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If your site allows visitors to post digital files or comments (e.g. in an online blog, as well as in a forum or chat room), you could be held liable for copyright infringement if any of their postings infringe the rights of another person, even if you are unaware of the infringement. Under general copyright principles, you would be strictly liable for their copyright infringement, even if you are “innocent”.

You could also be liable for defamatory statements posted by bloggers.

The Playboy Case And Copyright Infringement

A good example of an “innocent infringer’s” liability that occurred before the enactment of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the case of Playboy Enter., Inc. v. Frena, 839 F. Supp. 1552 (M.D. Fla. 1993). In this case, Playboy alleged that the defendants who operated a bulletin board service (BBS) were liable for copyright infringement. Subscribers to the defendants’ BBS had illegally taken copyrighted photos owned by Playboy and uploaded them onto the defendants’ BBS.

The court found the defendants liable for copyright infringement, despite the fact that the defendants did not upload the photos (the subscribers uploaded them), and the defendants were unaware of the presence of the infringing photos until the lawsuit was filed.

The court stated: “…intent or knowledge is not an element of infringement, and thus even an innocent infringer is liable for infringement …”.

The DMCA, enacted in 1998, provided a “safe harbor” so that this harsh result can be avoided, but service providers must take affirmative steps to qualify for it… or else you will suffer the same harsh fate as Frena.

To qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from strict copyright liability, you are required:

* to post a specific notice on your site (Terms of Use); and

* to file the DMCA Registration Form with the US Copyright Office.

Liability For Defamatory Statements

In addition to liability for the copyright infringement of bloggers, another pitfall to avoid if you permit visitors to post to your site is liability for their defamatory comments about another person, a competitor, or another product.

Defamation is an intentional false communication, made either orally or in writing, published to a third party, which injures another person or company’s good name or reputation.

While it is clear you will be liable for defamatory statements posted by you or your employees on your site, what about defamatory statements posted by bloggers? Will you be liable?

Statements which consist of pure opinion are not actionable… however, merely stating that a statement is pure opinion does not make it so. For example, a law school professor was awarded $3 million in damages arising out of defamatory statements published on a student’s site.

Online defamation may occur in the context of product reviews where strong statements are posted such as “do not buy this product because it will not perform as advertised”.

In addition, actionable defamation may occur where a site publishes untrue promotional statements about a person or company. For example, in one recent case, the Wall Street Journal was sued by the Harrods department store for publishing the statement that Harrods was the “Enron of Britain”.

Congress came to the rescue of “interactive computer services” in 1996 with subsection (c) of the Communications Decency Act which provides: “No provider or user of any interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.” 47 USCA Sec. 230(c)(referred to below as “Section 230″).

Section 230 was intended to overrule prior case law which routinely held that online providers were liable as publishers and speakers for third party content. Now, under Section 230, absent an affirmative showing by a plaintiff that an online service provider is the author of a defamatory message, email, or post, the provider should almost always avoid liability for defamation. In other words, if you or your employees are the authors of defamatory statements, you’ll still be liable, but if your website visitors are the authors of defamatory material, you won’t be liable.

A word of warning about another pitfall — be careful in assuming an obligation to monitor messages, email, or posts contributed by your site visitors or in exercising editorial control over them. If you assume an obligation to monitor, or if you maintain editorial control, and if you fail to screen out defamatory statements, you may be liable, despite the protections of Section 230.

For this reason, your Terms of Use should clearly state the extent to which you exercise editorial control, if at all, over messages, email, or posts of site visitors. And it’s always best to reserve the right to monitor postings, but not the obligation to monitor.

Conclusion In summary, if you have a blog, take the steps discussed above that are required to qualify for the DMCA “safe harbor” from copyright infringement. Ensure that that your employees do not post defamatory statements on your blog, and affirmatively disclaim any obligation to monitor posts by bloggers.

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Chip Cooper is a leading intellectual property, software, and Internet attorney who advises software and ecommerce businesses nationwide. Chip’s easy and affordable online contract drafting service coordinates website contracts such as Terms of Use, Privacy Policy, Subscription, Membership, and SaaS agreements. Visit Chip’s http://digicontracts.com site and download his FREE report, “12 Sure-Fire Ways Your Website Can Get You Sued”.

Tags: blogs

So you’ve decided to blog, but aren’t sure whether you should host the blog yourself or sign up for a free service like blogger.com. It’s a dilemma that many bloggers face. There are pros and cons to both, which makes the decision difficult for many. Neither is perfect, and neither is for everyone. Fortunately, you should be able to make the best decision for you if you are armed with adequate knowledge of both. In this newsletter, we’ll go over services like blogger.com, and others, plus software that allows you to host your own blog. We’ll also go over the pros and cons of each. After reading this, you will know which is best for you.

