Tuesday, December 06, 2005
Create a Podcast Radio Show in Hours, with No FCC Rules or Regulations
Interested in a new, cutting-edge tool that can reach millions of potential customers? Then you are looking for PODCASTING!
And unlike radio shows, which are transfered through the air in radio waves, and regulated and controlled by the FCC, there are no regulations or rules for podcasting, as long as you don't use copy protected property.
A podcast is an audio file stored on the Internet that customers can download to their computers or MP3 players and listen to whenever they want.
Now, you may be thinking, “So what - MP3 files have been available for download from the internet for years!” Well, what makes podcasting different and truly useful as business tool is that customers can subscribe to programs they are interested in. This means that free and easy-to-use podcasting software automatically downloads new podcasts to your customers’ computers as soon as they are available.
Just how big is the potential reach of podcasting? Consider these numbers from the Pew Internet & American Life Project. According to their research:
[o] More than 22 million US adults own an iPod or other MP3 player – 13% of men and 9% of women
[o] 20% of the lucrative 18- to 28-year-old market owns an iPod or other MP3 player
[o] 29% of the people who own an iPod or MP3 player have downloaded a podcast
This translates to 6 million U.S. adults who have downloaded podcasts – a truly impressive figure considering podcasting is still a relatively new technology.
The keys to the early success of podcasting is that it offers great choice and convenience, plus ANYONE can do it with the right tools.
o Offer Your Customers Choice
Podcasts can be about any topic you can think of. They might be music, a talk show, a lecture, a recorded tele-seminar, a sermon, etc. Possible applications for podcasting include:
- Interviewing authors and leaders in your industry, then offering the interviews through a podcast on your website.
- Offering late-breaking industry news.
- Offering in-depth information to niche customers.
- Medical organizations can offer podcasts on such topics as bariatric (weight loss) surgery, diabetes control, glaucoma, alternative medicine, and more.
- Religious organizations can use podcasts to distribute weekly sermons, missionary updates, extol their beliefs and offerings, and otherwise share their message, globally, as long as listeners have an internet connection.
- Preschools and Day Care Centers can offer parenting tips.
- Universities can offer audio lectures, student calendars and orientation, and campus tours.
- Travel agents can offer audio tours of popular cities.
- Chambers of Commerce can introduce potential tourists, conventions, and businesses to their cities.
- Museums and historic sites can offer private guided tours of their facilities.
- Conference presenters can offer podcasts of their sessions for people who were unable to attend the live events and save on postage and fulfillment costs.
- Companies and non-profit organizations can offer training to their employees and volunteers.
o Offer Your Customers Convenience
If you publish or plan to publish any type of audio file for your customers – whether audio newsletters, teleconference calls, interviews, lectures, etc. – podcasting simplifies everything for both you and your customers.
Once customers subscribe to your podcast, you won’t have to worry about sending them an email to download a new MP3.
Instead, your message will land directly on your customers’ desktops every time you create a new podcast.
The convenience continues even after the download. Once the podcasts are downloaded to your customers’ computers, they can synch them to your MP3 player, burn them to a CD, or simply listen to them through their computer speakers. In other words, customers can subscribe to your podcast, download it, and tak it with them as they go out jogging or commute to the office.
Best of all, not only are podcasts themselves generally free, but so is most of the podcasting software your customers will need to listen to podcasts!
Both podcasts and podcasting software are easy to find on the internet and are easy to use.
Jeff Mills is a former Youth Pastor of 9 years, who is now a full time internet information entrepreneur, author, speaker, sales coach, and also an avid traveler. Jeff has passionately pursued learning everything he can about podcasts and has just released his breakthrough E-book that every Podcast Enthusiast should own, as he will teach you HOW to podcast in hours, guaranteed.
Visit immediately. You can find Jeff’s podcast feed at: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jeffmillspodcast
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:12 AM
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Monday, October 24, 2005
Blog Wars: Attack Of The Splogs
The engines, namely Google, are striking back at sploggers and their malevolent creations, the splogs.
According to media reports, Google has taken measures to impede those attempting to use its Blogger service to create and maintain fake blogs.
Blogger's official corporate blog mentioned the "spamalanche" that has search engines, blog search engines and net advertisers in a tizzy.
They are now working together to eliminate the economic incentive for splogs by identifying them at their source - by domain - and not indexing them.
Can CAPTCHA Stop The Spamalanche?
The "CAPTCHA" test is a method by which automated programs that post or create blogs can be foiled--where the user is asked to type in a sequence of letters from a line that people can read, but computers can't decipher.
Blogger is currently working on ways to reduce false positives and ensure that once a blog with word verification has been established as legitimate, the blogger will no longer need to solve the CAPTCHA.
Why Create Splogs In The First Place?
Splogs generally fall into one of two categories, notes Mediapost: Link farms, which pack hundreds or even thousands of blogs with gibberish or recycled content, and contain multiple links to a particular Web site, which allow them to game Google's PageRank algorithm, creating artificially high organic search rankings; and spam blogs that simply recycle content with AdSense or other advertising on them in the hopes of making money from errant users clicking on the ads.
Splogs most often get their content by scraping - the process of sending an electronic copying bot to take everything it sees, recreating it on an unlimited number of instant documents, writes Jim Hedger.
Literally millions of instant sites have sprung up over the past twelve months, most of which are free-hosted Blogs, containing content scraped out from the original sites.
Why Splogs Are Evil
An article in the Wall Street Journal notes that the splogs are a big source of frustration for several search-engine start-ups that focus on blog searches, such as IceRocket.com LLC, Technorati Inc. and Feedster Inc.
Jim Hedger makes some excellent points about why splogs are a menace to genuine bloggers, notably that
- Splogs are content thieves and can cause honest webmasters to get caught up in technical and financial issues by losing search engine listings and advertising revenue
- Splogs use up blogging resources, especially those of Blogger and Blogspot
- Slogs clog up the search results with crappy and irrelevant sites.
- Splogs devalue the legitimate uses of blogs as communications and marketing tools
- Splogs might lead future blog readers or users away from the growing blogosphere.
Pete Blackshaw, chief marketing officer of Intelliseek, a firm that monitors and searches blog content, said that spam blogs make it harder to convince companies to blog.
What Can You Do About Splogs?
It’s not just the engines that are fighting back. There are a few knights in shining armour out there, like Frank Gruber, a blogger in Chicago who became frustrated while encountering splogs in search engines, and recently launched a site called SplogReporter, reports the Wall Street Journal.
SplogReporter lets anyone submit the Web address of a suspected splog. Gruber has created an index to rate how "spammy" a blog is, and is building a database of splogs that he may share with search engines.
Google engineer, Matt Cutts, provided tips on how to report spam to Google on his blog. Use his tips to report spam and do your bit to clean up the blogosphere.
I first wrote about spam-blogs here, and recommended that instead of using blogs for spam, marketers must focus on building content-rich sites and getting high-value links to them.
Don't restrict yourself to just the SEO benefits of blogging. Appreciate the value that blogs can add to your marketing and public relations strategy and use them the way they were meant to be used - as cutting-edge and "cool" tools for communicating with your target audience.
(CC) Creative Commons License
Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine marketing firm, SEO & More and writes an online marketing blog. Request the whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS.
This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.- posted by Priya Shah @ 12:20 PM
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Thursday, October 13, 2005
The Power of Marketing Podcasts
If you've used the Internet at all this year, you've probably heard of podcasting. It's the one word that's almost guaranteed to come up in discussions of small business marketing, and with good reason too. Podcasting has become more and more popular over the past 12 months and is set to become the most powerful marketing tool of the future. But what exactly is it?
What are Marketing Podcasts?
