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I don't mean that in the automobile sense either. I mean in the sense of Carnival Cruise Lines. It is being promoted by John Heald, Carnival Freedom's cruise director. These guys can be a lot of fun, and they are certainly funny. Their job is to make sure that your cruise is memorable. This cruise, taking place on January 19, 2008, is the first Carnival Cruise dedicated to the Blogger. My bet is it is going to be a full ship as many bloggers as their are in the world. This is a 7 day Caribbean cruise to Ocho Rios Jamaica, George Town, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico. I think that this event is going to be historical. My imagination is vivid with the memories of the Imagination because that is the ship that my wife and I took our honeymoon on. We went to Ocho Rios Jamaica and the Grand Cayman Islands. We saw the Loggerhead Turtle Farm and we swam with both the dolphins at Dolphin's Cove as well as the Sting Rays at the Caymens. You may recognize the two pictures that I use frequently on my article directory Moxie Drive Expressions, and my articles. They were taken in Jamaica.   This really was the happiest time of my life and I want to go back desparately. It is a very, very cool trip. The food is good and plentiful. The berths are a bit small for two people, but then again, I am 6'6". Anything is too small. The ship is amazingly smooth because of the stablizers, like wings in the water. My 7 day honeymoon on imagination felt like it lasted a month. I hate that it had to end and I have not been the same since that wonderful trip. So go, I dare you, and leave the laptop home. You will be way too busy for it. Get more information about the World’s First Bloggers Cruise Thingy. Labels: blogging TO: All BlogRush MembersFROM: John Reese, Founder of BlogRush ARE YOU READY? Because *everything* is about to change. Forget everything else up until now… PREPARE FOR *BIG* CHANGES! (TWO MAJOR CHANGES ARE NOW LIVE.)  BlogRush CAN’T EXIST if we’re not sending you a lot of ongoing, targeted traffic. We fully recognize this and that’s why this is our ONLY FOCUS. The BlogRush team has been hard at work making major improvements for you and we won’t rest until BlogRush is running 100% smoothly and sending you tons of targeted traffic! This is OUR MISSION. Please know that our entire team is working around-the-clock to make improvements and fix any problems AS FAST AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE. (We sincerely appreciate your patience.) We’ve encountered some problems since our historic launch just over a week ago, and we fully recognize that we’ve made some real ‘goofs’ with the system for our Public Beta release… For example, our data center provider (one of the largest in the world) had a short, temporary outage (they had to replace a network switch) two days after our launch. We had no control over this outage but want to SINCERELY APOLOGIZE to those that saw this message on their blogs (where the widget should have been): “We are currently experiencing some technical issues and the site will be back online shortly. Please come back in a few minutes.” We were completely *EMBARRASSED* when we realized this happened. That simple message was part of our application code and was meant to appear only on *OUR* WEB SITE PAGES if we ever experienced an outage. This was accidentally ‘marked’ to be a global error message for ANY outage — including if our widget ever had a problem loading. This was a major GOOF and we’re willing to admit it. Our code was planned so that in the case of a problem with our widget, NOTHING WOULD LOAD in its place. So a visitor to your blog doesn’t see an error or anything wrong should the widget ever have any technical issues. This was quickly corrected and is now working properly. Should the widget ever have any problem loading in the future, your blog will be served a transparent space (which will show whatever background your blog design has) and your blog readers won’t really notice anything. Again, our sincere apologies for our major goof. It was quite embarrassing. NOW ONTO SOME SERIOUS ISSUES… We also realize that we completely underestimated the number of unethical people that would sign up and proceed to CHEAT and try to ‘game’ the BlogRush system. These cheaters ruined the click-rates of many of our members (and burned through a lot of their credits using automated ‘exploit’ methods) and hurt BlogRush’s ability to send maximum traffic to our honest members’ blogs. BUT ALL OF THAT IS ABOUT TO BE ERASED… LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED. In the next several days to come, we’re going to be rolling out MAJOR changes to BlogRush. BIG changes. And these changes (again) have just ONE primary purpose — to drive more ongoing, targeted traffic to your blog. We’ve listened to your valued feedback and constructive criticism and we have been working in TURBO MODE to make the changes you want ASAP… —– HERE’S WHAT’S COMING IN THE NEXT 48 HOURS —– 100% MANUAL BLOG REVIEW. Our team is going to be manually reviewing every single new blog that registers to participate in the BlogRush Network. We’ll be applying some quality guidelines and criteria to our decision-making process. (We’ll be publishing these guidelines very soon.) If a blog does not meet our guidelines and criteria, THEY WILL BE REJECTED from the network and not allowed to join — i.e. they won’t be able to serve our widget, refer other users, or have their blog posts distributed across our network. They will have no access to any BlogRush