Who offers free blog hosting?

Many sites offer free blog hosting. Among them are Forumer, Blogger, BlogEasy, Aeonity, BlogThing, and Blogates. A quick search for free blog on Google reveals many possibilities.

What software can I use to host my own blog?

Like free blog hosting, there are many possibilities for software that makes hosting your own blog easy. Most of them are free to use. These include:

WordPress(the most popular software), Apache, Roller, Blosxom, Geeklog, Textpattern, LifeType.

There is also blog software which you can purchase for use on your site. These include:

Community, Server, Movable, Type, Radio, UserLand.

One negative about using software and hosting your own blog is that the process can often times be complicated. You have to download the software and install it to your server, which doesn’t always go easily. It’s particularly hard for those who don’t have a lot of experience installing things on servers.

Why should I remotely host my blog at a place like Blogger?

Places like Blogger allow you to host your blog there. It’s a good option for many people.

The Pros

It’s easy to set up and maintain a blog. You don’t have to go through the trouble of installing software and configuring it to work on your server. All you have to do is sign up for an account and start posting. It’s friendly for beginning bloggers. Sites that host blogs offer good tutorials on how to make your blog postings, so that even someone who is completely new to the concept of blogging can do it easily. Most blog hosting sites are completely free to use. There is no need to pay for things like a domain name and hosting. Monetizing your blog is easy. Rather than having to manually put HTML/Javascript codes on your blog to manually set up things like AdSense and Pay Per Click advertising, you can select an option on most blog hosting sites that does much of the work for you.

The Cons

You don’t have as many options to customize your blog. Remotely hosted blogs are admittedly somewhat limited in terms of what you can actually do on them. You have to stick with what is provided to you in terms of look and features. The URL you get is always yourname.BLOGSITE.com. You don’t get to have a custom domain name like YOURNAME.com. This can possibly hurt traffic to your blog. Blogs hosted on free blog sites don’t look as professional as self hosted blogs.

Why should I self-host my blog?

The Pros

You have more options and more flexibility. You are able to tweak the blog to your liking. Your URL is your address for your blog. Rather than having go to where your blog is hosted to read it, they can read it right from your site. The ability to make your blog look professional. Blogs that are hosted on sites of their own tend to look a lot better than those hosted on free sites. More space for your blog. Free blog sites usually place a restriction on how much space you have for things like photos and music. By hosting your own blog, you are able to use as much space as you need. The Cons

There are sometimes problems with setting up blog software to run on your site and server. If you aren’t experienced when it comes to working with mySQL, the process will be hard. Updates aren’t as easy to post. You have to manually set up programs to monetize your blog. However, if you are good with HTML/Javascript, this shouldn’t be too hard. You have to pay for your own hosting and domain

As you can see, there are pros and cons to both. Which should you choose? Well, it depends on who you are and what you intend to use your blog for. If you intend to use it for business, then a self-hosted blog is the best idea. If it’s a personal blog, then a free hosted blog will probably be fine for you.

Chris Haycock is an information publisher, specialising in helping others start and run their own successfull internet businesses. To find out more about the above, and to get an absolutely no cost two hour business blueprint video, go to http://www.easyebizz.com

Tags: blog, blog marketing

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

You’ve sold your client on a blog and you’ve developed a Blog Strategy. Plus you’ve made the blog much more implementable by coming up with 30 to 50 Blog Post ideas. But for this Blog Strategy to be really successful, one of the most important things that you can do is to manage your clients expectations.

Metrics without some point of comparison are just numbers. What turns that meaningless data into useful information is having a point of comparison.

Blog Benchmark figures are difficult to find.

Typically it’s only the top, very successful bloggers who make public their traffic figures, # of RSS feeds, etc. But for the average business blog, these are not a realistic benchmark for success.

In this post, I am going to provide business blog benchmarks. These benchmarks are based aggregate data across a broad range of clients.

1.) Common Measures:

Some of the most common measures of blog success include volume and engagement.

How many visitors does the blog get? Is that number increasing? Is it predominately repeat visitors coming in off your site or is your blog attracting new traffic too?

Number of visitors is really dependent on how broad your industry is. Small numbers are not a bad thing if this traffic is very targeted to your niche.

From what I’ve seen, average traffic benchmarks for a Small Business Blog = 1,ooo to 2,000 visitors per month; for Mid Sized Business = 10,000 - 20,000 visitors per month; Large, Enterprise-Sized Clients = 50,000 to 100,000 blog visitors per month. This is easily doable with a social media strategy.

What about engagement measures? Three great measures of how engaged your traffic is include Bounce Rate, Time Spent on the Site and Number of Page views.

While there are many factors that impact that bounce rate, as a general rule of thumb, you should consider a bounce rate below 20% to be excellent and over 60% to be fairly high. Between 20% and 60% whether these numbers are high or low really depends on what industry you’re in and if you have a high number of RSS subscribers.

