5 Reasons Why You Should Still Blog

Blogging is a concept that started in late 1990s and has evolved ever since. It used to be a way to comment an existing webpage, an opportunity for visitors and readers to react or voice out one?s opinion on the said topic. What started as a single-sentence commentary has evolved into pages of personal take on just about anything and everything under the sun. Is addition to sites like WordPress there are micro blogging sites like Tumblr. As it continues to move forward, online advertising has tapped into the blog?s potential. Here are 5 reasons why you should use blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

1. Blogging is simple. The simplest way to get your piece on the net is through blogging. No skills are necessary? an average adult can read and type, or at least click a mouse. It?s like having a virtual piece of paper and you just write your ideas, experiences, new products, and hope that the truth behind your articles comes out and entice your reader to also try your product. If you have a PC and an Internet connection (who doesn’t?) then you can blog and advertise.

2. Blogging is authentic. In this day and age where advertising saturate our lives, we question the credibility of promoters? claims. However, in blogs, real people share their real-life experiences, unscathed by paid advertising. Reading blogs about first-hand product use is like talking to people about their first-hand experience. You definitely want to buy a tried and tested product.

3. Blogging is free. Because blogging is yet to be proven as a mainstream online advertising media, most sites see it as something to augment current marketing tools and thus offer it for free. Any opportunity for free webtime is definitely a bonus especially to businesses that are starting up. Needless to say, paid blog pages can generate more income for your seriously growing business.

4. Blogging builds credibility. As you get more and more into writing your experiences on a particular product or industry, your readers come to realize that they can depend on your posts for their own information needs. As such, you become an expert on it; as a consequence, more readers visit your site and more bloggers link to your blogs. As companies and professional organizations notice the growth of your readership base, they may soon get in touch with you for advertising on your blog page, or make you an affiliate, which pays for every referral generated from your blog site.

5. Blogging builds your market. Unless you are a Hollywood star, chances are, only your Mom reads your posts. Mom has a lot of friends, so she lets her friends know how interesting your blog site is. But you need not depend on Mom to increase your readership base. Look into the following ways to build your market through blogging:

-By using your e-mail. Today, blogging is overcoming the e-mail?s popularity in quickly and effectively reaching and expanding a market. In this age of speed and quick access, logging in and downloading e-mail is simply taking longer than clicking into a blog site. Let them explore your site by using a short e-mail message as teaser to your blog site. If your e-mail is on an entirely different subject, use your e-mail signature to give a link to the site.

-By using subscription. An easy way to get your readers e-mail is to give them an opportunity to subscribe to your blog site. Keep some exclusive information for your subscribers to entice readers to subscribe and give their e-mail address. Just be responsible in using their e-mail address, as the last thing you want is a comment on your blog that you are a spammer. Aweber is what CashSherpa.com uses to collect e-mail addresses.

-By understanding your readers. Conduct a simple survey for your readers to understand their profile and advertising preferences. Ask consumers to give you feedback on a post, an ad link, or a trial that you shared. In this way, it is like interviewing your readers without the commitment and intrusion of a face-to-face interview.

-By joining a blog network ?A network of blogs maybe a collection of blog sites that share the same industry, interest, readership base, payment mode, etc. Consumers find credibility and convenience in clicking one link to several real bloggers about a single subject. Clearly, more bloggers are better than one.

-By using RSS. RSS is the fastest growing technology on the Internet today. As such, having RSS feeds to your blog is definitely another means of generating awareness for your readership base. Having a variety of feeds can add interest to your blog site.

Give your business a boost by effectively using blogging as an Internet marketing tool.

Web 2.0 is all about sharing, and the role that Youtube dot com played in increasing communication between people has been invaluable. We all know that videos consume a lot of bandwidth and computer resources, but a service like youtube made viewing videos online easy, fun and effortless. It also inspired people to be creative. Have something to share to the world, take your cam phone and create a 2 minute video; upload it to youtube and tag it in such a way that people will find it.

I have seen Youtube.com evolve from being a video depot to a video sharing site, and I am not at all surprised at the transition was encouraged by the millions of youtube users who continue to make friends with other video enthusiasts. This service has definitely improved the way people interact online. Instead of just photos, people have been taping their daily endeavors and sharing these with people.

Accessibility is the main thing that made youtube popular, and I think the no-porn rule helped a lot. Reporting porn is very easy, and more often than not, Youtube management will listen to users’ views of what is unacceptable and lewd. Our families and friends watch youtube, and I don’t think there’s an easier way to show people videos and discuss them together. If we wanted to tell our friends about a particular clip that we made, we can just invite them over to the page by sending them the link. Putting the video up in  youtube is easier than mailing the big video file to a person.

