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7 Reasons to Start Blogging

Perhaps you've heard of blogs, maybe even read a few, but haven't started blogging yourself. A weblog, which is usually shortened to weblog , is a type of web site where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order.

Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical weblog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photograph (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting).

Today blogging has become a phenomenon, and for good reason. Blogs give individuals the ability to easily communicate to mass audiences whenever they feel the urge. This ability is what makes blogging truly unique - not requiring any technical knowledge of web development, design, or management.

Maintaining or posting to a weblog is very rewarding and carries a variety of benefits, here are just a few: 1. Blogs are easy to create. Unlike starting your own web site, weblogs can be created in just a few minutes. Sites like Blogger.com allow you to register and start your own weblog for free. All you need is an email and a topic to start blogging about.

2. Blogs provide a dialogue with prospects, customers, and friends. Blogs are now being used as a communication vehicle to share important information with customers. Because blogs can be updated in real time, businesses are finding weblogs to be one of the quickest and most accurate ways to distribute their message.

3. Blogs are here to stay. Blogging gives you the ability to publish your thoughts in real time, whenever and where they like. If you enjoy writing, want to share your ideas, or even learn more about a particular subject, contribute to a weblog on a regular basis. Now that blogs have become popular, you can find a weblog directory that can help you locate weblogs by category. Find one aligned to your interests and post your comments. They'll remain on the web indefinitely.

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4. Blogs can drive traffic to your web site. Using a weblog , associated with a particular topic, can drive additional traffic to your web site. This is essential for anyone seeking new leads for their business or have an interest in generating online sales. The benefit of using a weblog to generate traffic is that weblogs attract a different type of user - one that is very focused on a particular subject. These users are more prone to take interest in what you have to offer and convert into paying customers.

5. Blogs give you the flexibility to post whenever, wherever. When authoring a weblog , all you need is an Internet enabled PC to post an entry. This level of flexibility removes many of the barriers associated with traditional forms of communication. Some blogs even allow you to make a post via email. Simply construct an email and send it to the weblog address. The result is an instant post to your weblog .

6. Establish yourself as an expert. By keeping a weblog up-to-date, and contributing in an area where you have experience, you can quickly build your reputation as an expert. Once you've establish yourself as having knowledge in a particular subject area, you can begin contributing to other web sources such as news articles and interviews.

7. Generate Ad Revenue. The beauty of a weblog is that you can attract those interested in a very specific subject area. This is an ideal market for online pay-per-click advertising like Google Adsense. You can easily integrate Google Adsense into your weblog - many weblog hosts provide it as a built in option- and generate ad revenue. This is a great way to provide value to your readers while generating revenue for your business.

These are just some of the benefits of creating and contributing to blogs. You will find that weblogs are a great way to share information with others who share similar interests. It's also a great opportunity for you to learn. Although I've been hosting my own marketing weblog to provide expert advice on marketing, I have learned a great deal from others who comment on my posts. This is one of the most rewarding aspects of creating your very own weblog . So what are you waiting for, start blogging!

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*Michael Fleischner is a marketing expert and the president of MarketingScoop.com. He has more than 12 years of marketing experience and has appeared on The TODAY Show, Bloomberg Radio, and other major media. Visit his marketing weblog directory for other helpful resources.

How To Be A Blogging Idol Instead Of An Idle Blogger

To be successful at Search Engine Optimization, it's important that you continually test out new theories and ideas. Before I use new SEO techniques on a client's web site, I always test them on one of my own. In order to better understand the application of SEO to blogs, I decided to implement the following experiment:

Several weeks into the project, I discovered two things:

So, while keeping my SEO experiment going, I decided to really "blog" about Bo Bice. In doing so, I learned many valuable lessons about creating a successful weblog that can generate sustainable traffic, including many repeat visits.

Beginners Lessons:

Have a narrow focus: The quickest way to drive traffic to your weblog is through excellent search engine rankings. If you weblog about lots of unrelated topics, you won't rank well for any of your key terms. Even if you don't know much about SEO, you can still create a weblog that will rank well in the search engines. Pick a narrow topic and keep your posts on topic. Choose a group of keywords relevant to your chosen topic and make sure you feature these terms prominently in your posts.

Build a base of content: Unless you already have a built-in audience, very few people are going to read your early weblog posts because they will be extremely hard to find in either the blogosphere or the search engines. So, save your best content for when you've already developed a steady stream of web traffic. Blogging newspaper articles is a good way to build up relevant content quickly. All you need to do is subscribe to Google news alerts to get relevant articles featuring your top keywords. As your receive new articles, create a weblog entry for each article, excerpt a relevant snippet (making sure to credit the source), and comment on the piece. This might not be interesting to your readers...but the objective here is to reach a point where you can start creating original, unique content that people will actually read because your weblog can be easily found. For the more advanced beginners, adding an RSS feed that is focused on your targeted niche will also be of great value to your weblog .

Try to make several posts each week. You'll be amazed how much content you can build up in a short period of time.

Monetize your weblog (if appropriate): I placed a combination of contextual and affiliate advertising on my weblog . The advertising revenue on my weblog was poor given the amount of traffic I generated...however, if you are blogging successfully in areas of business and technology, you could make a good deal of money from such advertising. Google AdSense is a ubiquitous way for bloggers to earn money from blogging. Once you've placed the AdSense javascript snippet in your weblog source code, Google's contextual ad technology will automatically choose ads relevant to your weblog content and when someone clicks on the ad, you get paid.

