning it is literally a separate page with a separate address from your homepage. Your readers access these pages by clicking on a link that you have provided on your blog.

Most often you will find these navigation links listed in the sidebar, on the top near the header and sometimes even at the bottom of the blog page. (Make sure these pages open in a ‘new window’ so that your customer can easily navigate back to the home page…you don’t want to loose them.)

An example of some ’static’ pages that should or can be included on your blog are:

1) About Page: This is probably the most common page used among bloggers and the first place I head to after I’ve read a post I like on a particular blog. Use your ‘About Me’ page to allow your reader get a more personal view of you. This page gives your new readers a glimpse or snapshot of the person behind the posts. You can and should include a picture of yourself. Additionally, you can explain a bit of why they should subscribe to your blog on this page.

2) Contact Page: Many times your readers will have questions after reading through one of your posts…or maybe something captured their interest and they would like to partner with you on a project. Whatever the reason, you should have a page dedicated to contacting you. Without this page, you will never know how many opportunities you may have missed with your readers and potential partners. Someone may even have been impressed enough to want to advertise with you. Make it easy for them to locate this important page…don’t test their patience by making it difficult to locate…they may walk.

3) Disclaimer Page: With the new FTC rulings about bloggers that came out late 2009, it is imperative that you inform your readers what you ‘get out of your blog.’ If you make money from your blog through affiliate associations or ads, you must inform your readers of this fact or risk big trouble from the FTC. You can balance this revelation by explaining to them some of the costs associated with your blog.

4) Service Related Pages: Any kind of services that you may offer your blog readers such as coaching or consultation services should be given their own page. Your readers will be more likely to buy your services from a dedicated page that you have set up than a flash in the pan mention in one of your posts.

5) Best of Page: Also referred to as a ’sneeze page’…not squeeze page! All your most favorite or most popular blog posts can be included on this page. Use this page to highlight anything about your blog that you want front and center or you know your readers will enjoy because of its previous popularity.

6) 404 Page: Most bloggers are aware of their 404 Error page. This error page is what someone sees when they navigate to a broken or deleted link or a link that is not working for some reason. What most bloggers are not aware of is the fact that they can customize this page to their advantage so that readers are directed to what they are looking for. Additionally, it provides the reader with something else to keep their interest. A blank 404 Page is a wasted opportunity.

7) Unique Projects: Should you participate in any kind of event…charity or otherwise, it is always a good idea to create page dedicated to this particular event. This gives the event much more importance and allows those with interest a place to follow up on any dates or updates that they need be aware of.

Testimonial Page: Selling an item or even selling yourself can be much more impressive if you include testimonials from others that have used the product or service and can provide their details. Once again, there are new strict rules concerning using testimonials so make sure you understand the new FTC rulings before placing any on your blog.

Although there are many more choices for pages in your blog, the choices listed above should be included in most blogs. Beyond those, there are no hard core rules on what pages to set up as each individual blog offers something different. You are only limited by your imagination.

Once you have settled on a blogging subject, visit other blogs with similar interests/topics as yours and check out their pages and how they have set up their blog. Great way to get ideas for your own.

Blogging is a platform that is growing by leaps and bounds. It is here to stay. The more you understand what elements are important to your blog the quicker and easier it will be to be successful at blogging.

Kathy Dobson is a free spirited business owner and entrepreneur dedicated to helping others achieve financial and personal freedom through Internet marketing with an emphasis on membership sites.
Learn more about membership sites please visit:
http://www.crazycashmembershipsites.com
For further tips and resources visit:
http://www.kathydobson.com

Directory Assistance – How Can I Help Your Blog?

12 2009 Tuesday

By Enzo F. Cesario in Blogs & Podcasts

Blogs-&-Podcasts Blogging can be a deeply satisfying, intensely personal experience. Generally simple to use, blogs allow the household mom, the serial author, the political activist and the high school poet to publish and archive their best efforts and satisfy the creative muse in all of them. Whereas, in the past, publishing was a privilege for the elite few, it is now open to anyone with the time and the means to access a computer.

But if no one is reading the blogs, they can become a disheartening and frustrating experience. A lack of audience can even cost a blogger money – there are numerous blogs on the web that are intended to be significant sources of personal income, between advertising programs and personal product sales. A key step in getting a blog read, therefore, is the use of a specialized web directory known as the blog directory.