Google Analytics measures a bounce as “the percentage of single page visits resulting from this set of pages or page”. This means that if you have a number of people sign up for RSS feeds, or read your blog daily. These “one-page-per-day” awesome visitors, will be counted as bounces.

Time spent on site is typically going to be much lower for your blog than for the rest of the site, particularly if your site is attracting a large number of return visitors.

Where time spent on site might average 4 or 5 minutes, time spent on your blog might only average 1.5 to 2 minutes. Time spent on your blog over 4-5 minutes (what would be considered average for the rest of your site) is quite good for a blog.

This is because it only takes about a minute to half read, half scan an average 800 word blog post. If your traffic is spending more than 3 minutes per visit and are visiting more than one post at a time then I’d consider your blog content to be engaging.

2.) Blogger Metrics

Most bloggers I know measure volume and engagement differently; in fact, RSS Feeds and Comments are darn near sacred.

Most people don’t publish their RSS Feed numbers until they get a decent number of subscribers. For some that means subscribers in the hundreds, for others it means subscribers in the thousands. Either way, this gives new bloggers unrealistic expectations for how to define success.

RSS Feeds rely heavily on building momentum. The first hundred RSS subscribers will probably take longer to build than it will the next two hundred. This is because it takes a whole lot of inertia to power something from nothing.

For a Business Blog, building your first 100 subscribers is a great achievement.

Most bloggers will agree that there is nothing so satisfying as knowing that you’ve engaged someone enough to stimulate a comment. I think that it’s because as bloggers we “put ourselves out there”.

Maybe we’re being as true to ourselves as we can be, or maybe we’re really honest. Whatever the case, as bloggers we expose our vulnerable side and then…

nothing.

We have no idea how our readers responded to the post.

Unless they comment. Comments turn your blog from a one way dialogue into a conversation.

How many comments should you aim for? Highly successful blog with thousands of subscribers will routinely get 50 to 100 comments per post. These blogs tend to be the most visible but they’re not a realistic benchmark for the average business blog.

For a new blog, getting one comment is an achievement. A solid stretch goal for your new business blog, should be to routinely get between 5 and 10 comments per post.
3.) Smoke and Mirrors Metrics

Some bloggers like to measure the “value of their blog”. This metric doesn’t really make sense for the average business blog though because they are unlikely to ever sell their blog. So if you’re never going to sell it; who cares what it’s worth?

Another measure of blog success often quoted is Technorati ranking. Technorati ranking is based on links to your site from other sites. For the typical business, this measure has very limited value. If you want to measure links to your blog then there are better tools to do this.

When used as a relative measure i.e. to compare your blog’s ranking to your competitors; then technorati can be somewhat interesting. But it should be considered a relative measure not an absolute measure.

4.) The most important metric of all.

ROE “Return on Energy”.

Apart from every other measure that I’ve discussed, the success of your client’s blog really just boils down to return on energy. Is the blog making them more money than the next best way they could spend their time and money?

One really cool way to measure the value of your blog traffic is to use Google Analytics. In Google Analytics you can set up your conversion tracking to measure Per Visit Goal Value [the average value (based on goal value) of a visit to your site].

For example, if every visitor who hits your homepage is worth $1.00, you may find that every visitor who visits the blog is worth $5.00.

Basically the ROE of your blog boils down to the following: Is the blog traffic spilling over to the site and are those visitors spending money?

and

are they spending more money than the value of your time invested and/or the amount of money that you are investing in your blog?

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Tags: blogs

What differentiates a tactic from a strategy?

A strategy is the plan for achieving a defined goal. A tactic is the “doing” part of the strategy. Tactics can be put together in a plan to form a strategy.

Time line is also an important differentiator between a tactic and a strategy. A blog can be up and running in a very short time frame (hours or days). A Strategy usually takes much longer to achieve (months or years depending on how lofty your goals are).

This is the second in a 5 part series looking at Blog Strategy with a focus on Clients. In this post, I’m going to look at how to develop a Blog Strategy for your Client. What makes it a ‘Strategy’ versus just building your client a Blog?

Starting a new Blog is a tactical move. You select the platform, customize a template, add a few plug ins and you’re done. Maybe it will be a success, maybe it won’t.

What transforms a Blog from a tactical move to a Strategy are:

1. Setting Goals and Objective(s)
2. Developing an outlined plan of all the steps necessary to get there from here
3. Having some idea of how you will know whether you’ve achieved your goals (metrics).

These principles apply to any Strategy, in this post I am going to take the above steps and apply it to a Blog.

1. Goals and Objectives

There are many good reasons for starting a Blog.

