Blog Tools&Tips Resource

The Language of Blogs

2007-08-04T02:47:00.001-07:00

I read over a lot of blogs each week, casually surfing one or two of the blog exchanges I belong.

I realized yesterday that I seldom read the whole entry unless it's very short. Many are quite uncomfortable to read, some downright excruciating, in terms of their grammatical skills, spelling, and style. Because it is such an immediate and off-the-cuff personal expression, do the standard language rules apply?

The conversational nature of a blog leads naturally to an informal, casual approach that can be refreshing and innovative, indirectly echoing some of the great writers of the past who used dialect and local expressions to vitalize their work.

It is unfortunate that so many who write don't understand basic language rules so cannot effectively break them. When it takes major time and effort to understand what on earth the writer is trying to say, rather than being able to appreciate the content and point of view being expressed, it becomes merely an exercise in frustration.

The beauty, and ultimate value of blogging, is that communication is direct, individual, and uncensored. No editor with an eye on public opinion or potential legal consequences is cutting out whole paragraphs in fear they will offend. There is no filter applied by conservative management or the need for committee consensus prior to publication.

However, those of us who publish our thoughts and opinions to the world do have one big responsibility: to our readers. We can, happily, say anything we want but need to clearly communicate our point of view.

Anything less demeans the value of this wonderful new medium and leads to millions of electronic pages that fail to unite us in community, as is our goal, but merely consumes virtual space like the incoherent ramblings of a lonely psychotic.

Virginia Bola is a licensed clinical psychologist with deep interests in Social Psychology and politics. She has performed therapeutic services for more than 20 years and has studied the effects of cultural forces and employment on the individual. The author of an interactive workbook, The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a monthly ezine, The Worker's Edge, she can be reached at http://drvirginiabola.blogspot.com

Blogging Can Improve Your Search Engine Ranking

2007-07-18T03:25:00.001-07:00

Search engines are after one thing - providing their users with the most relevant and up to date information to match the search term that was used. Search engine results are no good to users when the information doesn't relate to the search term. Nor are the results any good if they are old. People expect the most up to date, fresh information that is relevant to them.

That's why search engines love sites which are highly focused on a specific subject and which have regularly updated content. If you add material to your web site every day, you will get noticed by the search engines. If the information you add to your web site is directly centred on the precise focus of your site, all the better as far as the search engines are concerned.

That's why blogging can improve your search engine ranking. Blogging allows you to add content quickly and easily to your web site. However, you need to ensure two things:

1. The blog must be hosted at your domain - not at blogspot.com. or any other of the blogging hosts.

2. The blog must contain relevant content and links which are well within the focus of your site.

A blog which is an online journal won't help your site's search engine ranking because the content isn't that relevant to the focus of your site. An online journal style of blog is unlikely to have keywords in the entries.

What this means is that your blog needs to contain hints, tips and short articles. It can contain summaries of articles which are carried in full on other pages. In short, your blog needs real, valuable content.

If you add real content to your blog pages, at the very least a couple of times a week, you will notice your blog gaining interest by the search engines. You will also see that your blog becomes a much more important 'entry point' for people who visit your web site. That's an indication that your blog page is gaining ground in the search engine rankings. And that will be due to its regular updating.

For more answers to questions on blogging you can get a free guide to the Top 15 Questions on Blogging from http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm

Graham Jones is a psychologist who has specialized in the way we use the Internet. He is an author of 27 books and thousands of articles. He runs Infoselling.com where you can get a FREE report on how to sell your own information products, ebooks, reports and articles online.

Introduction to Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

2007-04-19T01:56:00.001-07:00

Really Simple Syndication is exactly what it's name states. A very simple way to syndicate your websites contents to other websites and news reading programs. This article describes the benefits of creating an RSS feed, and not how to produce one, or integrate other peoples RSS feeds in to your website.

RSS is a lightweight XML design with a very easy format, very similar to HTML tags. Simply put, an RSS feed is a file that has a title, description, and link to your content. Implementing an RSS feed on your website takes a very short time and is a great way to drive traffic to your website. But don't think that article writers are the only ones who can benefit from this form of information dissemination, it has many great practical purposes.

RSS gives you the ability to have a list produced that can be integrated in part, or whole in to another website. RSS gives you the ability to have other websites have up to date, accurate information from you online in seconds. Headline news, technical articles, website updates, security alerts, or your favorite food recipes are just a few of the things that you can syndicate!

You would be surprised at how many websites have RSS feeds that you may not have noticed, generally you can identify a website that syndicates their content by a graphic (normally at the bottom) that says "RSS" or "XML" or identifies in other ways that their articles are syndicated.

In addition to people receiving your syndicated articles over websites, there are many websites who keep up to date databases of RSS feeds. You can search their websites for your favorite topics and see what feeds provide information you like, then have it mailed to you, or browse it online. In addition web browsers such as Mozilla FireFox have introduced the live bookmark concept, which allows you to add dynamic content such as RSS feeds to your favorites, this creates a folder in your favorites and that folder polls your favorite feeds from time to time to keep you up to date all the time!

Really Simple Syndication is a great way to get way for webmasters to provide a valuable service to their users, other websites that may rely on them, and increase your traffic and reputation.

Ken Dennis http://KenDennis-RSS.homeip.net/

Blogs for Kids.

2007-03-04T19:44:00.001-08:00

Flush out the writer in children. Blogging could draw out a young writer and open doors to their future. Consider encouraging your child to start blogging!

Children love having an audience. The instant recognition and approval that comes from a crowd just can't be beat. Employing blogs to help develop good spelling habits, grammar skills, and develop a love for writing at a young age is an innovative concept that has potential benefits:

Benefits

1.) Responsibility/Commitment - Daily Posts

Regular updates require children to be disciplined and responsible.

2.) Communication - Increased Communication with Friends and Relatives

Blogging or journaling gives children the opportunity to connect with relatives who might live some distance away, communicating important timely issues.

3.) Technology - Exposure to Internet Technologies

Children are growing into technology-laden world. Exposure to innovative Internet technology will help them with communication skills and r้sum้-building.

4.) Improved Writing Skills

When presented with an audience, children will want to present their "best" work.

5.) Improved Editing Skills

Proofreading is an important skill that is difficult to teach. Editing of daily entries will help children learn how to present their ideas clearly and professionally.

6.) Improved Spelling

Automated spell-checking helps children be aware of spelling errors when they occur.

7.) Typing

Getting children acquainted with keyboards at a young age will help them become familiar with their layout and function, quickly making them proficient typists.

Resource for Blogging Information - http://www.blog-connection.com

Because blogging involves the Internet, parents and teachers should also take the opportunity to educate youngsters about the dangers of the Internet. The Internet is global in its reach and developing safe Internet habits at a young age is critical. Remind children not to disclose personal information including names, addresses or location of events they plan to attend.

Staying Safe Online - http://www.small-business-software.net/staying-safe-online.htm

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for the NotePage http://www.notepage.net and FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com product lines. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net.

Top 9 Reasons Companies Should Blog.

2007-03-04T19:27:00.001-08:00

Below are the top 9 reasons why companies should blog.

They the perfect public relations tool. Their personal nature gives you and your organization a unique voice online - a voice heard by the people who matter - your customers and clients, other bloggers and the media.

Blogs act as instant-feedback mechanisms. They allow readers to respond to your posts via the comments section or link to them on their own blogs using Trackback. These features provide near real-time feedback on ideas, opinions and issues that affect them, or highlight and address new or existing problems.

Blogs help to position you and your company as experts and leaders in your industry.

Their simplicity and addictive nature allow you to share more of your knowledge more often. Blogs are about sharing what you know, think and believe on an ongoing basis.

Search engines index your blog posts more often because of more frequently updated content. Your ongoing blog and knowledge sharing shows up in the search results, making it easier for your customers and prospects to find you.

You can have many conversations with many people at once - something nearly impossible in the brick and mortar world.

They're automatic buzz-machines. Go ahead and try it. Blog about something new - a new product or service launch, an improvement to an existing product, or a newly appointed manager. See how fast the news spreads throughout the blogosphere.

They're self promotional due to their RSS feeds being aggregated across the net almost instantly, exposing your knowledge to a growing number of potential company evangilists.

Companies who blog are considered early adopters, thought leaders and "in". Blogging is cool and companies who blog are cool.

But the most important thing to remember when blogging is that you're not a speaker talking to an audience, you are sharing and interacting. You are one more voice to be heard and how powerful that voice is depends on how much interacting you do. It's the opposite of Advertising.

Paul Short is a veteran internet marketer, professional blogging consultant and owns the popular blog directory http://www.getblogs.com

To Blog or Not to Blog: Are Blogs Becoming More Popular than Forums, Newsletters and E-zines?.

2007-03-04T19:25:00.001-08:00

Blogging is hot, and seems to be becoming hotter each month. Although blogging originally was dismissed, by many successful publishers and other online "gurus", the truth is that now, a few years after the "blogging trend" began, there are actually more blogs and more bloggers online than ever before. Blogging, obviously, is "here to stay"!

Actually first documented in 1997, Web logs initially used the abbreviated version: wee-blog, with a Web log editor referred to as a blogger. Since then, all types of Web logs (blogs) and blogging software have emerged, giving rise to this lucrative and dynamic market.

Now, everything from advertising blogs to zoology blogs exist, with every topic in between apparent online. Political blogs are rampant, and groups of bloggers across the globe post regularly on every topic imaginable.

What does a blog supply that an e-zine, newsletter, or forum might not? What has skyrocketed the popularity of the blog over the past several years?

The answers are really quite simple:

Blogs are more highly interactive. Posters get to see the results of a post immediately, as the post appears simultaneously after posting. Posters also don't have the usual moderation that appears in forums, where posts may be deleted without warning. Usually, in blogs, more freedom is given, and posts are usually accepted no matter what the content, or the topic.

E-zines and newsletters, with their one sided presentation of views, have decreased in popularity with the increase of the popularity of blogs.

Blogs are easy to maintain and easy to start. The sheer volume of choices is staggering! Everything from "blogging software" to "blogging services" are available, and even a novice blogger will find blogging quick and easy to do.

Blogs are "Search Engine Friendly Food". Search Engines love blogs, because of the constantly changing content that appears daily. Search Engines are constantly "searching" for new content, and blogs meet this requirement splendidly!

Blogs are actually a lot of fun! The entertainment aspects of a blog cannot be dismissed. A great deal of "voyeurism" exists on blogs, where other bloggers continually monitor discussions, both pro and con concerning an issue. Discussions on blogs can be "heated" and interesting, with much repartee occurring daily! Blogs are a rousing form of media, indeed, with many bloggers returning repeatedly throughout a day to view new posts.

For a view into popular blogs of many categories, just visit: http://www.blogit.com

Many blogs are capable of syndication. Syndication is a great way to ensure that your writing and your views are exposed to as much of the general public as possible. Syndication is many times included in blogging services now, and this has drawn individuals to the art of blogging continuously.

For an example of a blog service that features syndication, please visit: http://www.typepad.com

There are no lists to maintain, or spam filters to worry about with blogs. This is one reason why so many writers and publishers have turned to blogs. E-mail delivery of newsletters and e-zines has become difficult over the past few years, with the advent of spam filters. Blogs are not delivered, and therefore, no methods of defeating filters are needed, and no "non-deliverables" occur, which has been the bane of writers and publishers prior to this.

A good blogging software exists at: http://www.silkblogs.com

Blogs are economical. Since no lists are maintained, there are no list server costs. Blogging software and blogging services are also very reasonably priced, giving good value for the money spent monthly consistently. Some blogging services charge others to "read", while others charge writers to "write", but overall the monthly charges are rather minimal either way.

