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.

Are you experiencing writers block lately? Do you feel like you write and write but can’t seem to get ahead? Or are you just running out of things to write about? Just give it sometime. Maybe what you need to do is change up your blog marketing writing style a bit and test out some other things. Often times you just need to give things a fresh new approach on what your are doing. Change is good and you should re-invent yourself from time to time.

Analyze what you have been writing about for the last 6 months or so. If you have any analytics software take a look and see what the most popular posts have been and what people are enjoying reading. This will give you an idea of what your visitors are interested in reading and can help you with your long term blog marketing efforts. If you haven’t done this try reviewing some products in your industry. Do this as a campaign over a three or 6 month period and see how it works out for you. Pick a handful of popular products and do a blog post every week on one product of your choice. Write a 400-500 word blog post, complete with prices, product specs and photos of the product from various angles and see how that works for you. If you can even sign up with an affiliate network and find the products that you want to write about you might be able to make some money with your blog post but don’t let that be your goal. Start writing some product reviews and attempt to optimize your post and title to drive as much search engine traffic as possible.

For all of you thinking about launching a blog to become rich or famous just stop now, seriously. We all hear about bloggers who make 200, 300 grand a year with their blogs but there is something you don’t know. Chances are they started blogging when the blog and blog marketing was first invented and have never stopped.

Launching a blog and writing 50 posts and wondering why your affiliate ads are not generating enough profit for you to stay home is a ludicrous way of thinking. Time, patience and years and years of writing is what it takes to really make money from a blog through your blog marketing efforts. Not to mention proactive blog marketing efforts, partnerships, trade shows and everything else that comes along with owning a business. You do know that a blog should be run like a business right? if you are going to launch a blog do it because you have a passion for a niche or industry and you want to write about that topic. If you make money from it than that will be a bonus. There was a recent post done about a blog that was averaging a few million unique visitors every few weeks and the amount of income they generated from that much traffic was not even worth writing about. Making money from a blog should always be a secondary interest.

Negative online publicity can easily make or break your business. Digital voices travel at lightening speed online and it is important to be able to hear those voices before everyone else does. StepRep is new online tool that allows you to monitor your reputation a real time. A major factor that sets this tool apart from it’s competition is that is has the capabilities to track your reputation through the various social platforms. Places like Twitter where word can travel unbelievably quick, often times by the time you hear it naturally it can sometimes be too late. Platforms like this where voices travel fast and the importance of catching them early is crucial. StepRep allows you to monitor, manage and build your reputation from one website. Negative online press could can bring your business to crawl or even a halt very quickly so it is crucial for any individual or business to hear what the online community is saying about you.

With the emergence of whistle blowing websites like Rip Off Report and social platforms that allow for opinions and voices to be heard over a wide audience it is important to be able to hear it. One wrong move and your online reputation can be tarnished for ever. StepRep allows you to log in right through your Google account allowing to closely monitor Google chatter for what people might be saying about you or your business. Once you are in the site is is very user friendly to operate. Even a novice can log in and navigate through the various pages and set themselves up to be monitored.

For more information about how StepRep can help your please visit the StepRep website and start monitoring your online reputation.

You know that age old saying how everyone has an opinion well sharing yours on your blog is one way to get noticed. Especially if your opinion is controversial. Blog marketing does not have guidelines and comes in many different shapes, sizes and colors. These days thinking outside the box is really the only way to get your hands on some good website traffic.

When someone feels the need to express their own opinion you can bet your bottom dollar that someone else will want to challenge that opinion. Before you know it you will get a surge of website traffic chiming in on the discussion and voicing their opinion to the original post or others that might be leaving their comments. If you currently write about a controversial topic your opinions will most likely spread like wildfire through your industry allowing your website to really grow in traffic. It is important to be unique and offer a unique spin on everything you discuss in order to get people coming back. Make sure your content can be used by your readers in some sort of way. It has to peak their interest. This will be a great way to stand out from your competition and if you position it the right way you can quickly become and industry expert.

It is important to realize that a blog is also a website and should be treated like a website. When launching a blog it requires just as much marketing efforts as a traditional website. A blog needs to promoted in order for web traffic to find you. One major aspect of a blog is its content.

Content is really what the blog is designed for. A blog feeds off of content rich blog posts. That is what drives it’s engine. It is important to always keep writing in your blog in order to get blog posts visible. It requires more than just launching the site for others to see it. Link building efforts will be a must in order to create multiple pathways to your blog. There are many pieces to the puzzle on how to get a blog or website visible and popular but over all blog marketing requires many different steps and angles. You have to treat your blog like a business regardless if you sell anything. Creating a successful blog takes layers and layers of blog marketing efforts to allow the blog to climb in search results. There is no magic pill out there when it comes to online marketing. It requires a multi angled approach regardless of industry.