Having a good understanding of what you want to achieve will assist in setting the tone for your writing; determining what topics you’re going to write about; and making decisions about how often to Blog and whether you wish to have multiple authors.

It will also influence social networking decisions such as if you’re going to show and allow comments, if you’re going to employ social media tactics.

2. Outlined Plan

Getting the right level of detail in a plan is very important. I’m a visual person, so I like to start planning with a diagram

Here is where I currently am -> -> -> -> and this is where I want to get to.

Then I break this plan down into the high level steps that must happen to get me from A to B. Personally, I like to plan three levels deep. Steps A, B, C, then A1, A2, A3. then A1i, A1ii, etc.

By planning three levels deep, you can take big steps and break them down into bite sized, doable pieces. Unless you’re working on a 18 month IT project with 60 project members, I don’t recommend planning in much more detail than this.

Although detail is awesome, sometimes you can get caught spending too much time planning and not enough time doing (also known as Paralysis by Analysis).

3. Metrics

It’s important to make sure that your metrics are tied to your objectives. If your goal is to increase traffic then one of your metrics should be to measure increase in traffic.

Make sure that you set an actual number. Setting SMART objectives is very important. Jeff defined these principles really well in his post about setting goals for social media Profile Development.

It could be a percentage increase in overall site traffic or could be a 12 month goal. If you blow away your 12 month target by month 3, you can always adjust this goal later.

—————————————————————————————

Here is a Blog Strategy for a Typical Client which employs all of the above:

Objective

Client Objective: My ultimate goal is to increase sales and I’d like to attract new customers to my website.

Agency Objective: We can use your blog to help bring new visitors to your website. If the ultimate goal is sales, then we will go after targeted traffic. Quality first, quantity if possible. (this is different than if your client is on a CPM model who strictly is going after eyeballs).

Outlined Plan (3 levels deep)

In this case I would optimize the site to help rank for many more broader keyword phrases than we’ve targeted in the past. Further social strategies will encourage referral traffic from like minded sites. Finally, niche tier II social media will expose your site to potential customers.

Here is the plan one level deep:

SEO –> Content –> Social Strategies –> Blog Promotion using niche social media

Taking it two more level deep it might look something like this:

1) SEO

Select an SEO friendly blog platform (like wordpress) and customize it so that it has the look and feel of the clients site. Add plug ins that will make it easier to do your job.

2) Content - Develop editorial schedule for next 3 months.

• This will involve coming up with at least 15 to 60 Blog Post ideas that will appeal to your clients target market. I’ll be discussing how to come up with post ideas for Challenging Industries in Part III of this series, next week.

• Decide who is going to be responsible for the writing. I really like it when the client does the writing. Not only does this keep the budget down but it starts the conversation between your client and their clients. Plus, they are the expert in their field. They know what matters to their clients.

• Ideally you will be able to assign topics to various experts on the client side. Not only does this split up the work effort but it gives your client’s blog more variation in voices and content.

• If the client is going to be doing the writing then some Blog Writing coaching is probably required. Writing a blog post is different than writing an article which is different than writing a business email.

2) Determine what Social Strategies you are going to employ.

• The most common Social Strategy is to allow commenting on your site. I personally really like comments because take a one sided conversation and turn it into a dialog. Plus it can give your blog more of a community feel.

• RSS Feeds are another social strategy. Your client’s readers may not be very technically savvy so it’s very important to make it easy to subscribe and to give the reader the choice of subscribing by email.

• Linking out to other bloggers through your blog roll and in individual blog posts is also a good social strategy. When you link to another blogger you will get their attention. Chances are they will check out who is linking to them and if they like your blog they may subscribe to it. Or even link back to you in the future.

• Further, by linking to authoritative bloggers in your industry, your readers will perceive you to be at their level, defined by the company we keep. It’s very important that these links make sense and that they add something to your ideas. Name dropping industry experts into your posts does not add to the quality of your post and will probably take away from your readers experience.

3) Promote the Blog using Niche Social Media

• Research your clients industry to find social media sites that their potential clients may use. I.e. if your client’s product is helpful to the environment then environmentally conscious posts may appeal to the HUGG crowd.

• Decide which posts would appeal to which social media. There is no point in spamming social media with every blog post your client writes. Only the really good posts that are on topic for that social property should be submitted. If your post is interesting to the social media’s target market then social media can drive quality traffic to your client’s site.

Make sure all the steps i the plan are mapped out into a process and that the process is communicated to everyone involved.

Metrics

Forget about what all the experts say. Just ask your client “what would make you consider this a success?” You may have to coach your client to keep it reasonable but this is going to open up a very important dialog.

i.e. You want get more traffic to your site and you want some of it to convert. So we have two objectives here.

• Quantity of traffic (this is going to build over time so I would set goals for this for 3months, 6 months, 12 months).