Blogs are educational. There are such a variety of informative and educational blogs available now, that a search for any subject usually turns up hundreds of offerings. Differing points of view on all subjects are offered routinely, giving a reader or poster an "insight" into the hearts and minds of other bloggers.

Blogs also, to be successful, however, need to contain the same elements of a popular newsletter or e-zine:

A. Compelling, well-written content. No one, either online or offline wants to read materials that are poorly written or difficult or boring to read.

B. Updated material. Just as in newsletters or e-zines, if material is not updated continually, then the audience eventually dies.

C. Rousing topics. Topics of interest to a wide range of readers succeed more than topics that appeal to very few, or are rather dull topics.

D. A nice layout and visual appeal. A blog is akin to a Web site for written materials, and just like in the design of a Web site, every care should be made to have the blog be visually appealing and friendly to visitors.

Newsletters, e-zines and forums, of course, will remain. But as you can clearly see, blogging, bloggers, and blogs themselves, have definitely added to the "online experience" and will possibly (and hopefully) be around for decades more!

Vishal P. Rao is the owner of: http://www.work-at-home-forum.com/ An online community of people who work at home.

How Can You Use Blogs To Increase Traffic?

2007-02-28T01:14:00.001-08:00

I am conducting my 1st customer appreciation webcast and asked my subscribers list what is their most pressing question they have about blogs and rss.

Here's one of the questions I have:

How can you use blogs to incease traffic?

Blogs can increase traffic through the following:

1. If your blog has valuable content, this will attract readers to your blog who will visit again

Most people who perform searches using search engines are actually looking for information, for solutions. The more helpful and relevant content you have, the easier it is for you to attract visitors and also to turn them into loyal readers and subscribers.

2. With a Blog, you can submit to the many Blog directories that exist online.

By submitting to the many blog directories in the proper category, you can expand your reach to targeted subscribers or readers who wants to read your posting on your area of specialisation.

3. Blogs promote relationship building and trust with your readers, as it allows you to interact with them. Your readers can refer a friend and imagine the traffic power that can be generated if each one of your reader make a referral.

For example, if you have 500 readers and each one makes a referral, that will be an additional 500 new subscribers, giving you a total of 1,000 subscribers/readers.

4. By attracting search engine 'bot's to visit the site more often

All search engines have a program known as a 'search engine bot' which basically 'spiders' or searches web sites and bring back the results they have to the search engines.

And 'search engine bots' love content, especially pages with related keywords.

The more frequent you update your pages, the more frequent that search engines

A Blog is actually a content management system. If that sounds too technical, a Blog is a push-button publishing system.

There is no uploading of pages to web host accounts, unlike web pages

For example, with Blogger, you just set up a free account, write what you want, and press "publish".

Your Blog posting will be instantly published and is automatically hosted for you. The hosting is also free by the way.

5. Blogs can be easily turned into an RSS Feed, for syndication.

With RSS Feeds, your Blog contents can be published by other websites that pulls RSS Feeds based on targeted keywords or content automatically.

By turning your Blog into an RSS Feed, you can also submit to the many RSS directories out there, again expanding your reach you otherwise will not have with a normal web site

6. You can add "podcasts" or "videocasts" to your Blog, and reach out to even more people, Audio learners especially "Ipodders", people who own Apple Ipod and likes to download audio from the Internet and listen; as well as Visual learners.

Brandon brandon(at)brandon-hong.com

http://www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

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Brandon is author of video e-book, "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS", that teaches online businesses strategies of getting more free targeted traffic and more sales without additional advertising costs, as well as increasing search engine rankings and obtaining free listings in Google, Yahoo and MSN, by using Blogs and RSS.

http://www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

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4 Tips To Build Traffic For Your Blog.

2007-02-23T01:57:00.001-08:00

Bloggers blog. That's what they do. A blog is short for 'weblog' and it's really an online journal that can be updated easily and frequently without any knowledge of HTML code.

Traditionally, article marketing has been used by authors who are promoting their books or information products. Lately, I've noticed a growing trend of bloggers using article marketing to grow the traffic to their blog and you should too.

Three reasons why it makes sense for bloggers to engage in article marketing:

1) You've already got a lot of content produced in each of your blog posts. 200 words should be your floor for each article that you produce. In some cases, you already have enough words per post to create 10-50 articles instantly. If you don't, then stitch posts together of a similar theme until you have 200+ word articles to put into article marketing distribution.

2) A blogger has the same traffic building problems that any typical website has, and therefore article marketing can help your blog in the same ways it can help a non-blog website. Benefits include qualified traffic coming to your site year round, quality backlinks being built without any messy recip-linking campaigns, and you're expanding your reach to other experts that might not otherwise have found your blog.

3) Bloggers by nature are more Internet savvy than your typical author. With this said, most bloggers already understand how to create revenue with pay per click (PPC) advertising programs. As such, you already know how to produce keyword intelligent titles for their articles. This guarantees maximum traffic impact for each of your articles.

If you are already a blogger and are new to article marketing, here's how you get started:

1) Produce a cache of 10-25+ articles from your existing blog content.

2) Submit them to the major article directories and any that are niche-relevant to your field of expertise. You may also wish to submit them to ezine publishers directly from your niche.

3) Rinse and repeat until you have 250-1,000+ articles in distribution this year. Hire a college student or editor if you don't have time to get this strategy into practice as it'll be well worth it.

4) Watch your traffic counter slowly rise, day by day as your articles work hard for you delivering qualified traffic to your website year round.

Article Marketing as a strategy will not break your traffic counter on your first month of investing in this strategy?but, I guarantee if you engage in this strategy, your blog will grow in traffic and popularity beyond the traffic you were already creating by simply blogging. You knows, you might even increase your sales, land a new job, or improve your rank in the search engines as a side-benefit from your article marketing strategy.

About The Author:

Christopher M. Knight invites you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to the high-traffic http://EzineArticles.com/ directory. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your article, setup a membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit/

Blogs are an Art Form that Takes Practice to do Well

2007-02-21T00:17:00.001-08:00

Writing?Blogs?Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing?Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not been around very long, to use one of my writing teacher's favorite sayings, "Writing has only existed for one day in the one year that humanity has existed." Speaking and thinking come much easier than writing. These processes just flow out naturally like a river of consciousness; sometimes we hardly have to think about doing them. Anyone and everyone can write words down on paper but that doesn't mean it's 'good writing', myself included. Like most things in life, our society already takes writing for granted which is proving to expose more of our ignorance. Writing is a new form of expression, and if we want to do it in a way that the masses can connect with our ideas, we have to think much more simply and clearly about this art.

Now that was quite a big paragraph, you've got to wonder if I really needed to say as much as I just did to introduce this article on the best way to write your blogs on the Web. I didn't even mention this main idea, and that's what an introduction paragraph is meant to be for. This is a common mistake in many blogs out there. We try to get too many ideas across in one paragraph, sometimes even in one sentence! The key, as in all things in life-is to keep it simple. Simplicity means that readers won't get confused about what your journal entry is actually about. Introduce your main general topic at the start, and use the subsequent paragraphs to discuss separate ideas that relate to this topic. Try to tie everything up in the concluding paragraph, your main argument and the reason why you've written in the first place.

Grammar and sentence construction are not easy systems to master, especially if you come from a school system that spent more time telling you about historical battles and quadratic equations than on how to read and write. This is a real problem. When we speak we can get messages across to others easily, but if we put these words down on paper, the writing just isn't interesting and doesn't connect with people's curiosities and fascination. When you write you are not talking to a close friend. You can't use slang and colloquialisms that only your local community can understand. The aim is to connect with all the people in the world, so let's make it crystal clear and enjoyable to read.

Your computer has spelling and grammar checks, as well as access to a thesaurus. Use them, but remember that the machine can't decipher all the intricacies of language. Language is a world in itself, and much of its territories are undiscovered by the masses. So, again keep it simple. Short, precise sentences with single ideas are great. Many words in the English language have the same meanings (synonyms). Use the thesaurus so you don't repeat the same word over and over throughout the text. It keeps the story fresh and doesn't turn the reader off. There's nothing more boring than repetition. Using different words can be a lot of fun and a learning experience, just make sure you use a dictionary (also on the computer/Internet) to make absolute sure of the word's definition.

Readability?Simplicity?Make your blog accessible by all people. You can even take into consideration that many readers will have learned English as a second language. As I've said in previous articles, keep to the point-don't go on tangents. Stick with the article's topic, and definitely stay within the realms of your blog's main area. If your blog is entitled "Jazz music", people who go there don't want to hear about how your football team won on the weekend! Please be consistent. How irritating is it to visit a blog that hasn't been written on in months or years?

I hope these little tips will help you on your quest to producing 'good' writing that brings new friends and acquaintances of similar outlooks into your world. If you want people to read, the aim is to produce an emotional reaction in your reader. Pretend you are writing to another form of yourself, if it were not readable, interesting and fun?would you stick around?

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a 'grasshopper' writer attempting to inform other beginner writers on how they might one day become masters or 'sensei's'; http://www.m6.net.

5 Ways To Use RSS To Boost Your Business Or Organizational Success.

2007-02-20T01:38:00.000-08:00

RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication, among other things) is a relatively new technology that allows anyone who creates frequently changing web content - news, blogs, current events, etc. - to deliver their messages to interested readers with no fuss, no muss and best of all - no spam!

Currently, RSS is being used by content-rich sites (mainly blogs and news centers) to keep readers up-to-date on newly published posts or breaking stories. But RSS can do so much more. Many businesses and organizations are failing to truly exploit the amazing properties of this technology - and in doing so are leaving on the table innumerable opportunities to create even greater value, sales and traffic for their company, product or service and the market share it represents. Below are just a few of the creative ways that businesses and other groups can tap into the power of RSS and create new streams of revenue and interest for their organizations.

1. Create An "Announcements And Special Offers" Feed

If your business offers classes, seminars, products, services, specials, sales - essentially anything that changes, updates or rotates throughout a cycle - then creating a dedicated RSS feed could save you (and your clients) time and money. By creating an "Announcements and Special Offers" feed and offering access to your clients as an alternative to emails and print mailers, you can keep your client base up to speed, plus send out limited-time and exclusive "feed only" special offers and discounts, thereby offering an incentive to "get on board." This not only saves you time by reducing the advertising cycle to the time it takes to update your web page/feed, it saves your clients money by enabling them to quickly scan through the offering headings and pick out just the one's they're interested in - while your savings on the cost and time of paper and digital mailings (with their appallingly low conversion rates and sporadic delivery) progressively increase as the feed readership segment of your client base grows.

2. Create A "Client of the Week" Feed

If you're in a business where this sort of recognition is appropriate, then this could be a big hit! Creating a feed that regularly highlights a different client, their business and any special offers that they might like to make available - exclusively to other feed members, of course - can be a great value-add for your clients, one that costs you little more than the few minutes it takes to create the "spot" and publish it on your site/feed. Include a photo and a business link and your clients will be singing your praises far and wide!

3. Create A Training Or Team Feed

If you are part of a network marketing venture or are in charge of a large sales force or other team and need a way to consistently and continually get training aids, updates, incentives, sales copy, goals, meeting agendas and other items to your downline or members, consider setting up a feed just to serve this function. Since the actual content is hosted at one central site (subscribers only receive a "teaser" that they have to click through to get the full message), you can upload any digital file of any size that you need at the site itself and be assured that everyone who gets the message will be able to retrieve the files - not always a sure thing when dealing with email attachments and text messaging.

4. Create an inter-office feed

Memos, presentation materials, files, announcements, new policies, schedules - all this can be gathered up in one central feed (or broken down into departmental feeds) that are then easily maintained in one central archive and easily accessible by anyone who needs them. Nobody is left behind or out of the loop because they didn't check their email (or because the message got filtered or bounced) and everyone gets just the information they need without dealing with a lot of cross-over communication from people replying and clarifying.

