Website Marketing Resource

What is a weblog, well simply put a weblog is a journal that is kept online. In it’s simplest form a weblog will have an article every day or week that says what the person is doing.

A great way the weblogs are now being utilised is as a marketing device that allows a person to market directly to their customer without the hassles of email or especially direct mail. Just off the top of my head I can tell you what kind of information can be included in these weblog articles: info on new market trends, personal achievements, buyer and seller success stories, personal stories to personalize yoou to youor public. How else can you do this? With a website you would have to update it often and a weblog is built for this so there is no hassle. With direct mail such as newsletters you would have a high cost to send and a time lag to customer seeing it where with a weblog it is instantly accessible and free to post, and finally with email newsletters you have to keep track of a list and if you sent to them every day you would run into trouble with keeping a good list when everyone is being buried by your emails and think of them as spam.

Many marketers were very excited when forum and newsletter discussion focused first on blogs (about two years ago) and then on RSS feeds (mainly within the past year). It was a brand new opportunity for marketers to use, one that promised both search engine success and a way around spam complaints. So they ran out and created a free blogger account or bought some software and began blogging and trying to set up RSS feeds.

But many of these marketers didn’t understand the very real difference between newsletter readers and blog readers.

1. While newsletters are published from once a month to weekly there is an expectation among blog readers that content will be updated daily, if not multiple times each day.

2. Many people who would subscribe to an email newsletter have no interest in learning about RSS feeds, downloading a reader, or visiting your site every day.

3. Although there are people who will both subscribe to a newsletter and visit websites daily, most web users seem to prefer one or the other.

Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.

If you’re an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:

* a blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and

* a blog expands your customer base.

Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)

What’s a blog? Get up to speed here:

* http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs

Let’s look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.

One: A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines

In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.

How times change. In 2005, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.

Blog often, and you’ll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.

Before I address the following questions:

* What is a blog? and

* What can a blog do for my business?

let me pose a few “What if . . .” questions to you.

Keeping in mind that before your prospects and customers buy from you, they need to know you, like you, and trust you. In other words, they need to know, whether overtly or covertly, that they have a trusting and ongoing relationship with you. What better way to accomplish that goal than a blog?

Now, here are my What if . . . questions:

* What if less than two minutes after creating and publishing your blog, it were to be promoted to 10.000 prospects without any extra effort or cost on your part?

* What if every time someone clicks on a hyperlinked keyword that describes your hobbies; your occupation; your industry; or your favorite books, movies, music, or artist, your blog pops up?

* What if every time you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, you could leave a hyperlink to your website, blog, or email?

… if not months to come.

At a distinctive and stable growth rate of Blog users at an average of more than 100% within a researched 190 day cycle, the Internet should be ready for a “Blog Boom” anytime soon. Microsoft announced more than 4.5 million weblog spaces were created in MSN Spaces since 11 January 2005. On average, users are updating about 170,000 blogs on MSN Spaces every day and uploading about 1.9 million photos a day.

France music radio station SkyRock’s Skyblog is no exception. They will have an estimated 3.5 to 4 million blogs by year end. On average, more than 8,000 blogs are created daily, averaging out about 39 posts and 53 comments per blog.

Blog search engines in particular, are reporting searches in the tens of millions, consisting of a large diversity in language and geographical differences.

Technorati, a giant blog tracking site, finds that its tracking volumes double for every 5 months for the past 20 months. Technorati is estimating a jump at a high 15 million blogs by the end of August 2005, and doubles up to 30 million in January 2006.

If you’re wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here’s a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you’re on the right track.

1. START USING RSS AS AN END-USER

The first step to getting started with RSS marketing/publishing is getting your own RSS aggregator, subscribing to other RSS feeds and just seeing and understanding how it all works.