Advanced Techniques:

"Blog and Ping": There is a reason why news spreads so rapidly through the blogosphere. When you update your weblog , depending on your weblog host, a "ping" might be sent to one or more weblog search engines that track the blogosphere, showing that you've made a new post to your weblog . People who have subscribed to your weblog , or people interested in your blogging topic, can be notified about your post and read it / link to it. An active course of "blogging and pinging" will help greatly in building links to your weblog and generating more traffic.

Websites and software exist that will allow you to manually send pings to dozens of known weblog search engines. Ping-o-matic is a web site that allows you to ping 18 different weblog search engines on demand. I've been using RSSSubmit from Dummy Software to submit all feeds to over 70 such services at the push of a button.

"Conventional" Link-Building: To maximize your weblog search engine rankings, I strongly recommend building links for your weblog just as if it were a web site. I did not do this for the Bice weblog and that oversight (probably) came back to bite me.

Google's "Bourbon" update hit several days before the American Idol final and this weblog was the only "Bourbon" casualty in my entire portfolio...vanishing from Google the Saturday before the final. My intuition (plus other anecdotal evidence) tells me that had I built a foundation of links outside the blogosphere prior to Bourbon, the weblog would not have been hit...of course, I'll never know. The weblog reappeared in Google with its excellent search engine ranking 10 days after the Idol final, depriving me of a tremendous volume of Bo Bice web traffic for the time surrounding the final...Thanks, Google:.)

Linkmarket.net is by far the best link-trading site on the Internet. They now have more than 20,000 sites that are potential link partners. For $24.85 per year, you have unlimited ability to trade links with any site on the network. No matter what your site niche is, you should be able to find hundreds of potential trading partners and generate large numbers of inbound links quickly.

Press Releases: Online press releases are an excellent way to generate notice for your weblog . I created a press release announcing the launch of the weblog , and once I decided to "actively" weblog Bo, I wrote a release each week recapping the show and featuring highlights from the weblog . Online press releases can get thousands or even tens of thousands of reads...especially if you are writing on a "hot topic". Many of the press release readers will become weblog visitors.

PRWEB and PRLeap are the two most prominent online press release bureaus. Both allow free submission of releases and both allow you to pay for better "placement". Your press releases will also get spidered into the search engines and (sometimes) will end up in Google or Yahoo News as well. I've seen my Bo Bice press releases as high as #3 in Google News for a "Bo Bice" search.

Best Idea Yet

When my weblog reached a consistent 500 visitors a day, I decided to actively solicit posts from Bo's fans. Sure, most blogs give readers the ability to post comments...but I thought that if I ran the comments as actual posts, I could create a "buzz" about the weblog and generate large numbers of repeat visits. I ended up getting 5-15 e-mails every day from Bo's fans wanting their information to be posted on the weblog . So long as the post met my minimum blogging criteria, I ran the submission. Traffic spiked immediately and the quality of the submissions was generally excellent.

My idea worked strategically because the readers unknowingly submitted content that was SEO'ed for the keywords that were the focus of my weblog ... "Bo Bice". By running reader posts, I generated large amounts of SEO'ed content that helped generate and maintain my top search engine rankings. And, my "Blog and Ping" strategy ensured that each and every new post (several per day) was broadcast all over the Internet.

Top Search Engine Rankings Confer "Authority Status"

For most of the duration of American Idol 4, I ranked #2 -4 in Google, and #6-15 in Yahoo for "Bo Bice" and I learned such rankings conferred an enormous amount of "authority" in my chosen subject. A sampling of my e-mails I received included:

After Bo performed "Vehicle" by "The Ides of March" (the first time), an original member of the band e-mailed a message to Bo's fans through the weblog . He even asked me if I knew how to reach Bo...which I didn't.

A CBS Early Show Producer contacted my weblog to promote Bo's appearance on the show...asking his fans to show up at their New York studios.

What's more, I received multiple messages from the person running the AOL American Idol fan poll soliciting votes for Bo.

Results:

Currently, my Bo Bice weblog is generating sustainable traffic with very little work on my part (barring any unforeseen search engine calamity). As the American Idol Concert tour rolls this summer and as Bo gets to work on his first post-Idol album, I expect the traffic to increase.

One doesn't need to be a SEO ace to be able to create a weblog that can generate a large number of visitors. Whether you wish to weblog for business lead generation, ad revenue, or personal reasons, if you follow the techniques described above, you can create and sustain a well-trafficked weblog by following the techniques listed above.

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Start Blogging - I recently (like two months ago) bought a copy of Rob Benwell's Blogging to the bank. I found it quite interesting that this dude isn't an internet marketing guru, but managed to make some really decent money using blogs. He's just a regular guy (like me), and his decision to change his financial situation was to come up with something creative using weblogs.

Relevent Content - After reading the newest ebook published by Nathan Anderson, I was floored at how it easy it was to generate great search engine results without paying a guru an outrageous sum of money to do so. The search engines are accessible to everyone because of this new look at search engine optimization.

Start Blogging - There is no set answer to this question. It’s important to remember that your blog is a living extension of your business, and ultimately you. So keep in mind the image you want to portray, the goals of your blog and what your audience is looking for.

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