5. Schools, non-profits and other organizations - RSS works for you too!

Schools - Consider the possibilities of a student feed, updated with activities, exam dates, school closings, special "student only" offers from local businesses and so on. Or how about a special assignment feed in which class materials are uploaded by each instructor for students who are ill, away from home or otherwise unable to be in class?

Churches - A congregational feed can supply daily meditations, worship service schedules, prayer requests, special events and other such messages right to your congregant's desktop - a sort of ongoing, rolling newsletter that never has to wait for a full page or go out off-schedule due to mised deadlines (items go out as they come in - it's that simple). This could also be accessed by members who are doing missionary work overseas, to help them feel more connected with home and to allow them to contribute by sending in updates of their work to be added to the general feed.

Non-profits - Volunteer feeds could provide a running update of available positions and work needed, as well as featuring profiles of special volunteers and organizational wish lists; fundraising feeds might keep donors abreast of giving events and how their donations are being used; and inter-organizational feeds can keep board members and other involved parties up to date on meeting times, agendas and projects. All great ways of utilizing the powers of RSS for the common good!

Consider these options the next time you need to get information out to a scattered and diverse readership, or need to publish material that never seems to come in when you need it to. RSS is a new technology, surely. But that just means that it's true power to serve your needs is only now being discovered. One of the best ways to keep ahead of the crowd is to forge a path through new territories. Where will RSS lead you?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Soni Pitts is the Chief Visionary Butt-Kicker of SoniPitts.Com. She specializes in helping others reclaim "soul proprietorship" in their lives and to begin living the life their Creator always intended for them.

She is the author of the free e-book "50 Ways To Reach Your Goals" and over 100 self-help and inspirational articles, as well as other products and resources designed to facilitate this process of personal growth and spiritual development.

Who needs T.V. News, Newspapers and Radio News?

2007-02-20T01:31:00.000-08:00

T.V. and radio News got you down? On-line current events and News blogs make being informed a much more enjoyable experience. For many the News on television has become a trying time of the day. Focused mainly on negative events, you may have to wait through the whole program just to hear the one story you were waiting for. If you miss the 6:00 p.m. show, waiting until the late night segment can be a real drag, especially if you've got a lot to do, or have to wake up early the next morning.

My friends, there is an answer to this problem: News blogs or on-line current events. You can find all of your favorite broadcasters (E.g.: CNN, BBC) on the Internet, getting up-to-date information at any time of the day or night. You can even read personal journal entries written by multiple correspondents out in the field reporting on several different stories down to the current minute. Instead of hearing all News from one voice (often an irritating one), now you can read different human opinions straight from the scene of interest.

Often News on-line has a section called "themes" which allows the reader to only hear about the specific areas that interest them. No more waiting through several wars to get to the positive story about the current medical breakthrough that could mean a cure for disease, or the technological idea that might mean the end to extreme pollution levels. Like a newspaper, you can go straight to the "jobs" theme and search through all the current employment vacancies available. If you are obsessed with the negative, themes such as "Disaster and Tragedy" and "Crime and Punishment are still readily accessible.

As the News is now on the Internet it has also become an interactive experience in numerous ways. First of all now you can send News stories straight to the News companies yourself! If the story is deemed worthwhile and verifiable, you may even be published. This is also the case with photographers who have pictures of important events. It really means anyone can become a part of the action as a freelance consultant. Some News on-line have "witness" sections where you can tell your story if you happen to have been in the right place at the right time. This option means that we can hear many different views on contentious issues giving a wider perspective to the 'big picture'.

Some News sites also have interactive sites within. For example, on the BBC News Blog there is a learning site (BBCi Learning) that involves interactive activities and over half a million pages of factual information and resources available for children, adolescents, and adults. There are competitions and all sorts of games to help educate people in any and every area of interest imaginable.

Another great aspect of these on-line News sites is the ability to access archival information. You can watch video and listen to audio recordings of famous historical stories right on the computer. If the day is Feb.3, you can read articles from Feb.3's from fifty years ago. Looking up any date and year recorded is as easy as pushing a few buttons.

Some services have subscriptions where instead of looking up the website, the News you want is sent straight to your email. Being in the know, and being in the now, has never been such an objective, enjoyable, and simplistic experience as in the 21st century. Partaking in a new perspective on life is what on-line current events and News Blogs are all about.

About The Author

Jesse S. Somer is a human hoping to help other novices like him see the magic of the world of the Internet. http://www.m6.net

Business Blogging: Where Do I Start?

2006-12-11T01:28:00.000-08:00

The new hot commodity is a blog for your small business so you've decided you must have one.

Before you begin think about it long term. Where do you think
the blog is headed? What is the objective? Do you want it to be
found by the search engines for specific terms? How often
will you post? Who will the audience be? What will it look like
a year from now? Five years from now?

If you think you may have this blog for a long time, consider
hosting it with your own domain name. Blogger provides you
with a free domain name (name.blogspot.com), or the option
of ftp to your own domain. If, at some point in time in the
future you want to move the blog and you've been using the
blogspot name, you won't be able to take it with you. This means
that all of the people who have your blog in their reader will
"lose" you. It also means that you'll have to start from ground
zero with the search engines.

Do some digging before you jump. A couple of good networks
where you can get some education are:

- Blogging for Business at http://blogbrandz-network.ryze.com/
Make sure you sign up for the "Blogging for Marketers" email course. Priya has loaded the course with good blog information (and it costs you nothing).

- Blogger Forum at http://www.bloggerforum.com/modules/newbb/
The Blogger Forum is very welcoming to newbies. Browse around
and just by looking at previous posts, you can learn a ton. they also have a section on blog platforms which talks about the different options available.

Once you're ready to go, what are you going to write about? Make sure you've brainstormed ideas so you don't run into the inevitable writer's block. You can always start with what you've written before. Do you have a newsletter? Look through your archive and "refresh" some of those old topics as a blog posting. How about your website? Do you have content you can turn into a blog topic? Do you participate in online forums or discussion lists? Find some advice you gave to someone there and turn it into a blog post.

This should get you started. Remember that small business blogging is a long term activity. Be ready.

Denise O'Berry is a small business expert who helps small business owners take action to grow their business. Don't know what to write about? Get the cure for blog writer's block at http://www.whatspossible.com/blogidea/

What Is The Orange XML or RSS Icon I See More and More On Web Sites?

2006-12-11T01:20:00.000-08:00

This question does not have a one sentence answer! If I just said that one uses this icon to get a site's RSS feed, you still won't understand. So let's try and answer you in such a way that it all makes sense to you and, more importantly, that you learn how to benefit from it.

Let's say that you like my web site very much and you would like to read new content as I add it. At this stage there is no way of informing you when I've added a new page except for notifying you by email. This assumes that you've provided me with your e-mail address - which most people are hesitant to do any way. The other way is for you to bookmark my site - but how many times do people really go back to a site?

What if I told you that you could have a little "window" (called a reader or an aggregator) on your monitor and that, each time I updated my site, you are automatically informed about it. How, you may ask? A headline (called a news feed) and a short summary to inform/tease you is squirted to your reader. If the teaser interests you, all you need to do is follow the hyperlink that will take you to that page on my web site where you can read it all. If you're not interested, you simply delete the headline. The process is repeated each time I add new content.

You can of course subscribe to as many feeds as you want to - from current affairs to people's personal blogs (a blog is short for web log which is a diary or a journal on the internet).

So, what must you do to set it up and how much is it going to cost?

Let's answer the second question first: Setting it up is FREE - it will cost you nothing.

This is how to setup a reader or an aggregator on a Windows system:

Download Microsoft's .NET framework here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=262D25E3-F589-4842-8157-034D1E7CF3A3&displaylang=en"

Install this on you system.

Download RSSReader from here:

http://www.rssreader.com/

Install this on you system.

You are now ready to add your first feed.

As an example I'll walk you through the process of adding my site http://www.perfect-party-ideas.com 's XML feed. Navigate to the site. On the home page you will see the orange XML icon. Right-click the XML icon and then click the "Copy Shortcut" option.

Open the RSSReader and click on the green "+ Add" icon in the top left hand corner. A form opens up that prompts you to enter the URL of the feed. Just paste the URL here (ctrl-v). Well done - you've just added your very first RSS feed.

Let's test if it is working. Click the "Get" icon which is to the left of the "+Add" icon. You should see a number of feeds arriving in your reader. Simply double-click the ones you are interested in to read the summary. Click the "Read more" or "Open in a Browser" links if you want to read the whole article.

Was it that difficult? No, I agree, it's fairly straight forward.

Now you are ready to sign up for more feeds. Why not sign up for my blog's feed as well? I use my blog to document the process of setting up my web site. There I share my ideas, failures, frustrations, doubts, successes, and articles that have I found useful. And, B.t.w. I also tell you how to make money from your web site.

If you're interested in following the exciting journey, just copy and paste this URL exactly as you did with the previous one.

http://perfect-party-ideas.blogspot.com/atom.xml

Congratulations - you have entered the exciting world of RSS!

Anne-Marie Killer is a mother of two teenagers and a toddler. She is the webmaster and owner of Perfect Party Ideas
Read her blog where she documents the process of setting up Perfect Party Ideas

Cash In Your Blog - 4 Ways to Profit From The Hidden Revenue In Your Blog.

2006-12-11T01:18:00.000-08:00

Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there's the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects.

But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form?

The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience.

In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they'd never catch up to reading it all.

This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers.

If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy.

Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products

As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you'll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be.

For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I've noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they'll be able to use as a reference guide.

Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response.

Method Two: The Subscription Model

When you're blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this.

Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they're looking for at your site, but you'll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time.

Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a "Best of" compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution. Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine.

Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook

With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information.

There are a couple of tricks you'd have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you'd be surprised about how easy this process can be.

Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book

I know what you're thinking. "Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it's free at my site?"

Under certain circumstances, you'd be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services.

For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as "overwhelming". It's one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it's not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home.

Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs.

If you're still not convinced that it's not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this.

On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It's almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer.

Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look.

You can learn low-cost ways to turn your blog into an ebook or preview Tinu's 400 page Free Traffic Tips printed edition and ebook at FreeTrafficTip.com .

Should You Get A Blog?

2006-12-06T18:37:00.001-08:00

A blog is a type of website. It allows the website owner to easily write messages that get posted to the site automatically, often in a journal or diary-like style. A particularly appealing thing about blogs is that your readers can comment back to your posts fairly easily, and a continuous stream of fresh conversations result. (This is a good thing.)

Here are three reasons to consider getting a blog:

1.To Replace Your Ezine

If you currently publish an ezine, you may wish to consider replacing it with a regularly published blog. This means using your blog to publish journal entries, and then when it comes time to communicate with your subscriber list, you excerpt some items from your blog, and send those out as your ezine.

This saves you from creating special articles only for your ezine. In many cases it becomes easier for you to write in blog format (short and sweet) so you save time. Readers enjoy the practical, "reporter-like" nature of blogs instead of ezines, and gradually come to feel that they are in conversation with you on a daily basis. You become part of their everyday circle of friends and associates, which leads to you becoming their natural resource on the topic of your expertise.

2. To Create a Quick and Dirty Learning Environment or e-Campus

For those of you who offer TeleClasses or other programs that want to have a web page of learning resources, links, class notes and audio, etc., a blog can be a great way to bring together an e-Campus.

If you offer a workshop, coaching/consulting, or even a software solution, and you want to instantly add value to your clients, create a "client/student resource page" using a blog. This becomes an environment that the students can play in, study more, and soak up your materials. Your clients continue to benefit from your expertise even though you're not physically there; they do it at their pace, and at little cost to you.

Once again, because blogging makes it easy for you to continually update your website without mucking around with FrontPage or DreamWeaver, you will save time and energy publishing to the Internet.

