Invasion of the Blogs

For great tips on what to put in a blog, Meryl K. Evans goes in depth to help you understand why a blog can be so much more than just a blog

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Blog content is king

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I've been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl's notes, you'll notice they're more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late '90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn't work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they're getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It's much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

Who should venture where one has not blogged before?
No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn't black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

Can you regularly update it -- at least five times a week?

Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?

Do you read other blogs or feeds?

Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?

How large is your newsletter subscriber list?

How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn't give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that's where trackback comes in handy.
Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog's comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog's trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you'll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a niche

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl's notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl's notes. It's about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it's a personal blog and doesn't belong in meryl's notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. For an explanation of syndication and feed readers, refer to What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business? When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogs in disguise use the same tools

Blogging tools aren't just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn't a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don't have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site. Women's Spirituality is one such site. Karen Casey may not use the blog, but she does have discussions surrounding the articles she writes.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They're used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won't help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization's mission, needs and goals along with its target market's desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you'd like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Author Bio
Meryl K. Evans (www.meryl.net), Content Maven, is the editor of eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik's The Remediator Security Digest. She writes columns for PC Today, InformIT, and MarketingProfs. Contact her to get content that inspires action.

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How to Write a Blog Post From Start to Finish | Neil Patel

For a complete run down of creating a great blog post watch Neil Patel here.

We regularly feature Neil Patel's work because he offers such great value

Creating A Blog To Promote An Existing Business

Who would keep a blog and why? Mal Keenan gives the reasons why blogging can help your business and how to make it effective

If you belong to any of the following groups, then this article is for you.

You already have a business and a website that serves as the official hub for your online sales. The website may be serving as an online store for your enterprise.

You need a venue wherein you can promote your affiliate links.

Your already have a website, which may not necessarily be a commercial one, and it is enrolled with a Pay Per Click (PPC) program, like Google AdSense.

Success in these fields depends on one essential principle which you might have already realized: traffic is the key to your online business thriving.

You may have in your digital inventory the best products in the world, but they won't mean squat if no one would get to see them. This is why each and every online businessman will fight tooth and nail just to have a piece of the Internet traffic. After all, the more visitors who get to visit your site, the more potential clients you have.

And blogs can most definitely help you drive visitors to your pages. Here is how you could use them to achieve such a purpose:

1. Download the Wordpress blogging software, which is available for free at www.wordpress.com . An alternative is to go with blogger.com. I have posted instructions for setting up a Blogger blog at your own server in this PDF file:
www.pluginprofitstraining.com/blogsetup.pdf

2. Remember that good content is always at the heart of a progressive online traffic stream. People are always looking for information, and if you will give them that, they would read what you have to offer. Dedicate your blog to the subject of your main website. Publish informative entries that would hook your readers and make them come back for updates. In between purely educational entries, strategically include a link to your site by suggesting their importance to your readers.

3. Using the above mentioned strategy, you could also include your affiliate links to pre-sell your affiliate products. The more traffic you drive to your affiliate merchant's site or sales page, the more chances you will have of effectuating a successful sale and bigger commissions.

4. Links from blogs are unilateral, meaning, they are one way links to your websites. The more traffic a unilateral link generates, the more it becomes prominent in online searches. Avoid reciprocal links at all costs! Do not include a link to your blog from your website. Search engines abhor reciprocal linking.

5. 80% of your traffic will come from the search engines. You have to tweak your blog to attract the attention of the search engine spiders. Now, blogs are already search engine friendly. However, there is a very big possibility that you would be competing with other blogs on the same subject. You have to make sure that once you upload your blog, it is able to outperform its competitors in the search engine rankings.

One way you can do this is by using the title of your post to match the keyword phrases you are targeting, plus put a sprinkling of your keyword phrase in the post itself. I am doing this with great results.

6. Check your blog offline. It should be as readable and as navigable as possible for your prospective readers. Make appropriate adjustments if necessary.

7. Upload your blog to a reliable server that has enough bandwidth to accommodate many viewers.

8. Constantly update your blog. Search engines love regularly updated content, so publishing new entries will greatly increase your blog's page rank, and consequently, your main website's traffic.

9. Accepting links from other related blogs will also bring to your site some traffic from sources other then search engines. The way that a blog is designed fosters the building of a community of blog sites, and this will provide for an added stream of visitors for you.

10. You could also decide to enroll your blog site in the Google AdSense advertising program. This will give you an additional income stream. We will discuss this in future articles.

Blogs are excellent promotional tools for your existing business. Use them well and you will harvest the rewards in a matter of weeks.

Author Promo from Mal Keenan
Get Your Hands on My FREE and Exclusive 7 Day Blogging Report by Sending a Blank Email to freeblogreport@getresponse.com In this Report I Reveal All The Secrets for Creating and Running A Successful Online Blog.

