Many new blogs pop up almost every single day. Some are good and some just a train wreck. I think many people that launch a blog are under the impression that once you launch you write some posts and your famous! It really doesn’t work that way. We do see some really great blogs with quality work put into them with a realistic mind set understanding that it will take sometime and hard work to really become a blog with some authority. Here are somethings that we have noticed not to with your blog if you are trying to really grow your business or online presence. Some serious blog marketing efforts are required to get your blog visible.

1. Don’t Cover Your Blog in Ads: If someone gets to your blog and the every space is covered in a Google it just kind of looks tacky. There is no problem with trying to monetize your blog but take a tasteful approach. If you look a little too greedy you will not get any returning traffic.

2. Don’t Write Once Per Month: There is nothing worse than coming to a blog and not seeing any updates for a few months or so. Once per week maybe week and a half are fine but once you start to approach the thirty day mark you will quickly see any traffic you have drop. Even if you start writing again it might be tough to get some of those people back.

3. Purchase Some Server Space: Get a blog that has your own domain hosted on your own server. having your own url structure and your own blog gives you freedom to do what you want. Recently music blogs have been seeing blog posts removed for anyone that uses a free Google blog because they are picking up posts that bands have given permission for a link to an MP3 as piracy. This is the stuff you have to worry about if you don’t have your own blog.

4. Stop Promoting Yourself: if you sit there and self promote over and over you are just going to loose all your traffic. It is fine to write about announcements at your company or even a new service or product offered once in a while but do just demand business on each blog post.

5. Use Photos: I think the use of a photo or video with your posts will keep the reader hanging out a bit longer. It is important to have a little more than just text. Even thought they are there to read not look at pictures a good user experience is important.

The whole idea behind a blog should not be too difficult to comprehend but I understand that many people are just not savvy when it comes to the internet. it is basically an online journal for everyone to see. There are many different ways you can apply a blog to your business and companies across the world have attempted to apply every possible blog technique to their business. some work and some don’t. I have listed a few ways a blog can be used to help grow your business.

1. Some companies use their blog to simply post about their products. You can write a daily blog post for every product you have on your website. By using model numbers and detailed product descriptions for each one of your product blog posts you can use your blog as a spring board to get your product descriptions floating around online that much further.

2. A blog can be used to express information on your industry. You can write daily about different trends and changes specifically to your industry and act as a voice for your market where people can come to and learn about what is going on.

3. If you have a brand that is very interesting and has a strong following you can use your blog to communicate to your past and current clients and customers. You can write about funny things that happen at your company and really take a personal approach as if you are specifically writing for each person reading your blog. This works well for successful companies in the spotlight such as clothing lines, musicians and entertainers.

4. If you are a service based industry you can write about your industry providing tips and tricks on how you complete some of your strategies for others to use as tools. If you provide good information others can use to better their daily routine you can quickly grow a strong following of readers on your blog.

These are just some blog strategies. Over time as a company you will figure out the best approach that works for you and your organization. One important rule to remember is that there is no rule book to launching a blog. Have fun with it and experiment with different approaches until you figure out one to stick with. It is fine to mix match the styles above. Just sit and write everyday in your blog and focus on the big picture and you will ultimately have a successful blog that can help grow your business.

It is no surprise that the power of the internet has completely changed we go about daily life. It seems like everyday there is something new being introduced to us that guarantees to make our lives easier. With our troubled economy here more and more of us will be looking for new employment. Some by choice and many by no choice at all.

Most employers are so utterly flooded with resumes that many do not know where to begin digging. It will be very important for you, as a job candidate, to stand out. You might be asking your self, how is starting a blog going to help me? Well lets take a moment and put yourself in the shoes of an HR representative. They probably sift out all the obvious non-compatible applicants and pull them out of the interview process. Once they start to narrow down their list some might search your name online just to see what sort of juicy gossip they can pull up. If you start a blog, even a free one, on a topic that you hold a passion for when they search for your name many of your hard written blog posts should appear in the search results.