3.) Just For Fun, And To Be Cool

Let's face it, a large part of the reason you're wondering about blogs is because it sounds cool, right? And new stuff is fun. So why not try it just because? Sometimes it's enough to try something because it stretches you, keeps you limber and awake to possibilities. There's nothing wrong with playing, UNLESS you fool yourself into thinking your business is improving, or you're somehow paying the mortgage while you play.

Rest easy, there's no pressure to get a blog. Not getting one won't negatively impact your bottom line. So although the technology can be entrancing, stay focused... what are you selling to who? How is it going? That said, do stay curious about new technology. Part of your chosen profession as an online biz owner means modeling for others by staying abreast of new things.

With that in mind, see some fun blogs at the blog search
engine: http://www.blogsearchengine.com/

Andrea J. Lee coaches entrepreneurs and online business owners. As Thomas J.Leonard's General Manager, she helped build and manage the largest network and trainer of personal and business coaches in the world. Now the CEO of Andrea J. Lee Group of Companies, she writes, speaks and consults on Marketing, Internet and Business systems. For more helpful tips, visit http://www.39lessons.com/

How To Profit From Your Home Business Blog.

2006-12-01T00:51:00.000-08:00

A blog is a simple tool which all affiliate marketers should be utilising to explode their affiliate sales.

I set up my blog in about 15 minutes at http://www.blogger.com it's a completely free service, and it's really easy to set-up. I followed directions on an excellent article on getting a new website listed in Google in 48hrs check it out here, http://www.scamfreezone.com/gg/. I just followed the advice in the article and got started with no problems in no time.

I've been doing a lot of research with regards to blogging and came across a case of a 19 year old kid who was making something ridiculous like $50,000 a year with a blog on mobile phones, from his bedroom! So clearly there is a good earning potential through blogs, but they do take time to grow and build up a readership. Treat your blog as a marathon not a sprint, because it will take time.

Blogs provide a very simple, quick and easy means to add fresh content to your website. As I'm sure you've heard many times over 'content is king' in the search engines eyes and if you can provide high quality, regularly updated content your website should benefit with regards to your search engine ranking.

By providing fresh, high quality relevant content you will gain an increase of both first time visitors and repeat visitors, they will come back to check out your new content. Providing it's interesting, relevant and useful to them. You will begin to build relationships with your readers, increasing your credibility and building their trust in you.

These repeat visitors will be exposed to your messages more and begin to trust you and your recommendations. This in turn will fuel sales and referrals. Just make sure you don't recommend a product you haven't tried because if it is bad you will lose all credibility!

Never recommend something you haven't tried and tested your self.

You want to send traffic directly to your blog, do it through multi-dimensional strategies. Have a subscriber box for your newsletter to build your list from your blog. Use it as an exit pop-up from your main site or thank you page for new subscribers, directing them to relevant content immediately. As once your prospects have got to know you through the blog they are much more likely to explore your website and check out whatever you are offering.

Whenever you sign-up for an affiliate program or buy a product, review it in your blog and be brutally honest, your readers will love you for it. Take a completely unbiased view point and talk about both the positives and negatives of each product. In essence you are providing more of an insight into the product than the sales page itself, almost a sample, this will help convert those prospects that are 'sitting on the fence' so to speak. Obviously when you review your affiliate products, make sure that you use your affiliate links.

It has been shown that prospects are 7-10 times more likely to buy from a blog recommendation than from other sources!

Other ways that you can generate extra income through your blog are through the Google ad sense program, selling banner/link space as your traffic increases or as I mentioned earlier by adding you own opt-in sign up form to which you send your newsletter or other targeted offers.

Your blog can be syndicated using RSS, which I won't go into here, that's another article. But savvy webmasters can use your blog content on their web pages. This benefits them as they have regularly updated fresh content for their website and benefits you through increased exposure and free targeted traffic.

Be passionate about your blog, love your blog. If you do not then it will become obvious through your posts and you are unlikely to be anywhere near as successful as you could be.

Add to your blog regularly provide good quality content and reviews and you will be on your way to blogging success.

"A man would do nothing, if he waited until he could do it so well that no one at all would find fault with what he has done". -- Cardinal Newman

Get that blog started today!

(Feel free to use this article online and in your email newsletters as long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. The byline and biography must remain in the article.)

Ian Canaway is a home business entrepreneur and the owner of http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com and also a home business based blog at http://www.ahomebusinessblog4u.blogspot.com; providing high quality information and resources. Check us out Now!

What is an RSS Aggregator or RSS Reader?

2006-12-01T00:08:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing about RSS, XML and RSS feeds. I just barely have a clue what they
are,
but when people then start talking about RSS aggregators, what are they talking
about and why would I want one? Do you use an aggregator, and if so, which one?

Ain't jargon fun? RSS is Really Simple Syndication and it's a simple data-only version
of a Web page or, in the case of a weblog, Web site. Why is that interesting? Because
it's then easy to write programs that track this XML formatted data stream and let
you know when there's new material added to the site.

For example, if you were tracking the Ask Dave Taylor RSS data stream then when
this article "went live" on my site, you'd receive notification and be able to read it
within minutes of it arriving. Maybe not so critical for my tech and business Q&A, I
admit, but I also track a number of different business newswires and was reading
about the Proctor & Gamble acquisition of Gillette at least a day prior to my
colleagues. How do I know that? Because they've told me that it was my own article
on the subject (P&G buys Gillette for $57 billion, but how much is that in human
terms?) that alerted them to the $54 billion transaction).

Helpful Hint: If you'd like to track an RSS feed and you have a browser with RSS
support, you can click on the cute little XML button you find on many different Web
sites. If your browser doesn't know what to do with that and instead shows you a
cryptic page of text, you'll need an RSS reader or aggregator. Keep reading, but
remember that you can also "right click" (or Ctrl-click for you Mac folks) and copy
the link address to your buffer, then paste it into a 'subscribe' field in your reader.

The problem is, I don't want to check 100 RSS feeds any more than I want to visit
100 Web sites every day, and that's where aggregators come in. Whether they're
standalone programs, plug-ins for your favorite Web browser or email program, or
Web-based services, RSS aggregators remember your subscription list, check each
site on a periodic basis, and alert you to any new articles that have been published.

If you're not thinking "wow, very cool" then you are spending too much time visiting
Web sites! To scan the headlines of just a dozen sites on an hourly basis would
probably be a full time job and if you need to keep abreast of your industry, as I do,
then you wouldn't have any time to actually do anything, which would obviously be
deleterious to your career long-term! :-)

So there are programs you can download that are RSS aggregators (or RSS readers,
basically synonymous) for Windows, Mac and Linux/Unix systems. A few of the most
popular are BlogExpress and FeedReader for Windows, NetNewsWire and NewsFire
for Macintosh and Lifera for Linux.

Don't like having yet another application running? You can graft RSS capabilities into
your Web browser (or run Firefox or Safari / Tiger, both of which have elegant built-
in RSS capabilities) or your email program. Notable entries in this category are
NewsGator (grafts into Microsoft Outlook on Windows), Pluck (grafts into Microsoft
Internet Explorer on Windows) and Safari Menu (add-on for Apple's Safari browser
that includes some RSS support).

Finally, you can subscribe to an RSS aggregator Web service which gives you a
custom Web page that includes the newest information from your hand-picked RSS
feeds. The highest profile solution to this is My Yahoo, which recently announced
support for RSS feeds as additional personal home page information sources,
though it just shows you a rolling 'latest five articles' from each source, so it doesn't
work for me because I'd still be left trying to remember which I'd read or not. Other
possibilities include AmphetaDesk, Bloglines, and Feedster.

Instead of those, however, I use a great Web-based product called NewsGator
Online, which gives me the ability to track as many feeds as I like (fellow blogger
Robert Scoble tracks over 1200 in his NewsGator Online account) along with the
flexibility of keeping in sync at home, in my office and on the road.

Whichever solution you choose, I promise you that once you start traveling down the
road of RSS feeds and RSS aggregators, you won't turn back. In fact, you'll find that
every time you go to a Web site that you like, you'll immediately start hunting for
the "syndicate" or "rss" or "xml" button. i certainly do, and I'm more plugged in now
than I could ever have been in the past.

It's a rolling sea of information out there, and an RSS aggregator gives you a sail and
GPS navigation system. It might just save your life out there!

Dave Taylor has been involved with the blogging community for years and is widely
respected as an expert on business
blogging, among other areas.

What Is RSS?

2006-11-30T00:50:00.000-08:00

Recently I did an interview with a well known email Internet Marketer. He wanted to share with his readers a viewpoint on what RSS is from someone who is using it in place of traditional email marketing. Of course this interview was geared towards other Internet marketers so they all somewhat "get" what RSS is, at least in theory.

So, what IS RSS? Again, I find myself laughing, as I did in that interview because I'm fairly new to this RSS business myself. RSS is really an acronym for REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION - well at least that's ONE definition and the one I tend to use. Many people have heard the word syndication tossed around in other media venues, but not when it comes to the Internet until recently. Although RSS has been around for quite some time, it is finally coming into the mainstream like a snowball rolling downhill growing and gathering momentum.

Why? And really, what is RSS? First of all everyone who uses the Internet either in business, personal use, or both, have all come into contact with spam, viruses, spam laws, and heard a lot about it in the media. This whole mess has been extremely frustrating to those who make a living using the Internet, especially by direct email marketing methods. A lot of "fixes" have been tried and are being implemented to try and combat the ever growing frustration and hassle associated with delivering email newsletters to subscribers. This is where the "why" comes into play with RSS. Before I tell you what RSS is, let me explain a bit about email newsletter marketing.

Normally an email newsletter is sent out to a "list" by those who have supposedly opted in, or requested, to receive that newsletter. In fact, most list managers now require double opt-in. "Double opt-in" is just a way of saying you signed up for the newsletter, then received an email asking you to "verify" your subscription - the sender wants to make doubly certain you are the one who signed up for that newsletter. You were sent the verification email by an "autoresponder". An autoresponder is an automatic email sent to you by a service the sender uses and pays for to handle verification and other responses to subscribers. That is done to alleviate having to send out a personal email to every single subscriber which could become extremely tedious and time-consuming otherwise.

Still problems persist, because after all of that many subscribers still "forget" they signed up and file spam complaints, which can lead to investigations, IP bans and even shutdown and confiscation of all related lists, websites and software. Granted, there are some mass-mailers out there who deserve this, but the typical newsletter publisher is trying to deliver helpful, desired content and guards their list very carefully. If you're fortunate enough to get your newsletter through to your subscribers, what happens then? Well, typically, once a subscriber receives your newsletter, they read it and then naturally delete it once they're done reading it. So, you, the email marketer and publisher have gone to all the trouble to put together a newsletter, comply with the spam laws, etc., only to have your hard work deleted all the while dealing with spam issues, paying for list management services and/or paying for autoresponder service.

A much better, more viral method of online marketing can be done with an RSS feed. Let me explain that in terms that we can all understand (me included!):

Whenever we watch a television series, that series is called syndicated programming. The series is produced once, filmed once, and then put out to all the subsidiary stations across the country airing on the same day at the same time according to each time zone. So, the work is done once but duplicated all across the nation on hundreds of affiliate television stations.

RSS on the Internet works on the same concept. You input the "work" once, and every single website that carries your syndication code then receives the information you just input once. As you update your feeds those feeds are automatically updated on every single website that has your syndication code. Another upside to this is that your news does not get deleted by the reader - only you can delete it! Another plus is every website that carries your code gets regular content provided whenever you update your feed automatically. This all keeps those hungry search engines happy too.