3 Superb SEO Plugins for Your Wordpress Blog

11 2009 Wednesday

By Stacey Zimmerman in Blogs & Podcasts

Search engine helps you to generate traffic, but consequently Search Engine Optimization is very complicated, which beginners and expert bloggers dismay in joining such a strategy for achieving traffic. Starting a wordpress by default is pretty suitable at letting search engines see what’s happening. Fortunately, there are wide varieties of plugins accessible to keep you attain a good ranking for your blog, lessen that the stress of typing the code of your blog to obtain results of the search engines.

Here are some very beneficial SEO plugins to help you build a better wordpress blog.

Redirection

In improving our wordpress blogs, we cannot avoid our permalinks to be broken. This happens when you make changes to an old post, or maybe in upgrading or improving your wordpress blog also when you make changes on your permalinks. These changes can break up your entire wordpress blog.

Ill explain what really happens behind these changes, each post has its own URL this is what we call permalinks. When it is broken, those visitors won’t find your blog post. The redirection plugin helps you to redirect the visitors to follow the new permalink. So that your traffic will work efficiently.

features include by John Godley:

404 error monitoring – captures a log of 404 errors and allows you to easily map these to 301 redirects
Custom ‘pass-through’ redirections allowing you to pass a URL through to another page, file, or website.
Full logs for all redirected URLs
All URLs can be redirected, not just ones that don’t exist
Redirection methods – redirect based upon login status, redirect to random pages, redirect based upon the referrer!

Existing features include:

Automatically add a 301 redirection when a post’s URL changes
Manually add 301, 302, and 307 redirections for a WordPress post, or for any other file
Full regular expression support
Apache .htaccess is not required – works entirely inside WordPress
Strip or add www to all your WordPress pages * Redirect index.php, index.html, and index.htm access
Redirection statistics telling you how many times a redirection has occurred, when it last happened, who tried to do it, and where they found your URL
Fully localized

Robots Meta

Robots Meta plugin allows you to point specifically to the search engines which sections of your blog to crawl. This means that you’ll gain more respect from search engines, and likewise more traffic.

This plugin by Joost De Valk makes it possible to:

Prevent indexing of your search result pages, while still allowing the search engines to follow the links on them, by adding noindex, follow robots meta tags.
Disallow indexing of subpages to your homepage, category pages, author pages and tag pages, to prevent duplicate content.
Prevent indexing of your login, register and admin pages by adding noindex robots meta tags.
Add noodp an noydir meta robots tags, allowing you to opt out of DMOZ and Yahoo! Directory descriptions.
Prevent Yahoo! and Google from indexing your feeds by adding a meta tag to their head-section.
Prevent indexing of just your comment feeds.
Disable author and date-based archives.
Prevent attachment pages from ranking in the search results over your articles.
Enforce a trailing slash on archives.
Edit your .htaccess and your robots.txt from within WordPress.
Assign robots meta tags to individual posts & pages.
Verify your site with Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo! Site Explorer and Bing Webmaster Tools.
Add noarchive tags to your blog.

SEO Smart Links

Internal linking structure is the prime subject of SEO. If you have more links it just convey how well your website structure is. The problem with this is that if you had to manually go and create links to relevant and important posts you’ll spend hours and hours doing it.

Here are some advantages by Vladimir Prelovac:

SEO Smart links allows you to specify a word, like ‘SEO’ and then link it to a post on your site. Then each time the word SEO appears on your site, it’s automatically turned into a link you specified.
SEO Smart Links provides automatic SEO benefits for your site in addition to custom keyword lists, nofollow and much more.
SEO Smart Links can automatically link keywords and phrases in your posts and comments with corresponding posts, pages, categories and tags on your blog.
Further SEO Smart links allows you to set up your own keywords and set of matching URLs. Finally SEO Smart links allows you to set nofollow attribute and open links in new window.
It is a perfect solution to get your blog posts interlinked or add affiliate links to other sites.
Everything happens completely transparent, and you can edit the options from the administration settings panel.

Stace Zimmerman is an Internet Marketer who owns & maintains many websites online. Please visit this site for wordpress themes and other blogging information. He also runs a hoodia information site.