There are two possible scenarios here:

1. The job you are seeking is directly related to the industry you write in your blog about. This my friends is going signal many things in the eyes of that HR person. One it is going to show you have passion for the product. It will also show that you have drive and you are willing to write and communicate to the world about this topic because you enjoy it so much that you are willing to do it for free.

2. If the job is not related to your industry it is still going to show drive and passion and the ability to use modern day communication strategies to express something that is dear to you will help them in their decision process. Plus the blog post about how bark can show the age maturation of a white birch will look better than your Facebook photo passed out on your buddies lawn.

If you are fresh new graduate right out of college or a seasoned professional launching a blog could help you get employed.

The emergence of blogs has allowed many individuals who have not been able to project their voice through their competition to quickly have a voice and also be heard. With the rise of the blog came an entire new industry along with it. Many people have different reasons for launching their blog. Someone just have way too much they want to get off their chest, some have a passion to talk about something they enjoy and some want to make money, quickly.

Many people are starting to realize that it has become much harder than expected to monetize their blogs. Launching a blog and offering some advertising space just doesn’t cut it. Even with massive amounts of traffic coming to your website it is still sometimes difficult to make money from your blog. When you launch a blog you have to keep in mind your goals. Blogs have become amazing tools of communication to stay in front of your audience through product announcements and other company information and news. If you are planning on launching a blog in an industry make sure you hold a special place in your heart for that industry and you plan on bringing some passion to your writing. If you lack the passion for your topic you WILL lose focus on your writing and your blog will end up suffering due to lack of interest in that field. This often times happens to individuals looking to launch a blog and make enough money to pay their mortgage by month’s end with it. It’s not going to happen so pick something you enjoy typing about.

You have to treat your blog like any other website. It takes time to mature and grow. You need to write and write and build a following of loyal clientele who will come to your website and read it daily. Watching your blog grow requires a tremendous amount of patience. I think many people looked at blogs like get rich quick schemes. They do not work that way. With so many blogs being created everyday you have to do the most to stay creative and active by writing in your blog daily if possible and targeting keywords in your blog posts. Always keep in mind the goal of your site and stay focused otherwise you might find yourself blowing the dust off your blog.

Many new bloggers feel like the smallest needle in the largest haystack – and they are. Every blog starts with nothing – no content, no readers and no future. As blogger, what happens from that point on is what you do.

You have no readers, but then you have no content, so what are they going to read. Content. Create it, and plenty of it. All of the top blogs have pages and pages of content so you have a lot of catching up to do. The key to successful blogging in the early days is to imagine you have an army of readers just waiting for your next post.

Of course, to get those actual readers you need content and that content needs to be both worth reading and optimized for the search engines so that it appears in the search results. You don’t necessarily need to go mad with your optimization. As the site grows, so should you search optimization. Basics such as keyword selection and on page optimization form a good base.

Of page optimization such as social bookmarking and directory submission can make a start on your back links.  From there, the more content you have the more back links you will accumulate with a subsequent rise in search engine results placement. The higher you climb, the more visitors you will receive.

The constant addition of content and the delveopment of links both internal and external will see your blog grow from nothing to a powerful voice. All blogs start from nothing – they don’t have to stay that way.

Google Blog Search has become a blog news tracker similar to Techmeme, however rather than focus on a particular niche, Google is using an ‘all world’ approach combining news blogs and standard blogs.

Cnet have posted a good comparison of seven news trackers, some new and some old. The news trackers examined include:

• Google Blog Search
• Techmeme
• Blogrunner
• Newspond
• Technorati
• Topix
• Megite

All seven have their uses as they collect and present news blogs in different ways. Google Blog Search incorporates a little of the Google Trends technology to show how ‘hot’ a story is.

As a blogger they all represent a great resource for discovering new content, references to support an argument you are trying to present, or simply for inspiration should you get stuck for content. They can also be a good place to check if you think you are about to ‘break’ a new story.