There is more to blogging than just getting a free blog on blogspot or wordpress, it takes some time, effort and patience to really get your blog visible. You know the old saying don’t judge a book by it’s cover? Well people do and they will.

If your writing is great but your design is sloppy you won’t get people to stick around for very long. The design aspect is a very important factor for your blog’s success. Website visitors want to see great design. if sections are disconnected and out of order you bounce rate will increase drastically. Great blog design keeps your web traffic wondering and looking for more. It will entice people to scroll and visit other pages. Before you build loyal readers you need to grab the trust of your web traffic as soon as they land on your website. A blog should have its own identity established. You want your web traffic to have something to remember you by when they are not searching around online. The tighter your blog design the wider of an audience that will appeal. Chances are your blog will have competition in the search engines so it is important to compete with them visually so that you can attract some of that audience. Once a blog has loyalty and readership it will take a great deal of effort to pull that loyal reader away from that blog to have them read yours.

Blog marketing is clearly moving at hyper speeds and it is difficult to predict what is here to stay and what is just a fad. However it is clear that we are heading into a transitional phase in all aspects of the business world with online marketing moving in giant strides. How much longer before news papers are gone? Do you really see your children reading the newspaper in 20 years? I don’t. All these new improvements in online communication and many people are still trying to grasp concepts of email marketing.

The internet has growing at lightning speed and many people are still trying to grasp concepts like blogging and search engine optimization. You have a large portion of an older generation of business owners that know they need to do something online but the thought of shifting from traditional marketing methods to online marketing just scares the socks off of them. Blogs have been around for a few years now and many business owners have just accepted the fact that this is something they need to do. Many are still confused how it will help their business but they hear from everyone how it is a must so they do it. Now comes Twitter and for most people the concept is easy to understand but you still have a segment of business owners that have just came to the realization that they need a blog so what on earth do they do with Twitter? Everywhere they turn they hear about Twitter and how it is vital to the success of an organization and now they have to sit down and learn and apply this new blogging tool to their business. Will micro blogging pass right by traditional blogging like a runaway train? Is blogging in general just a fad? Nobody really knows.

For years and years all you had was offline advertising. You either put and ad in a newspaper, magazine or a billboard. You have this generation of business owners that just can’t keep up mentally with all the advancements in online technology. How can you blame them? Many savvy online marketers have a hard time just keeping up with blogging and micro blogging and everything else that comes with online marketing. How long before blogs are just not that important? Will we see video cam micro blogging? Nobody really knows where online marketing is heading. Every six months you get a group of people that have invented something great that everyone runs to and jumps aboard without even taking a look at what they are jumping into.

Almost everyone who launches a blog wants to see traffic right away. if you have done your research you will see that that unless you buy a blog from someone which is already established it takes time and patience to really get your blog visible. A blog is like any other website, it requires a great deal of marketing efforts to really see traffic building. There are things you can to do speed up the process but you have to be very proactive.

1. Appearance: You don’t want your blog to look like everyone elses. I’m not saying to spend your whole budget on design but a little customization will decrease your bounce rate and get people to stay longer and read more.

2. Write Often: You have to write almost everyday, write anything. Even if your post can only be 5 sentences long just write as much as possible because this is who you will increase your odds of traffic coming into your blog through various blog posts. A blog is a journal so feed it with as much content as possible.

3. Use Photos: Putting a photo with each blog post will keep visiting. Nobody wants to just look at text, it just is not that much fun to look at. Putting images will get web traffic coming in from image search as well as long as you put an image tag.

4. Coding: This is a very simple change that can be done that will change the way your blog post index greatly. By changing the setting for your blog post titles so that instead of the url for that blog post being a series of numbers to the actual title of the blog post will allow your blog post to rank much better with in the search engines. You can then implement the use of some popular keywords strategically into the titles of your posts.

5. Links: Search online for a list of the top blog directories and get your blog listed in all the top blog directories. This will not only help by building more ways to your blog but the links left behind in the directories will aid in your link building strategy. Remember you must build up your quality one way links to your blog in order to get it ranking for your chosen audience and keywords.

Anybody who has a blog will eventually hit writers block, it is only natural. It doesn’t always last too long but you will hit hurdles when you start searching for material to write about. You have to persevere and find something good to post. As soon as you stop writing that is when things go sour and your blog all of a sudden starts to build dust. Once you step away from your blog for too long it only makes that much more difficult to fire it back up again.