In simple terms, podcasts are like radio transmissions which are broadcast over the Internet. Listeners subscribe to an RSS or Atom feed and can listen via their computer or hand-held devices such as iPods. They're a little like a blog and a little like radio - and they're starting to take off in a big way. In marketing terms, podcasting presents a new and very powerful method of communicating directly with your clients, both current and prospective.
What are Marketing Podcasts About?
The simple answer to this question is that a marketing podcast can be about anything and everything you think will be of interest to your listeners. You may want to talk about a new innovation you're using in your business, interview some of your industry leaders or discuss some of the big issues in your area of the business world. The choices are endless and it's up to you to use your imagination to come up with something people will be interested in hearing.
Why use Marketing Podcasts?
There are many different ways in which marketing podcasts can help benefit your business . Here are just a few of them.
1. Marketing podcasts help build tangibility
By creating a podcast you let your listeners/customers see the real you - the people behind the business. This helps give your business some kind of tangibility and personality. Rather than just being a faceless corporation your business becomes something your customers/listeners can relate to and understand.
2. Marketing Podcasts Increase Your Credibility
By offering a podcast on a particular subject, you're establishing yourself as an expert in that subject. People like to buy from experts - podcasting helps build trust and, by extension, grows sales.
3. Marketing Podcasts Add Value to Your Business
By offering a podcast, you're giving visitors to your website something fr.ee - and something which they'll hopefully enjoy enough to want to hear more of. This means that they'll become repeat visitors and may even turn into customers.
4. Podcasts Build Loyalty
Marketing podcasts work in much the same way that email newsletters build loyalty towards your business by providing fr.ee information to subscribers. As you start to build up a listener base for your podcasts you'll be creating your own f�rm of word-of-mouth advertising as your listeners tell other people about your podcasts and your business.
5. Getting Started in Marketing Podcasting
Creating a podcast is surprising simple. In terms of hardware all you need is a computer, mic and broadband connection. Simple, free pieces of software such as Audacity allow you to record it, then it's a matter of saving the file as .MP3 and uploading it to your server.
Once uploaded, your podcast is ready to be distributed, and this can be done through aggregators such as iPodder and FeedDemon or via web-based directories such as Podcast Alley and BlastPodcast. Some Podcasts for you to Start off With: "The Marketing Moment" - "Win Federal Contracts"
©2005 Robert Moment
Robert Moment is a business strategist and author of "It Only Takes a Moment to Score" found on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble. Robert shows entrepreneurs how to turn ideas into wealth, how to avoid becoming a statistic - and have FUN! Download the FR.EE Special Report, "17 Ways to Turn Your Content into Money" at http://www.sellintegrity.com
- posted by Priya Shah @ 4:11 AM
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Sunday, September 04, 2005
Blog FAQs and Answers
Q: Can you get married by blog?
A: Now that I've got your attention! Actually you can, at least Eric and Kathleen consider they did, thanks to an obscure law in Texas regarding "informal marriage." All you have to do, they say, is declare your spouse-itude publicly to other residents of the state. Read about it on her blog, August 5th entry.
There's a proliferation of articles on the Internet about blogging matched only by the proliferation of blogs being created. The numbers are astronomical, the growth rate exponential. Since blogging has yet to peak, there is the usual hysteria and hype around it. To help you sort through the maze, here's a brief primer with resources:
Q: What's the purpose of a blog?
A: Some of them are:
1. Self-expression; journaling gone public
2. Pitching a product or professional service
3. Providing information on a topic
4. Raising awareness about an issue
5. To get around Google "sandboxing"
6. To have fun
Before you mount a blog, decide the purpose and the intended audience. This will shape your choice of template and dictate content as well.
Nancy Fenn, The Introvertz Coach, wanted a blog to raise awareness about introversion as a legitimate personality style, and to show "what it's like to be introverted and intuitive every day."
Her target market is intuitive introverts, and since introverts love the Internet, she hit the jackpot. Peripherally, she promotes her products and services and receives over 5,000 visitors a month to her website.
Q: What's the format?
A: Many blog production sites, such as http://webhosting.availablehere.biz offer attractive templates. Picture this as writing in a diary, one entry after another. You should have a masthead telling what the theme of the blog is, and information about yourself, as well as contact information.
Q: What's "sandboxing"?
A: Something google can do to your website. When you have a new website and submit the URL, it can appear on the search engine and then suddenly disappear. For some reason it's put in a holding pin ("sandboxed" for a while, or indefinitely. Putting up a blog is a way to bring traffic to your website while you wait to see what happens. (See my article "Blog Your Way Out of Oblivion," www.goarticles.com ).
Q: Can your employer fire you for having a blog?
A: No doubt you've heard about the Delta employee who got fired for putting an "inappropriate" photo of herself in uniform on her blog. Ellen Simonetti, Queen of Sky, tells her story here . As with "inappropriate" emails and visiting porn sites at work, employees who have a Promethean desire to self-sabotage will find the uber-public Internet just the place to crash and burn. Why would you post something negative about your employer or their product or be unprofessional on a blog any more than you would badmouth them at a Chamber meeting and expect no repercussions?
"Why push the envelope?" says Mark Brandenburg, MA, CPCC, a coach who helps business clients connect what they do at work with their personal values. "Don't do anything on a blog, or anywhere else," he says, "that you wouldn't want your supervisor or co-worker to see. If it doesn't represent you or your organization well, don't do it."
"If you feel a desire to write or do something that doesn't reflect well on you or the organization," he adds, "it might be time to get some help to find out what need you're not getting met."
Q: What mistakes should you avoid?
A: (1) All the mistakes that make a regular website inhospitable - poor layout and navigation, bad grammar, typos, poorly written articles, lame material, static not dynamic (you should feed your blog at least every other day), or something unreadable like blue print in Blackadder font on black screen.
(2) Failing to market, if that's your intent. If you're marketing, you must give the person a reason to return often and make it easy for them to contact you. Keep to your topic, pump useful (or entertaining) information, and give URL, email and phone number.
(3) Not submitting your blog to blog directories. Do it now. As of yesterday, at www.blogwise.com, just one submission site, there were 5989 blogs in the queue with an expected wait of 29 days.
(4) If it's a blatant ad, no one will visit more than once.
(5) Not stating what seems "obvious" to you. Tell them what your blog is about, how often you add content, why you're doing it.
Q: What should not be on a blog?
A: The same copyright and intellectual property laws regarding written and graphic material apply as elsewhere. For legal advice, consult an intellectual property attorney. To be safe, use your own material, or access sites like www.ideamarketers.com offering pre-authorized articles. For graphics, go here: (www.clipart.com).
Q: With a new blog going up every second, how can you make yours stand out?
A: "The blog software or blog service you choose can make a big difference," says Craig Thornburow." You should consider the level of support, the cost, whether it's HTML or PHP driven, and how the software manages links. You also want software flexible enough to allow you to customize.
For instance, one advantage on webhosting.availablehere.biz is the use of B2Evolution. It's the next generation blogging system - probably the most comprehensive blogging engine you can find. Its features include the ability to blog instantly by one simple button or by sending an email or MMS to your blog. The system also supports up to 100 different blogs from the same site."
A further advantage to a site such as this, is that you can have your own URL, better for SEO. With the free blog sites you can end up with a URL like http://theirblog.com/yourname.html which is far less attractive to the search engines.
Q: What can you do if you want a blog but are computer illiterate, hate to write, and/or don't have time?
A: Programs like www.blogger.com and http://webhosting.availablehere.biz are so simple to use, I urge you to give it a try. However, you can always hire someone else to do it. As soon as something new appears, the support personnel, trainers and teaches start queuing up for your dollar.
Q: What do you look for in a blog-meister?
A: If you're going to supply content, minimal computer skills, like a Virtual Assistant. Or (this is our future, folks), take a look at the prices on this site owned by an Australian company, with techs in India. $1.88 an hour for web techs. (I'm not recommending this, not having used it.)