BlogTalkRadio Offers Book Authors the Opportunity to Host Their Own Shows

11 2009 Wednesday

By Phyllis Zimbler Miller in Blogs & Podcasts

BlogTalkRadio.com – an internet radio “station” that offers anyone the opportunity to host his or her own show for free – is an ideal opportunity for book authors to promote their books on a regular basis while providing valuable content to their target audiences.

To begin with, no technical knowledge is needed. You simply sign up at BlogTalkRadio.com, follow the directions, and you can become the host of your own live show. You don’t even need a microphone. You call into a number at BlogTalkRadio to be the host, and your show guest – as well as show listeners who want to ask questions – call into the same number. Show listeners can also “chat” questions during the live show.

Wait you say! How do you think of topics to talk about? Let’s answer this by taking two imaginary book projects. We’ll take both a fiction and a nonfiction book project.

We’ll imagine that Janice has a novel titled “Sally Smith Confronts Her Ghosts” – and the book centers on a protagonist who realizes she has undiagnosed PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) and seeks help. When the help fails her, she goes on a quest to cure herself.

Janice decides to have a half-hour show once a week with the title “Confronting Your Ghosts.” She invites psychologists and other mental health workers as guests on the show. Sometimes the topic is PTSD, sometimes eating disorders, sometimes any number of “ghosts” that people face. At the beginning and end of each segment, Janice announces that she is the author of “Sally Smith Confronts Her Ghosts” and gives a brief blurb about the novel.

Then Janice uses her weekly show to get more exposure for herself on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the other social media sites on which she is a member. She tweets and posts Facebook updates about the guest topic for that week’s show.

Now what about Paul, whose nonfiction book “How to Speak to Your Plumber” provides tips on how to speak the language of the various repair people you use in your home or office. Paul starts a BlogTalkRadio show with the same name as his book – “How to Speak to Your Plumber.”

Each week Paul has a person from a different occupation as the show’s guest – an air conditioning repair person, an upholstery cleaner, a fence builder – talking about information for that specific specialty.

And, yes, Paul also uses his social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook to get the word out about his show, which gets the word out about his book.

One of the benefits of doing a BlogTalkRadio show is that, after doing the live show, the recording of the show is available on your show’s page for downloading. People can listen on the site – and guests can download the show onto their own website or blog.

Build a fan base for your BlogTalkRadio show by offering quality content, and you’ll have a weekly platform for promoting your book.

Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is an Internet business consultant. If you liked this article, you’ll love her free report on “Power Marketing’s Top 3 Internet Marketing Tips” – download the report now from www.QueensofBookMarketing.com

How to Get Your Blog and List Building Working in Harmony to Build Your Internet Home Business

11 2009 Friday

By Michelle Jayes in Blogs & Podcasts

For anyone who gets involved in an internet home based business, one of the first things that they are taught to do in order to build a successful online business is to get a website, a blog and an auto-responder. In fact these three things are the most important tools when starting an internet business.

What we are going to discuss here is ways to get your list building and blogging activities to synchronize in such a way that your marketing efforts will support both these activities at the same time. In other words, your blog will support your list building and your list building will support your blog.

Let’s begin by looking at how you can use your blog as a way to build your list.

When setting up your blog make sure that you add an opt-in box to your auto-responder and place it in a prominent position where your visitors will see it on arrival at your blog. Near to the top and either on the left or right hand side is good. You could offer a free report or e-book as an inducement to sign up to your list.

Whenever you make a new post to your blog, sign off with your name and a link to your squeeze page. Encourage your visitors to sign up to your list so that they will be notified every time you make a new post on your blog.

Another way that you can promote your blog is by inviting people to comment on your blog posts. The advantage for them is that their comments can link back to their websites when they enter the URL field on the comment form.

If your business is internet marketing then make posts about this and teach your subscribers about the benefits and etiquette of commenting and linking back to their sites from the blog comments. Make sure that they understand that spamming is not an option.

Whenever you make a new post about something controversial or a review on a product or service, email your list and ask them to give you their opinions on whatever you have blogged about and include a link to your blog post.

You should see a significant increase in traffic to your site from your email list if your post is well targeted and also a big increase in the number of comments that you get to each article.