• Quality traffic. Some of my favorite quality indicators include bounce rate, time spent on site, and number of pages visited.

Down the line you will want to start looking at how social measures like the comments your posts are generating and the number of RSS subscribers.

I’ll discuss what realistic measures are for your Clients Blog, in part four of this series.

A Blog without Objectives and a Plan is just a Tactic.

By breaking out the steps and assigning accountabilities & time lines to those steps you can take a tactic and turn it into a successful strategy for your client.

Jennifer Osborne writer and marketer for Search Engine People.

Tags: blog marketing

As you think about ways to generate buzz around your blog, you can also improve the quality of your blog by focusing on your posting techniques. These tips may give you some good promotion ideas:

Post about current or controversial issues. This idea seems like a nobrainer, but it’s an easy one to forget. Pay attention to the news, and watch for events and issues that are of interest to your readers. When you find one, create a post or series of posts around the subject. You might want to aggregate blog postings on the subject, sum up opinion articles, or even state your own opinion.

Don’t be afraid to be critical or controversial in what you say, as long as you can defend your opinion. Good blogs don’t shy away from confrontation, although they don’t create it purely for the sake of argument. Going out on a limb definitely causes people to comment more and probably also result in more links from other blogs to your postings.

post in user groups and forums. The Web is peppered with user groups, bulletin boards, and forums about all kinds of subjects. If you have set yourself up as an expert and have valuable information to contribute to a forum, you can drive traffic to your blog.

Be very careful that you don’t come off as a spammer or someone who is trying to sell a product or service. Your postings should be on topic and provide information, opinion, or clarification that contributes to the discussion. Let your knowledge sell the blog or your company for you. Don’t try to be someone you’re not — identify yourself as being associated with a company, because if anyone figures it out and you haven’t been up-front, the backlash can overshadow your message, even if you didn’t intend a deception.

Guest blogging. Invite prominent bloggers, industry experts, and other influential people to guest edit your blog for a day or a week. You may have to provide some incentive to get them to help you out. Other bloggers, however, undoubtedly talk about their guest-blog gigs and bring traffic to the site. The real payoff is in the promotion you can do to bring readers in during that time.

If your blogger is well known, you may be able to offer an exchange: Your blogger for mine. This solution is also handy for those days when your blogger wants to take a vacation or is in some way unavailable to blog. Even an unknown guest blogger is preferable to having your blog go dark.

Tip: Be sure to talk with the guest about appropriate topics, writing style, and your expectations on the number of posts to be provided. If you plan to edit the guest blogger, state this up front as well.

Add photos to your posts. Say it with images! A blog can be a text-heavy, boring-looking page, even if the writing is scintillating. The addition of photos, charts, and other graphics can add spice and interest to any blog entry — and readers respond well to blogs that use images. Keep your images to a reasonable size, especially if you have pages that display several blog entries at once.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

Unquestionably, the popularity of blogging has fueled the expansion of RSS feeds. According to Technorati, about one-third of blogs have RSS feeds. Some people who maintain blogs are publishing an RSS feed without even knowing about it, because some of the blog Web sites automatically create feeds.

In this article, I give a quick overview of blogging and how to use RSS with your blog to gain more readers. If you want to start a blog, i explain where to go next. If you already have a blog, I explain how you can create an RSS feed and use it to publicize your blog.

Bloggers Unite

Blogging has become a movement. Blogs have become influential, and even the mainstream media are taking notice. Web sites have been around for a long time. How did a few daily entries balloon into millions (yes, millions) of blogs and an entire industry?

The early days of the World Wide Web contained lots of personal sites and free information, as people discovered they could post anything they wanted. Still, the great expansion of the Internet was driven by commercial uses.

However, people never forgot those earlier days of personal interests, and they still had more to say. People discovered that they could publish, meaning that they could create a site whose main purpose was to provide updates on anything — current events, social mores, technical advances, and so on — including their opinions on these topics. It was the opinions — well-researched, smartly written, and often funny — that hooked people on reading blogs.

Tip: For lots more on blogging see Ten Simple Tips for Successful Blogging.

Creating a Blog

If you want to create a blog, you need to decide which type of service or technology you want to use. Your choice of blogging tools is an important decision — after all; you’ll probably use that tool almost every day.

The easiest way to start a blog is to use a Web-based service. You don’t need your own Web site, because the Web service hosts your blog for you. You just enter your content into a Web form in your browser and click a button to post your blog.

If you want to run your own Web server, you can. Several blogging programs work on a server. The disadvantage is that you need more technical skills. The advantage is that you have more control over your blog. Also, you don’t have to worry about your blogging service going under or its servers crashing.