So, you provide the content you want to market to your subscribers by providing them the links to your RSS feed from your website, meaning you don't have to send that out by email either. You can have your code posted on your website for anyone to read, and also offer it to webmasters to input into the websites they manage. No link swapping is necessary in this case either as links are not viral like syndication code. It's the difference between offering someone a Lear jet in place of a horse. It's much better to offer your syndication code in a "swap".

So, now you've avoided the spam hassle because anyone reading your feed is doing so willingly and you have not sent them anything by email so no subscription is necessary. You are providing content so not only are your readers happy, your website is happy, other webmasters are happy because you're providing consistent content without them doing a thing, and you've only done the work ONCE! No one is deleting any of your work, except you if you choose. Your work is also staying on the Internet forever. The search engines are way happy too!

So, before you start that email newsletter campaign, why not consider an RSS feed instead? It can be a much more dynamic option for you!

Kim Bloomer publishes several RSS channels using the Quikonnex system. She partners with another Quikonnex publisher, Cathy Carlton, in their Kick the Email Habit channel, where they offer syndicated online marketing services, channel building and management services, and recently opened a new RSS article bank to help others take advantage of the ease of syndicating and sharing RSS based content. Kim and Cathy built and manage the International Virtual Women's Chamber of Commerce (IVWCC) RSS channel. For more details on what she does and to subscribe to her RSS channels go to http://KimBloomer.com

Marketing with Blogs and RSS Feeds.

2006-11-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you still don't realize or fully understand the power of RSS Feeds as a marketing tool.

After all, email works fine, doesn't it?

Unfortunately, the truth is:

1. It's getting harder to send e-mails to the prospect's inbox because of SPAM filters

2. People are getting numbed by the amount of e-mails they receive everyday

3. People are not reading their e-mails

4. It's getting harder to get people to opt-in or subscribe to your newsletter or content.

With RSS feeds, this changes the playing field:

1. RSS feeds can bypasses email - Eat your hearts out! Rss feeds can be read by desktop software
and delivered right to your prospect everytime they turn on their PC

2. RSS feeds allow you to syndicate content rich news in your niche market and attract targeted
prospects

3. People who subscribe to newsfeeds are generally in the higher income bracket and educated.
They want to find news and information to solve their problems. Can that person be YOU?

4. E-mail doesn't allow yourself to be branded all over the Net. With RSS feeds, your content gets
circulated/sydnicated and you can brand yourself as an expert.

5. RSS feeds can be submitted to RSS feeds directories, which will list your site within 24 hours
which measn more traffic for you

These are just some of the few examples of the use of RSS feeds you can use in your marketing.

What are you waiting for? My multimedia e-book cuts to the chase and shows you in VIDEO how to start a blog, create a feed, track it, list it in Yahoo, submit it and mORE..

Get a copy of "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS" NOW!
www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com
and learn the $299 Secret - How to get listed in Yahoo for FREE

Brandon Hong (Infopreneur, Author, Online Marketer)
brandon @ brandon-hong.com
http://www.Marketing-Rampage-With-Blogs-And-Rss.com

Should Bloggers be Helping Google Fix Their PageRank System?

2006-11-24T22:00:00.000-08:00

By now, most bloggers have heard the announcement that the Big 3 search engines - Google, Yahoo, and MSN - have united in support of a new tag that will supposedly combat comment spam. The new tag is a nofollow attribute that can be added to links. When added to links in comment tags, the search engines will ignore them.

An excellent discussion of this new tag and how it works can be found at Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Watch:
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050118-204728

Google announced the new tag in a 1/18/2005 post to their own blog: http://www.google.com/googleblog/

And Microsoft added their support to the new tag in this post: http://blogs.msdn.com/msnsearch/archive/2005/01/18/nofollow_tags.aspx

At first blush, anything that can help cut down the comment spam that most bloggers are daily subjected to would seem to be a good thing. It can be pretty upsetting to access your blog in the morning and find 50 junk comments with links to casino, adult, and pharmacy sites. If your blog has any PageRank, you can expect to find more of this garbage polluting your site every day. Fighting the spread of comment spam has become a necessity.

But after first cheering the proactiveness of the search engines, many bloggers have stepped back and taken a closer look and they don't like what they see. You can read a sampling of their thoughts at Search Engine Watch Forum:
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=3797

Brian Turner's incisive article "New Nofollow Tag Cheers Bloggers but Fails Blogs" discusses some of the potential abuses of the new nofollow tag:
http://www.platinax.co.uk/news/archives/2005/01/new_nofollow_ta.html

And Jim Pryke's article "Bloggers Cheer Google As Their Search Rankings Plummet" makes it very clear that not only will this NOT stop comment spam. But it will actually hurt bloggers as a community:
http://netinstitute.com/archives/2005/01/20/bloggers-cheer-google-as-their-search-rankings-plummet

For an hilarious take on the new tag and how it will get abused, be sure to take a look at Link Condom: http://www.linkcondom.com

I have to agree with these bloggers that the nofollow tag won't even put a dent in the problem of comment spam. You have to realize that the comment spammers who cause the most problems are the ones who use automated bots to spread their spam onto every blog they find. The fact that they find a blog using the nofollow tag won't stop the bot from posting. If you have a popular blog, you'll still wake up every morning to find 50 casino/pharmacy/adult ads on your blog. You'll still have to spend the time deleting those posts to clean up your blog.

You see, the problem to bloggers isn't that those comment links pass PR. It's the fact that those spam posts make your blog look like garbage. Whether the links pass PR or not isn't the big issue for bloggers. It's the time it takes to get rid of unwanted comments and the detraction to their sites. The nofollow tag won't do a thing about that problem. You'll still have the problems, even if you use the tag.

Think about this: how effective have email filters been in stopping email spam? As most of us know, they've hardly done any good at all. Email spam becomes a bigger problem every day. Spammers really don't care if some of their emails are blocked. They just send more of it to compensate. The same will be true of the automated comment spam bots.

The fact of the matter is, there are already much better tools in most blogging software to fight comment spam AND save the time and effort of the blogger at the same time. There are already a number of plugins for WordPress, Moveable Type, and other blogs. There will undoubtedly be more in the future. These tools are already more effective at fighting comment spam than this nofollow tag will ever be.

What is unfortunate is that the people the nofollow tag will really hurt is bloggers themselves. Traditionally, bloggers have read and commented in each other's blogs. And these comments have added value. When I write an article for my blog, I love it when other bloggers take the time to add their insights on the topic I'm discussing. These comments add content to my site and continue the discussion. This is one of the reasons blogs are so easy to grow into topic-specific information-rich sites that are popular with readers. Unlike static sites, they offer two-way communication between reader and blogger. They become communities.

When someone adds this kind of value to my blog, I am more than happy to give them a link to their blog that passes PR. That will help them build the readership of their own blog, grow the community even larger, and add to the richness of the discussion. These are exactly the kinds of links that any webmaster should want on their site!

Adding a nofollow tag to comments can only quash this discussion. It can only discourage commenters with the most to contribute from taking the time to add to the discussion. After all, if the time I spend on another blog doesn't contribute to the growth of the blogging community as a whole or aid in the visibility of my own blog, am I going to spend as much time and effort doing it?

Anything that decreases the open flow of discussion currently enjoyed in the blogging community is a bad deal for bloggers.

The question that should be asked is this: why is comment spam so profitable? After all, if it weren't profitable, so many people wouldn't be going to such ridiculous lengths to do it.

The answer to this is obviously Google's link-heavy PageRank algorithm that forces webmasters to get every link they can to get their site's indexed and ranked. Most webmasters know that in order to get ranked in Google, they had better have a ton of links to their site.

That's the problem with PageRank as an algorithm. It encourages artificial linking between sites that no longer has any relevance whatsoever to the goal of providing good resources to visitors. Do we really believe that most reciprocal link directories provide a resource to our visitors? Not likely! If websites are real estate, reciprocal link directories are the slums, the seedy bars and tattoo parlors on the edges of polite society.

Whole businesses have sprung up as a reaction to PageRank. I'm talking about the link auction and link selling sites. Under the PageRank system, sites aren't being ranked by who provides the best content, but by who has the deepest pockets to buy the most links. Or, in the case of comment spammers, whoever wants to spread their bots all over the internet spamming blogs. This system has over time totally skewed the natural linking between sites that once dominated the internet - the very thing that Google's PageRank system is supposed to reward.

Ironically, blogs are one of the few places left on the web where linking is actually about providing good content to visitors and rewarding value provided on other sites. Bloggers as a group are the most likely to link to sites because of the content value to their visitors. Their links are very likely to be very topic specific. You don't find that on other sites. These are the kinds of links that I would assume Google would want to encourage through their PageRank system, not those junky reciprocal link directories or purchased links.

It would seem to me that the only effective way to cut down on comment spam and all the artificial linking techniques Google purportedly wants to thwart is not by making life harder for bloggers - the very people who link in the most relevant fashion. But at taking a second look at their own PageRank system and whether it is really serving the usefulness of their own search engine and the whole web in 2005.

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

The Viability of Blogging to a Niche Market.

2006-11-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

Niche marketing is an old and very successful marketing strategy whereby a company focuses on marketing and selling to a clearly defined segment of potential consumers. The company earns by supplying a unique product or service to this narrowly defined market which other companies have not met or provided.

Are there potential buyers online? According to the Central Intelligence Agency's latest figures, there are over 185.55 million internet users in the United States alone, of these around 139.52 million active users. The Computer Industry Almanac which compiles statistics on global internet users, records a staggering 934 million users for 2004 and this market continues to grow.

Do these users buy online? Statistics gathered on internet users, show they do and their numbers are increasing. For instance, in December 2004, online sales rose by 53%, from $795 million of the same month 2003, to $1.22 billion 2004, (gathered by CMP Media a service provider of information and marketing services to the technology and healthcare industries). For each unique marketing hook, product and service, your business blog can tap in, that's how many niche markets you can serve.

The next question then to answer: Can your blog be the perfect vehicle for reaching and marketing to your niche?

You should realize that successful blogs go a step further in providing excellent content, as well as regular updates or new content. Most websites provide these services. Rather it is the ability of these blogs to provide the author and the readers' a venue for one-on-one conversations, in an impersonal medium. By sharing commentaries, thoughts and opinions, the author positions himself or herself as being an authority in his or her field of work. If you write content that is relevant to their needs, they'll remember and keep returning to your blog.

But that's not all; you need to have an abiding passion for the subject matter or product you'll sell. Without this, your blog won't stand out and carve itself a niche apart from the other blogs.

In essence, a well researched and crafted business blog is a potential revenue center. It has the authors' personal touch and speaks to the need of this particular consumer. As every marketing analyst knows, when a seller understands his or her consumers well, this seller gets their business.

Mal Keenan is editor and publisher of the Home Business Tips Blog:
http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/blog/

Visit his Internet Marketing Plug In Training site for great strategies and step by step processes in running a successful online business:
http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/

How Can RSS Feeds Help Your Online Business?

2006-11-21T21:59:00.000-08:00

So who should I use RSS Feeds? How can it help with my online business?

1. RSS Feeds allow you to deliver your newsletter/message directly to the desktop of your subscribers and readers, BYPASSING email. As you might have read or heard, email is not getting through to a lot of people, especially now with CAN SPAM law in place, ISPs are filtering a lot of emails with certain subject lines in them.

Imagine if you have a 10,000 list and 20% of your emails doesn't get through.

That means 2,000 mails are not being delivered.

How much sales are you losing from this alone?

It is also costly to hire services that help you do the monitoring and ensure your autoresponders/emails get through.

Your readers and subscribers themselves are getting numb to the constant bombardment of emails from other parties, bear in mind they are not just subscribing to your newsletter.

With RSS Feeds, you can get your readers to subscribe to your news feed using a newsreader software or online web service for reading rss feeds).