There’s a variety of RSS aggregators to choose from. Just a small sample:

a) Web-based RSS aggregators (websites): http://my.yahoo.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.bloglines.com

b) Desktop RSS aggregators (software): http://www.awasu.com, http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/, http://www.stevenwood.org/stories/2003/06/08/voxLite.htm

c) Integrated RSS aggregators (integrate with IE or Microsoft Outlook): http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (browser with integrated RSS features), http://www.newsgator.com, http://www.pluck.com, http://www.attensa.com/index.php?ys=1

2. PLAN YOUR RSS FEEDS

Planning your RSS feeds might be the most important thing you do about RSS. You most certainly need an RSS feed for your e-zine, your news section, your articles etc.

But how you will package these, what others you might want to offer and other important issues, are much more complex than we can cover in this space. A precise overview of all of the opportunities is available in the "Unleash the Marketing and Publishing Power of RSS" e-book at http://rss.marketingstudies.net?src=sa13

I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually surfing one or two of the blog exchanges I belong.

I realized yesterday that I seldom read the whole entry unless it’s very short. Many are quite uncomfortable to read, some downright excruciating, in terms of their grammatical skills, spelling, and style. Because it is such an immediate and off-the-cuff personal expression, do the standard language rules apply?

The conversational nature of a blog leads naturally to an informal, casual approach that can be refreshing and innovative, indirectly echoing some of the great writers of the past who used dialect and local expressions to vitalize their work.

It is unfortunate that so many who write don’t understand basic language rules so cannot effectively break them. When it takes major time and effort to understand what on earth the writer is trying to say, rather than being able to appreciate the content and point of view being expressed, it becomes merely an exercise in frustration.

The beauty, and ultimate value of blogging, is that communication is direct, individual, and uncensored. No editor with an eye on public opinion or potential legal consequences is cutting out whole paragraphs in fear they will offend. There is no filter applied by conservative management or the need for committee consensus prior to publication.

Are you new to RSS? If so here is a introduction to what RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is and how your website will benefit from offering an RSS feed to your visitor’s.

RSS is a smooth channel of communication between publishers and visitor’s. Since RSS has grown in recent popularity, more website owners are beginning to experiment with and use RSS feeds to deliver content in new and exciting ways. Usually RSS feeds contain news headlines and small content summaries. The summaries have just enough information to allow the visitor to decide whether he or she would be interested in reading the entire contents without overwhelming the visitor with excessive details. If the visitor is interested they can click on the headline in the RSS feed and access the website which has additional details.

RSS readers are software programs that run either client side or server side and their purpose is to aggregate multiple feeds, making it easy for visitor’s to quickly and efficiently scan information contained within each feed. Feeds are usually themed, which allows visitor’s to subscribe to feeds that are of interest to them.

Let me ask you three questions to get you thinking. Does your website offer an RSS feed? Are you promoting your feed effectively? Are you seeing an increase in profits as a result of offering a feed to your visitors?

I’m going to outline several actionable steps you can take to promote your RSS feed both internally on your own website and externally on other websites. Then I’m going to show you a couple of effective programs to generate more profits using your RSS feed. Read what I have to say carefully, and then act on the information. I guarantee you can take it to the bank! I’m not just reiterating what others have said before. I actually acted and performed on my own websites everything I’m about to tell you and the results are awesome.

Promoting your RSS feed effectively requires a two prong approach. Start with examining your own website. Educate your visitors about the benefits of using your feed first. Then focus on external promotion second.

By the end of 2004 blogs had established themselves as a key part of online culture. “Blog readership shoots up 58% in 2004 6 million Americans get news and information fed to them through RSS aggregators But 62% of online Americans do not know what a blog is.” - Pew Internet & American Life Project

Tip #1 - How and Where Should I Start?
You should begin your blog with a free blog hosting service such as Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), or other similar free services such as JournalHome.com, LiveJournal.com or Blog-City.com. The learning curve for using such free services allow you to spend more on developing your content rather than worrying about the advanced areas of scripting, hosting, or programming.

Tip #2 - The Things You Should Decide to Write About
Although not a required prerequisite for you in order to write a blog, it is highly recommended to try to find a topic to write about based on your level of interest and knowledge. The higher your level of interest, the easier it is for you to get your quality content posted on your blog. Always try to choose an area which you can enthusiastically write about on a daily basis.Try to pay attention to a niche which suites you well. A niche is basically a targeted product, service, or topic.