Website Marketing Resource

A blog is an online journal in which the author publishes his or her thoughts and opinions on a subject which interests them. A good blog will be updated frequently with new points of interest which the blogger (author) and readers can discuss.

Recently, blogs have appeared all over the internet. Thousands are being created every day on every subject imaginable. Everyone has interests and so you can always guarantee that other people will have the same interests as you. If you start a blog on something you are interested in you can be sure that thousands of people will be interested in what you have to say. Having thousands of people reading and following the content in your blog has enormous potential. Here are some great ways in which you can use blogs to your advantage.

1. A blog is a great way to promote your web business. Your blog should be about the same subject as your web business because this way you can easily promote the products and services that you are trying to sell. Due to the fact that you can guarantee your readers will be interested in the product you are offering, it looks like you are doing them a favour and not just blatantly advertising to them. A blog is also great for keeping your customers and prospects updated on new products or deals available.

Is this you? It has been 3 or 4 days since you updated Your Blog. You know you need to make a Blog entry but you suffer from the Dreaded Blog Block. Here are 7 things you can write about so you will never suffer from Blog Block Again

1 - Write An Article

Do you have an Article handy that you wrote before? Have you been meaning to write that article but still haven’t gotten around to it. Maybe now you should. Need a topic for that article just ask yourself some of these questions

• What am I good at?
• What do I like to do?
• What do people ask me for advice on?
• Is there a better way to do a task?

2 - Someone Else’s Article.

Also known ass OPC (Other People’s Content) Just go to an Article Directory and Find an Article related to your Blog. Have an opening sentence or 2 why you chose the article and a closing paragraph with related link to one of your web pages

3 - A Blurb about one of your web pages.

RSS for the Rest of Us

I don’t know about you, but I’m seeing a whole bunch of articles and websites telling me that I need to get into this RSS thing.

Is it really time?

RSS (it stands for “Really Simple Syndication”) is the latest wave of internet technology designed to take advantage of the “Content is King” mentality. Imagine getting direct access to the content you want, without having to give out your personal information. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Here’s how it works: You find a website you like and look for the little orange XML button, or a link that says “Syndicate this site”. When you click that link, you get the raw feed of content from that site.

An example:

My Simplified Selling site allows you to syndicate my content. That means you don’t have to remember to visit my site to discovers articles of interest, but instead they are fed to your preferred RSS reader (more on this in a moment) at your behest.

I’m here to teach you about how RSS Feeds can boost traffic for your website. You may have heard of it, but I guarantee you are not harnessing the full power of the tool. RSS Feeds are very hot, and the marketing pro’s are getting their websites listed in Google within 2 to 3 days.

What is an RSS Feed?

RSS stands for "Really Simple Syndication." Think of RSS this way: Whenever a writer who belongs to a syndicate writes a column, they don’t just write it for their local paper, every article goes up on the newswire and any paper who belongs to the syndicate can reprint it.

First, you have to download an RSS Reader, a program that combines all the news online in one place. You can download a reader for free at www.RssReader.com. Once you’ve downloaded a reader, you can click any topic that suits your need, and only those topics will be delivered right to you.. Why would I put RSS on my website?

Unless you’ve been under a rock for the last year, you’ve heard the term “blog” once or twice.

To most people, a “blog” simply represents a glorified online “diary” where geeks, computer nerds, and lonely teenagers record their thoughts in cyber-space.

However, many people don’t realize that “blogs” are quietly revolutionizing the way companies and customers interact about everything from existing products to new ideas and improvements in customer service.

In short, “blog” style communication has come of age and anyone with an online business better sit up and take notice fast!

In the beginning, “blogs” were basically an online diary to record your thoughts; but “blogs” have now evolved into dynamic websites that non-technical people can update immediately without html editors or ftp programs.

Blogs allow their authors to make instant website updates through a computer anywhere in the world with a Web browser and Internet connection.

Blogs also allow readers to respond to the author’s posts, provide additional information, links, expanded opinions, and more.

In short, an active “blog” creates an interactive community with the author as the hub and the readers as the spokes of the wheel that keep the whole cycle turning round.