It has also become a repository for online tutorials. Demonstrating how well you know your blog topic through a video or talking about an interest and showing how it should be done increases credibility. There are many marketers who have used the service to increase their audience size. People who would ever have known about them see their videos, comment and subscribe. Building friendships is also easy, and there are certain advantages to “friending” other people. People can limit access to their videos to their community. The best way to help people find your videos is to tag them well. Appropriate tagging, putting in relevant titles, and descriptions are skills that every “Youtuber” should know.

There us no doubt that video sharing helps bloggers and web entrepreneurs create new connections and develop networks. A video is very personal and sharing a part of yourself and your knowledge with others becomes an experience that they don’t easily forget. You can use your youtube profile to boost company sales, promote products and even services. The potential for collaboration is limitless. People who were not friends with each other in the past collaborate and create videos together.  Some even claim to have found long lost friends through communities in youtube. It’s like facebook, but a more creative and fun.

A good idea is a curious thing. The one who came up with it will get the chance to test it, and if it works, he will stay complacent and try to smooth the details out. In some instances, someone else comes along to improve things and sets up a similar service with bonuses. Now, let’s talk about Plurk and Twitter. Two web 2.0 services that are free to join and extremely addictive. Twitter was “it” until Plurk arrived. I’ve noticed that Twitter use has decreased among my own circle, while Plurk has been attracting more members. Both sites ask users a question, which basically means “what’s up with you.” You can tell the world what you’ve been doing, what you’re crazy about as of the moment, or what you plan to do today. You can start a conversation within your circle and read what others have to say in small windows.

•    In Twitter, updates (called “twits”), yours and others, are posted on your profile. People can follow you and they will see your updates, as well as your current followers, and people you have been following. You, in turn can follow the individuals that your followers are following, until you form a complicated community when everyone can see what everyone else is doing. It’s fun! In Twitter, you can send private messages, presented in the same way as updates, to others. Other systems have evolved as a result of this Twitter fandom, one of which is Twhirl. Numerous plugins have also been created to put your twitters on your blogs.

•    In Plurk, when other users want to read your updates, they may add you as a fan. They stay as your fans until you add them back, which will turn them into friends. A private plurk (message) may also be sent to a user you want to talk to privately. Like Twitter, there are many applications for plurk that you can use to enhance your messaging and community building experience.

The Main Differences Between Twitter and Plurk

•    The Update Management. We hate spammers, and we hate how updates at Twitter move off the list so easily in just a few hours because of some spammers.  Twitter displays updates one after the other, and place the newest items at the top, and the older ones at the bottom. How about if we want to view the older ones, do we have to go through the numbers at the bottom just t view this morning’s twits? Plurk presents user updates in a timeline, putting the newer items on the left. This timeline can be dragged across your screen to display other dates. You can even customize your viewing of messages and only show new comments, An option to not see a discussion about an update is also available and you can do this by “muting” if you don’t want to read any further comments on an update.

•    Discussing an update also becomes confusing in Twitter because you can reply to an update by typing the at sign before a user’s name and clicking reply. In Plurk, you can isolate one discussion (read: further comments) to one update, so that those who want to join in may do so.

The Above-the-Fold Power Spots and What Should Stay There

Do you notice how magazine covers are laid out? There are headlines and taglines that are bigger and more colorful than most, and there’s a very good reason for this. They realize that people view a page a certain way, and that’s from top to bottom. Blog advertising is not much different. You can control what your readers see first. The first things that they see without scrolling downwards should reflect your priorities on your blog. When you place advertisements on top, it tells of your blog’s purpose. Those who are focused on getting readers place their subscribe buttons or banners at the top spot, and around this is the link box pointing to their recent posts, most popular posts and categories.

The term “above the fold” is usually associated with newspaper, and this refers to the main headline, main photos and main issues that aim to make the reader pick up the paper and buy it. This is the most important spot on a news page, and your blog functions the same way. What you write about is news to others and so what you deem will catch their attention and continue reading will have to be placed above the fold. You will notice that popular sites place self serving ads above the fold, or widgets that get them the most traffic.

Some other sources delineate the most important spot on a page according to the way a reader browses. We are trained to read from left to right, and so the most valuable place above the fold seems to be the left hand corner. Web 2.0 themes are designed to show the content first (left side) and then the ad banners or the subscribe button.

What to put on your power spots?

1.    A tasteful header image which tells people exactly what your blog is about. Something that doesn’t cover the whole screen, maybe 100 px or so in height.

2.    A link to the homepage, so that readers who might have arrived on more obscure pages on your blog have a means of getting to your front page with minimum hassle.

3.    If you don’t mind placing a photo of yourself on your blog, you can place this inside your About Me box at the top spot, adjacent to your latest post.