Getting started

Obviously, once you have chosen a blogging tool, you’ll be eager to start writing. Perhaps you already know what you want to say — in fact, maybe fully developed ideas are practically exploding out of your head. But for most people it’s a good idea to think a bit about how their blog will develop:

• Decide on your blog’s purpose. You may want to write a mission statement that describes what you are trying to accomplish and why. Include your expected audience.
• What kind of content will you include? Do you just want to create a diary-type blog and write off the top of your head? Will you need a source of inspiration?
• What is the focus and format of that content? Will you focus on one topic or let yourself write about anything that interests you? Will people read your blog because you’re an interesting person, because you write well, or because they’re already interested in a topic that you’re covering?
• Consider your schedule. How much time will it take you to write a regular blog entry? How much time do you have every day to blog?

Tip: If you’re considering a blog for your business, and you’re already spending lots of time communicating your thoughts via e-mail, blogging probably won’t take you any more time.

Creating a Blog with Your HTML Editor

If you already have a Web site and maintain it, and you don’t need fancy bells and whistles, you may not need a blogging tool at all. For example, perhaps you don’t want to allow comments or responses — this requires some sophisticated programming, which the blogging services offer but which you may not be able to do easily on your own. If you don’t need this kind of feature, you may choose to create a blog on your own.

After all, what is a blog? It’s just some text on a Web page, listed by date. If all you want to do is create a daily entry, you can create one in the same way you create any other Web content.

Maintaining Your Blog

After you’ve created and posted a few blog entries, you’ll establish a routine of maintaining your blog every day or so. The most popular bloggers put aside a few hours each day, usually at the same time, to blog.

Getting input for your blog

Although many people write entries based on blogs or news stories that they’ve read, don’t forget that you should add something meaningful to other peoples’ content. Work on developing your own voice and your own point of view.

Remember: When you mention an outside source, provide not only a link but also a mention of the author and title. In other words, be generous about giving credit to your sources.

Maintaining your blog is more than just posting. If you allow people to add comments, you should comment on some of those postings.

Adding ads

Here’s another consideration for maintaining your blog — do you want to make some money from it? If your blogging service is not free, you may want to at least make up some of the cost of using it.

The main way to make money is to place ads on your blog. If you create your blog on your own Web site, you can use Google Adsense. You get paid a small amount for each time someone goes to your site and clicks one of the ads. Because the ads are appropriate for your site’s content, people are likely to click the ads.

A similar option is Blogads. Advertisers sign up and choose the blogs they want to advertise on. You can sign up to be listed as one of those sites.

On the other hand, it’s perfectly all right to keep your blog ad-free. In spite of the commerciality of the Internet, a strong culture also exists for keeping information and opinion noncommercial. If you’re blogging because you love it, why bother with ads?

Finding other ways to make money

You can ask for donations. Some bloggers use Amazon’s Honor System program, which allows site visitors to donate to your site.

If it’s appropriate for your blog’s topic, you can become an Amazon associate and recommend books that relate to your blog. If readers buy the books, you get a small percentage. Many readers will appreciate your recommendations for further reading and won’t think of these links as advertising.

Publicizing Your Blog with RSS

If you feel that no one is reading your blog, it can be disheartening. But you can’t just sit back and wait for the masses to come to you; you need to let people know about your blog. Just having an RSS feed doesn’t guarantee that people will subscribe. And most people still read blogs by going to the blog’s Web site.

The first step is simply to let people know about your blog. Tell them the URL of the blog and of your RSS feed. Send an e-mail to all your friends and colleagues. Put the URL on your business card. Explain to them the advantages of subscribing to your feed.

If you used a hosted blog service, such as Blogger or LiveJournal, remember that they only list your blog on their sites. Therefore, you need to go out and make your blog and its RSS feed visible elsewhere on the Web.

If you can find other blogs on similar subjects that accept comments, feel free to make constructive comments and include a link to your own blog. Perhaps you can write some articles for online or offline publications and mention your blog in them.

Quite a few sites function as directories just for blogs, regardless of whether they have RSS feeds. People come to these sites to search for blogs on topics that interest them. You can list your blog on some of these sites to help people find you.

Use a combination of blog directories and RSS directories to publicize your blog. Keep your blog interesting, relevant, updated, and useful, and people will come knocking at your door.

Do you have a favorite method for promoting your blog or RSS feed? Leave a comment and share with the rest of us. Who knows it may help you gain another reader

And finally, be sure to check back soon, when we will be releasing a similar article named “how to promote your RSS Feed” Be sure not to miss it by Subscribing to my feed.

Author:  Andy MacDonald, CEO of Swift Media UK, a website design & search marketing company. For daily tips on Blogging, Marketing, SEO & Making Money Online, Checkout our SEO & Marketing Tips for Webmasters blog or Subscribe by RSS.

In the past, audio was typically used on websites as background music to increase the “WOW!” factor, but it didn’t really help in communicating with customers.