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Make Money Blogging (How We Built a $100,000/Month Blog) 10 Simple Steps

The guys at Create and Go did really well out of blogging to make money.

Watch how they achieved this

The Smarter Ways to Use Urgency Online

Urgency (and indeed scarcity) is a key marketing concept but only if used properly (and certainly not deceptively)
This great article by William T Batten looks at how urgency is well used


When you sell a high-end product - I'm thinking a luxury car or diamond-studded watch here - there's a natural element of scarcity.

Which is great, because Scarcity is one of Cialdini's principles of influence.

When you walk into a supermarket, you expect the cereal aisle to overflow with choices.

With anything that's less cheap and interchangeable, you don't.

Apparently, 800,000 new watches from one high-end brand spring, tick and wind their way into existence every year. If you saw all of them on the shelves of a store, they'd seem a whole lot less valuable - even at the same price.

This is hardly revolutionary. I doubt you're impressed by me telling you that as supply dwindles, costs rise.

But this created a real problem in the early days of the internet.

If you sold physical books, fine.

But what if you sold eBooks, audio programs or online courses?

The cost of duplicating bytes is essentially zero, so there's no scarcity there.

There's no "act now - supplies are limited!" when it comes to data.

So the marketers had to create the same sense of scarcity and urgency on something infinite. Luckily for them, they already had everything they needed.

The Basic (but Effective) Scarcity Tactic

It wasn't hard to find the solution.

After all, who in the marketing world hasn't heard of the 'limited time offer'?

With physical products, there's always a vague sense of urgency. If they run out of stock, you might have to wait for them to get more... assuming they ever do. With data, they never run out.

Sure, the servers might go down and never come back up.

But that's uncommon, especially today.

So even though quantity is unlimited, you can still restrict time.

You've seen it before, I'm sure. Order this eBook before the deadline and you get a free report.

Or whatever the offer is.

It creates urgency, because now time - not supply - is scarce.

Some folks will get resentful. After all, it wouldn't cost you anything to leave the bonus up there forever.

The way I see it, you're doing them a favour. If your offer helps them - and I really hope it does, because most of my advice backfires for snake oil - then you're gently pushing them to get it now.

And the sooner they start, the sooner their life improves.

Besides, most folks accept this. Even if they didn't like it before, it's been a staple of internet commerce for so long that everyone's used to it.

So like I say, it works.

And the better the bonus, the better it works. I've happily paid for products I'll never use just to get the bonuses, so that's a handy rule of thumb - make them worth the price, if not more.

But, ultimately, that approach is fake scarcity.

It's fake because you're cutting off access to a digital resource, which costs you nothing to host.

That doesn't mean it's bad, ineffective or even dishonest.

It just means when you use real, genuine scarcity, it works even better.

Create Digital Scarcity by Charging More Often

You can create a sense of scarcity around something by raising the price.

The more it costs, the fewer folks have (or can get) it.

But note I didn't say 'charging more'.

I said charging more often.

Now, this might not work for your offer or your market.

And even if it does, it'll require a lot more work.

The benefits?

Built-in scarcity, a reliable income stream and more value for your customers.

What you do is you take your offer - something they pay for once - and turn it into a subscription - something they pay for again and again.

Like I say, this doesn't work for everything or everyone. It requires a significant depth of material to create, plus it's ongoing work for you.

If your market has a burning problem, they want the fix now. If it works, they don't need any more. If not, they won't have the patience to stick around.

But if you have something that builds and builds and builds...

(Training is a good example for this - each lesson adds something for them.)

... then you can turn it from a book to a magazine.

• A book you buy once.
• A magazine you buy every month (or so).
• A book is the author talking to the readers.
• A magazine lets the readers write in, creating a dialogue.
• A book puts money in your pocket once per customer.
• A magazine has them coming back as long as you're adding value.

And the best part?

If someone is a subscriber, they receive the next instalment of your product. If not, they don't.

So while they could wait until next month to buy...

They get more by buying now.

Urgency, right at the heart of it.

Urgency in a Service

What if you offer a service?

If your service scales, you could still have a subscription. For example, hypnosis scales if you know how to hypnotise a group of people online.

But maybe the subscription idea doesn't work for you.

You can still create urgency easily enough with your services.

How?

By reducing the number of time slots in your schedule.

We've already established time can be a scarcity. And if we're talking about your time, it definitely is. I know there's plenty you could do at any moment.

By seeing fewer clients in a week, it might seem like you're reducing your income. And it might, at least in the short term. But, if you understand your market, then it more than makes up for it:

It creates real scarcity, which increases your perceived value. An amateur is willing to work with anyone at any time. A professional is willing and able to set their hours.