One easy marketing tool that every blogger can use is actually sit right there in front of them all the time. It is the comments section on their blog. This blogging tip goes further than just responding to comments. I suggest you follow them.

When I say follow your commentators, I am not just referring to follow them back to their site. If someone stops by and leaves a comment, follow them home, find a related post, and leave a comment. While your there, check on who else has left a comment and follow them home. Once again, find some related content and leave a comment there.

In effect, you are introducing yourself to the readers of those who read your blog. Not only are you introducing yourself, you are also visiting them and by leaving a comment on their blog, you are introducing yourself to their readers. This has a compounding effect.

To use numbers to demonstrate this point. If five people leave a comment on your post and you follow them back and comment on their posts. You have introduced yourself to everyone of their reader. Let’s assume they each have 100 regular readers – that is 500 readers who will see your comments. If each of those five have three regular commentators and your follow them, that is an additional 15 blogs you have introduced yourself on. If they each have 100 readers as well, that becomes an additional 1500 readers for a total of 2000 readers you have introduced yourself to.

If ten percent of those readers decide to visit your blog in response, that is an additional 200 readers. And what has it cost you? Perhaps and hour or two visiting 20 blogs and reading and leaving a decent comment.

It won’t happen every time. In fact you can leave comments on all 20 blogs and only receive an extra 20 or fewer visitors. Do it regularly and your traffic will grow. Ask yourself, can you acquire around 200 extra visitors virtually for free? When you think about it, not only are you marketing yourself, you are also networking!

Do you ever get stuck wondering what to write and where to start. What is your method? Do you start with a title and try and write to it?

I find this to be one of the biggest sticking points. Trying to find a title and then writing content to match the title. A more sensible approach is to find a theme for your post. Once you have established what you want to write about – go ahead and write it.

You will find, as you start writing, numerous titles coming to mind. Make a note of them if you must. Alternatively, keep writing until the post is complete. Then find the title.

There are several advantages to putting the post before the title. With the post complete, you can go back and optimize your keywords. Those keywords can then flow back up to the post title.

The end result is a post that has been written and optimized well. You will also have a post title that is not only well suited to the content, it is also optimized for the search engines.  The hard part is finding your theme for the day and the content for it. What comes first for you, the title or the post?

Most bloggers don’t consider using ‘landing pages’, they leave their pages as they come out of the box, they only change from one page to the next being the content.

If you check to see where your traffic is coming from and which pages they are landing on you can capitalize on that information and flow of traffic to the greater good of your site.

As an everyday blogger you probably don’t want to get your hands dirty playing with code and changing the look of individual pages. You can however change how some pages look by changing the area within the content.

If you have popular pages and you have monetized your blog, the best place to put some of those ads, particularly the PPC and affiliate type ads is right in the middle of where the traffic is. The traffic that is arriving could be the traffic that can generate your income. By placing ad units within your content, particularly close to the top and bottom, you can catch the traffic that is landing and deciding to leave – hopefully through one of those ad units.

For blogs that like to collect subscribers for RSS or newsletters, having a call to action close to the top of the post can often convert quite well.

Find which pages are attracting the most traffic and work them as much as possible with your advertising and call to action strategies. Take the advertising to the masses. The masses won’t go where the advertising is without some help from you.
It does make sense. Rather than writing from a purely SEO perspective, write from the perspective of your every day reader. Believe it or not, you will actually enjoy writing a lot more – you may even be able to put your heart and soul into. Readers can feel this, relate to it, and come back for more.

How often do you check your blog for dead links? Doing a regular check is important as it can identify any broken or dead links within your blog, and any dead links leaving your blog.

Having a link that points to a site or page that no longer exists is a waste of a link. You are should remove and dead links and either leave them out altogether, or point them to content that exists.

More importantly, you need to be able to find broken or dead links within your own site. If you don’t delete or rename content, the only issue will be broken links. These are often caused by typo’s when you first created the link.