Offer your readers the opportunity of using your posts on their own blogs provided they include a link back to your site and acknowledge you as the author of that post. Also submit your articles or posts to other peoples’ blogs for possible inclusion on their sites. Invite your email list to submit articles for possible inclusion on your blog with a link back to their sites and inform them of how guest blogging will help to increase their own profiles on the internet. This will help to keep your blog loaded with fresh content at all times.

By adding these tactics to your list building and blogging efforts you will be creating a well synchronized and effective marketing strategy for your internet home based business.

If you enjoyed this article by Michelle Jayes then visit her website www.online-income-business.com for more great ideas and
business opportunities and sign up for her free newsletter

CliffsNotes For Bloggers To Avoid The FTC’s $11,000 Fine For Endorsements

10 2009 Monday

By Chip Cooper in Blogs & Podcasts

If you’ve already read – and clearly understand – the 81-page Guides for the use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising issued by the FTC on October 5, 2009, then read no further.

However, if you’re a blogger or other producer of consumer-generated online content, and you’re not quite sure about how to decipher the legaleze or how to comply with the Guides, then this article may be for you… particularly if you’re more than a little concerned about avoiding the $11,000 fine for non-compliance.

What’s This All About, Anyway?

I’ve read bloggers’ comments to the effect of “why is the Federal Trade Commission sticking its dad-gum nose into the blogosphere — how far will this go?” That’s one way to look at it – as an unnecessary intrusion by the government.

Another way to look at is that the Guides represent an “official” recognition that blogging has passed its adolescent stage. Blogging has grown up, and the FTC is the so-called new sheriff in town.

Now, any producer of consumer-generated online content – bloggers, podcasters and video producers – is being treated to the same truth in advertising rules that other businesses in the brick and mortar world have been living with for a long time.

When Do Bloggers Become Endorsers?

This is the key threshold question. If a blogger is not an endorser, then the Guides do not apply. However, if the blogger is an endorser, then the Guides apply and with them, potential liability.

If you want to actually read the Guides to find the answer, go to new Example 8 (pp. 50-51). Example 8 provides 3 scenarios where a consumer reviews a product or service on a blog:

no endorsement – a consumer purchases a product with his/her own money, and posts a review or opinion on a blog (result: Guides do not apply do not apply because there is no relationship at all with the advertiser; no worries);
no endorsement – same scenario, except that a coupon for a free trial of the product is generated by the store’s computer, based on his/her purchases (result: Guides do not apply because there is no relationship with the advertiser indicating “sponsorship”; no worries); and
endorsement – the consumer is part of a network marketing program where he/she periodically reviews products and receives a free product for which he/she writes reviews (result: Guides apply because there is a relationship with the advertiser based on the stream of free products indicating “sponsorship”; there are legitimate worries about how to comply with the Guides).

Suggestions For Bloggers Who Act as Endorsers

If you’re a blogger who acts as an endorser, then you should take care to understand and comply with the Guides to avoid a $11,000 fine by the FTC.

In simple terms, the basic rules are these:

disclose “material connections” you receive for promoting someone else’s product or service, and
disclose typical results that should reasonably be expected from a product or service (”results not typical” disclaimers won’t work anymore).

The real trick is understanding how to comply with these basic rules. The following is a list of examples and suggestions to assist you:

if you purchase a product and pay for it with your own money, then blog about it, you’re not regulated by the Guides – no worries;
if you are paid for product review, you should disclose who paid you that you were paid for the review (you’re clearly regulated by the Guides);
if you regularly get free products and blog about them (e.g. a book reviewer), you should disclose who sent you the product and that it was free (you’re clearly regulated by the Guides);
however, if you don’t routinely blog about products, or you don’t routinely receive free products, but you receive a free product that’s not very valuable and you blog about it, you’re probably not regulated by the Guides;
even if you write a negative review of a product or service you’re not off the hook — if you’re required by the Guides to make disclosures, the disclosure rules still apply, even to negative reviews;
if you’re an endorser, you should be a bona fide user of the product or service at the time the endorsement is given – fake endorsements are deceptive, and won’t comply with the Guides;
disclosures should not be after-the-fact; they should be made at the time of the endorsement and live with it;
disclosures should be clear and conspicuous – it’s not required that the disclosure be in ALL CAPS, but all caps disclosures would go a long way toward satisfying the clear and conspicuous requirement; * example disclosure: FTC GUIDES NOTICE: I RECEIVED THIS PRODUCT FROM XYZ, INC. FREE OF CHARGE, or FTC GUIDES NOTICE: THIS PRODUCT WAS PROVIDED FREE OF CHARGE BY XYZ COMPANY; and
if you regularly get free products and blog about them (e.g. a book reviewer), you might consider adding a clause to your website’s Terms of Use regarding this business practice.