This way you can bypass all the email SPAM and reach 100% your readers.

And with some good headlines, you can bet your message gets read.

2. Get your site listed by YAHOO within 24 hours and save $299

With RSS Feeds, you can get your site listed in Yahoo within 24 hours and save $299. Yahoo is currently building an RSS directory and as such has inadvertently opened a "back door", allowing people to list their website with RSS feeds.

This secret is revealed in my multimedia ebook, with video tutorials showing you how to do it. Each day more people are discovering this secret, and I'm not sure when Yahoo will pull the plug.

3. Dominate niche market with RSS feeds

You can create multiple RSS feeds centered around targeted keywords and submit them to RSS directories. There are people who are actually looking for good content online and wants to read and subscribe to news feeds.

They might be searching for news on the keyword "cooking" for example. When someone performs a keyword search and you have your feeds built around that keyword, it will turn up and you get to have more subscribers when they subscribe to your news feeds.

4. More subscribers, more leads, more sales.
RSS feeds give you a wider reach and gain more subscribers you otherwise would not have gotten.

More subscribers mean more leads, and more sales!

RSS allows your newsletter, messages, ads to be syndicated all over the web, giving you a wider reach you otherwise would not have.

Imagine a giant octopus with unlimited tentacles stretching all over the sea searching, looking...well, with RSS feeds, basically you're doint the same thing.

You have to submit your rss feeds though, to the relevant directories, otherwise noboby knows about it.

5. Podcasting

Podcast is the latest application of RSS feeds. Have you heard of webcast?

With Webcast, you have to go to the website where the audio file (mp3 file) is stored.

Podcast take it one step further. It allows you to syndicate your mp3 audio files (such as a web cast or tele-seminar) all over the web and even allows you to download to Apple Ipod.

Your potential customer and readers can listen to your message even without being at the PC. Isn't that fantastic?

Ride the RSS Wave TODAY! Learn more at
www.marketing-rampage-with-blogs-and-rss.com

Brandon is Author of Multimedia Ebook "Marketing Rampage with Blogs and RSS". Unleash the power of blogs and rss feeds to drive more FREE targeted traffic, gain more leads and sales. List in Google and Yahoo for Free and save $299. Dominate niche markets with RSS Feeds

brandon @ brandon-hong.com

http://www.Marketing-Rampage-With-Blogs-And-Rss.com

http://www.brandon-hong.com

Set up a blog for your business.

2006-11-18T00:55:00.000-08:00

What is a blog?

The term ‘blog’ is short for web-log – a constantly updated web page that gives visitors usually a daily update or set of views from a particular person – a sort of on-line diary. Most blogs are run by individuals but an increasing number of businesses are now running their own blogs to keep people informed of – and interested in – their activities. You can usually reply to blog entries as well – but this is not always the case.

What can it do for your business?

Blogs can be used as a marketing tool, giving potential customers a different way of getting a feel for a business than a conventional web site. If the blog is interactive, it can also act as a fairly informal first point of contact for new customers and contacts. By making sure the blog is up to date and interesting, you can encourage people to get into the habit of visiting the site.

If you can make it work, a blog can open up regular dialogue with customers and potential new customers, position you as a market and thought leader – or just as the top dog in your area and expose new ideas or products and services to the market faster.

What to put on Blog pages .

You can use it to put up simple or amusing anecdotes and developments but also more serious information such as new projects, offers and promotions. If you get enough traffic you can even use a blog to test market an idea or an offer. But you do need to keep it up to date – otherwise, visitors will soon drift off to other sites.

Matters of style.

Unless your blog is aimed solely at existing customers, the expected style of writing a blog is light-hearted, engaging and humourous. A blog is not a sales brochure but a way of communicating with existing and potential customers in a more personal way. Content can be personal – your views and thoughts for example on anything that is happening to you or to your business – but never insulting, rude or inflammatory in any way. Nor should it be in any way considered libellous – you are responsible for what you publish on the blog as much as you are responsible for the content of your own web site. You should have a clear statement somewhere that says that the views expressed on the blog are those of the individual employee and do not reflect the opinions of your company as a whole.

Setting up a Blog.

There are lots of on-line web tools that enable you to set up and manage your own web log pretty easily. You can be up and running within an hour or two and thereafter it is just a matter of keeping it up to date. Two of the most popular blog sites are Blogger, which is free; and Typepad, which has a small monthly cost but more customisation options.

You can direct people to the site hosted on their web site, but it looks more professional to buy a standard web address and link that to the site. e.g. www.abclimitedblog.co.uk sounds better than http://abclimited.bloghostingcompany.com. Also see www.businessblogconsulting.com for reviews of various publishing platforms and if you are more comfortable with a familiar approach, take a look at Windows Live Spaces - http://spaces.live.com/

There are numerous software packages that let you add a blog section to an existing web site which is probably the best way to do things if you already have a site.

Using Feedburner to Add Statistics to Your RSS Feed.

2006-11-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

Out of many of the free RSS and blogging services that I have tried one of the most useful has been Feedburner. Feedburner allows you to publish your RSS feed and provides circulation statistics about your RSS feed. It also allows you to make your feed more friendly by using Feedburners Smartfeed system and can also make your feed browser friendly.

The most useful service provided by Feedburner are it's circulation statistics. These statistics are not only useful for yourself to see how popular your feed is but also to provide circulation statistics to potential advertisers. Feedburner can tell you which RSS readers are being used to read your feed, how many readers you have and which posts readers are clicking through back to your website.

Feedburners Smartfeed system can supply the most valid feed by detecting which
RSS reader the user is using. This irons out any potential compatibility problems there may be between your feed and the readers feed reading software. If your visitor click on your RSS feed subscription link Feedburner will provide your visitor with a web friendly version of the feed rather than an unformatted XML file. This is great for educating the reader about RSS feeds.

To use Feedburners services first you need to go to Feedburner and enter your feed link. Your feed link is the address you give your readers to add your feed to their feed readers. Take a look at my RSS sign up page at Newsniche to get a better idea of how this works.

Once you have your feed address enter it into text box on the Feedburner page. Clicking on ok will bring up a page with all of the options for your feed, you will need to decide for yourself which services you need. At the bottom of the page will be your new feed address which you will now offer to your readers instead of your original feed address. Follow the rest of the instructions to complete the process and then you will have an improved feed with statistics.

There is one final point before we finish and it is something optional you may wish to choose. You may wish to keep your existing feed address if you have existing subscribers and to future proof your feed. To do this you will need to use an HTTP redirect in your htaccess file. If this means nothing to you I would suggest further research before doing this.

You will need to add a new line to your htaccess file.

redirect temp /rssfeed.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburnerFeed

You will need to change /rssfeed.xml to the name of your current feed and the Feedburner path to the new feed address you will be given by Feedburner. You will need to point Feedburner to a copy of your feed that only Feedburner will see. You will then offer the /rssfeed.xml feed address you created in your htaccess file to you visitors to subscribe to your feed.

This is how it should work. Feedburner will periodically check your address you gave to Feedburner for new posts. Your visitors will subscribe using the address you used in your htaccess file and get redirected to the feed that Feedburner has created for you. This will mean that in the future if you wish to stop using the Feedburner service all you need to do is remove the line from your htaccess file and your readers will not notice any difference.

Allan is the webmaster at Newsniche an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

How to Get Started Blogging in 5 Minutes or Less.

2006-11-15T01:20:00.001-08:00

I put off starting a blog for a long time because I thought it would be hard. I thought it would be technical. I thought I'd have to install scripts and tear my hair out getting them to work. At that point, most of what I'd read about blogs and RSS was just so much geek-speak.

Was I ever wrong!

When I finally got the courage to give it a go, I went to blogger.com and signed up for an account. To my amazement, I had a blog set up in about 5 minutes. My first post was uploaded to my site about 10 minutes later.

The only thing even remotely technical I was required to do was enter the FTP settings for the website my blog would be published on. But even that wasn't a requirement. With Blogger, you can set up a blog on their site, Blogspot, and not even worry about FTP settings.

Since then, I've started 3 Blogger blogs on different sites. Blogger remains one of the most popular blog applications in the world simply because it is so simple to use and set up. If you're a technophobe or don't have the time to learn something completely new, I would urge you to drop by Blogger.com and take a look. You could be blogging - and enjoying the benefits - almost immediately.

Another very simple blogging tool is Wordpress. This blog is my first Wordpress blog, and I'm very impressed with how powerful it is - as well as simple.

Wordpress is installed on your own website, but don't let that stop you. Most hosts that have Cpanel already have Wordpress ready for you to install. Look in your Cpanel for the Fantastico application, click it open, and then choose Wordpress to install. It will automatically install it on your site for you, and you can start blogging right away.

If your host doesn't already include Wordpress in the scripts on your server, you can still pick it up at:

http://wordpress.org/

Then go to the Wordpress Wiki for instructions on how to install it in 5 minutes:

http://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=5MinuteInstallation

Wordpress is free, open-source software. It is very simple to install, even for technophobes, and has a lot of online documentation. There are also many sites with free Wordpress add-ons and templates. I'm using a template for this blog that I picked up at Alex King's site:

http://www.alexking.org/index.php?content=software/wordpress/styles.php

The Wordpress Wiki is a wealth of information on all things Wordpress, including installation instructions, help files, a long list of template sites, and all kinds of hacks and extras you can use to modify your blog and make it original.

If you're a Wordpress user, another place to visit is the Wordpress discussion forum:

http://wordpress.org/support/

If you're a new blogger, both Wordpress and Blogger are very user friendly. There isn't a long learning curve. And you won't have to learn any new technical tricks. Why not give one of them a try?

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to
visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

Top 9 Reasons Companies Should Blog.

2006-11-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

Below are the top 9 reasons why companies should blog.

1. They the perfect public relations tool. Their personal nature gives you and your organization a unique voice online - a voice heard by the people who matter - your customers and clients, other bloggers and the media.

2. Blogs act as instant-feedback mechanisms. They allow readers to respond to your posts via the comments section or link to them on their own blogs using Trackback. These features provide near real-time feedback on ideas, opinions and issues that affect them, or highlight and address new or existing problems.

3. Blogs help to position you and your company as experts and leaders in your industry.

4. Their simplicity and addictive nature allow you to share more of your knowledge more often. Blogs are about sharing what you know, think and believe on an ongoing basis.

5. Search engines index your blog posts more often because of more frequently updated content. Your ongoing blog and knowledge sharing shows up in the search results, making it easier for your customers and prospects to find you.

6. You can have many conversations with many people at once - something nearly impossible in the brick and mortar world.

7. They're automatic buzz-machines. Go ahead and try it. Blog about something new - a new product or service launch, an improvement to an existing product, or a newly appointed manager. See how fast the news spreads throughout the blogosphere.

8. They're self promotional due to their RSS feeds being aggregated across the net almost instantly, exposing your knowledge to a growing number of potential company evangilists.

9. Companies who blog are considered early adopters, thought leaders and "in". Blogging is cool and companies who blog are cool.

Paul Short is a veteran internet marketer, professional blogging consultant and owns the popular blog directory http://www.getblogs.com

For more information on blogging and marketing with blogs, check out Paul's site at http://www.bloglogic.net

Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business.

2006-11-07T18:24:00.000-08:00

As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you can use and should be taking advantage of.

In recent months blogs have become more and more popular all over the internet. A blog, or weblog, is a personal Web site updated frequently with links, commentary and anything else you like. People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger. (http://www.blogger.com) At blogger.com Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process. This makes it very simple to create several 100 pages within a site all with the same look and feel but with different content. This of coarse is exactly what the major search engines are looking for.

