Cory Threlfall asked:


Blogs or more specifically… Niche Blogs are simply blogs that are topic focused and target a specific market and/or niche.

More importantly though, these blogs contain targeted information that their target market is searching for.

This is KEY.

As an affiliate marketer we are always told that information, whether its an article, review, ebook, ecourse, report, mp3 or pod cast, is a key Pre-Selling tool before your potential customer decides to buy what it is that your offering.

This is where Niche Blogs come into play because of there many capabilities and functions.

The biggest advantage Blogs have is they give you the ability to syndicate your content and/or information through a technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication).

The types of content you are able to syndicate are as follows:

- Articles

- Product Reviews

- eBooks

- eCourses

- Special Reports

- Mp3 Files

- Steaming Video(A.K.A Pod Casting)

Are you starting to see the advantages to blogs or more importantly, having a network of affiliate Niche Blogs?

I hope so.

Also, with your blog comes an RSS Feed that your potential visitors can subscribe to.

Whats this mean for you?

Simple. When ever you post to your affiliate Niche Blog or network of Niche Blogs guess who will INSTANTLY receives that post?

That’s right, who ever subscribes to your RSS Feed.

Are you starting to see the many benefits of having a Niche Blog and incorporating it into your affiliate marketing mix?

Only you can answer that.

Another great thing about Blogs in general is that search engines love them and everytime you post to your Niche Blog it “Pings” the search engines and other RSS Directories you’ve submitted to letting them know that there’s new fresh content for them to come and index.

The more you post, the more pages that will be produced, which means… more for the search engines to index, which means… more traffic to your Niche Blog.

The best way to take advantage of your new source of traffic and maximize your Niche Blog profits is to modify your blog template and add Google Adsense and your affiliate programs marketing materials to it.

By doing this, everytime you post to your Niche Blog your marketing message will always be there and Google Adsense will display targeted ads related to your content.

Now, I can′t go into alot of detail on how to modify blog templates in this article simply because that’s an article within itself and then some.

What I can do is show you one that I just put together as an example.

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/internet-joint-venture/

All I really wanted to get across to you is the advantages to having your own Niche Blog as part of your affiliate marketing mix to help market your affiliate programs to your target audience.

Blogs are here to stay so we might as well take advantage of them in any way that we can.



Website content

Sarah Reiter asked:


Two of the best and powerful promoting tools for small business today are blogs and RSS feeds. They are simple to set up and offer many benefits for the small business owner. You need to create an extensive network of contacts to make the most monetary proceeds and accolades from the small business trade industry related to your small business.

Blogs have become all the rage for personal and business use for several reasons. They are great communication tools, they can be informative, interactive, and integrate with many other platforms with ease, plus a blog will gain popularity in a search engine usually much quicker than a standard website could for the same search term.

RSS feeds provide fresh content that is updated in real time meaning it will never be content that has been parked on a page for awhile, and content that may not even be relevant anymore. RSS feeds on a wide and constantly increasing range of topics are obtainable easily through subscriptions to them and RSS readers. Many new browsers as well as the online blogs you can create have RSS subscribe and read features built into them making the process of getting RSS feeds for your website and blog that much easier.

Content and distinctive features on a website and in a blog are powerful agents that pull substantial quantities of traffic to your small business website and blog. Furthermore, the traffic that is pulled towards your small business website or blog comes from search engines redirecting them to your site. Why is this redirection from a search engine important to your website, blog, and earning potential? The redirected traffic is gathered from search users searching for keywords specific to your website or blog, raising the likelihood that this traffic will have a higher interest in what you present to them on your real estate or small business website and blog.

You do not need to buy expensive and complicated software programs to design and publish a blog online. Blogger.com and other online blog creation tools help you create free blogs following simple instructions, design templates, ad ons, and automated processing and publishing in as little as five minutes.

RSS feeds are very easy to find. Simply look for and subscribe to them on the websites you visit in the course of your real estate or small business work, and also on those websites you visit to get current event news and entertainment suggestions from. Many blogs and the newer browsers also have RSS suggesting tools to help you find RSS feeds you may not have known where to search for but that are strongly related to your small business or have a high interest level to them.

Your website designing tools may feature RSS, which will make it a snap to install RSS on your website. Not to worry if your website designing tools do not include this feature. You can still easily install RSS on your website. There are plentiful numbers of web articles and helpful advice and guidance in forums for small business, which can help you with the self installation of RSS on your website.

Blogging amplifies your connection with your contacts for durable working relationships that raises the potential for massive proceeds and enviable business reputation. Blogging also augments your rise in page rank in search engines. RSS for your website and blog will also have a pleasant rank lifting in search engines with little effort on your part besides installing RSS and the subscribing to feeds.

There you have it. Small business blogs, blogging, and RSS are effective, powerful promotional tools with many benefits that you should take advantage of for the success of your real estate or small business.



Website content

Julie Francis asked:


If you have an aspiring writer on staff you may want to consider promoting them to a blog writing position with your company. Both small and large companies spend money on advertising, varying from yellow pages directories and classifieds to full featured television commercials or radio advertisements. The cost of a blog is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the cost of television advertising and it can reach thousands of on-line users spreading your message and branding your company.

Your advertising managers may even have looked at blogging as an advertising medium before. The most common reason given for dismissing this approach is the large commitment of time required and the writing skills needed to come up with daily posts related to the company. It’s certainly true that with a low staff ratio, their time is better spent creating a quality product and running a store than writing a blog. Some companies, small or large, are especially suited to use a business blogging project to advertise their company and this business blogging tip is about taking a slightly different approach to a business blogging project.