services. Our members, like YOU, made it LOUD AND CLEAR to us… BlogRush needs to only have members that have quality blog content — not blogs filled primarily with ads and other spammy looking JUNK. The only accurate way we’re going to keep these junk blogs out of our network is to REVIEW EVERY SINGLE ONE BY HAND. And we’re willing to do it to protect the integrity of our network. I don’t care what it costs us to hire more people (if we need them) to review 100% of any blog trying to join our network. We will be reviewing ALL OF THEM from here on out. * We realize that several non-English language blogs blatantly ignored our “ENGLISH BLOGS ONLY” warning on our Registration page. Rest assured, though, they’ll all be PURGED from the network when we do our QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT over the next several days (you’ll read about it in a moment). As I’ve said several times before, BlogRush isn’t some passing “fad” or short-term service. We’re dedicated to building an incredibly valuable resources for bloggers FOR MANY YEARS TO COME. We’ll also be doing a QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT of all of our existing member blogs. We’ll be reviewing every single blog that’s currently in our network (or that registers before the Manual Review Process becomes active.) And we’ll be completely *REMOVING* any blogs in our network that don’t meet our quality guidelines and criteria. As you can probably tell by now, we’re not messing around. We have put a lot of hard work into the development of this service and we will continue to bust our butts to make it one of the best Internet services in the world. COUNT ON IT. We’re also deploying several new Anti-Cheat measures to SHUTDOWN AND WIPEOUT the cheaters and unethical users that have abused our network. Sorry, crooks, but THE FREE RIDE IS OVER. We’ll be dedicating an entire department to stay on top of any abusive behavior in our network. We believe that our new measures are going to instantly eliminate most, if not all, of our system abuse. It’s going to take us a few more days to roll-out all of these measures (and to complete our entire QUALITY CONTROL AUDIT) but rest assured, BlogRush is about to go through a major TRANSFORMATION. And a quick word to any ‘cheats’ that might be reading this letter… it’s very possible that you may come up with something extremely creative that temporarily gets by us, but you should know something… IT’S NOT GOING TO BE WORTH YOUR TIME. And I’m not just talking about the tiny amount of traffic that you’ll receive before we shut you off. You see, we have other plans in the works… If you attempt to cheat or abuse our network in anyway, shape, or form, we will not hesitate to come after you. Our company is well funded and has plenty of resources. And we WILL use them to punish you to the fullest extent of the law (and civil court process). Oh, you think you can just hide behind some anonymous proxy IPs? Sorry, it’s not that easy. ANY reason you’d have to try and cheat the BlogRush network for traffic and any attempt you make to monetize that traffic will lead directly to your front door — whether it’s AdSense, any affiliate program in the world, any online pharmacy, porn site, casino… ANYTHING. We will follow the trail and it WILL eventually lead to you. Our hard-working company provides the income for MANY families. As the CEO of our company, I take this very seriously. I HAVE TO. People that attempt to abuse or cheat BlogRush are affecting the livelihood of all my employees and their families. And I will do everything in my power to protect them — it’s MY DUTY. So for all you cheaters that joined BlogRush and had your fun trying to siphon off some traffic, hopefully it was fun. And I’ll go ahead and make this statement right now… IF you were one of the people that has been cheating our network I’m going to give you ONE opportunity… quit now and we’ll pretend it never happened. I think that’s more than fair. BUT… if you continue after this point, all bets are off. We WILL eventually discover what you’re doing, where you’re trying to send traffic, and we will prosecute you. I GUARANTEE IT. Sorry, but WE HAVE NO CHOICE NOW. * If you’re one of our valued, HONEST users, I’m very sorry you even have to read stuff like that. I know it’s a waste of your time. Unfortunately, there are unethical people in this world that attempt to abuse and take advantage of others. MOVING ON… —- ALSO COMING SOON! —- **** A LOT MORE CATEGORIES! **** You asked for it, and you’re getting it! We’re going to be greatly expanding our directory of categories to increase the relevancy of post links appearing in the widget on your blog — this will also increase click-rates (and traffic) for all members. * Stay tuned over the next several days for more news about the addition of new categories. AND… **** IMPROVED REPORTING! **** The current Dashboard stats are being under-reported for all users right now. This is the reason that users show discrepancies when looking at Google Analytics data (or other stats packages). We’re currently sending more traffic to our users than we’re reporting in the Dashboard because we are giving all users bonus credits everyday. We’ll soon be reporting all bonus credit activity so all the numbers will be accurate. SPECIAL NOTE TO ALL LOW-TRAFFIC MEMBERS: In the near future we’ll be giving our low-traffic members (those that need more traffic the most) the BULK of our bonus credit allocations. You’ll get a ton more bonus credits than high-traffic members because you really need it. It’s only FAIR! * Also