If you have modified URL’s for some reason, a link checker can help you find the links to the old URL. Update them to new URL and everything will be fine. Search engines don’t particularly like broken or dead links. Incorporating a good 404 redirect page is a must.

Internal links are of particular importance. You have obviously linked two pages together for a reason. If that link is broken for whatever reason then the link proves will halt at the breakage therefore not achieving your desired outcome.

One of the more common problems is the moving deleting of images. If you have used those images in a post and then moved, removed or renamed the image, it will appear on your page as a broken link.

There are several good link checkers:

Dead Links

404 Checker

Xenu

There are many others including plugins for WodPress. Try one out on your site and see how many broken links you have.

As your blog gets bigger and the number of pages expand, sometimes it can be difficult for your readers to find information. We live in an instant world where people want everything at their fingertips. One of the best ways to help your readers is to have a well placed internal search option. There are other options.

Your past content should not be wasted, particularly if it is good and has been well received in the past. Some bloggers do a weekly recap where they summarize and link back to their best posts for the week. This can be quite helpful if you are prolific and write several posts each day.

If you are not quite so prolific then perhaps a monthly recap where you highlight the best posts for the month, again linking back to those posts, can be a great help to your readers, particularly those that are new. Of course these recap posts get syndicated out as well, with the internal links.

One of the most useful recap posts is where you dig back through your past archives and bring together related material as a recap. For a blog like ours, we could create a recap post on the best ‘blogging tips’ or the most commented on, or simply link together related tips. The recap post then links back to each post referred to.

There are two common threads to this blogging tip. One, you are using old information to create a new post whilst helping your readers find some of those older gems; and two, you are creating an internal linking structure and reminding the search engines of previous posts.

This is a simple blogging tip that can be of immense help to your readers. It can often be good to reduce bounce rates from the home page as readers click through to read older posts. Whilst you don’t have to think of new material to create these posts, don’t assume it will be a time saver. It can take a lot of work to find the best posts to use and then to craft together a useful post. However, you will find that over time readers will come to appreciate your recaps and the time its saves them.

Business blogs are excellent tools for promoting one’s business. The scope of what can be done in a blog is endless; however there are some things that, as a business blog, you should never do. Here are four blog no-no’s, I am sure you can think of more.

Don’t use your blog to trash on the competition.

Your blog should be about your business. The moment you start trash talking the opposition you are achieving two negatives.

First, you are promoting – remember some people accept that negative publicity is better than no publicity.

Secondly, you are lowering your own company’s reputation. Leave the verbal trashing of your competition to others. In fact, if someone leaves a negative about your competition in your comments don’t delete and don’t agree. Either ignore the comment or be noble and respond by turning the comment to your benefit. For example, if someone complains of slow delivery from the competition, respond with “I understand your concern, we all face delivery problems at times, however we……….”.

Don’t turn your blog into a catalog

There are times when I visit a blog and it is really nothing more than a compilation of all their catalog. Every post is a product description, price and link to the shopping cart. By all means use your blog to promote your products; however you need to go beyond a simple product description.

Blog about how it could be used, how and when to service or change consumables, perhaps even how to upgrade. Mix these posts with interesting posts that are more general. Your blog should answer questions, not push products.

Don’t talk at or down to your readers

Your tone should be one of discussion or sharing. Talking down to your readers does not encourage a two way communication which is where a blogs real power sits. Use friendly everyday language that avoids the overuse of jargon or industry ’speak’.

Treat your readers as equals. Encourage them to share their experiences while you share yours with them.

Don’t ignore your readers – they are potential customers

Never ignore a reader. If they take the time to comment then leave a response, particularly if they have asked a question. If the response required is a long one, either email it to them if they have left an email address, or provide a short summary with the option of emailing a full response. If you email a response, note it in the comments so others can see that you have answered the question.

You can also send a short email thanking them for taking the time to comment and offering them opportunity to sign up for a newsletter. You will be surprised at how many people take up the offer. You have made them feel special by sending a personal email acknowledging their comments.