If you want someone to research and/or choose content, you need someone intelligent, with a proven record for research and writing on the Internet who is familiar enough with your field. Check with marketing companies and coaches who do Internet marketing.
If you've been thinking about starting a blog, now's the time. Good luck!
© Susan Dunn, MA, Internet Marketing and Blog Coach, http://www.webstrategies.cc .
To set up your own blog, go here: http://webhosting.availablehere.biz .
For more information, mailto:caricky@beeb.net .
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:48 AM
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17 Mistakes Professionals Make with Their Blogs
Are you getting results from your business blog? Is it getting harder for you to spend time on your blog because you're just not seeing how it is going to pay off? If so, you're not alone.
Hundreds of blogs are started each day and many of them are abandoned after several months because it takes time and energy to keep a good business blog going.
Make no mistake, blogs are a great tool for building community, interacting with potential clients, and marketing your services. And, it's not enough to set one up and post occasionally. You have to use it effectively to drive traffic and gain readership.
We've discovered several common mistakes professionals make with their blogs. Mostly, they aren't using some the features available to them with their blogging software, because it hasn't been sufficiently explained.
Eyes glaze over with the mention of RSS, pinging, trackbacks and permalinks. Professionals may be ignoring these things, hoping they don't really need to know. But they do if they want results from their business blog.
Here's a list of what we found on a recent trip around the professional business blogosphere:
Content:
1. Not posting frequently enough. (Recommended: 2-3 times a week.)
2. Content is not focused, and the target audience is not clearly defined.
3. Posting articles that are too long, instead of using extended post features.
4. Not linking profusely (because the professional isn't researching their field on the internet).
5. Poor spelling, bad grammar and typos.
Design
6. No name of author in tag line or on side bar.
7. No author photo.
8. No signature or name in the footer; no way to tell who wrote post on a multi-author site.
9. No subscription form; no way to get blog updates through RSS or email.
10. No way for readers to leave comments and use trackbacks.
11. Too many categories or none at all.
12. No information about their business services and products.
13. Calendars for no reason at all (what is the point of those calendars anyway?).
Marketing
14. Blog isn't submitted to blog directories.
15. Not pinging each time a new post is published.
16. Not using trackbacks referring or linking to other blogs.
17. No blogroll or list of favorite blogs or websites.
If you're considering using a blog to build your business, optimize it by taking time to learn the features and steps that will ensure success. A blog is like any other marketing tool - you've got to use it correctly to get positive results.
Here are a couple of suggestions:
1. Get an ebook and take the time to learn about your blog software or hosting provider.
2. Hire a professional blog expert to coach you on how to rev up your blog.
© Denise Wakeman & Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D.
Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman are two blog experts who have teamed up to form The Blog Squad. They provide advanced training and coaching for professionals who want to beef up their blog for marketing optimization. Each month a blog is selected as Blog of the Month and undergoes a rigorous makeover. At the end of the month, the blog must pass the Blog Squad Seal of Approval to be certified a success. Patsi and Denise also publish a popular blog at Build a Better Blog.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:42 AM
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The Power of the BLOG
Can a Blog earn you a prison sentence? Ask Mojtaba Saminejad. He is an Iranian whose Blog, published in the Farsi language, earned him a two-year prison sentence in June 2005.
The online community is fast waking up to the power of blogs which have spread across the internet like wild fire. If you are still grappling with the word BLOG, these are online websites which are diary-like in approach and people are free to publish news or their ideas and thoughts. Blogs are very popular as they are simple to use and in most cases, free.
However, professional bloggers (people who have a decent no. of hours of blogging to their credit) will admit that blogging is not as easy as waking up in the morning, checking out some posts and putting together a few witty lines before you brush your teeth. You do need to be knowledgeable about the subject you are writing on or you are likely to be torn apart by people who are.
Having a Blog has its own set of inherent advantages which are obvious and some which are not so obvious. The better known advantages are:
Freedom to express: If you like to build a chain of communication and use that as food for thought and for your existence, a BLOG is the best way to create this outlet. You can express your opinion openly and you just might be surprised by the number of people who would agree with you. Such communication channels also help build momentum for a particular line of thought.
Networking at its best: If you own a blog which has genuine exchange of ideas it can evolve onto a good platform to network and grow your business. It is easier to impress potential customers with a strong and valid point of view rather than a price quote.
Excellent advertising platform: The sheer size of community generated at a popular blog provides an excellent advertising platform for advertisers. With the hunger for new advertising platforms which is both innovative and cost effective, blogs seems like the next location for the big bucks of advertisers.
Gauging public opinion on products and services: Bloggers post comments at a fiery pace. It is not uncommon to see a couple of comments posted within a few minutes of the original post. The topic and title of the blog needs to be alluring enough to get such quick responses. Blogs thus become an excellent forum to gauge public opinion on products and services and even political and business events.
Useful tool for inter-company communication without the red tape: IBM recently started a blog for its employees on the intranet. Reason? Simple, to get employees interacting with each other and building up a knowledge based community for putting together new ideas as well as provide good human resource practices.
More and more companies are ignoring the naysayers for blogs and going ahead with using this tool for fostering better employee relations within the company. The knowledge sharing is also excellent and HR personnel can monitor comments to get an idea about new policies or identify troublesome issues head on and well in advance.
Other benefits which are worth mentioning if you own a blog is search engine optimization due to the high volume of content featured here, updating yourself on the latest trend in the marketplace which subsequently helps you identify new opportunities which helps you stay ahead and allows you to be tech-savvy in your social and professional circle. The benefits outlined above should be enough to inspire you to start a blog at the earliest!
Copyright 2005 The Powerful Promoter
About the Author:
Matt Bacak became "#1 Best Selling Author" in just a few short hours. Recent Entrepreneur Magazine's e-Biz radio show host is turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories. Discover The Secrets To Unleash The Powerful Promoter In You! Sign up for Matt Bacak's Promoting Tips Ezine ($100 value) just visit his website at http://www.powerfulpromoter.com or http://promotingtips.com
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:38 AM
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Blogs: The Hidden Ace Up Your Sleeve
If it wasn't for my blog, I wouldn't make any online sales at all.
It's true that I have a "regular" website, my so-called "main website," which I first set up to sell my goods, in this case, men's and women's health products. It's my workhorse, the source of most of my revenue. Most of my sales resulted from generic listings in the search engines, particually Google.
That is, until Google sandboxed me.
Some of you may have heard of the legendary Google sandbox, sometimes called, "The Goggle Sandbox Effect." What happens is that newly listed sites rank well for about two to three weeks, then suddenly drop off the radar screen. These new sites are placed in a type of probational sandbox, away from the "real" sites.
Why does this happen, you ask? There are almost as many theories as there are SEO (Search Engine Optimization) experts. Many believe that this probation period is not related to the sites themselves, but to their links.
It is believed that back link (pure link popularity) credit is placed in a reserve for a period of time (2-4 months) before it is applied to ranking and has an effect. The theory behind this is to combat PR (Page Rank) purchasers from dominating PR from the beginning. It is meant to deter spam websites.
Others believe this alleged filter that is placed on new websites is an illusion. These skeptics argue that the phenomenon merely echoes already existing Google algorithm calculations.
Whatever the reason, I got sandboxed, the rug pulled out from underneath me; shiskobobbed. The high-ranking and sales that I was receiving from my site suddenly plummented.
I was devastated. What's a poor boy to do now?
Desperate, I wrote to a number of online SEO forums, seeking advice from the SEO gurus. Some thought it was amusing and laughed in my face. Others offered advice such as forgetting about Google for awhile and optimizing my site for the other search engines (not a bad idea).
Others thought that I should continue adding content, since content is king as far as the search engines are concerned. Still others thought I should try to gain as many quality links as I should, and this would help pull me out of the sandbox (it felt more like quicksand to me.)