we apologize to anyone that has seen a “negative” credit balance for their account. This is a minor bug that we’re taking care of. It doesn’t mean anything and you can just ignore it for now. We apologize for any confusion. **** IMPROVED NETWORK DISTRIBUTION **** A few of our users have noticed that they’re building up credits faster than the system is using them. This will eventually balance itself out as the network continues to “adjust” to the growth levels and traffic patterns of each category — because our network provides syndication distribution based on daily average “cycles” and then adjusts moving into the future; so it’s able to accurately predict how fast to use a certain user’s credits, etc. — as compared to just using them all “as fast as possible.” —- AND HERE ARE *TWO* BRAND-NEW ADDITIONS THAT JUST WENT LIVE!!!! —- **** BLOGRUSH “FLAVORS” ARE NOW ACTIVE! You can go login to your account, click the “Settings” tab and then select “Flavors.” You can choose from (13) different widget colors. You no longer have to only use our original “black” widget design that many users thought was ugly! (Hey, just don’t let our lead designer hear that… he thought his black design was “really cool.”) Now you can select a color that more closely matches the look of your blog. Our users have been asking for this since we launched our Public Beta, and we’ve taken action to offer these new options. * We have future plans for further widget customization but we’re working on one “stage” of improvement at a time! Please bare with us. We’re fully aware of the request for a more narrow widget as our current one doesn’t fit on some blogs. We’re trying to produce a solution and should have some news soon. HERE’S THE BEST PART… You don’t have to copy and paste new code to your blog. Just go to that “Flavors” section for your account, select the flavor you want, then hit the “APPLY FLAVOR” button. That’s it! Reload your blog in another browser window and take a look. And if you want to see what a different flavor might look like, just pick another one, hit the “APPLY FLAVOR” button and reload your blog. PRESTO! :-) AND LAST BUT CERTAINLY NOT LEAST… ***** BLOG POST CONTROLS ***** Under the “Settings” tab you’ll also find a new option called, “My Post Control.” Here’s what this awesome new feature does… You can create POST FILTERS for your blog posts… For example, you can add a keyword or phrase and create a new post filter. If you ever create a post on your blog (while you have that filter active — and you can add/delete them at anytime) that contains one of those keywords in the TITLE of your blog post, that post… WILL *NOT* BE SHOWN ACROSS THE NETWORK. And you won’t use any of your syndication credits! All bloggers post “off-topic” stuff from time to time, or short posts that don’t have a ton of great content. Well, now you can easily keep any of those types of posts from using your valuable syndication credits and from being shown across the network! This is GREAT for you because now you can control exactly which posts of yours will be syndicated. This can help you maximize your CLICK-RATES and, ultimately, the traffic you receive from the BlogRush network. AND it can help retain NEW READERS for your blog (your ultimate goal that can grow your blog’s traffic on a day-to-day basis.) Here’s Why… By selecting which posts get syndicated (by simply adding filters right BEFORE you publish a post on your blog that you don’t want to be used; or having setup one well in advance) you can make sure that you’re only syndicating your BEST POSTS. The ones with top-quality content. Your posts that a new visitor to your blog will enjoy and be much more likely to make a “YES!” decision to become a regular reader for you! AND OH YEAH, ONE MORE THING… This is only the very beginning for BlogRush. We have so much great stuff in store for you! As I said at the beginning of this letter… we will continue to work VERY HARD to make improvements and add-ons with ONE PRIMARY FOCUS… To drive more ongoing targeted traffic to your blog. I want to personally THANK YOU on behalf of our entire company for your interest in BlogRush. We’ve received a lot of criticism from many bloggers on the Internet, and we’ll be the first to admit we’re not perfect and a lot of it was WELL-DESERVED. But please know, we’re busy working around the clock FOR YOU. You have our word on it. Now go login to your account and try out some of the new “Flavors” for your blog! And also start setting up some Post Control Filters so you can start maximizing your content syndication. I’ll be in touch when I have more “news” to share. Thanks for reading this long letter. I had a lot to tell you about. :-) Best Regards, John Reese, Founder of BlogRush Labels: blogging  Blogrush is coming! It's a new web 2.0 technology that will bring thousands of visitors to your website. John Reese said that you can get as much as 25,000 visitors. You can see it in the right frame of this blog as well as a sign up widget in the middle frame. Don't miss out on free traffic. I did not see any gimmicks or weird kind of tricks in this offer. Regards, Len Click here to read entire article Labels: blogging From the desk of Alvin PhangIf you have been actively surfing around the Internet and looking around and studying what all the Gurus are doing you will noticed one thing. They all now are using blogs as a platform for their business. Here are 3 reasons why they use blogs? 1. Helps create creditability for their business In the past blogs used to be a tool for diaries but as blog mature and grow along the years blog slowly now became more then just a blog but a tool that marketers often uses to have a closer relationship with customers. 