Monday, September 5, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
7 Questions To Ask Yourself BEFORE Starting A Business Blog
Blogging is the latest buzzword in online marketing and PR. But with so many marketers jumping on the blogging bandwagon, few people are giving a thought to whether blogs are really up their alley, or taking the time to consider the best ways of going about it.
If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge.
1. Do you really need a blog?
Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog. But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing - like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?
2. Who are your targeted blog audience?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.
If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.
If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.
- Internet users
Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.
- Blog readers
Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users
A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.
3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?
There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you -
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
- Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders
Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.
4. How much time can you spend on your blog?
Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.
If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business. If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.
5. What blogging platform will better fulfill your needs ?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.
The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.
Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.
If you want to get started quickly or new to internet and not very good with coding, then BLOGGER by Google or Wordpress by WordPress blogs are a good start for you and the good news is both are free and you can start instantly.Though wordpress is more professional, flexible and customizable and lot of people's favorite.
If, on the other hand, you're a control freak (like me) and don't mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like Wordpress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you.
If you don't want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.
6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog? Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.
Because without proper promotion no one will ever know if your blog even exists on mother earth.So it is a good thing after adding some useful contents to your blog take some time to submit your blog to famous high PR blog directories and link directories.This might be slow and steady but it will help you getting new unique visitors to your blog.I will talk more about link building and blog promotion in another post in detail.
7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.
Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.
Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.
Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.
Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.
But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business.
If you are planning to start a business blog, ask yourself these questions before you take the final plunge.
1. Do you really need a blog?
Writing and maintaining a blog takes a certain degree of commitment, as well as a passion (or at least a liking) for stringing words into a decent sentence. If you don't enjoy writing that much, you could always create an audio or video blog. But would your business objectives really be served by starting a blog? Or could other methods of online marketing - like SEO, ezine advertising or newsletter publishing work just as well, if not better?
2. Who are your targeted blog audience?
The first step to reaching your audience is understanding where they go to find information about your products.
If your audience largely consists of people who live in your town or use products that they search for in the newspapers, offline advertising might be more suited to your purpose.
If however, your target audience belongs to one or more of these segments, a blog might be just the thing to boost your business.
- Internet users
Does your target audience really use the internet? If not, then starting a blog (or any online activity, for that matter) will just be a huge waste of time and effort.
- Blog readers
Does your target audience read blogs? Or do they prefer to get their information in their inbox? If the latter is true, then an email newsletter might be a better option than a blog.
- Search engine users
A blog is an excellent way to boost your search engine rankings and get listed for a lot of your target keywords. If you know that your audience uses search engines to find information, a blog will increase your chances of getting their attention.
3. What do you want to achieve with your blog?
There are a lot of things that a blog can do for your business. Blogs can help you -
- Increase your visibility and search engine rankings
- Brand yourself, your products, your services, your company
- Build a community and network with people who have similar interests
- Expand your reach to those outside your current sphere of influence
- Establish your credibility as an expert or thought-leader in your field
- Put a human face on your business
- Reach out to potential customers and stakeholders
Deciding exactly what you want to achieve with your blog can help you get focused, so that you can spend your time and effort in activities that help, not hinder your business objectives.
4. How much time can you spend on your blog?
Serious business bloggers not only spend time writing their own blogs, but also spend a great deal of time reading up on current events and browsing other blogs in their field for information.
If you are prepared to put in the time and effort required to do that sort of research, your blog will serve as a good branding tool for your business. If not, you should either hire someone to do the research or seriously rethink your decision to start a blog.
5. What blogging platform will better fulfill your needs ?
Deciding your blogging platform is an important step that you should take only after becoming familiar with the features and benefits of each option.
The reason it is so crucial is because it can be extremely difficult to migrate an established blog to a new platform once you have started it. Moving your blog can result in you losing your data, search engine listings and readers, so don't take this decision lightly.
Decide which platform will best meet your marketing objectives, time constraints and personal preferences before you make your first post.
If you want to get started quickly or new to internet and not very good with coding, then BLOGGER by Google or Wordpress by WordPress blogs are a good start for you and the good news is both are free and you can start instantly.Though wordpress is more professional, flexible and customizable and lot of people's favorite.
If, on the other hand, you're a control freak (like me) and don't mind spending some time and effort to customize your blog, then a server-installed software, like Wordpress, b2Evolution or Movable Type might be just right for you.
If you don't want to install the scripts yourself, choose a hosting solution with Fantastico, which comes with a one-click install of a number of blogging software.
6. How do you plan to promote your blog?
Why is it good to know this before you start your blog? Because it will help you decide where best to invest your time and effort when you need to build traffic to your blog.
Because without proper promotion no one will ever know if your blog even exists on mother earth.So it is a good thing after adding some useful contents to your blog take some time to submit your blog to famous high PR blog directories and link directories.This might be slow and steady but it will help you getting new unique visitors to your blog.I will talk more about link building and blog promotion in another post in detail.
7. How will you assess the success of your blog?
To determine how successful your blog is in boosting your profile or profits you will have to measure your blog traffic and track sales or leads that have come through it.
Planning this in advance will help you take more informed decisions about your blogging metrics, choice of blogging platform and degree of customization you require on your blog.
Understand that blogging is not for everyone. It's just another form of communication.
Don't get so hung up on the technology that you end up ignoring more appropriate ways of communicating your message.