I committed to doing all these things, but in the meaintime, what about my website and the products that I was trying to sell, the money I was hoping to make?
I kept hearing about blogs, those personal websites that are published on the Web. As you probably know, blogs contain philosophical reflections, talk about social issues, and opinions about everything under the sun. They are usually presented in journal style with a new entry each day, or almost every day.
Some people have found out that blogs can also be used to sell products. In fact, an entire industry has evolved around commerical blogging and ways to market them. Some of these commerical blogs appear in the same journal style as the most popular blogs, while others do not look any different from a regular commerical website.
At any rate, I decided to check them out. The fact that a number of blog publishers allow you to build and post your comments for free, certainly didn't hurt either.
I studied many of the blogs that are out there on the Internet, particually the ones relating to my niche. The more I read, the more I liked. I was surprised to learn that some of the top websites in my niche were actually blogs. They ranked high on Google and all of the other search engines. And no doupt, they were making sales.
Soon, I had a pretty good idea about how I was going to build my blog. I didn't want to copy the others, I just needed to get an idea of how some enterprising webmasters were creating them.
Within minutes, I had created my blog, published it on the Web, and began posting and tweaking it. I inserted some HTML code to monitor my stats, and continued to work on making it a better blog. I also continued to work on my other websites, so that whenever I do climb out of Google's sandbox, my site will get a good rating.
Not long afterwards, I made my first blog sale!
Elated, I built other blogs. The more lines you have in the water, the better chance you'll catch a fish, right? Each was slightly different than the preceeding one, but I still hawked the same products. All have links back to my "main" website, and all have brought me sales.
I might have been down, but thanks to my new-found knowledge about blogs, I wasn't out.
So, while I'm waiting to climb out of Google's sandbox, I have an ace in the hole and another up my sleeve that is continuing to make sales for me - my blog. Unknowingly, I had stumbled upon one of the best ways to get my products out there before the buying public.
What I had thought was the worse thing to happen turned out to be the best thing. Had Google not sandboxed me, I probably never would have discovered the awesome marketing power of blogs!
About The Author: Van Whitsett is the author of numerous articles, both online and in the print media. He has tried (and failed) a number of Internet businesses until he hit the jackpot as an affiliate for Mensniche. His website, Natural Male Enhancement has proven to him that the Holy Grail does indeed exist, and that it's possible to earn money online.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:36 AM
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10 Ways to Instantly Promote your Blog for Free
1. Ping weblogs.com and other search engines. When you ping a blog, you are telling the search engine that you have updated your blog content and that your listing should be refreshed. Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes. Pinging your blogs to the search engines is the fastest way to get the search engine robots to visit your blog. Also, many people browse these sites to find something new.
2. Submit your blog address to blog search sites and directories. You can submit your blog's url to websites such as Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex. For a complete list of websites where you can submit your url, go to http://www.guidetorss.com
3. Set your blog to display RSS feeds and submit your blog's RSS feed to the major RSS feed directories online. A good place to start is http://www.guidetorss.com which provides a list of the top RSS directories.
4. Put your blog URL in your email signature. If you're a regular at any online discussion forum, you can also add your url to your signature line at the bottom of each message you post.
5. Install a blogroll. A blogroll is a collection of links to other weblogs. Services such as Technorati spider your links to tell who's linking to you and who you're linking to. If you show up on someone's Technorati link list for their site they're likely to visit your site to see what you said, increasing your exposure. Blog owners can also visit your site to check it out if you show up on their referral logs.
6. Be an active commenter. Try to leave comments on the blogs that you regularly visit. Most comment systems also provide a way for you to leave a link back to your blog which begs a visit at the very least.
7. If you plan to have anything printed up, put your blog's web address on it. You can print your blog URL on business cards, stickers, leaflets, etc.
8. Take advantage of blog software features that help to promote your Blog. For example, if you're using Blogger, you can do this by turning on: "Email This Post", "Post Pages" "Site feed" and the Blogger Navbar. These features will help attract new visitors to your blog.
9. Exchange Links with other Bloggers or blog owners. This is another effective strategy for generating targeted traffic to your blog for free. It involves contacting other blog owners for a possible link exchange partnership. All you have to do is locate blogs that are related to yours and contact the webmaster to swap links.
10. Write articles or free reports for other webmasters to publish and put your blog url in the byline. The `byline' is the short paragraph that goes at the bottom of each article and describes who the author is and what they do. If you write good content, your articles will be published by other webmasters and many readers who like your article will go on to visit your blog.
Copyright © 2005. Chileshe Mwape writes for the US Banks Website: http://www.us-banks.org/ Find informative articles and news stories about banking and finance.. This article may be reprinted as long as all the above links are active and clickable.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:32 AM
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Five Ways A Blog Helps You To Market Your Business
Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.
If you're an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:
* a blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and
* a blog expands your customer base.
Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)
What's a blog? Get up to speed here:
* http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs
Let's look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.
One: A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines
In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.
How times change. In 2005, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.
Blog often, and you'll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.
Two: A blog expands your customer base - you'll reach people you could reach in no other way
A blog helps you to reach people you can reach in no other way because your frequent updates mean that you'll automatically get niche visitors - those people who have no clue about you or the product that you're selling, but who happened to type in a search engine query that mentioned words you used in a single post.
Those niche visitors can become buyers, and this means that you don't need to struggle to get top listings in any search engine. Write (or link to) quality content, and your visitors will find you.
Three: A blog helps your site to differentiate itself
A blog is a form of stealth marketing. Therefore a blog doesn't need to be about the products you're selling. A blog can be about any topic that you're passionate about. Blog about your passion, and mention - in passing - the products you're selling. You can also link to them, but don't bother selling heavily - that's not what a blog is about.
Four: Like a diamond, a blog is forever
Although the most-visited blogs update often, some of them several times a day, that doesn't mean that you have post more often than you can fit into your schedule. Your permalinks (see below) mean that since your blog items are standalone pages, they're indexed by search engines in the same way that any HTML or other page is indexed - your blog items/ pages will continue to bring traffic even if you don't update very often.
Five: A blog attracts new opportunities
A blog makes your business visible. Your stealth marketing efforts will attract the attention of people who may become joint venture partners, or who will have other opportunities for you.
The time and energy that you invest in your blog can bring results beyond your wildest expectations. Create a blog - it's your hardest-working, and most cost-effective online marketing option.
GLOSSARY:
Blog = Web log.
Permalink = permanent link, an URL for a single blog post.
Comment = blogs have a comments section, where readers can interact with the blogger and others.
Michael Murray is a 22-year old full-time Internet marketer with Cerebral Palsy who lives in sunny Orlando Florida. Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising!: http://www.marketlikeapro.com/words.html
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:30 AM
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RSS and Blog Marketing for Real Estate
Earlier this month, Realtor Magazine announced that they would be featuring an article about Tampa Bay Realtor John Mudd and the success he has been having in attracting prospects and media attention with his blog on real estate.
Since then, many others in the Real Estate market have been curious about how to implement similar strategies to capture leads in their areas.
This article is part of a series that provides insight to the unique ways that the strategy of blogging and the use of RSS and/or Atom feeds can be applied as part of your web promotion strategy.
1. Capture better search engine positioning for your local market with a blog.
By now it's apparent that blogs with unique content can bring you better search engine rankings. This advantage is strengthened when you use a blog software tool that enables you to publish posts on your own server, which we'll go over in more detail in part two of this article series.
RSS and Blogs bring you special web promotional opportunities that can help your blog and the site where it resides rank higher in search engines, due in part to the way they are organized. Particularly for narrow local markets, this can both widen and deepen your audience within 3 - 8 weeks with proper implementation.
By far, this is not the only benefit of blogging or RSS - though if you're looking for better organic search engine ranking across a multitude of keyword phrases, this just may be the answer for you.