These days it’s a different story. With broadband becoming ubiquitous and streaming audio technologies getting more advanced, you can now easily convey spoken word over the web. Well crafted audio messages can help you add a personal touch to your website which will make customers feel closer to you.

The presence of your voice welcoming customers, answering questions, or describing the benefits associated with your product or service can boost customer confidence in ways that text and images alone can’t.

Most people have computers capable of playing streaming audio and will find it a refreshing change from boring text. Increased use of the internet along with improved technology now make it easy for you to add streaming audio to your website and create that personal bond with your customers.

Reasons Why You Should Have Audio on Your Site

1. Customers remember what they hear more than what they read. Did you know that people remember only 20% of what they read while they remember an astonishing 70% of what they hear? That’s three and a half times more! Your audio message will help you to stick into the minds of your customers longer.
2. Audio boosts your credibility. The sound of your voice adds personality to your website and helps customers identify with you. Customers buy from people who they feel they know and trust, and using audio can help you achieve this.
3. Audio keeps customers on your site longer. Audio can keep customers on your site longer and you give you more time to make the sale. It can be used as an additional resource or tool for customers to familiarize themselves with your product or service while browsing your site.
4. Audio increases your subscription rate. Using a personal audio message to get customers to sign up for your newsletter can raise subscription levels by up to 400% more than using traditional subscription marketing techniques. You can also use audio as a part of an online course that people can subscribe to. The lesson that includes an audio in our free online meditation course gets opened most, leads to the largest number of sales and receives the best feedback.
5. Audio enhances newsletters, ezines and blogs - which leads to profits. You can spice up your newsletter, ezine or blog by using audio to provide special tips or product updates that keep customers interested and motivated to buy.
6. Audio puts you light years ahead of your competitors. Using audio successfully on your site gives you a competitive advantage. Most internet businesses overlook using this effective marketing tool so be sure you’re not one of them!
7. Audio is easy to use. Being able to put audio on your website isn’t limited to just techies - anyone can do it! Many of the programs available don’t even require you to know HTML or flash. They’re designed to be user friendly so you shouldn’t have any problems taking your website to the next level.
8. Audio is cheap. You can add audio to your site for as little as $19.95. More advanced audio solutions will only cost you around $97 - a small price to pay considering the many benefits it provides to your website and your customers.

In short, audio gives you an edge over your competitors and allows you to build a personal bond with your customers in a way that’s not possible with traditional websites. When customers feel they know you and can identify with you, they will be more likely to buy from you.

Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned from having his own building company to a great online business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

Podcasting can be time consuming and often frustrating, especially when you are under-prepared and ill-equipped for what you are setting out to achieve. In order to smooth out the bumps in the ride, it’s always a good idea to be as prepared as you possibly can before you sit down to create your podcast. If you’re too eager to get your voice recorded before you’ve laid the groundwork you can often get into a pickle and the show you had in mind just doesn’t come off as planned.

Get into the habit of following the 5 steps below so that there’ll be less time spent pulling your hair out and more time spent getting a great business podcast out into cyberspace.

Step 1 - Email participants and permission requests in advance.

You’ve had a great idea for a show where you’re going to interview some successful business owners and use a clip of one who podcasts himself. If you plan to record your show on Thursday afternoon, don’t expect you can get away with requesting interviews and permissions on Wednesday and still record your show, as planned, the next day.

People are busy and their time is precious. Always be one step ahead of yourself in thinking about who you’d like on your show and ask for permissions way in advance of recording. Always have back-up ideas too, just in case you just can’t get to people in time.

Step 2 - Choose clips and interviewees before writing the scripts/planning your links.

If you intend to take extracts from the interviews to add in between links or even extracts from other people’s shows, it’s a good idea to know which clips you’d like to use before you go ahead and write the script. This means you can then write the script in a way that introduces what participants are going to say or you could comment on what they’ve said at the end of the clip.

Step 3 - Have a script.

Lots of would-be podcasters feel 100% confident that they know what they’re going to say and intend to have a slick, fluff-free delivery. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? It’s a really good idea to have a script of some description so that your points follow a rational and well thought out process and your listeners get maximum value out of your podcast. You don’t have to write a detailed script and then reel it off word for word if you think this will make you sound wooden (most non-professional broadcasters would have difficulty making it sound otherwise), it’s more about knowing what you’re going to say, knowing how your points are going to pan out and, if you have guests, having a few notes about them and the kind of questions you could ask them.

Imagine introducing your guest and their name goes completely out of your head. A set of notes or a script will stop this from happening and make you feel more comfortable, much in the way crib notes help you stay relaxed when giving a presentation.

Step 4 - Prepare yourself.