When a business is providing a service that requires some expertise or gives professional advise, a business blog is a valuable publishing platform to display samples of what your company or service offers. Business tip articles are often highly sought after. Where there is a high turnover of new products or company events, a blog can use the unique features of RSS to quickly inform your clientèle of new items. Combined with an auto responder a blog is a powerful advertising method to encourage repeat visits to your company store or site.

Sharing industry related news on a blog is an easy method of communicating with a large staff and customer base. Blogs can have both public and private areas so you can use the same vehicle but require a login for the more sensitive information you might wish to share only with staff.

Don’t let your business blogging project concentrate only on selling or advertising. People are looking for information and entertainment, not to be sold to. They may not even be looking for your company so niching exclusively within your business topic may not be the best idea for your advertising campaign.

Business Blogging Tip Case Study

John Nardini does the marketing for Denali Flavors, an ice cream manufacturer. He found that his most successful high traffic blogging project was a blog on personal finance called Free Money Finance. After a little experimentation with other business blog projects, he chose personal finance because it gets a high volume of searches and because there is so much valuable information to add to the blog on a regular basis.

Denali, being the sole advertiser and sponsor of this blog gained great exposure for its logo on a totally unrelated high traffic site. For brand recognition this was an excellent marketing strategy. Ice cream is an impulsive buy and unlikely to be searched for on-line in high volume.

So think creatively about how to use a blog to advertise your business. Give it to the project managers and experiment a little with different ways to give something to your clients in order to gain them as visitors or subscribers. Once people are visiting you can display your messages, your logo and give a free sample. Do something that will stay in people’s memories so that next time they need a service or product that you can provide, they remember your name and go searching for you.

Make sure your company name comes up on the first page of as many different search engines as possible. Owning the domain name of your company name, showing your company name in the url of blogs and in bookmarked article titles are the best way to make this happen.Submission of your site to the directories is also helpful.

Our business blogging tip is to gain extra traffic to your company name blog by building a blog on one of the online hot topics and displaying your logo or advertising on all its pages by retaining sole sponsorship for this high traffic site. Niche your company business site but go where the crowds are for clients by creating a niche site on a hot topic.



Content

Christine OKelly asked:


After being immersed in the Internet marketing industry for years and experimenting with dozens of different online marketing methods, I have found blogging to be one of the most effective business marketing tools. Not only does a business blog provide a space for fresh, regularly updated content (which search engines love), when done correctly a business blog can establish a loyal group of customers and promoters.

However, I have seen some companies make major flaws with their business blogs. These mistakes cause businesses to waste a great deal of resources on their business blogs with little or no return on investment. There are many factors that make a business blog successful or a flop. In this article, I’ll touch on the three of the most critical strategies for building an effective business blog.

Establishing an Overall Mission and Purpose for Your Business Blog

Though this may seem elementary, it’s amazing how many business blogs do not seem to have an established purpose! What need is your business blog going to fill for its readers? What topics are you going to cover on your blog? Having a clearly defined written ‘purpose’ for your business blog will help ensure that your blog content will stay on target and on topic so that you deliver what your readers expect every time.

Many business blogs make the mistake of writing content that is of interest to their peers rather than their target audience. If one of your primary objectives is to sell products, it’s important to create a resource that will be of benefit to your target audience.

Consider your business blog like a magazine. When you pick up your favorite magazine from the rack, you have a pretty good idea about what will be in the magazine. People subscribe to magazines only when they have a sense that the content in the magazine will be consistently relative to their interests.

The same goes for a business blog. One of the primary goals of a blog is to establish a large subscription base. This is done by consistently delivering content that is of interest to your readership base. Clearly defining the mission and purpose of your blog provides you with a guideline for creating content that is consistently useful to your readers.

Blog Marketing: Telling Not Selling

Blogs are not the place for a heavy hitting sales pitch. In fact, being too salesy is the fastest way to turn off blog readers. Bloggers don’t mind that you are trying to promote something - most are. But heavy-handed sales tactics just don’t fly in the blogosphere.

I’ve worked with some companies that were so worried about not sounding too promotional that they took their business blog to the opposite extreme. Reading their blog, you would have no idea what the company was or what they sold. One didn’t even have link back to their website! The key to creating effective business blogs is to find the right balance.

One way that you can introduce your products without being pushy is by choosing a layout that allows you to feature some of your products on every page. A two or three column blog layout works well for this purpose, as does a blog layout with several ‘feature’ boxes at the top.

Not ‘hiding’ the fact that you have something to offer helps you to establish your business as an expert in your niche. It’s perfectly fine to reference your products in your post in the context of a useful article that tells readers how to accomplish certain goals as opposed to a post that solely push your product. Readers begin to trust your content and learn to like you - and therefore are more likely to buy the products and services you offer.

Finding Your Voice

One of the greatest mistakes a people tend to make when creating a business blog is to write in ‘corporatese’ as opposed to a more conversational tone. Just like there is a certain accepted writing style for a press release or an editorial article, there is also a particular accepted writing style for blogs.

The most effective and popular business blogs have a personal voice. This scares some businesses and corporations - but it doesn’t have to! Select a few key company representatives as the personalities of the business blog. If you’re worried about giving people the right to instantly publish content, you can set up a system so that no post goes live without the approval of a single individual whose role is to ensure that the blog remains consistent and professional.

Have each person include their photo in the about page or even in the post with multi-author blogs. Post authors should respond to comments and engage in dialogue with readers in order to build and enhance relationship. Blog marketing is very much ‘relationship marketing.’ Responding to reader comments and questions is an important duty of a business blog writer or another assigned person within the organization.

Though a blog can be set up in a matter of minutes, there is a lot of planning and strategy that goes into creating a truly effective business blog. Starting you planning session by tackling these three core points is a great way to get your business blog off to an effective start!



Website content