2. Dominate your local niche by becoming a resource for information for home buyers and sellers in your area
The ease of publishing content to a blog, coupled with one of the easier ways to implement RSS, its accompanying feed, gives you the ability to provide fresh and relevant information, often at the same rate of time it would take to write a short email.
With the proper blog publishing system, the speed at which you can now provide information means that you can publish updates more often, drawing more attention to your web site from search engines and visitors alike.
After landing in your blog, links to other relevant parts of your site can draw visitors to the areas you most want them to pay attention to, such as your updated listings - which can also be made available via RSS if you so choose.
Why RSS?
It can mean 100% delivery of your message to your prospects, in a fashion that they choose to have pulled to them. Rather than attempting to digest all the information at your blog in one visit, they can skim your headlines, read a summary or post, and then click through to your site upon finding information that draws them in.
You can supplement this with email for users who are more comfortable with receiving your information the traditional way.
While promotion and updates via email are not necessarily to be discounted, the use of RSS and other feed formats lend themselves to additional promotional possibilities.
3. Have yet another reason to remind prospects to return to your site - and shorten the sales cycle using a multiple feed strategy
With the combined power of blogging and RSS, you can construct multiple outlets for information that are each hyper-targeted to several segments of your market. Instead of attempting to force your static web site to capture home buyers and home sellers for your area, as well as provide the statistical information on your locale, you can build several focus areas and promote them side by side.
For example, if your local area is Frederick, Maryland, you can dedicate one blog and its accompanying feed to recent Frederick listings, and then have a separate feed that automatically provides updates on area schools, crime rates, cost of living and other statistical information home buyers consider when making purchasing decisions. Separate blogs and feeds on the same site could focus on the needs of home sellers in the area
The possibilities are truly as endless as the number of markets you wish to capture.
It is often said that it may take up to seven times for a prospect who comes across a marketing message to buy. Therefore, the faster the opportunity arises for you to contact your potential client, the closer they may be to a buying decision. If you are able to provide them with the information they need to make that decision with updates from your site, the likelihood that they may ultimately make that purchase decision through you increases.
Updates to blogs and RSS feeds can give you the power to make this transition happen at a faster pace, as the production cycle of the content takes only the time you would need to publish that information.
Rather than contacting your web content management department, forwarding content, and waiting for the page to be published, then picked up by search engines, with a blog, you simply log into your administration area, type and publish.
These pages can also get picked up by search engines faster through the power of syndication - those already following your feed receive your update instantly.
There are more ways that you can use RSS to draw more qualified prospects to your business which will be covered in part two of this series.
About the Author:
Copyright 2005 Tinu AbayomiPaul
Read part two of this series at http://rssapplied.com/rss-real-estate/ . This will also give you access to a free guide to using RSS and Blogging to target prospects.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:27 AM
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How to Benefit from Comment Spam
It happens all the time. You have your blog up and running. You're writing interesting stuff and you're even getting some attention. All of a sudden there's a flood of comments on your site. Having comments helps a blog look busier, so everyone wants to get comments.
But comment spam like:
Get Rich Quick! Visit my site at…
Want to meet girls?! Visit www…
Low cost morgages for anywon! Check out www.
Grrrrr – these aren't comments, they're unpaid ads, taking up space on your site.(*and yes, they frequently have misspellings like the third one!)
It makes your blood boil. How dare they!? What right do they have, cluttering up your comment section with their advertising!
Comments that are off-topic and blatant ads are annoying. Most comment spam is self serving claptrap that needs to be deleted, and doing so is just the cost of doing business in the blogosphere.
But lately a new breed of blog comments have started arriving at blogs all over the web. Comments like:
"Nice job – keep up the great work!"
"I really enjoyed this post and I'll be back often!"
"Wow, you really made me think. Thanks for the insight!"
Unfortunately, these comments are not from legitimate readers, but instead they're from some pharmaceutical or casino site just trying to get free links.
You see, some comment spammers have even gotten clever, writing praise and reasonable comments that a blog owner would hesitate to delete, hopeful that maybe, just maybe, they're legitimate comments. This tactic ensures that the sites get free links all around the blogosphere.
But you can turn the tables, you can use some comment spam to your advantage, and it's amazingly simple. Keep the comment, delete their link. You'll get the benefit of a good comment without the spammer profiting at your expense. I even go so far as to replace their link with "Auto-Deleted by http://www.ArticleMarketer.com" – why not make it a self-serving link in the process?
If the link was from a legitimate reader who really intends to "come back often", you'll get a note by email or a follow up comment that protests your change. When you find out it's a real person who really liked what you said, you can make the decision to put the link back.
I personally have no trouble allowing legitimate links from my blog. That's what makes the blogosphere interesting.
Do you have any tips and tricks to make people more successful with their blogs? Can you help website owners get more customers? Visit http://www.articlemarketer.com and distribute your articles to editors and publishers all over the web. Does it work? Well, you're reading this article, aren't you? Get massive distribution: www.articlemarketer.com
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:20 AM
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The Blog and the Nature of Natural Linking
A lot of people are talking, and few of them know, the soul of a search engine was created in the blog. ;-)
There has been a lot of talk about Natural Linking. From Oakland (Ask Jeeves), Sunnyvale (Yahoo!) and Mountain View (Google), California, all of the search engine companies are talking more publicly about "Natural Linking":
Why Is Linking Important?
The whole concept of linking in the eyes of the search engine companies is that when Site A links to Site B, then Site A is making a personal recommendation of Site B. Because Site A is willing to put their reputation on the line to share the story of Site B, the search engines have determined that Site B MUST be of higher value than Site C.
Google established their PageRank system a few years back based on this conceptual idea. Over the past few years, the other search engine companies have begun to adopt the linking model in their attempt to catch up with Google's lead in the marketplace.
Because the search engine companies want to provide the best possible results to their users for a particular search, they have all climbed on the concept of link counting to determine the value of the sites that they are recommending to their users.
What Is Natural Linking?
The idea behind "Natural Linking" is that you can have for example five people linking to the same site giving the site a recommendation via the hyperlinked text.
The hyperlinked text is any text that appears between the <a href=> and the </a> tags. When used in a HTML document, the hyperlinked text in the viewable webpage becomes a live clickable link like this: http://Blogger.Com.
When viewing this link from within the HTML coding, it will look like this:
<a href=http://Blogger.Com>http://Blogger.Com</a>.
Each webmaster who decides to link to an individual website has a different idea and reasoning as to why his or her visitors should look at the site they are recommending. As a result, each webmaster will outline their reasoning within their links to your website.
In our example, we have five Site A's pointing to Site B:
Example Site One will put the following on their site:
<a href="http://Blogger.com">Easy to Use Blogging Software</a>
Example Site Two will put the following on their site:
<a href="blogger.com/'>http://Blogger.com">Blogger.com - Owned by Google</a>
Example Site Three will put the following on their site:
<a href="get/'>http://Blogger.com">Get a Free Blog for Your Website</a>
Example Site Four will put the following on their site:
<a href="bloggers/'>http://Blogger.com">Bloggers Love Blogger.com</a>
Example Site Five will put the following on their site:
<a href="fully/'>http://Blogger.com">Fully Featured Blogging Software</a>
Each webmaster in this example has shown their users why they should visit Blogger.com. In doing so, each of them has shown their link using their own descriptive text. It is this "descriptive text" that the search engines view as "natural links".
So, "Natural Links" are links that are created by individual webmasters and not by Site B's owner. In the eyes of the search engine programmers, these links will likely have a more accurate representation of the content that appears on a website. And the search engine masters understand that a stranger is always more honest in his representations than the webmaster trying to promote his own website.
What Does Natural Linking Have To Do With Blogs?