2. Search Engines like blogs It's a fact and it has been proven that search engine like blogs more then websites. Why? Because blog are constantly updated with new content and search engine loves fresh content. In fact, recently there has been many SEO experts lately using blogs now as a platform for SEO. 3. Blog converts visitors to buyers more effectively As a full time blogger myself I do not have a single page that I created that is not a blog. What I found most interesting was that visitors who visit my blogs were more responsive towards clicking on recommend products and very often I would be able to make great commission cheques just by using blogs promoting the products. Having said that, blogs can be easily created by anyone in just 3 minutes. However only a handful of people managed to successful create profitable blogs. After a survey of 80 over people online done recently, I realized most people do not have a perfect system to follow through to create profitable blogs with traffic. And that came the reason why I came out with Atomic Blogging.  Here's what some of our customers has feedback about it. "I have bought quite a few blogging products But when I got Alvin Phang's Atomic Blogging I was very delighted, it is easy to understand well laied out and has many fresh new ideas that I have not seen before they show you how to get your blog to the top of your niche. Atomic blogging is far more superior than the other products I have bought not only has is it full of very useful information without any fluff, but also comes with plugins and some great bonuses This Atomic Blogging product is great for newbies as every thing is explained in easy to understand and instructions and seasoned bloggers will also learn about the new concepts that Alvin points to. Thank you Alvin for a great product and I look forward to the useful follow up e-mail letters that you send also." - Sandra Hedditch Labels: blogging A step in the right direction. I have determined that Google is really stupid when it comes to indexing a site. My post from 8/14/07 was indexed this morning, 8/15/07. At least Google is paying attention.The problem with the way this post was indexed is that Google used the date as a title. So now, I have moved the date to the bottom of the post. The first text that occurs on this blog is now the title, not designated as the title but a h1 header. This has already worked with my article directory Moxie Drive Expressions. Let's see if it works here. I sense a great deal of traffic around the corner if this works. Time for Breakfast! Labels: blogging I've been bothered for over a year now about how Blogger posts show up in the search engines. Sorry to say that even Google's own blogger tool does not always present the desired results. As a matter of fact, it is built in such a way that it is designed to dump all posts into their own supplemental index. Sad at best.There is a reason for this. The title of this blog is "Turnkey Business Blog". Every post indexed by Google is considered a duplicate entry because they have the same title. Blogger has the same problem with the description. Now, try to fix this. My attempts included making the post title, identified as <$BlogItemTitle>, the actual meta title of the posts. Guess what shows up when I change it? <$BlogItemTitle> in that form. So, I have deleted the meta title as well as the table that contained it and the meta description, again another duplication. Now all you will see is the post title and the body of the post. No fancy header tables, just straight into the content. I have seen many WordPress blogs without title or description metatags, some of them very successful. Will it prevent my posts from getting dumped into the supplemental index? Only time will tell. Labels: blogging Wouldn't it be nice if everyone got as excited about your company as you are? Unfortunately some businesses just aren't very sexy; in fact, some businesses are downright boring. As a consequence, companies that sell commodity products and routine services tend to rely on presentations that load-up on features, specifications, and statistics that may be relevant to anal-retentive types, but hardly compelling to the vast majority of your audience.There is no reason why every company can't deliver an exciting image to its audience; one that generates the kind of buzz and excitement usually associated with companies like Apple, Victoria's Secrët, Benetton, Absolut Vodka, and Sony. It may seem impossible to produce a whole lot of steam for things like sand paper, accounting services, and facial tissue, but thanks to the Web and it's extraordinary ability to deliver multimedia content, even the most mundane offerings can get hearts racing and the blogosphere blogging. Emotional Experiences Connect Let's take facial tissue as an example; it is one of the most common, boring everyday products you can imagine. There is just not much you can do to sell this stuff other than telling people yours is softer and cheaper than the other guys, but then the other guy is saying the same thing; the result, consumers buy whatever is on sale. But wait, the clever fellows at Kimberly-Clark instituted a brilliant website campaign for their facial tissue, called "Kleenex - let it out." The campaign zeros in on the emotional experience associated with why people use facial tissue: to wipe away tears of joy or sadness or maybe to clean-up cute little runny noses - in each case the