Blogging Resources

(photo - Abundance - uploaded by seanj)

Make some time to listen to the Get More Business Podcast where I share Blogging as a Business Strategy. Most of the information I have learned from Terry Dean’s Monthly Mentor Club.

Leave me a comment if you find this info helpful!

Blogging Business Strategy

Textblogg 24 april, originally uploaded by moonhouse.

Blogging is really quite a phenomenon. Anybody can be “published” internationally on the Internet with a blog - but that doesn’t guarantee you readers. What is the strategy that successful bloggers use to make money online?

Today on Get More Business Podcast we’ll be discussing a strategy that many Internet Marketers use when developing an income producing blog.

Here’s a list of some of the basic steps to get started:

Research - Before you do anything at all you need to do some research on whether or not people are shopping for what you want to offer. Terry Dean has a great report that is available for only $10 that will describe a method and several sources for researching and choosing slam dunk markets.

Secure a domain name and hosting - The host that I trust for my domain registration and reliable hosting is a company called My Small Business Website. Their prices are reasonable - less than $10 to register a domain and just under $4 a month to host - that’s less than a Mocha Frappechino from Starbucks! Their customer service is friendly and available 24/7. I almost never talk to customer service or tech support - only because I almost never have a problem! The website hosting package includes a free WordPress Blog that can be installed for you - you just need to customize and fill it with content!

Create a 30 Day Plan for creating content and promoting your blog. This is not my idea. I subscribe to Terry Dean’s Monthly Mentor Club. This monthly printed publication is a wealth of information. It’s the best $20 I spend each month.

Following are practices that you will need to do repeatedly to create an income producing blog:

• Research Long Tail Keywords for your market - this is important to get found on the Internet.
• Post comments on complimentary blogs and forums
• Write relevant blog posts - write ahead for the whole week!
• Turn your blog posts in to Articles and submit to other publishers and bloggers
• Submit your best posts to Blog Carnivals
• Write and Submit Press Releases
• Interview guests to create products and or blog posts
• Create and upload video

Your success will be in consistency. Don’t abandon Your blog! We’ll talk more about this on the show!

For a more structured training I recommend that you participate in Anik Singal and Rosalind Gardner’s Blog Classroom. Read here for more resources.

Coaches - Build Practice using Article Marketing

I’m joining Coach Dave Buck of Coachville (virtually, of course) in his quest to create a “relentless demand for coaching.” My message is to the Coaches that provide powerful, and provacative inspiration for “playing big” in the game of Life.

One of the tools that I recommend to Coaches is Article Marketing.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Article marketing is a type of advertising by writing short articles related to business’ respective industry. Once written, the business makes these articles freely available for distribution and publication in the marketplace. Each article contains a ‘bio box’ and ‘by-line’ which include references and contact information for the author’s business. Well written content articles released for free distribution have the potential of gaining the author business credibility within his or her market, as well as new clients.

Article marketing has been used by professionals for nearly as long as mass print has been available. In paper-print form (as opposed to online forms) it is commonly utilized by business owners as a means of obtaining free press space. The local business provides useful content to the newspaper free of charge and in return the newspaper prints the business’ contact information with the article. Since newspapers and other traditional media are expected to present content on limited budgets, this arrangement is generally advantageous for all parties involved.

For example, an accounting firm may market itself by writing an article titled “The Top 10 ways to Avoid Getting Audited” and offering it to the local newspapers 2-3 weeks prior to tax season. Similarly, a roofing company could offer radio stations a concise article on “How to avoid ice damage to your roof this winter” shortly before the winter season.

With the rise of ecommerce and online marketing, article marketing has made a move to the online world as well. As in traditional forms of media, online article marketing has served the dual role of providing publishers with essentially free content and advertisers with essentially free advertising. However unlike the off-line version, there are additional dimensions to article marketing online. Most notable among the differences is the use of articles for search engine optimization.

Articles are written to target particular keyword niches, and distributed to content publishers that cater to those markets. Authors are able to target their audience with informative content, sent to an already interested group of readers.

There’s a plethora of information available on the Internet on the topic of Article Marketing. I may even recommend products to help you get started in a future post. It does help to have someone guide you through the process and develop your strategy. Believe me there’s a lot of behind the scenes strategy that goes into each article - however, much of it can be automated so that background work is eventually minimized in comparison to initial learning experience.

Anyway - I’m jumping ahead in the process today by providing a list of where to submit your articles. The reason I’m jumping to that is so that you can go look at what others are doing with articles. Read the busiest article posters to see what / how they are doing it. You can be sure if they’ve posted a lot of articles  - it’s probably at least creating traffic to their website - if they’re doing it right.

There are new article directories coming online all the time. Here are a few of the ones that I’ve read are pretty reliable and or have been online for awhile.

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://searchwarp.com
http://www.articledashboard.com
http://www.articleclick.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.advisor.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articlecube.com
http://www.articletrader.com

In a future post I’ll describe a strategy that a coach could use to build their practice with Article Marketing.

Another similar idea is to build lenses at Squidoo. This is a very interactive tool and would work well with an article marketing campaign by providing a referral center for additional tools and resources that can be used with the topic of the article. (Lensmaster who like this idea please comment here!)

I love comments to my blog posts - please join in the conversation!

Related topics:

What do you Squidoo?

Blogging for Business

I’ve been a small business owner for a long time, over 23 years. I’ve been on the Internet with one of my businesses (GiveAways Plus  or The Small Business Guru ) since 1999. I’ve been ahead of many of my competition in the Ad Specialty Industry using the Internet to build my business. But along came blogs,  RSS feeds and pod casting and I feel like I got lost in the rush of technology. Initially I grasped the power of blogging a few years ago but I just couldn’t put my hands on good information to get me started on what to do to get started. I couldn’t figure out how to customize the design and make it look and feel the way I wanted the blog to represent me.

Finally, someone who I respect has made a very easy to understand tool that I can use to get me started and on track with this vital tool for my business. I have to give credit for making every step so easy to understand with step by step instructions to follow. John Jantsch, of Duct Tape Marketing, has written a super easy to follow step by step guide to getting started with blogging your business. His digital publication, Blog Lightning , describes such a thorough process for getting started you could actually get your blog started and promoted all in one day.

Being a mom of three children and a small business owner with lots of deadlines and responsibility,  It took me about two days to get my blog set up, designed and promoted. Now all that’s left is posting.

In future posts I will cover how blogging can be used for different types of businesses for Lead Generation for small business owners.

I am preparing for a Teleseminar on Blogging for Small Business Promotion. I’d like to hear from you on the subject. In fact, I am gathering questions for this event so that I can prepare comprehensive content that covers the most relevant topics that you want answers to. Please  submit questions here.  Listen in, I may use your question.

Blog Lightning - A step-by-step roadmap that guides small business owners and independent professionals through the process of creating a blog and RSS feed to marketing their business.