Over the last few years, you have read many an article from people pitching the importance of the blog in the search engine optimization game. But, do you know why blogs have become so important to the search engine companies?
Natural Linking.
When all is said and done, the text within a link has been given more weight in the search engines than the real content on a webpage.
I heard the guffaws in the audience. I can see the look of utter disbelief on your faces as you sit in front of your computer staring incredulously at my comments.
But, wait. I can actually prove this to you.
Come back when you are done, but do click this link to view the search results for the Worst President.
Did you notice the results in search result #1? Did you go to the webpage to see if you could find the word "worst" in the text? I did too. And guess what. I could not see the word "worst" in the text either.
The same search with a slight variation, searching for the Worst President in History puts the same page in search result #4.
This Is The True Power Of Blogs
The search engine companies put far more value in the natural link text than they put in the terms that show up within a webpage! The bloggers are the ones who have said that George W. Bush is the worst president in history. And, I will bet that they get a great chuckle every time someone like me points out their accomplishments.
The reason why the blogs are the best new resource of the search engines is because blogs use natural linking far more often than regular website pages.
The Challenges Facing Us Now
As we move forward to promote our website in the here and now and tomorrow, we must keep in mind the need for natural linking. The challenge for us is how to communicate our sales messages in such a way that links to our websites are perceived by the search engines as natural links.
As we face this challenge, we should consider giving other people more leeway in how they post a link to our websites. If you are using reciprocal links or paid advertising, you should by all means give the person showing your ad several choices for your advertisement.
If you are using reprint articles to promote your online business, you should find a way to offer publishers and webmasters multiple article resource boxes, or you should just give them more free reign in developing another natural link to your website.
Good luck in your linking endeavor.
By Bill Platt (c) 2005
the Phantom Writers
Bill Platt owns http://thePhantomWriters.com . He specializes in getting your reprint articles distributed to at least 17,000 publishers and webmasters seeking good content. Pre-Written ghosted articles are now available for purchase. If you need help setting up your blog, please review his blogging services at: http://BloggerSupport.com
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:11 AM
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Tuesday, August 23, 2005
5 Secret Benefits That Bloggers Love And Enjoy
1: Building Trust Relationships
Blogging allows bloggers to share their expertise and knowledge with a very large audience. Building a loyal audience is something that every small business owner would love to accomplish and bloggers are able to do this by simply sharing their thoughts using their business blogs. Building a community that trusts you and follows your blog updates on a daily basis is one of the key ingredients that hundreds of bloggers are using in their business.
2: Easy To Publish
Blog software is simple to use. With the push of a few buttons you can post your thoughts, link to resources and publish your blog. Blog software companies provide bloggers with all the tools necessary to get started. Bloggers can update their blogs much quicker than a website which usually requires contacting a web designer or uploading yourself.
3: Search Engine Traffic
One of the greatest benefits that bloggers receive is search engine traffic. Search engines love to spider pages that contain quality content and are updated with fresh content on a regular basis. Smart bloggers optimize their blogs by keeping their content focused on a specific niche.
4: Cost Effective
Blogging is a low cost alternative to having a web presence. Blogging has given small business owners the opportunity to create a web presence without the time to learn html or the income to hire a web designer. Blogging is quickly growing with popularity as an inexpensive method to get the name of your business out on the internet. Gone are the days of having to come up with a large investment to create a web presence.
5: Spam Free
With Spam problems and email filters creating a huge challenge for email marketers to publish their newsletters, bloggers are now using blogs as an additional option to communicate with their subscribers. The advantage of using blogs is that you don't have to worry about spam and email filters because your message will be delivered by using RSS (Really Simple Syndication).
You can use these syndicated RSS "feeds" to display the latest news from major newspapers, for example, on your own web site or read them on other sites collecting these feeds. There are special programs and web-based services called "RSS feed readers" or "RSS aggregators" that, given the URL of an RSS feed will fetch the latest headlines periodically and let you read them comfortably and efficiently.
In Closing...
If you are looking for another source of traffic that is cost effective, spam free, search engine friendly, and perfect for building relationships, start publishing your own blog today. Once you get started, you too will experience the secret benefits that bloggers love and enjoy.
About the Author:
Benjamin Scott operates a successful internet business working from his home personal computer. To learn how to duplicate his success and earn multiple streams of income using the internet take a FREE course at: http://www.eazyhomebusiness.com/ Copyright © 2005 Benjamin Scott
- posted by Priya Shah @ 8:48 AM
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Blog Your Way Out of Oblivion
I market coaches. One of the most successful ones really had her practice take off when she started a blog. It got 42,000 hits within the first 3 months, quite a bit more than her main websites. However, at the same time, traffic to her websites picked up. That's because her blog has many links to her main websites, and pitches her products and services, along with great content she changes daily. In fact it's so interesting, I check it out every day too.
Some blogs, it's true are personal indulgences, sometimes for ranting and raving, emotional hemorrhaging, political issues and so forth, but your blog is what you make of it. I have a blog. Of course I have several main websites as well. They're the cornerstones of my practice. They've been up for years, and of course I've loaded them to place on the SEOs, but what if you've got a new website and Google has "sandboxed" it?
"What's that?" you ask. Your website will rank at first, and then suddenly it doesn't appear. Google places it in some kind of holding tank, maybe to check it for content, or for legitimate links or to avoid spam sites. Maybe they just want to see if it will be around for a while - which is going to hard if you don't get exposure, right?
For an excellent article about "sandboxing," go here: http://www.globalise.com.au/internet-marketing/google-sandbox.shtml
What can you do if this happens besides wait it out and hope for the best? Submit to other search engines (www.submitexpress.com is one), keep adding rich content, get some help with your meta tags, use other promotional means such as writing articles, and get more quality links. Or put up another website, only call it a BLOG! I've sold services and products from my blogs, and yes, that's plural. Why stop with one? They're fun to do, and can be extremely informative for other people.
Be sure they include links back to yur website(s) and to each other, and ads for your products and services. Make them dynamic, with entries daily, to keep people interested returning. Be sure and enter its URL on the search engines too.
You can build a blog free at www.blogger.com . It's about as simple to do as a thing can be on the Internet.
Research some of the blogs out there (google it), and get going. You want to give people every chance to find you and purchase your great products and services, don't you?
©Susan Dunn, MA, Marketing Coach, http://www.webstrategies.cc. Marketing consultation, implementation, website review, SEO optimization, article writing and submission, help with ebooks and other strategies. Susan is the author or "How to Write an eBook and Market It on the Internet." Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for information and free ezine. Specify "Checklist."
- posted by Priya Shah @ 8:44 AM
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Earn Money Blogging
Creating A Blog For Your Business Can Help You Increase Your Profits
One of the more searched for terms among the major search engines is "blog". The word blog is meant to describe a web log, or online journal, that is used to post personal thoughts on the products and services offered by your business.
A blog can also be used to make announcements to your customers and provide them a place to give feedback and make comments. You may include any information you desire in your posts to your blog that are related to your line of business. Articles, questions, and opinions are all appropriate blogging subjects.
Starting a blog is simple and there are several blogging tools available to you. Some are free to use and other, more powerful blogging tools can be found for a small monthly fee. In general, blogging tools are user friendly and do not require the knowledge of HTML or complex computer skills.
Creating a blog can give your business increased visibility and give your subscribers a forum in which to receive product updates, advice on how to effectively use your products, and post questions or comments about your line of business.
To bring your blog to the attention of your target audience, you can link your blog to other blogs, include links to your blog in newsletters or on your web site, and you may even want to include a link to your blog in your email signature.
Blogging can help you increase your profits due to increased visibility, which will undoubtedly lead to increased web site traffic and lead to you earn money blogging. Make sure to only include pertinent information about your niche or line of business in your blog.