This may sound like an obvious preparation step but it’s one that many neglect. Imagine getting up in the morning and everyone is out of the house; there’s nobody to talk to. You go into your office or studio and switch your mic on, ready to record your podcast. You clear your throat a little and then start. How do you sound ? A bit like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead? So, what to do instead? Talk out loud or sing to loosen up the vocal chords, do some stretches and breathing to loosen up the body. Have a warm drink (but avoid milk as it clogs up the sinuses) and, last but not least, put a dab of lip balm on your lips (yes, it’s so that they move smoothly over one another when you speak, reducing any unwanted noises).

Step 4 - Prepare your environment.

An essential element in making sure your podcast runs smoothly is to prepare your environment as well as you can. Turn off any phones that might disturb you, ‘dampen’ your room as much as you can (I know of someone who records under the desk with a blanket draped over it), make sure you have everything you need.

If possible, try not to time your recording to coincide your with the time the cats need feeding or your spouse will be home. Take care to ensure you will have as much peace as possible.

Following these 5 steps will go a long way to ensuring you get your voice into the heads of your target audience as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

Sarah Rourke: For help with creating podcasts and other audio resources go to http://www.AudioPodArtist.com Audio Pod Artist - get your voice into their heads.

Podcasting can be time consuming and often frustrating, especially when you are under-prepared and ill-equipped for what you are setting out to achieve. In order to smooth out the bumps in the ride, it’s always a good idea to be as prepared as you possibly can before you sit down to create your podcast. If you’re too eager to get your voice recorded before you’ve laid the groundwork you can often get into a pickle and the show you had in mind just doesn’t come off as planned.

Get into the habit of following the 5 steps below so that there’ll be less time spent pulling your hair out and more time spent getting a great business podcast out into cyberspace.

Step 1 - Email participants and permission requests in advance.

You’ve had a great idea for a show where you’re going to interview some successful business owners and use a clip of one who podcasts himself. If you plan to record your show on Thursday afternoon, don’t expect you can get away with requesting interviews and permissions on Wednesday and still record your show, as planned, the next day.

People are busy and their time is precious. Always be one step ahead of yourself in thinking about who you’d like on your show and ask for permissions way in advance of recording. Always have back-up ideas too, just in case you just can’t get to people in time.

Step 2 - Choose clips and interviewees before writing the scripts/planning your links.

If you intend to take extracts from the interviews to add in between links or even extracts from other people’s shows, it’s a good idea to know which clips you’d like to use before you go ahead and write the script. This means you can then write the script in a way that introduces what participants are going to say or you could comment on what they’ve said at the end of the clip.

Step 3 - Have a script.

Lots of would-be podcasters feel 100% confident that they know what they’re going to say and intend to have a slick, fluff-free delivery. Well, you know what they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? It’s a really good idea to have a script of some description so that your points follow a rational and well thought out process and your listeners get maximum value out of your podcast. You don’t have to write a detailed script and then reel it off word for word if you think this will make you sound wooden (most non-professional broadcasters would have difficulty making it sound otherwise), it’s more about knowing what you’re going to say, knowing how your points are going to pan out and, if you have guests, having a few notes about them and the kind of questions you could ask them.

Imagine introducing your guest and their name goes completely out of your head. A set of notes or a script will stop this from happening and make you feel more comfortable, much in the way crib notes help you stay relaxed when giving a presentation.

Step 4 - Prepare yourself.

This may sound like an obvious preparation step but it’s one that many neglect. Imagine getting up in the morning and everyone is out of the house; there’s nobody to talk to. You go into your office or studio and switch your mic on, ready to record your podcast. You clear your throat a little and then start. How do you sound ? A bit like a zombie from Night of the Living Dead? So, what to do instead? Talk out loud or sing to loosen up the vocal chords, do some stretches and breathing to loosen up the body. Have a warm drink (but avoid milk as it clogs up the sinuses) and, last but not least, put a dab of lip balm on your lips (yes, it’s so that they move smoothly over one another when you speak, reducing any unwanted noises).

Step 4 - Prepare your environment.

An essential element in making sure your podcast runs smoothly is to prepare your environment as well as you can. Turn off any phones that might disturb you, ‘dampen’ your room as much as you can (I know of someone who records under the desk with a blanket draped over it), make sure you have everything you need.

If possible, try not to time your recording to coincide your with the time the cats need feeding or your spouse will be home. Take care to ensure you will have as much peace as possible.

Following these 5 steps will go a long way to ensuring you get your voice into the heads of your target audience as smoothly and painlessly as possible.

Author:  For help with creating podcasts and other audio resources go to http://www.AudioPodArtist.com Audio Pod Artist - get your voice into their heads.

Most successful bloggers can offer some tips for successful blogging. Some people develop methods based on experience. Others simply offer what they’ve been told—like post often, link often, and be yo