Conclusion

Prior to the issuance of the Guides by the FTC – which go into effect on December 1, 2009 – the blogosphere was sort of like the wild, wild west. Few if any rules, anything goes… and that sadly included fake endorsements and material relationships that weren’t disclosed.

The Guides were intended to address some of these abuses. Despite the good intentions motivating the Guides, there are legitimate concerns that the Guides may have gone too far. Critics argue that they are overbroad, and that they may create as many problems as they solve. Legal scholars debate whether they are contrary to established legal precedent.

Despite the misgivings of some and debate among legal scholars, the new FTC Guides are here to stay. They represent not only a win for consumers, but also a wake-up call to bloggers. The blogosphere has now come of age, and this requires a much greater sense of responsibility in a highly regulated environment.

Leading Internet, IP and software lawyer Chip Cooper has automated the process of drafting website documents for small websites with his MyLegalFirewall website documents drafting service. Discover how quick, easy, and cost-effective it is to determine which legal documents you need, draft them online, and claim your FREE Special Report, Determine Which Legal Documents Your Website Really Needs, at ==> http://digicontracts.com/kits/firewall.aspx

3 Critical Things Blog Site Webmasters Need To Know About The FTC’s New Blog Regs

10 2009 Tuesday

By Chip Cooper in Blogs & Podcasts

In recognition of the increasing influence of social media online, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on October 5, 2009, for the first time since 1980, issued new regulations governing online testimonials and endorsements by bloggers.

If you operate a blog site, your exposure to legal liability may have increased exponentially. Violators could be fined up to $11,000. And you face new liability associated with statements made by your endorsers, such as affiliates.

It’s critical that you understand how these regulations affect your website business.

A Quick Summary

In a nutshell, the new regulations are aimed at protection of online consumers. The FTC wants to regulate blogs to see if they’re trading testimonials and favorable reviews for some kind of financial reward. That’s a good thing.

The not-so-good-thing is that the new regulations may be overbroad and even in conflict with existing legal precedent. As a result, they may subject harmless, every-day activities to potential liability. Serious liability.

A good way to see how the regulations affect you is to consider 3 basic questions discussed below.

No. 1 – Threshold Question: Are You Even Covered By The New Regulations?

If you have a blog on your site, or if a blog is essentially your site, and all you do is publish creative content about your areas of interest, you’re not even covered by the new regulations.

No worries.

No. 2 – Are You Promoting Someone Else’s Products or Services?

If you promote or pitch someone else’s products or services on your blog, there are 2 key requirements under the new regulations:

disclose “material connections” — you must disclose all incentives you receive — cash, gifts, benefits, etc. – for promoting or pitching the product or service, and
disclose typical results — you can’t get away any more with small print disclaimers such as “results not typical”; you’re now required to provide a more complete and forthright picture of what can be reasonably expected from a product or service.

If you’re a violator, you could be fined up to $11,000. In addition, you could be held liable for false, misleading, and unsubstantiated statements.

This all sounds like a great win for consumers; however, It doesn’t take much creativity to imagine horror stories with the “material connections” requirement.

Example: suppose you’re a book reviewer. Book publishers routinely send you free books to review. If you fail to disclose that the book was free in your review, will you be fined $11,000? Technically, your failure to disclose the free book would be a violation, but would you be fined? That’s anyone’s guess. If you’re not fined, and someone else in a similar position is fined, is that selective enforcement? As you can see, there’re a lot of potential problems with well-intentioned, but overbroad regulation.

No. 3 – Do You Recruit Other Bloggers To Pitch Your Products or Services?

If you recruit other bloggers to pitch your products or services, such as affiliates, you’re an “advertiser” under the regulations. As an advertiser that sponsors endorsers, under the new regulations you’re required to:

provide guidance and training to ensure that statements made by your affiliate-bloggers are truthful, not misleading, and substantiated, and
monitor your affiliate-bloggers and take steps necessary to stop the publication of deceptive representations when they are discovered.