result of some moving event. Tapping into this emotional association is key to the Kleenex campaign and key to your new thinking on how to make your boring stuff, exciting. Video - The Best Way To Tell A Story The Kleenex campaign features prominent videos of articulate people telling their personal stories, all resulting in the need to use a facial tissue. A pregnant woman discusses the emotional impact of having a child and as her eyes begin to tear, the interviewer hands her a Kleenex. A second video features another well-spoken woman talking about her return to New Orleans after the devastation of hurricane Katrina. Again as the woman becomes emotional and begins to cry, the interviewer hands her a tissue. Nothing more needs to be said, this is very powerful story telling that connects to the audience and delivers an image of the brand as caring and sensitive; the exact kind of impression the company wants to portray. Even companies that aren't exactly dead-from-the-neck-up boring can benefit from this approach. The Home Depot ran a series of advertisements with a husband showing his wife a series of power tools that he wanted. Rather than try to convince his wife, and by association all the wives in the audience, that he needs another expensive toy, the husband points to each tool and states, "this is your new shelving unit" and "this one is your new kitchen" - a far more dramatic and effective way to make the case for a new purchase. You can deliver the same kind of powerful marketing messages for your own company by presenting Web-based videos that follow a few very simple guidelines. Six Steps To Turn Boring Into Exciting 1. Use People to Sell People There is no substitute for people. Human beings are capable of communicating with an enormous degree of nuance and subtlety, using voice, expression, body language, and gesture; no animation, avatar, or artificial substitute can take the place of a real person for communicating meaningful, memorable marketing messages. With relatively easy-to-use production tools anyone can create a video, but not necessarily one that delivers the message or image that your company wants to present. We have seen far too many poor quality efforts both on the Web and even on local television, where company presidents with bad haircuts and ill-fitting suits, uttering nonsense-riddled scripts in zombie-like performances expose themselves to audiences expecting more, much more. Skilled performers communicate in very subtle ways to an audience, and only the well-practiced professional has the experience and capability to deliver the intended experience. The cost of saving monëy by doing-it-yourself or with amateurs can result in delivering an unintended message that may undermine the impression and image you are trying to create. 2. Perception Is Reality - Use Scripted Professionals You will notice that I described the women in the facial tissue videos as articulate. Now I cannot tell you if these women were actors or not, or that their powerful presentations were scripted, but if I had to guess, I would say these very effective videos were about as carefully produced and constructed as the latest episode of 'Survivor' that by no means makes them any less effective. The point here is that perception is reality, and the professional filmmaker knows how to tell a story and communicate a message; and that is not the same thing as being able to turn on a video camera. 3. Tell A Memorable Story When we talk about companies telling their story, it is important to distinguish between the company's history and the emotional experiences generated by the product or service. Company histories can make for interesting videos and can produce a sense of trust associated with being in business for a considerable length of time, but that sort of presentation does not speak to the underlying emotional and psychological factors that actually trigger a sale. It is difficult but imperative that businesses understand that marketing is not about you, or even the product or service, it's about the audience. Like the Kleenex videos and the Home Depot commercials, every product and service that is purchased from your company represents an experience, a story that relates to your audience's aspirations and needs. It is the audience's story that demonstrates credibility, clarifies purpose, penetrates memory, and makes the message compelling. 4. Create An Emotional Experience The vast majority of decisions we make are colored by the emotional relevance associated with those decisions. No doubt rational factors figure into our decision-making process, but the pivotal factors that attract the use of one product over another are emotional. If you're not connecting to your audience on an emotional level, then you are left with a commodity that can only be sold on price and features, and unless you're a monopoly, there will always be some competitor willing to offër your customers more for less. When presenting your product or service it is important to tap into an emotional element that your audience can relate to as its key purchasing decision factor. When people purchase boring accounting services and software, what they're really buying is an improved life style for their families. It really doesn't matter what you sell, if you look hard enough, you can find the emotional benefit that should be the central element of your marketing message. 