Some things may be easier to communicate face to face, in a conference room, or even through the good old telephone.
But if you asked yourself all the questions above and decided that blogging meets all your objectives, then a blog may be just what the doctor ordered for your business.
Sunday, June 26, 2011
4 Ways To Make Money From Blog
How to make money from home without spending much time and money is the common question that comes in every one's mind. But is this really possible???
And the answer is a " yes " in some cases that i am going to tell you about right now and by following these methods in right way you can earn money from home without spending a penny, but you have to spend some time instead and to show some patience
1 _ Google Adsens:
Most common method that almost every one knows about. Very easy and very good for almost every one. If you are signed up with Google adsens then Google bots will come to check your site that what type of contents do you have on your site or blog and it will automatically post ads related to your contents, and whenever a visitor will click on that ad, Google will pay you a prefixed amount of money for that click. The more the clicks the more you earn simple as that.
All you have to do is to make a blog with Blogger which is free or Wordpress for which you have to buy some hosting to host your blog. (I personally like Wordpress because it is very flexible, customizable and easy to manage). You can use whatever you want.
Then Post some contents like articles or reviews on your blog. Don't be a copy cat, write original contents and talk about things that you know about. After that signup for Google Adsens & after approval of your Adsens account which can take up to a weak Google will automatically display ads on your blog. If your blog is about shopping deals then ads will also be related to shoping deals and so on.
2 _ Affiliate Marketing:
In this method you display ads of other sites on your blog/site. Suppose you are an affiliate of a hosting company then they will provide you with banners of different sizes that you can choose from to display on your site. Whenever you will send a visitor to that site that will buy services from that hosting company, you are gonna get paid a certain amount of commission for that referral.
3 _ Product Promotion:
Its up-to you that you promote downloadable products like software's and eBooks from clickbank or you want to promote any hardware product like electronics and hundred of others from Amazon for example. There are lot of other websites that you can use but these are popular one's.
3 _ CPA Leads:
CPA or Cost Per Action (sometimes known as Pay Per Action or PPA) is an online advertising pricing model, where the advertiser pays for each specified action (a purchase, a form submission) linked to the advertisement.
You will be paid only in case of specified action like a purchase a form fill or signup from unique visitors. You will mot be paid for clicks or incomplete leads.
Check out CPA Leads for more info or any other CPA advertising service on Google.
So good luck and if at any stage you have any trouble please ask me. I would love to help you guys. Please comment if you have any question. I can help you to create a Money Making blog.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
What To Blog About..??
Every new blogger faces this big question that "What topic to choose for his/her blog"? Some people blog just for fun or hobby and some blog purely to make money from it. If you fall in the latter category, it is imperative to give some serious thought about choosing your blog niche. The success of your blog in terms of money depends heavily on how wisely you select the topic of your blog. Following are the guidelines, which will help you in your quest to select an appropriate topic for your blog:
Personal Interest: If you are blogging on the topic that you love and are passionate about it, then you have already won the half battle. The first and the most important thing is to select a topic that you love to explore, read and talk about. Readers are only going to come back on your blog if they find the content appealing and useful, which you can only serve them if you are comfortable and expert in your domain. You will also loose interest very soon in generating fresh content if it is not of your choice. Having the favorite topic in hand for the blog does not mean that you will surely get profit from your blog. There are other factors involved. Read on..
Popularity: Assessing the popularity of the chosen niche is the next step. If people do not search for the topic you have chosen, then no matter how hard you work, the results will never be promising. Start analyzing with search engine results. Google the first keyword that comes in your mind related to the topic and see the results.
This method will give you idea about two things. How much content about that topic is on net and does it have some advertiser base or not? On top right of results page you can see the number of pages having the keyword that are in Google's index. If your keyword is made of several words put them in double quotes and then search. A large number suggests that the topic is quite popular. On the right side of page if you can see long horizontal list of sponsored links then be assured that your chosen niche is highly competitive. To sum up, if people are not looking for that topic on major search engines then your blog is a dead duck.
Profit Potential: The popularity of the topic alone doesn't mean it can give you profits. The most critical thing is to look whether it has sufficient advertiser's base in major PPC Advertising networks. Google Adsense and Yahoo Publishers Network (YPN) are the two most popular PPC programs. Google has provided Google AdWords Keyword Tool and Google Adwords Traffic Estimator to look for high paying keywords related to your blog niche. You can use these tools
to get a fair idea about the traffic and average CPC for the relevant keywords for AdWords/Adsense. Although the provided data is not accurate estimate, still it will give you fair amount of data to assess the earning potential of your blog niche. For more accurate keyword research you can use WordTracker and can get the list of targeted keywords for the topic of your blog.
Content availability: To keep running your blog, you need fresh quality content at a consistent pace. Some bloggers face this situation where they start very enthusiastically, but soon they end up in searching for fresh ideas for their blog content space. For making a successful blog you have to feed it with new valuable content continuously. Choosing a niche that has scope of vast amount of content creation is a wise decision. You can subscribe to news bulletins, discussion forums and your peers in the Blogosphere to get new ideas and topics for fresh new content.
Give some thought before you start posting on your blog, as it will be the deciding factor in the success of your blog. Check out these Free Blogging E-books , which will equip you to become a successful professional blogger. Good Luck...
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