Most bloggers are happy to link their blog to those belonging to others. The sharing of information and ability to post thoughts and comments makes for a winning situation for all concerned. Starting a blog for your business can be a great way to help you increase your profits and share important information with the public.
About The Author: For more information about home based business go to http://www.mommysplace.net
- posted by Priya Shah @ 8:41 AM
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The Buzz About Blogs
The "blogosphere" is continuing to grow at an amazing pace. In fact, the number of published blogs is expected to double about every five months. Right now, there is a new blog published every second, according to Technorati, the search engine that keeps track of Weblogs.
In March there were over 7 million blogs, that number is now over 14 million. Weblogs have become the homepages of the 21st century and are used for everything from sharing recipes, personal opinions and travel adventures, to the latest in political and economic news.
Blogs are also facing their share of controversy and praise. Reporters Without Borders recently published their "short list" of the seven best blogs out of 60, which won the "Freedom Blog Awards" for defending freedom of expression.
Winners (who are chosen by the public who vote for their favorite blogs) included "Shared Pains" which describes life in Afghan, and Mojtaba Saminejad, an Iranian whose blog is published in the Farsi language. (He received a two-year prison sentence in 2005 because of his blog).
Another winner, Jeff Ooi, publishes the Malaysian blog "Screenshots" which is in English. Because he allowed a comment on his blog back in 2004 which reportedly "insulted Islam" according to authorities, he was also threatened with imprisonment.
This award marks the first year for the event, but Reporters Without Borders hopes to make it an annual one. The organization follows and reports on freedom of the press around the world.
In oppressive countries, such as Iran (which shut down almost all independent newspapers in 2000), blogs have provided a way for journalists and others to express themselves and share the latest news and happenings.
But speaking up in such places often has serious consequences, such as one blogger in Iraq who was jailed by authorities after speaking up about what was simply a local problem.
China is another repressive area. Recently Chinese authorities declared that all bloggers had to register their blogs with them, or risk being shut down. To help combat these and similar problems around the world, organizations are being set up to provide global support among bloggers for those who are being repressed.
One of the biggest controversies right now, is whether bloggers should receive "journalistic" status. Some people see blogs and bloggers as a kind of counterbalance to what they see as media arrogance, while others call them vigilantes.
Recent events with Newsweek, CBS News and others have caused a division between the main stream media (MSM) and bloggers who feel the "truth is out there" and they want it told.
One thing both bloggers and the mainstream media agree on, is that things have been forever changed. The tools of mass media are no longer the property of the press alone, they're also freely available to the people.
What that means to us in the future, or what changes blogs will bring about to the way we receive and act on the news we get, no one really knows. Not as controversial, blogs have also become a mainstream tool of large and small businesses everywhere.
Blogging provides a simple and low-cost method for businesses to stay in touch with their customers, get free publicity and build a business brand. As technology continues to evolve, and the number of blogs continues to rise, it remains to be seen whether blogging will remain an effective business and marketing tool. But one thing is for certain - blogs are here to stay.
About The Author: Sandra Stammberger is the owner of Insider Scripts. At Insider Script's programmers are working around the clock to develop affordable, powerful money making scripts that will help you drive traffic to your business.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 8:35 AM
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The Huge Marketing Potential Of A Simple Blog
A Blog (also known as Weblog) is traditionally a webpage where pre-surfer or a blogger "logs" all pages he/she finds interesting. In other words, it is a Web page that contains brief, chronologically arranged items of information.
Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author. Weblogs provide a series of annotated links to items such as news stories, and often include personal rants. They are maintained by one person, most commonly someone who is involved in Web design or some other tech-related field.
A blog is often a mixture of what is happening on a particular website and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
Blogs can be used to introduce products to potential customers. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process.
Blog as a marketing tool:
Blogs offer huge marketing potential. They are highly strategic tools that can strengthen relationships, share knowledge, increase collaboration, and improve branding. Besides, blogs can represent the real voice of the website.
A weblog can take the form of a diary, a news service (or summaries of and links to current news items on a topic), a collection of links to other Web sites, a series of book reviews or products, reports of activity on a project, the journal of an expedition, and much more.
Businesses can use this tool to effectively advertise their products or services. One of the most interesting ways to use a weblog is by allowing it to function as a discussion forum for customers of your products or services. In this case, the webmaster can give posting rights to other people - visitors and customers, and their posts may or may not be reviewed before they are published to the Web page.
Customers, in such a way can post favorable comments about the websites offerings. Some weblogs are set up in such a way that only the owner or the owner and certain other people have posting rights, but anyone else can add comments to the posts.
Weblogs when used with newsletters present immense marketing opportunities:
- Articles within newsletters can be linked to a blog, extending life and creating a massive conversation.
- You can offer a bidirectional forum to customers to get true, personal opinions on your products and services.
- Company experts can start a blog and become industry experts, helping your company edge out competition and, through this interactive forum, draw customers into another exchange of information and thoughts.
- The beauty of this interplay is you can layer your blog with editorial controls.
How to create a Weblog?
The majority of weblogs are now created using software or services designed specifically for this purpose. Some of the software is free - and some of the organizations that provide weblog software will also provide free server space to house a weblog so that it is publicly accessible on the Internet.
There are also commercial versions of some of the free software; these commercial versions often provide more features. Some weblog software is available only as commercial software.
Alternatively, bloggers can create and maintain their weblog using free software or a free weblog service, but use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to load the resulting weblog to their own Website. There are many blogging softwares available easily on the Internet.
One of the most popular weblogger is "Blogger" which can be used for free at http://www.blogger.com. Most webloggers simplify the process of Website creation. However, they do require basic knowledge of FTP, Website structures and a few technical terms.
Besides, creating an advanced weblog requires knowledge of HTML. So get out there and start your own Blog.it's free, easy and can work seamlessly with the rest of your website or newsletter.
About The Author: Get your FREE step by step guide to setting up your first blog, - Ian Canaway will help you launch your very own money making website today that's 100% ready to take orders and pull in massive profits for you right now. guaranteed! http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com
- posted by Priya Shah @ 8:32 AM
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Friday, August 19, 2005
7 Tips For Choosing The Right Blog Software For Your New Blog
Choosing the right blog software for your new blog requires that you ask yourself some questions and make a list of all of the features and tools you need as well as your budget. Once you have this information written down you will be prepared to start shopping for blog software. However, keep in mind the following seven tips for choosing the best software for you.
Tip #1 Ping Updates
These allow you to update your blog and are very important in blog software. Make sure the blog software you are interested in provides automatic ping updates.
Tip #2 Comments
Whatever blog software you choose, you’ll want to make sure that it has an area for comments from visitors. This will help you understand what is successful in your blog and what is not, as well as guide you in future blogs. This is a really great tool and should be part of your blog software.
Tip #3 Trackback
If you are discussing your blog on another blog, or simply adding information to another blog, trackback will allow you to update this information. This is a little confusing, but trackback allows you to talk on your blog about information on another blog and ping the writer of the other blog to let them know what is going on. Trackback is certainly a feature you want in your blog software.
Tip #4 Pingback
Pingback is similar to trackback, but it just sends a URL to the other blog to let them know you are talking about their blog on your blog. This is not used as much as trackback, but you will want a blog software that has at least one of these two functions.
Tip #5 Web-based
The point of a blog is you can post information instantly online, so you want your blog software to be similar to a word processor and web based without a shadow of a doubt.
Tip #6 Archiving
You want a blog software that supports archiving, and most of them do. The reason for this is you will want to save all of your past blogs by the date they were published and archiving allows you to do that.
Tip #7 Categorize
Another great tool you will want in your blog software is the ability to categorize. You want to keep your blogs organized and in categories, if you have them, so this option is really a great one for most bloggers.
There are lots of types of blog software available. You just need to do the research and compare what you find with what you need and then… start blogging!