These four blogging tips will help you relate yourself, your site and your products to your potential customers. Treat every visitor to your site as if they have just walked into your store – because, in reality, they have!

Commenting on blogs has become popular within some sections of the blogging community. Others sections seem to steer clear of commenting for varying reasons. The five blogging tips may help some bloggers to rethink their strategies.

Leaving comments is one of the cheapest and fastest ways to develop a name for yourself. Comments are your opportunity to voice your opinion about the blog post you read, add something that was not covered in the post, and discuss the post with other readers.

Popularity:
Blog commenting is a great way to make your name recognizable by many other bloggers. As you gain in popularity your website gains as well.

Traffic to your website:
As people come to recognize you they will start to visit your site. This is particularly true if you have written a similar article and referenced it in the comment. Don’t spam by linking without the blog owner’s permission.

More comments on your blog:
As the traffic to your blog increases you may find the comments starting to increase. This will rely very much on the content you write. Obviously if you write posts that are boring you will find that no one wants to comment. Keep it interesting and fresh.

Improve relationship with the blog community:
By commenting on other blogs and writing material that draws comments, your relationship with the blogging community develops. This improved relationship leads to subscriptions to newsletters and further involvement with your site.

Backlinks:
Many blogs incorporate a do follow in the blog comments. This provides a valuable link back to your pages. More importantly, as you gain a reputation that is supported by quality content you will find others either quoting or referring to you in their posts, with links. The more back links you can gather, the better your search rankings will be. This of course leads to more traffic.

The key to commenting on other blogs is to develop a sensible regime. You don’t need to comment on every blog you read. Be selective with your comments. Leave comments that are on topic, help the reader clarify points or perhaps add new information. Quality and relevance are the most important aspects. If it looks at all spammy then your comments will most likely end up in the trash – where they belong.

Blogs come in all shapes and sizes. Some are personal while others are trying to sell a product or service. Others are nothing more than spam collectors trying to earn an income through affiliate programs and advertising such as Adsense, Adbrite, etc. Blogs can also be your businesses best marketing tool if they are produced properly.

We live in a digital age and people are becoming used to dealing with unknown faces behind digital walls. That doesn’t necessarily mean they like it. Humans are social creatures – very social. We prefer to be where the masses are – the principle behind the success of Facebook and Myspace and other social networking sites. It can also be the secret to increasing sales on your site.

Your blog can be the perfect vehicle to break that digital barrier particularly now that new communication methods are becoming popular.  The easiest way to break some of these barriers is by including profiles and staff bios together with contact details. I would much rather email a technician by name to try and solve a problem than email a techsupport@ faceless person. To receive a personal email back addressing me by name and signed by the technician also helps to personalize the service – more so if they have also provided a decent solution to my problem.

Having these individuals also write posts on topics from their area of expertise also helps. To this can be added podcasts and videos. Now I can hear and/or see the person I am dealing with. They have a face and personality, they are human like me!

Blogs can serve many purposes, breaking that digital faceless barrier can be just one. It can however be a very important barrier to break.

Today’s blogging tips looks at trackbacks and how they can help to increase your inbound links. Trackbacks are really just a notification. If you write a post that references another site, you can include the trackback URL in the trackbacks feature of your WordPress blog (other platforms such as Drupal have similar features available).

Once you write your post, including the link to another post on another site, you enter the trackback URL. Once you publish your post the trackback feature sends a small excerpt to that site advising them that they have been linked to. The advice appears as a comment for the linked post.

If the blog owner approves your trackback, it effectively becomes a comment with a link back to your post. Link to three posts with trackbacks enabled and you should receive three links back. Naturally, you don’t want to use trackbacks as spam, however where your posts are related then the links will be relevant.

Trackbacks can be found below the editing window. Some blogs provide a trackback URL – use this in the trackback window – if you have more than one, separate each trackback with a space. Hit publish and the trackbacks are sent.

This is an easy feature to use and used judiciously, can deliver some nice links back to your own site.