‘Blogs’ or ‘Blogging’ have existed for several years and there are still many people who don’t know what one is and how important it is to making you money.

A blog is a web log. It’s used to add contents of a diary or news by the owner (blogger). For example, I may want to blog about the latest affiliate programs there are and ones that have good commissions as soon as I know about them. People can visit my website and see new contents on my website regularly.

A blog should contain information about a similar topic. For example, cars, computers, stamps etc… The good thing about blogs is that you can write whatever you want on it. Your visitors can even comment on what they think about a particular blog. With a blog you do not need to have any programming experience. You can update a blog easily by just typing what you want just like with a word processor. What an easy way to update a website.

So now we know what a blog is, what’s so good about a blog? Why are so many talking about it?

According to Technorati, there are over 15 million blogs as of July 2005. And during July, an average of 80,000 new blogs were created each day. If you own a blog, how are you going to promote it in order to stay ahead of the competition?

Fortunately, there is a simple, yet very effective method: RSS directory submission. Submitting your RSS newsfeed to specialized news directories benefits your site in several ways.

RSS directory submission increases your readership. When a person is looking for newsfeeds to add to their RSS reader, it is highly likely they will visit an RSS directory to find newsfeeds on their subject of interest. I recently visited a directory looking for personal business blogs. I subscribed to several, and now read them via RSS on a regular basis. Someone else may have an excellent business blog, but since they weren’t listed in the directory, I was unable to discover their site.

Think of a product or a service that your business provides to customers. This product may requires lots of instructions to assemble, tips to use efficiently, or simply requires lots of questions to be answered before it can be used. What are your options? Provide a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list on your website, OR write a FAQ Blog.

What will a FAQ Blog achieve that a simple FAQ List on your website cannot achieve?

FAQ Blog may be designed to answer one Frequently Asked Question per day in great details and is properly categorized for easy access. Answer may include some other tips and tricks useful for your customers. This approach can help your customers to become power users of your product / service and in turn become your emissary to the prospective customers.

Typically a Weblog has a comments feature, where a reader may post their comments, questions and appreciation. With proper moderation of comments, FAQ Blog can almost become a Customer Service center on Auto-pilot once there is a good collection of Frequently Asked Questions answered.

This Weblog can ultimately become a detailed and easily searchable manual of your product / service which serves dual purpose of satisfying existing customers and attracts prospective consumers.

In today’s online world of high-speed websites and giant portals, every established Internet business boasts of delivering content via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), a simple XML based technology allows anyone to easily share content on the web. It’s a brand new way of reaching out to your users and subscribers without the fear of getting flamed or being slammed of illegal mailing.

RSS has almost become like an important accessory for content oriented websites. No wonder it has become one of the fastest growing publishing standards on the web.

Since publishers can easily make their content syndicated through RSS and thus drive more targeted traffic to their website or blog.

Here are the top 7 reasons why your business should use RSS:

1. Improve Search Engine Ranking - Search engines are desperately looking for content that is fresh and is updated on a regular basis. Since RSS allows you to update your content from time to time, the search engine spiders visit your site more frequently. Resulting in better ranking and more traffic from the major search engines, as well as RSS specific search engines and directories like Feedster and Syndic8.

“Why Should I Blog? I Simply Don’t Get It”

This post on a popular discussion forum set me thinking - and I came up with 12 reasons you should blog.

Read them and get started on your blog. Or better still, go get your blog up and running and THEN come back and read this

#1 - You Do Not Need To Know HTML

One of the biggest hurdles many hopeful website creators face is they don’t know to design a webpage. Blogs overcome this - all you do is type into a box, and the blog software automatically converts it into a webpage and publishes it on the World Wide Web for anyone to see.

#2 - You Are ‘Forced’ To Keep Your Content Fresh

Blogs are essentially online diaries. It doesn’t make sense to write in your diary every month or two. Similarly, running a blog itself ‘forces’ you to update it often. And refreshing your blog often makes it more useful to readers and consumers - and by extension, to search engines who are in the business of presenting *their* clients with valuable resources.

#3 - Your Blog Is AUTOMATICALLY Optimized For Search Engines