There are several reasons why a work from home internet business entrepreneur like my self would use blogs in their arsenal of marketing tools. The number one reason for me is to gain better search engine exposure. I have several blogs already started. Two are merely work from home business article databases. Every time I write a new article or find a good one someone else wrote, I submit it into my blog which crates a new page in my site. The search engines will find and spider this new page. I also have a work from home tips blog which I try to post several good tips to each week. This is all great content for my work from home internet business web site that my visitors will hopefully want to read.

Blogs also create opportunities for more search engine submissions. Recently with the popularity of blogs special blog search engines have started to emerge. The only way you can submit to one of these special blog search engines is if you have a blog yourself. Blogs create a special rss or xml files that these search engines will look for.

Setting up your blog may initially take some time and effort but it's made much simpler if you use blogger.com. But do not use bloggers hosting service. Be sure to use your own domain and hosting service. This will get you the best results with the search engines. Once you have chosen your main template look and feel of your blog all you need to do is keep posting new and good content that your readers would be interested in to your blog. Eventually over time you will have 100's pages of great content that your visitors will enjoy reading all spidered by the major search engines giving you more traffic and exposure.

Tom Worsley is a successful work from home Internet marketer and independent representative for SFI , Owner and Webmaster for http://www.bigmoolla.com & http://kawarthapublishing.com. This article may be re-published on your site or in your newsletter as long as this resource box is included.

WEBMASTERS CLICK HERE FOR TEXT VERSION

Corporate Blogging: 7 Best Practices.

2006-11-01T23:03:00.000-08:00

Blogs have become one of the hottest communication tools on the Web. Offering the opportunity for anyone to create their own free Web site, encouraging opinions and interaction, blogs provide forums for individuals to create their own highly personal presentations to the Web audience. They also provide for consortia of all types to experience the sort of online community feeling that was pioneered by early newsgroups and by the phenomenal success of AOL in the 1990s.

Blogs have reached into the corporate and government sectors as well. What started out as an outlet for teenage expression and grassroots journalism has turned into a lucrative communications tool for small and large businesses alike.

Corporate Blogging refers to a company producing or supporting a blog that it uses to accomplish business objectives. As with anything, there are certain "best practices" to be followed to ensure your company reaps the maximum benefits. These seven tips guidelines will help make your blog a success.

1. Fine Print. Blogging can lead to legal issues. Companies should have real concerns about liability, exclusions and limitations, and indemnity. Although there are laws that protect against libel, misappropriations and other injuries suffered as a result of posts on the Web, companies can still be held "vicariously" responsible for statements made by employees that are harmful to others. Since there are so many legal issues surrounding blogs, it is imperative that the site has some sort of disclaimer and limitation of liability.

2. Know What You're Doing. Senior management should be educated by the corporate communications and legal department about what blogs are and how they might affect business. That way, they can be contributing members of the blog, further improving employee relations. Their support and participation is often what makes a blog more effective.

3. Create blogging policies. In any medium where an employee is sharing information, there is the possibility of leaking trade secrets or financial information. Blogging also has a tendency to become personal. A company should have a list of policies regarding blogging to ensure that trade secrets are kept secret and personal lives do not become public. Policies may include keeping financial information from being posted, as well as severe consequences for anyone using the blog for negative publicity.

4. Avoid the Marketing Blog. Making your blog into a blatant marketing campaign is a bad idea. Customers are looking for real answers and honest opinions. They will pick up on insincerity instantly. Use the blog for what it's for, transparency. This is an opportunity to make a real connection with your customers. Don't ruin it by filling it with empty advertising.

5. Keep It Fresh. Blogs are usually judged by their amount of new content. Easy to add on to, they are designed to be updated constantly. To keep your readers coming back, make your content relevant and timely. Don't forget, content can include anything from product releases to job openings, recent news to thoughts from the CEO. It's practically impossible to run out of material.

6. Reinforce the company's core values. Use your blog to reflect your company's inner soul: its mission, goals and direction. A blog is just another medium by which you interact with your customers and employees. It's another part of the brand experience. It should be consistent with the impression the company wants to make.

7. Encourage employees to use it. Create an atmosphere where they are comfortable asserting their opinions and concerns. You'll be surprised how the quietest employees will speak up when given such an opportunity. With all communication, blogging can become negative, so remind employees of the public nature of the blogs and the ramifications for their actions.

About the Author:

Kari White is a Content Developer for Brook Group, a Web design firm near Washington, DC. More articles by this author can be found at http://www.brookgroup.com/ and http://www.usabilityandbranding.com/.

Source: http://www.isnare.com/

Blogging on Ecademy will boost your web site.

2006-11-01T23:02:00.001-08:00

For many people blogging is the way in which they are able to update their web site with new information and fresh content. As such, blogs are a great way of gaining returning visitors to your web site.

However, there are other places you can post blog entries which can also affect the popularity of your web site. One such place is Ecademy.com.

Ecademy is the world's largest online network of people in business. Once you sign up as a member you get access to the blogging system within Ecademy. This allows you to post entries to the Ecademy blog. You can post anything, as long as it is not an advertisement.

However - and here's the important part - if your blog entry on Ecademy includes a link back to your own web site you will benefit. That's because Ecademy is one of the world's most frequently updated web sites; it changes every minute. As a result it is adored by the search engines who re-index Ecademy several times a day in some instances.

This means if you post a blog entry on Ecademy, include in it some keywords related to your site and have a link to your site in your signature, you will be indexed by the likes of Google. Once your link is seen within Ecademy you get a bonus benefit. Not only is your link followed through by the search engines, but because your link is on a high profile site, your site is seen more favourably.

However, you need to ensure that your entry on Ecademy is real content - no keyword stuffing for instance. If your entry is not useful it can be removed by the Ecademy staff. Even if it is allowed, Google will not see your site as important if your blog entry isn't focused on what your site is about. But if you post entries onto Ecademy which are directly related to your web site you will see search engine benefits.

Furthermore, you'll also see many people visit your site as a direct result of your link in the Ecademy blog. So, don't just think of blogging on your own site; add your blog postings to Ecademy as well.

For more answers to blogging questions you can get a free guide to the Top 15 Questions About Blogging from: http://www.infoselling.com/blogging/howtoblog.htm

About the Author

Blogging and Pinging- Powerful Backdoor Into Major Search Engines.

2006-11-01T23:01:00.001-08:00

Most of you know what a blog is. But have you ever had to ping a web site? Did you know that the two together, blog and ping have become the talk of the seo forums lately on how powerful these two techniques together can be at getting any web site no matter how small or large, indexed almost immediately by the major search engines and for free.

If you're a webmaster then you know how frustrating it can be to be able to get your site listed and indexed in the major search engines in a reasonable amount of time. You spend countless hours creating your site, adding content, checking keyword density, etc... You then take the time to hand submit your site to all the major search engines like Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN and then wait... and wait for the spiders to come index your web pages.

If you're lucky they may come by this week, this month, or even this year. After spending all your time and money in the development of your site the last thing you want to do is wait forever for it to show you the fruits of your labor. You want to get it listed as fast as possible. Now there are some ways you can get the spiders to visit your site sooner. Like posting to similar high ranking forums, buying high PR rated links, or submitting articles on your subject and linking back to your site.

All of these techniques work and work well, along with some other methods not mentioned here. But they all still take time. Some may work faster then others, but how would you like it if you could learn how get your site spidered and indexed by all of the major search engines in only 48 hours without spending a dime?

By blogging and pinging you can do just that. You need to follow some simple steps in setting up this strategy. But once set up it can become a major tool to getting any of your sites listed quickly.

Setting these steps up isn't hard you just need to do them in a proper sequence or all your work will be in vain. But with the proper research you could very well be on your way to getting your site indexed and listed in as little as a few days.

About the Author

Ted Kushner is a internet research junkie. Bringing you updated information on a wide variety of subjects including health, finance, and web promotion. You can find additional information on blogging and pinging at: http://www.affiliaterevenuesources.com/blog-and-ping-case-study.html

BlogJet 1.6.2 Review

2006-10-30T02:11:00.000-08:00

"BlogJet is a weblog client for Windows that allows you to manage your blogwithout opening a browser. Those who are seriously concerned with blogging, cannot imagine their work without using this wonderful tool with elegant interface. "

Blog clients allow you to update your weblog straight from your desktop. Blogjet offers this feature, plus more.

Easy to setup, easy to manage you blog. Intuitive Account Wizard helps you to create a new blog or use an existing one with BlogJet (it supports almost all leading blog services Blogger, blogging.com, Wordpress, MSN Space and other. Now Blogger bate is not suport) Furthermore, the intuitive smart interface of BlogJet will help you to start using the program right away. And if you have many blogs, you can manage them all from BlogJet. Use Manage Accounts. BlogJet integrates with Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox browsers; FeedDemon, RSS Bandit, NewsGator and other news aggregators to enable you easily blog about the current web page or news items.
Not only does it have a straightforward WYSIWYG editor, it can even act as a FTP tool (if you have FTP hosting). Some of my favorite features also include: multiple blog support, back editing (ability to edit the last 5 posts), automatic excerpt generation and ability to choose multiple categories (if your blog supports this).
It's also very quick and easy to install and to operate. But, my biggest problem with it is that it can get quite unstable. Sometimes, the FTP functions don't work. Or, at times, I would be given an error message even though my entry did get published successfully.

Pros

Light program, easy to install.

Easy to use.

Simple and clean interface.

Great features - including audio blogging capabilities.

easily insert photos from your flickr account.

Cons

Limited documentation for novice users.
Curently only available for Windows platform.
A bit buggy - occasionally shows some instability.

Blog Farm Pro Review.

2006-10-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

Blog Farm Pro Review

Before we begin I will warn you that Blog Farm Pro is not for the feint of heart. You will need to be a fairly experienced web user to realise the full potential of this set of tools. In particular you will need to be familiar with the Web Host Manager/Cpanel software. Having said that, there are very useful screen capture videos detailing every major process so if you can learn, you can use BFP.

On to the review ... rarely does a piece of software come along which gets my juices flowing like this fantastic offering from a couple of guys who've managed to create what is possibly the most powerful set of tools you could find online to help you profit from blogging.

In case you haven't heard, blogging is all the rage. There are even recognized blog awards putting this modern age phenomenon firmly on the map as something which allows almost anyone the chance to express their opinion and strike up a dialogue with those of a like mind. Very simply, a blog is an online diary with the option of allowing the readers to comment on the entries posted by the blog owner. A blog is a great 'community builder'.

Partly because of the social aspects involved, search engines absolutely love blogs and using them as a way to make money with programs like Google Adsense can be very profitable. Using the free blog software known as WordPress it is very easy to set yourself up with a blog, begin posting content and hopefully begin profiting from clicks on your Adsense.

Once you begin down this route you soon begin to realize that three or four blogs are simply not enough if you want to make good money with contextual advertising programs such as Adsense. This is where it comes down to numbers pure and simple. To make real money using this method you need to dramatically scale up the number of blogs you own.

An initial target would be seven hundred to one thousand WordPress blogs. With this in mind, once you see how long it takes to setup one blog (even though the install process is very simple) you will realize that it could take you a very long time to set up enough blogs to begin making good money. When we are talking these kinds of numbers the system is referred to as a blog farm. Using blog farms there are some very tidy incomes being earned online but it does take work.

For this reason, I was very excited when my friend introduced me to Blog Farm Pro. For a minimal investment you gain access to an exclusive membership site providing you with a comprehensive set of tools which enables you to build anywhere from ten to as many as three hundred blogs or more in one day. I haven't tried to calculate the amount of time this site has saved me but I know we are talking days not hours.

Here's a quick rundown of the main tools available to the Blog Farm Pro user.