The new regulations apparently embody the concept that advertisers can be held liable for the endorsement-related sins of their affiliate-bloggers. The FTC stated: “It is foreseeable that an endorser may exaggerate the benefits of a free product or fail to disclose a material relationship where one exists. In employing this means of marketing, the advertiser has assumed the risk that an endorser may fail to disclose a material connection or misrepresent a product, and the potential liability that accompanies that risk”.

Legal scholars are now debating whether this new liability exposure for advertisers is in conflict with a well-established legal defense provided by a federal statute (47 USC 230(c)(1)), which reads: “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” In simple terms, this statute has been interpreted to mean that Party A is not liable for Party B’s online content.

Has the FTC overlooked 47 USC 230 in its haste to regulate? The courts will have to sort this out. Only time will tell.

Conclusion

The FTC was well-intentioned in its new blog-related regulations. Protection of online consumers is a worthy undertaking.

However, overbroad regulations, particularly if they are in part contrary to well established legal precedent may create as many problems as they solve.

One thing is clear, however — if you fall under No.s 2 or 3 above, protecting yourself from unexpected legal liability should be a high priority.

Hey Bloggers! Let’s Hear It For Government Regulation!

10 2009 Monday

By Catharine P. Taylor in Blogs & Podcasts

There was a certain air of inevitability to the Federal Trade Commission’s edict earlier this week that bloggers have to disclose when they have a relationship with advertisers. And, even though there are those who would prefer that the industry self-police, I’m with the FTC on this one: Just as ads dolled up to look like editorial or infomercials dolled up with sets to make them look like “The Larry King Show” have to disclose their true nature, bloggers need to account. Many do, many don’t, and thus, the FTC needs to be involved.

I know that’s not what everyone wants to hear, but we’re now living in a world where we are all, prospectively, endorsers, and where industry self-regulation starts to get much more complex than it was when there were a limited number of media outlets. (I’ll leave to one side, for the purposes of this column, how the FTC will actually pull this off from a logistical point of view – although no doubt a few good algorithms will help.)

If self-regulating were entirely up to advertisers, that would be one thing – I’m normally a supporter of self-regulation. But in social media, as we’ve learned time and time again, the message is essentially out of advertisers’ control, and while one would hope, via self-regulation, advertisers would monitor those with whom they have a relationship and what they are saying about a product or service – indeed that’s the point of having such a relationship in the first place – the actual endorsement is out of their control. Can an advertiser actually reach into someone’s blog post and add in disclosure where it doesn’t exist? With the exception of adding a comment into the discussion thread, the answer is no, unless I’m missing something.

The onus has to be put on bloggers to an extent, and with the advent of these new endorsement guidelines, it is. (While, we’re on the subject of disclosure, I admit I didn’t wade through all 81 pages of the FTC document, but you can right here if you want to.)

People I know, and like, don’t necessarily agree with me on this, but I don’t view the guidelines as really being about what we generally consider to be the marketing/social media/advertising industry. To us, the fact that bloggers should disclose that they are paid by an advertiser, or gets free product from one, is obvious. To not do so shoots down one’s credibility, which is the coin of the realm in social media.

But the people who read this column have all grown up being schooled in this tradition. As social media tools come into broader use, more and more people without that grounding are going to become part of the conversation. If the history of so-called “mommy bloggers” is any guide, advertisers will reach out to them.

That said, I still think there’s ample room for some of the initiatives already out there to help develop a code of conduct for blogging, such as Blog with Integrity. (I tried to get in touch with Liz Gumbinner, who is one of the bloggers behind it, to get a few thoughts, but she is currently out of the email sphere.)

There’s still a need for bloggers to let it be known that not only do they play by the FTC’s rules but also are being honest and transparent, no matter what the topic. Thankfully, that’s something no government organization can regulate.

Catharine P. Taylor has been covering digital media and advertising for almost 15 years. Contact her here.

Learning How To Market Your Blog Online

10 2009 Thursday

By admin in Blogs & Podcasts

If you’re new to blogging then it can be confusing when creating your first blog.

For a blog marketing guru though, it’s really not that difficult, anyone whose familiar with blog marketing online will tell you it takes hard work, dedication and most importantly consistency.

For someone just starting out with their marketing campaign, it may seem like a lot of work with little or no immediate return, however, just know that marketing is something that you have to build.