5. Create a Believable Relevant Personality Part of the process of connecting with your audience is creating an appropriate personality for your company. Many corporations today believe in the cult of management personality but this is a dangerous game. Your company needs a personality of it's own, one that is distinctive and that will stand alone and not be dependent on senior management's ego and self-promotion. Web-video marketing campaigns provide a vehicle that allows companies to create appropriate personalities that engage, inform and entertain your audience in ways that establish your identity and create the basis for a prosperous business relationship. Clever marketing can create a corporate personality but it is imperative that you follow through and deliver that personality in all aspects of your relationship with your audience. Producing a campaign that promises one thing and a website, staff, and product that delivers another is one of the easiest ways to alienate customers. 6. Deliver A Critical Hot Button Moment Web-video presentations need to focus on single issues that are driven home by the addition of a hot button moment or punch line. Remember you are telling your audience a story that needs a beginning, middle and end. That story should build to climax and deliver the point in a single memorable moment. The era of point förm slide presentations is dead, along with the laundry líst of benefits approach. Creativity, personality, and the ability to communication and develop an emotional connection to your audience through the use of Web-video campaigns has the potential to turn even the most lackluster company into a vibrant and exciting marketing business. About The Author Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a website design firm that specializes in Web-audio and Web-video. Visit www.mrpwebmedia.com/ads, www.136words.com and www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246. Technorati Tags: your business blog audience emotional turnkey company marketing boring story exciting make product deliver tissue create people personality businesses videos facial directory Labels: blogging, businesses, exciting marketing business, extraordinary I've been blogging now for about 2 years, and I'm amazed at the amount of traffíc that I get from my blog and the number of people who tell me that they first heard about me from my blog instead of my website. The word blog is derived from the term "web log", or an online diary or journal. If the HBO series "Sex and the City" were being filmed today, Carrie Bradshaw would be a blogger as well as a columnist, I think. Why? As she experiences her revelations about life, love, and relationships, she could post them to her blog for the world to see and comment upon.Blogging has opened website creation to almost everyone, as it takes very little know-how to get a blog up and running. In fact, many service business owners are using a blog platform as their primary website, with some of them creating static pages as you would find on a traditional website, while others are using the platform as a blog and are posting updates regularly. There are several advantages to using blogs instead of ezines or traditional websites: 1. Search engines love blogs. The strategy that seems to be attractive to search engines today is regularly updated content. I can log-in to my blog at the beginning of a day and submit a post. Within 24 hours I'll get a notification from my Google alerts account that Google has indexed that post. 2. Content can be distributed quickly. If you instruct your visitors to subscribe to your blog via updating services like Bloglines or Feedblitz, they'll be notified within hours of any new posts on your blog. 3. Little web programming knowledge is required. Once your blog is set up, it's simply a matter of logging into your account, typing the info for your post, adding graphics or photos as needed, and publishing your post to your blog. 4. Reader feedback. Your readers can give you comments and feedback about your posts almost immediately after you log an entry. Blogs are a great way to engage your audience. How do you begin to blog? Here are 10 simple steps you can follow: 1. Blogging platform. The easiest way to get started is to use the frëe service found at Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. The ability to customize your blog is limited with the frëe services, so I urge my clients to subscribe to Typepad.com, which will host your blog for you on their servers, or purchase a hostíng account where WordPress can be installed. The downloadable version of WordPress is located at Wordpress.org and is frëe of charge if you need to install Wordpress yourself on your hostíng account. I use Typepad for my blog, so many of my examples will relate exclusively to blogs hosted on that platform. 2. Name. What do you want to call your blog? Blog names tend to be attention-getting and off-beat. However, for service businesses, I encourage my clients to use keywords important to their business when naming their blog. You will also want to acquire the .com version of your blog's name or your blog's name with the word "blog" attached as your blog URL. After you have set up your blog, your blog provider can give you more info about how to map your domain to your blog. (Note: You don't want to simply forward your blog to your domain name, as that impacts the URLs of your individual blog pages). 