4.    Links to your best posts (using the Most Popular WordPress plugin)

5.    Top commentors plugin widget. This is for those who believe that rewarding their blog’s most avid commenters will encourage participation in others.

6.    Your community banner. I have seen blogs with Twitter, Stumbleupon, MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog widgets above the fold and have always asked: what’s the logic behind the placement. Now, I realize that getting people to join their communities in these blog directories and social networks so that they can have a long term traffic source.

Using Squidoo Lens to Increase Traffic and Earnings

Squidoo.com has become very valuable to webmasters, in terms of building traffic to their blogs. A squidoo page or a lens can be a place to aggregate a webmaster’s many interests all over the web. These lenses are user-generated, and you get to decide what to put there. Think of it as one page that asks you a single question: What are you about?

You can place RSS feeds from your blog, which could be a good way to build traffic. You can also enhance your credibility by showing a side of you other than that they see on your blog. Think of it as your about page away from your blog, or another place over the web where you can self-promote. This can be your personal announcement page, where you tell your fans and squidoo community that you are connected with a particular blog, your accomplishments so far and why you do they things you do. This could also be your poll place, if you don’t have much space for a poll on your blog. Other stuffs you can place here include youtube videos and photos. A squidoo lens is particularly useful if you have an offline business and you just want a page on the net to inform your customers about your travels, favorite food, and recent activities.

How does one monetize a Squidoo lens? Here are several ways:

Keep your topic relevant and get extra adsense earnings from the traffic your lens attracts. Remember that lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Squidoo splits the adsense earnings with their lensmasters, and donates a portion of your earnings to charity. The earning scheme is co-op style and 5% goes straight to charity first; 50% goes to the lensmasters (you) and 45% goes to Squidoo.

This isn’t a content place, and people do not expect to see articles. Just an introduction about you or a topic; and other things related to you that you want to announce. In this sense, it is ok to recommend products from ebay auctions, amazon and other companies that you are partnered with The second earning option is relevant to us because we can have an additional free place on the web to place links to sales pages or ebook downloads.

Of course, build your lens with your visitor in mind. Do not build a lens that contains ONLY links to affiliate or sales pages. The best way to do this is to alternate your links and lens parts. Your affiliate links may go in between videos, RSS feeds and photos. This way, you dictate how a reader browses your page. First he sees something interesting like a travel photo, then he sees a recommendation from you to try a new camera, then he sees summaries of your blog posts (as RSS) or links to your other blogs. Use your lens to tell a story about what you do online and offline, by pointing your viewers to relevant sites.

Why a New or Established Blogger Should Join Technorati

Several sources all over the internet say that technorati has becomes a mandatory thing when building a new blog or increasing a blog’s community. Simply put, it is a blog directory that helps a blog gain exposure. Apparently, when a blog becomes added to someone else’s favorites and tags, its traffic increases because those who are friends with the other blogger will be able to access your post feeds too. I am impressed by technorati’s authority in the blogosphere and looking around the system alerted me to more opportunities to interact with other bloggers. It is basically a popular search engine for blogs, and if you are an avid bloghopper, the technorati free service is for you .

It’s more than a feed aggregator, It’s a vote of confidence. Having your feed in another person’s technorati page means they are telling their own circle to visit you and also add you to their favorites. Web 2.0 is all about interaction and building communities and technorati makes introduction to a wider audience possible.

Tehnorati tags and why you should take Tagging Seriously

A Technorati tag is a keyword or category name that you associate with a blog post, an article or a whole blog. When you add someone else’s blog as a favorite on technorati, you can assign an appropriate tag that represents the blog. There is an option on a technorati member’s page to “search their favorites”, and this is where the role of tags come into play. Anyone searching for “culture” will find the posts or the blogs of those you assigned to this tag. The algorithm for this is not clear to me but as far as looking for posts about a certain topic is concerned, efficient tagging is useful. There are technorati widgets available to allow your site visitors to explore your site according to the technorati tags you assigned. Joining Technorati is easy. You just have to sign up, claim your blog (through 2 simple processes) and categorize your blogs by putting in keywords that you want your blog to be associated with.

What is technorati authority? This authority is the number of blogs linking to your blog during the last six months. The higher the number, the more Technorati Authority you have. It simply means that your blog is being talked about in other places. Every time someone mentions you in a post, or puts your link on the blogroll, you gain technorati rank. Aptly given the term “blog reactions”, this ranking system simply tells you how popular you are in the blogosphere. These system is one of the reasons why other bloggers post linkbait content, which are simply blog posts that contain strong opinions, funny stories, astounding facts and even fallacies. Sensationalism is a good way to increase your technorati authority, as more and more bloggers mention you as the source of the news.