It makes some of the clients work for it. If they're eager to see you and they have their choice of days, that's easy for them. If you'll only see them on Thursdays, then they might have to skip the occasional golf game to see you. That minor inconvenience makes them more invested in you and your process.

It lets you raise your prices. The demand for your time is high and the supply has dropped, so it's only fair.

Now, you might be nervous about seeing fewer clients. If one cancels per week, that's a higher chunk out of your income than before. But once the supply of time slots fills up, you can create a waiting list. Waiting lists are great for your financial stability (and therefore peace of mind). If someone pulls out, you don't need to scramble to find a replacement - a simple email to your waiting list will do the trick.

Abundant Ideas for Creating Scarcity

This article is getting a little long - and the irony's not lost on me.

So let me say here: this isn't the final word on scarcity. There are plenty of ways to make what you offer rarer without becoming obscure.

If nothing else, you could combine these ideas.

For example, you could offer a free eBook and a discounted subscription to anyone who books a session with you.

(With a time limit on that deal, of course.)

Either way, you have the freedom of taking the time to get all this right.

Then again, if you're thinking: eBooks? Subscriptions? Bonus reports? Who has time for all that?

You're not alone in thinking that. If you're prone to Writer's Block, abandoning projects halfway or chronic time shortages, then I'll get to the point.

Take less than an hour - even over lunch or dinner - and complete my writing course. By the end, you'll be able to churn out more than enough for what you need.

If you're ready to write like a demon, follow this affiliate link:

https://skl.sh/2PymK9O

About the author: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/William_T_Batten/2522089



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How To Write Sales Copy That Sells: 4 Types of Scarcity Marketing

How do you call your customers to action to take up your service?

Scarcity is a really effective tool used everywhere. Like when you are looking on a hotel website and it says "only 2 rooms left at this price" right?

Alex Cattoni has a great video here about what scarcity is in marketing and how you should and should not use it

Promoting Your Affiliate Products

You've set up your online business, you've got your affiliate partners sorted. Now all you need to do is start, or, as the article author, Mal Keenan, puts it:

Once you have your affiliate link, you're ready to go!

All you have to do, as we've discussed earlier, is to pre-sell your affiliate's products by marketing the same through your affiliate link. An affiliate link leads the would-be buyer to the affiliate merchant's payment processing page. Once you have managed to do that, your job is done, and the affiliate merchant will take care of the rest. This system makes affiliate marketing a very convenient home based business for anyone!


Pre-selling, however, should be carried out through effective marketing strategies to make this venture really profitable for you. These marketing strategies should be able to ensure a high conversion rate, or the power to convert the people who would be exposed to your affiliate link into successful sales.

Here are some of the more popular types of marketing campaigns being used as promotional tools in this home based business:

Promoting your affiliate links through viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a very powerful strategy that would rapidly expose your business message, or your affiliate links in this case, in just a short period of time. Viral marketing tools usually involve eBooks, special reports and other information products. We will discuss this effective promotional tactic for your home based business in the succeeding lesson.

Marketing your affiliate links through forums.

 As we've discussed in a previous articles, promotion in online communities is an affordable and efficient way in spreading the word about your products or website, including your affiliate links. You could try to be active in these forums, befriend other members if you have to, and before you know it, you'll have more traffic for your site and more referrals that could rake in some good commissions for your home based business.

Article marketing. 

As we've likewise discussed in a prior article, writing articles and submitting them in various venues, with your resource box firmly attached at the end of each piece, is a magnificent way of promotions. People would scour the Internet for information, and if you write something about what they're looking for, you'll win their favor and expose your affiliate links to them aswel. This could only redound to the benefit of your home based business.

Search engine optimization.

 As we've mentioned earlier in these lessons, having your own website would help a lot in marketing your affiliate links. If your website carries your affiliate links, you could always optimize the same for the search engines and drive a humongous amount of traffic to your pages. Every visitor you'll have would always carry with him the chance of clicking on your affiliate links.

Create your own mailing list. 

With a mailing list in place for your home business, you won't have to lose any visitors. You could always "capture" them, warm them up for an offer later on, or present to them new packages that they might be interested with in the future. Most successful affiliates make a killing with their mailing lists alone! We will discuss this in detail in one of the the forthcoming lessons.

These are but some of the ways by which you could market your affiliate links. If done well, they could assure for you a very successful business that can be easy to sustain as well.

Author Bio
Mal Keenan can show you step-by step how to set up and run a successful online home business. Learn the 7 essential strategies to internet marketing success. To receive your free 7 day mini-course visit: www.malkeenan.com
For a home business you can believe in, check out: www.malkeenan.com/pips.html

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