3. Look and Layout. How many columns do you want to display? Do you want links to static pages? What colors do you want to use? How about a signup box for a frëe giveaway? Should you use one of the templates provided or have something custom designed? Do you want your blog archives displayed? Do you want to be the only author or do you want to permit others to make posts, as well? There are many questíons you'll be asked in the startup phase about the look of your blog. A Typepad blog permits you to change your mind about your layout at a later date. The best way to determine the look of your blog is to look at the layout of other blogs and determine what appeals to you. 4. Widgets. There are a number of widgets, or add-on programs, that you can incorporate into your blog. Chëck your blog software's site for more info about what features you'd like add to your blog. At a minimum you'll want to give visitors a couple of ways in which they can receive blog updates through various updaters, or feeder services, as mentioned earlier. 5. Comments. The newest sp*am making its rounds online is comment sp*am. Don't these guys have anything better to do? Set your comments to moderated, which means that you have to approve any comments to your blog before the post goes live. You'll save yourself a great many headaches and time by choosing to moderate the comments. Once you've gotten this far, you should have a basic blog established and are ready to begin to blog. 6. Blog content. The time has arrived -- your blog is ready to accept posts. What do you write about? You can post content rich articles of interest to your target market, comment on a current event, answer questíons from your visitors, present a before and after case study outlining how your business helped someone, etc. Keep your eyes and ears open for information relevant to your audience. I use my blog to bring forth info that doesn't fit well into my newsletter format or something that arises between newsletter issues. I post my ezine content to my blog, as well. 7. Posting frequency. Blogs are just like gardens -- they need watering regularly and require some care and attention. For maximum effectiveness, you need to post several times a week to your blog. I try and post 4 times per week in my blog -- 2 posts are items I run across or comment upon as noteworthy in the moment, and the latter 2 are the contents of my ezine posted over 2 days. And, respond to reader's comments when they arrive -- blogs provide a great forum for ongoing discussions. 8. Blog traffíc. In the same way that you publicize your website URL on everything that you do, you can similarly publicize your blog. Submitting your blogs to blog directories is another way to get traffíc. A very comprehensive líst of blog directories, RSS Top 55 has been compiled by Robin Good. Searching out blogs that appeal to your target market and making comments to those posts will also drive traffíc to your blog. Another trick is to post your blog on social bookmarking sites like Reddit, Digg, StumbleUpon, and del.icio.us. 9. Measure the results. Some blog programs, like Typepad, have built-in statistics so you can view details of your blog traffíc. Some of the feed/updater programs have built-in statistics as well, or you can install a metrics program as an add-on to your blog. Review your statistics regularly to determine how much traffíc your blog generates. 10. Rinse and repeat. Don't let the novelty of blogging wear off. Blogging is effective only if you continue your blogging efforts regularly over a long period of time. I know of several individuals who have gotten book deals from their blog and radio and TV interviews as well. Just think -- your blog might be your ticket to fame! Every service business can benefit from blog technology. Few other marketing strategies provide the quick immediacy that blogging provides. About The Author Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more Frëe tips like these and claim your Frëe gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com. Labels: blog, blogging, business, coach, marketing, online, resource, search engines, social bookmarking, strategies Author's note: I recently had a response to a blog entry that stated a reader had been recommended not to use a blog. Being a well educated person, I usually am able to determine that the reason most people say "no" is because "they don't know". With that in mind, and I believe that it has had a direct result in the recent increase of my main web page http://www.moxie-drive.com attaining a PR 4, here is a little celebration on blogging.Blogging is a concept that started in late 90s. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one’s opinion on the said page. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog’s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool. 1.Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary… an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It’s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise. 2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters’ claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product. 3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business. 4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site. 5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging: -By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail’s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site. -By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blogsite. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer. -By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview. -By joining a blog network –A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one. -By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site. Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool. Labels: blogging
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