It all comes down the goal of your blog but it is perfectly fine to to a product review sometimes even on a competitor. Online traffic often times looks at blogs as information tools. If it is all about you sometimes you could loose traffic as quickly as you received it. Doing a product review for your audience might allow for a potential client to realize that your business actually exists. This is a way your blog can quickly become an industry voice and website which has some authority. People will begin to use your blog as a tool which can eventually allow for bringing new clients and customers to the table. A blog serves many other purposes than just promoting your business. Blog posts index so you could very well pull in competitors traffic through your blog if blog are positioned the right way you could attract potential customers or clients that might have not found you through other means.

But once again this all depends on the goals of your blog. When first launching a blog it is important to apply many different strategies in order to see what works best to building traffic. Testing out different strategies is important because many times a multi pronged approach to pull in traffic will be very important.

I have been to many websites where a blog is actually the home page with almost no call to actions on it. There are very few times this strategy works. If your website, blog or company are relatively new than I would not take this approach.

This will only work if you have built up a great deal of followers and your brand is just oozing with loyal fans that want to hear more. When you first launch your online business and people come to your website and they really do not know who you are just yet a blog won’t help them. In situations where companies have been around and have built a serious number of followers is it ok to have your blog as your homepage. Those visitors do not need to be educated on what your product or brand is. They already know and they are there now because the like your blog. In beginning stages call to actions and brand education are required. When time passes and you customers and clients become intrigued you can shift your blog over to the homepage. Plus if you want to write about company information and have it as your homepage you better have something worth while to read about or you might find yourself loosing traffic just as fast as you got it. Running out things to write about on your blog could be the end. As a company you always want to keep your blog filled with information on your company, if that is the direction your blog is taking. An empty company blog is just as bad as website which can’t load correctly for visitors.

For anyone looking to venture into the world of online marketing this new Boston blog marketing meet up dedicated towards learning how to marketing your blog is perfect for those looking to learn more. launching a blog for any growing business has become a vital component. Learning how to do it correctly is another thing. If you line in the greater Boston area and are seriously interested in blog creation and blog promotion this event will help you on your way.

Here is a break down of what the agenda will look like for the event.

When:

January 22nd

6:30pm to 7:00pm: Open Networking
Mingle, meet, pitch, etc.

7:00pm to 7:30pm: Open Mike
Everyone will get a chance to describe their interests and request help with specific problems in blog marketing. A laptop will be attached to a video projector, if you want to briefly demo your blog.

7:30pm to 8:30pm: Search Engine Optimization for Bloggers, presentation by Nick Stamoulis
* SEO tips for starting a stand alone and company blog.
* SEO Content writing techniques for blogging.
* How to craft effective blog post titles.
* Internal link bulding best practices for blogs.
* Link buidling tips for blogs.

Nick Stamoulis is the president of Brick Marketing which is a full service website marketing firm. Nick has 12 years of SEO experience and currently Brick Marketing owns a networks of blogs all catered towards different aspects of the online marketing industry. For more information please visit the event page to sign up.

So you have launched a blog and you are starting to write in it everyday and a few months go by and you start to ask yourself what else can I do to further my blogs reach. One thing you have to realize is that your blog is like any other website and it requires an additional shove to get it moving. A blog requires various marketing efforts to further it’s reach and really become visible. It is important to take advantage of all platforms at your disposal.

Submitting your blog to various online blog directories is a good start to get things moving. Below are a few directories to get you started.

Blog Catalog is great website to get things started for your blog. One of the industry leading blog directories you can include links to your blog, a description and also social interaction.

Blogarama is also a very high powered blog directory that is a must for your blog to be in. With over 100,000 blogs already listed and still growing this directory will be great for your blog.

Bloggapedia has also become a great place for your blog to be visible on. With the ability to set up a profile and interact directly with web traffic the social aspect will be great to help grow your new blog.

Best of Web Blogs Directory is a new website as part of the BOTW franchise of directories and should be considered when you start to perform link building for your blog.

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.

Boston search engine marketing agency, Brick Marketing will be hosting and teaching a series of seminars designed to help Boston area businesses who are looking to learn the ropes of search engine marketing. Nick Stamoulis, president of Brick Marketing, will be teaching a series of seminars to help growing businesses with everything from email marketing to search engine marketing.

He will also include topics on launching blogs and blog marketing and how important it is these days for your business or brand to have a voice with your blog. He will teach the basics of opt-in email marketing and website optimization. If you have been looking to get yourself noticed online but have not been sure exactly how to do it these workshops can help you get started. He will show examples of real life websites and various techniques they have used in order to be successful online in the various search engines. Discover how to measure ROI and success of all your search engine marketing efforts you plan on executing for your online or local Boston business.

For more information on how Brick Marketing’s search engine marketing seminars can help your Boston area business please visit the following link:
http://www.brickmarketing.com/internet-marketing-workshops.htm