About the author:
Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/
Via Web Kahuna blog
- posted by Priya Shah @ 11:54 AM
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Thursday, July 28, 2005
Promote Your Blog
By S. Housley
Well, you've joined the others and have created a blog. It is time to tell the world about your online journal. Most blog services generate an RSS feed. If your blogging software does not create an RSS feed, consider using software like FeedForAll to create an RSS feed. Like blogs, RSS is growing in popularity and is a great way to spread the word about a new blog.
Syndication is conceptually simple. It allows publishers to distribute content that can be displayed in another location or context. Using RSS, publishers are able to easily create and disseminate content feeds that include news headlines, blog summaries and related links. RSS is the defined syndication standard that has become mainstream. All types of information are now available in a syndicated format.
1. Blog Submissions / RSS Submissions
There are a number of blog directories and blog search engines where you can submit your blog. A large list of sites allowing blog submission and RSS feed submissions can be found in the left column at: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm
Similarly, there are RSS feed directories and search engines like http://www.rss-network.com . Be sure to submit the URL of your RSS feeds to the RSS search engines listed on the RSS specifications website.
If you wish to automate your blog and RSS submissions consider using Dummy Software's Blog and RSS Submit Software http://www.dummysoftware.com .
Like a website, its important to select the appropriate category for your blog. Use a clear title that contains descriptive details but is not excessively long. The Blog description should further expand on the purpose and general theme of the blog.
Incorporate important keywords related to the blog's theme in both the title and description. This will help bring targeted traffic that is genuinely interested in the contents of the blog.
2. Post Press Releases to Online Resources
Write a press release announcing your blog to the world. Keep it factual and submit the release to the free press release directories. This will provide incoming links to the new blog and get it started on its way to popularity. There are a number that allow for press release posting free of charge.
The releases on these sites are occasionally picked up by publications looking for information or filler content. Another side-benefit to these listings is increased link popularity, which helps with search engine ranking.
A list of sites that allow for press release posting can be found under 'press release posting' . A number are available at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/pressreleases.html
3. Post Announcement on Usenet
A number of Usenet groups allow for posting of announcements or press releases. Most of the announce groups in Usenet contain 'ann.' in the domain address. If your blog is focused on a specific topic, search Usenet newsgroups. To locate topic-specific announce groups, consider searching http://www.newsguy.com to locate groups specific to related topics.
4. Post to Forums
Forums also contain sections in which you can post announcements. If the application is a niche product, consider searching for topic-specific forums in addition to the general software announce forums listed below. Be sure to post any announcements in the appropriately marked 'announce forum' . The following are related blog forums, some of which allow for posts.
Favorite Feeds - http://www.feedforall.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3
Your Blog Announcements - http://www.forum4bloggers.com/viewforum.php?f=12
Got Blog - http://www.blogomania.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=7 http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/forum/viewforum.ph
Announce Software, Blogs or Relationships
5. Promote & Auto Detect Blog Feeds
It has become a standard that nearly all websites that have RSS feeds available use colorful graphics to indicate the presence of an RSS feed. The graphics were initially bright orange rectangles, but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit.
NotePage has made a free online RSS graphic tool available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting the text on the button and the color scheme of the button. Once the color and text is entered, a custom graphic is instantly created. Webmasters can easily match the style of the RSS button to a website's theme.
Graphics experience is not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to personalize RSS feed graphics. The RSS graphics tool can be used by clicking the following URL http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or choose ready made graphics from: http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-graphics.htm .
Include information in the HTML code of a website so that RSS Readers automatically detect that an RSS feed exists for the material contained on the site. Aggregators will automatically detect RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in the header field of an HTML page.
After publishing an RSS feed it is important to let visitors know that the feed exists. Aggregators will automatically detect RSS on a website if you add a small bit of code in the header field of an HTML page. [link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml"]
Be sure to replace http://www.yourdomain.com/rss.xml with the URL to the RSS feed and replace the brackets with "<" (less than) and ">" (greater than) symbols.
About the Author: Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage – a wireless text messaging software company.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 5:35 AM
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Blood Test for Your Blog?
By Nick Smith
Just like a real blood test tells you which blood type you have or whether you have a disease or not, this article will help you test which type of blog you are writing and what you can do to improve it.
Are you contributing to one of the estimated 36.1 million (and growing) blogs online? Or are you thinking of entering the fray and starting to publish a blog for your small or home business? Make sure you are publishing the right type of blog for your kind of business, or all that writing time will have been for naught.
The Blog Blood Test
Just as there are different types of blood, there are many different types of blogs, and each serves its own purpose. Giving your blog a blood test will help you determine which type of blog is best for your business and what may be wrong with the one you’ve got now.
Blog Blood Type 1: Customer Relations
Blogging is one of the best ways to put a face and personality on your business, especially if you operate entirely in cyberspace. Those that best employ their blog in strengthening relationships with their customers spend a lot of time interacting with customers, answering questions, providing useful tips, and keeping them informed of business happenings.
These blogs focus less on the company’s products and more on the company’s culture and outlook. The goal of this type of blog is to engender customer loyalty and establish a consistent flow of interested website visitors.
Blog Blood Type 2: Sales
As you can imagine, most businesses that blog do so because of the perceived benefit to their bottom line. While very little quantitative research has been done with regards to the actual monetary impact of blogging on overall sales, the ubiquity of sales-oriented blogs indicates some kind of return-on-investment.
Sales blogs focus on product developments and benefits to the customer. There is less online interaction with customers via the blog as the goal is to move readers off of the blog and onto the product pages. The goal of a sales blog is to encourage visitors to purchase a product, service, or information that the company is offering.
Blog Blood Type 3: Personal Web Journals
These blogs make up the bulk of the 36.1 million web logs online. The majority are personal accounts written without regard to size of readership or monetary value.
Many have heralded free blogs as the Internet’s greatest achievement, allowing virtually anyone with an internet connection to publish literally whatever they want, and all in a matter of a few minutes.
There are as many purposes for personal blogs as there are bloggers. Perhaps the most common theme is the chance to be heard.
I’ve Taken the Blog Blood Test. Now What?
Which category did your blog best fit in? Did you find that you’re writing one type of blog but desiring the benefits of another? If you haven’t already started your blog, which type do you believe would best match your writing abilities and desired outcome? Simply put, if you’re not writing the best type of blog for the benefits you want, you’ll never get them and you’ll waste a lot of time in the process.
If your current blog is doing exactly what you want it to, leave it alone. If you find that some changes are necessary, consider the following questions:
- Do I think I can drive actual sales from the blog?
- Would I rather spend my writing time interacting with customers (both positive and negative) or writing about my product? (Remember the blood test)
- Am I the best person to author my blog, or is there someone else who could do a better job?
- Do I want to stage the blog as a company-sponsored communication tool or would I rather it appear as a kind of third-party, objective review?
- How much time am I willing to spend writing?
- How free do I want to be with regards to frequency of posting and responding to customer comments?
Millions of others are already blogging, but don’t let that stop you from starting. Give your business the blog blood test and see which type works best for you.
About the Author: Nick Smith is an internet marketer with http://www.10xmarketing.com More Visitors. More Buyers. More Revenue. Visit http://www.genetree.com/landing/paternity-blood-test.asp for information about a DNA blood test and other DNA products.
- posted by Priya Shah @ 5:31 AM
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Five Ways A Blog Helps You To Market Your Business
Copyright 2005 Michael Murray
Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.
If you're an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:
* a blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and
* a blog expands your customer base.
Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)
What's a blog? Get up to speed here:
* http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs
Let's look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.
One: A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines
In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.
How times change. In 2005, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.
Blog often, and you'll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.
Two: A blog expands your customer base - you'll reach people you could reach in no other way
A blog helps you to reach people you can reach in no other way because your frequent updates mean that you'll automatically get niche visitors - those people w