You have to work on it and continue to market your blog.

There are many things you can do to market your blog and get it out there to be seen by the world, one of the most important things is to visit other blogs that are relevant to yours and leave comments.

Doing this gets your blog out there to readers of other’s blogs and in return can get you some new visitors as well as readers.

While all of this might seem confusing at first, after a while you will get the hang of it and it will make sense and fall in place.

Posting on your blog on a regular basis is another way to get new readers, who wants to read a blog that is never even updated?

Would you?

Of course not! So give your readers what they want with new content and give it to them often, post daily, weekly or bi weekly and be consistent about it.

This way your readers and visitors will know how often to check your blog for a new post.

You must know where your traffic comes from, knowing which search engines are directing people to your blog is extremely valuable as is identifying those which aren’t, find out which keywords are driving visitors to your blog too.

If you know all of this then use it to your advantage, write further content using the keywords that work for you and look at the areas where you fall down on search engine results that are sending visitors.

If someone leaves a comment on your blog, be sure to acknowledge it.

No one wants to have a conversation with themselves, and it will only take a brief moment to reply and let them know you appreciate them, otherwise if you have a section full of comments and you have not replied, chances are that you will not be getting many more.

The readers may even drop you off of their list of blogs to visit frequently as well, using your head and treating others as you would want to be treated is a big part of marketing.

Make friends with other bloggers, network with them and find out how they get so many visitors to their blog and what they do to keep them interested.

Exchanging ideas with other bloggers that are successful is a great idea and a good way to make friends. If you want, you can even become friends with other bloggers offline as well.

Use this to your advantage but don’t just take from your conversations though, make sure you share all your own blog marketing techniques with your blogging friends as well.

If you happen to be quoting an article from another source or blog, always be sure to provide a link back to the original, otherwise this is known as plagiarism and something that is looked down on in the world of marketing.

Stealing other peoples content isn’t clever and let me assure you, you won’t get away with it, you’ll get caught trying to pass someone else’s work of as your own when clearly it’s not.

This is not a good way to start off in the blog marketing world.

Blog marketing is a fantastic way to make an extra income and build an online presence letting people know you are there there.

Be patient, use these tips to drive people to your blog, as they become regular followers and you earn their trust you’ll be able to use your blog to earn yourself some money.

Pete Craig – Marketer
Blogging is one of the easiest and quickest ways to build an online presence. A marketing method used by both beginners and experts alike. If you’re new to blogging you’ll want to make sure you do things right. The best way to do this is to follow the lead of an experienced blogger, you can then cut out all the mistakes and get to your destination even quicker. http://www.bloggingforcash.cjb.net

« Older Entries

Webmaster Headlines

Yelp Walked Away From $700M Microsoft Offer - Silicon Alley Insider

Indian IT Giant Tata Consultancy Services Hacked - TechCrunch

Survey: Majority of people don't want an iPad - cNet News

Apple banning location-based ads?
- iMediaConnection

The Internet Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize - Mashable

FBI Calls For ISPs to Keep Browsing History Logs - ReadWriteWeb

Bing & Facebook Expand Search Agreement - Marketing Pilgrim

Two Simple Rules For Fixing High Bounce Rate Pages - Search Engine Land

Now It Is The iTablet That Takes Center Stage - Lockergnome

Testing How Crawl Priority Works - SEOMoz

Recent SiteProNews Articles

RecentSiteProNews Articles

The Benefits of Installing Internal Site Search

The End Of Dumb Affiliate Marketing

The Road To Online Marketing Success Requires Commitment

How to Conduct Keyword Research Like the Pros

Obama, Giant Lollipops and Unique Selling Propositions

Reader Rescue: How do I choose what keywords to target?

How to Participate in a Tweetchat

SiteProNews Blog News

Reader Rescue: How do I choose what keywords to target?
Hi Kalena I have two questions. 1) How do I know if a keyword merits my time and energy? For e...
more >

Can Jobs walk on water or is he the god that failed?
Steve Jobs, Apple Inc's visionary CEO, may not be in the same league as Moses, but he has the potent...
more >

Google’s New URL Shortener: Goo.gl
Everyone needs to shorten a URL sometimes. Whether it's to prevent long URLs wrapping in emails, ...
more >

SiteProNews