Blog farm tools

* Blog Farm Creator
* Blog Farm Subdomain Creator
* Spider/Poster 1&2
* Pinger

Site building tools

* Domain Hosting Creator
* Subdomain Creator
* Content Manipulator
* Web Site Builder

Control tools

* Simple Cron Editor
* Advanced Cron Editor

Misc tools

* Article Regenerator - Single
* Quick Blog Creator
* Quick Database Creator
* Quick Cron Creator
* Quick Pinger
* List Shuffler

Everything has been specifically designed to run on Cpanel servers. If you are using any other kind of server software then Blog Farm Pro will be no good to you.

The blog farm tools are the core of the system. Here you can create multiple pre configured WordPress installations using randomly selected themes with custom plugins all of your choosing. Blogs can be created on top level domains or sub domains.

Blog Farm Pro sequentially works through your list of blogs to be created. It actually logs into your web host manager, creates the domain (or sub domain), database and WordPress installation all in one go ... awesome! Once your blogs are created you can give the spider a list of web sites whereupon it will go off and spider those sites posting the content (with a link back) to your specified selection of blogs at a schedule determined by you. Doesn't get much better than that.

The site building tools are also very useful. Here you can create multiple Cpanel domain hosting accounts and any number of sub domains. These tools dramatically increase the speed at which you can create your hosting accounts. If you have ever tried to sit down and create a thousand sub domains you will appreciate how useful these tools actually are.

With the content manipulator, site builder and FTP upload facility, Blog Farm Pro brings weblog/site-building on a massive scale easily within the reach of every web marketer.

The control tools allow you to set your schedules for spider posting and here you can also select the ping schedule. The pinger allows you to specify any number of blogs and ping them from a regularly updated rotating proxy IP list at a schedule you determine (phew!). Again, the seasoned Adsense blogger will absolutely love this feature.

The miscellaneous tools provide you with an article regenerator, single blog, database and cron creators a quick pinger and a list shuffler which are all very handy items to have in your toolbox. The owners of Blog Farm Pro are very responsive and you will always get an answer to any questions you may have on the forums.

I have used Blog Farm Pro enough to know that this is something I really cannot do without. If you want to build massive blog farms in a very short space of time then Blog Farm Pro is definitely worthy of further investigation. The amount of time this package saves you is enough to give you that competitive edge which you need to succeed in the Adsense blogging game.

Just imagine ... you could easily build a thousand blogs in a week - hell you could build three thousand! Now if each one of those blogs only earns you one dollar per month then you would be making one thousand to three thousand dollars a month. Now we're talking!

The idea behind Blog Farm Pro was actually not to create monetised blogs but to use your blog farms as a means of getting your money sites indexed in the engines. The theory goes: build your blog farms, build your sites, post your sites to your blog farms and watch the indexing happen. This works too and whichever way you decide to use BFP I'm sure you'll quickly come to realise that here's a set of tools you really need ... like, yesterday!

Article Source: Article Beam - a service of A1 Web Server Web Hosting

More info on Blog Farm Pro. Fabio Marcell is an online entrepreneur with a fascination for anything that automates menial tasks :) He especially enjoys reviewing software and would love to hear from you if you have a tool which you need a write up for. You can contact him here: fabio @ linkz-and.info

RSS more effective than email.

2006-10-27T20:46:00.000-07:00

Long have I been proclaiming the effectiveness of RSS as a communications channel for non personal communications over that of email. The protection and anonymity that RSS can offer over email means that it is fast becoming the preferred medium for many users. It seems visitors to your site now put more trust in RSS as they are five times more likely to subscribe to an RSS feed as they are to the equivalent information via email.

A recent article from Rok Hrastnik at Marketing Studies shows that there is greater trust in RSS over email as well as RSS being more effective at attracting visitors back to your site. Over a 48 hour period it was shown that the average CTR from feed to site was 23 percent. That means that nearly a quarter of the readers of your RSS message click through back to your main site.

Rok's report also shows that there is a 6.8 percent average CTR from a content item in your feed to the web page that the content item points to. Better still is the results that show a 150 percent CTR from your feed to the site within a 30 day period. That means on average each subscriber of your RSS feed clicks through to your site one and a half times each month.

The report also points from data obtained from Lockergnome where it is shown that RSS subscribers out number email subscribers by 5 to 1. This clearly shows the increased take up of RSS, particularly among the more tech savvy internet audience.

At http://newsniche.com/ I have often argued that one of the major benefits of RSS over email is that it does not have the flaws that makes it susceptible to spam and control over the subscription to the information you provide is totally in the hands of the subscriber. This makes RSS subscribers more confident than email subscribers that they can unsubscribe knowing they will no longer receive communications from that source.

I have seen numbers banded about that show there are as few as 5 percent of the browsing public use RSS. The reason for this is that it is not yet as ubiquitous as email, but email has had a lot longer to be established. I truly believe that these results will encourage more webmasters to offer RSS feeds to their readers and help educate the browsing public to the benefits of this form of communication.

Allan is the webmaster at http://www.newsniche.com/ an RSS resource for webmasters. Learn how to use RSS to attract and retain visitors to your site.

What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business?

2006-10-27T20:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a long day at work and you're in no mood to cook dinner or go out. Time to count on the reliable pizza delivery guy. The order is called in and he promptly arrives with smokin' hot pizza within 30 minutes as promised. If it were only that easy with a picky family where no one can agree on the same restaurant for dinner. One wants Mexican, another wants Chinese, and another wants a burger and Mexican. Instead of running to three different places, you call a delivery service that goes to all of them and brings it to you. What could be easier in getting a meal without cooking it or fetching it?

RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom are the food delivery guy of the Internet. The content they deliver is mixed and cooked elsewhere on the Internet just like the meal isn't made on your door step and the acronym fellows bring the content to you via software or an online application. Instead of trying to remember all the places where you like to go to get the latest news, it all comes to you once you order your food.

Click on any of those orange or blue RSS, XML, or RDF buttons and you see unreadable text. Some of it is readable, but reading between the is slow and difficult. In this case, you've got the raw ingredients of the content known as a feed. To make it easily readable, download a feed reader that can interpret (aggregate) the ingredients or sign up for an online service that can do the same.

When the software or application is ready to go, click on the orange or blue button (or "Syndicate This Page," or whatever is along these lines) and copy the resulting URL from the address box. Paste it into the application to cook the ingredients where it's delivered to you ready for your enjoyment.

Syndication is a not a new concept on the Internet, but it's growing in popularity as more Web sites and newsletters are churning content to turn it into syndicated files, which are fed into an aggregator. Think of it as the content that's ready to travel anywhere it needs to go. Grab the feed and feed it to the aggregator, another way of bookmarking (or creating a favorite) a site because you wish to come back again another time. But how often did you go back to the site through your bookmarks / favorites?

Instead of schlepping from site to site in search of information, I have it all in front of me via the aggregator. The feeds are sorted in folders by topic for easy finding. If I'm writing about the latest virus or worm, then I open the security folder with the security-related feeds and scan them. Scanning content through aggregators is easier than on a Web site because it's in one folder with headlines and maybe a short summary. On a Web site, you're only getting the benefit of that site's news and no where else. The folder has news from over ten resources including blogs, news sites, and newsletters.

Any content can be syndicated. It's a matter of having the backend process in place, which is dependent on the application used for managing the content. If a site doesn't have such resources, then there is software for entering content to create a file with the feed for posting on the site.

Most aggregators have exporting capabilities so the feed can be shared with others interested in the same topic. If you're interested in my security feeds, I can export them into, in most cases, an OPML file and you can import it into your aggregator.

Spam filters are preventing readers from getting newsletters or they get lost in the spam pool. Offering a feed for the newsletter is a compromise. Readers can get the content, only instead of it coming to the emailbox, it comes through the aggregator. It's a way around spam. Like everything else, it has its advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

Filters can't stop the newsletter from reaching its destination.

The recipient will get it - if the server is down, it'll download next time and email can get lost.

The feed can be syndicated providing more exposure for your content.

Disadvantages:

Rely on readers to open aggregators like they open email client, but some aggregators are built-in with an email client like NewsGator and there are online aggregators like Bloglines, which can be your home page.

Metrics won't be as complete, but it's still there through the links.

Not as pretty as HTML-based newsletters.

If the feed is automatically created, what have you got to lose? You're providing another way for your readers to get your content just like you can get pizza in different ways: go to the restaurant, have it delivered, or make it at home. More applications are adding syndication capabilities, which make the process effortless. Some have said they won't read something unless it has a feed.

Syndication works better than bookmarks. With bookmarks, you click on a site that might have the security information and arrive there to find it doesn't. So, back to the bookmarks to click on another site. Lather, rinse, repeat. With aggregators, there is no jumping from site to site. Scan the headlines right there until you find what you need.

There was a time when we didn't have the option to have pizza delivered to our doorstep. When we're too tired, we know we can rely on the delivery guy. In term of content, expect to see it show up at your doorstep more often than the pizza guy plus it's cheaper with the cost only coming from the software though there are many free options available. Syndication is here to stay and should be added to a company's communication toolbox rather than as a replacement. Witness it by watching for RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom out there.

Meryl K. Evans is the Content Maven behind meryl.net who increases conversion rates by writing and editing content so organization can focus on their core business. She is the editor-in-chief of the eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik's The Remediator Security Digest. Visit her Web site at http://www.meryl.net/blog/

What Are RSS Feeds.

2006-10-27T10:36:00.001-07:00

RSS Feeds.

RSS also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article.

Benefit to the Webmaster:
As the web has become more crowded webmasters have been striving to provide fresh and up to date content for their website visitors. Many webmasters have discovered they can easily utilize the information in RSS feeds to provide fresh web content.

RSS feeds are composed in XML, which is a very simple markup language. Similar to HTML, XML uses tags to identify fields. Webmasters can easily parse the RSS feed and dynamically create web pages that contain headlines and summaries. The feeds will continuously update, supplying a steady stream of automatically generated fresh content.

RSS allows webmasters to:

1.) Provide fresh and relevant content on their website, which encourages users to return.

2.) Constantly changing content means that search engine spiders will visit more frequently.

3.) Automate content delivery.

The benefits of RSS feeds are not limited to webmasters, surfers too benefit from the technology as well.

Benefit to Web Surfers:
The beauty of RSS is that readers can quickly scan headlines (titles) and read articles of interest. Because the information is condensed and provided in a single location users can generally review more information in a shorter time frame. Additional information is only a click away. Best of all readers choose the feeds they wish to see, there is no spam with RSS. If you are not completely thrilled with the content appearing in a feed simply remove it from the newsreader. The technology is a pull technology rather than push technology, meaning the content is not forced on the consumers, who pull the content they want to see.

RSS allows for users to:
1.) Easily locate information.

2.) Read condensced information or 'soundbytes' with clearly marked and dated topic material.

3.) Classify and categorize information in an easy to navigate manner.

4.) Maximize their time without having to deal with spam.

RSS feeds can be viewed in a news aggregator or reader, which constantly updates and shows unread feeds. I found the functionality of the newsreaders to be similar to a simple email client. Consumers generally enter the URL of any RSS feeds that interest them. Topics with a common theme can be segregated into related groups.

I highly recommend FeedDemon http://www.feeddemon.com by BradSoft as a newsreader. FeedDemon is extremely easy to use and allows for quick scanning and indexing of topics. FeedDemon allows users to quickly scan, sort and scroll through headline and article summaries, while viewing the actual content in a split screen web browser.

Finding Topic Specific Relevant Feeds
In order to find feeds that provide niche information users can search Feedster. Feedster http://www.feedster.com is a rapidly growing news search engine that indexes information contained within RSS feeds. Searches for topic specific feeds can be conducted and feeds can be retrieved for syndication.

Benefit to Content Developer
While the benefits to users and webmasters are clear the distribution opportunities made available to content developers should not be overlooked. Information contained in the RSS feed can be easily syndicated, increasing content distribution and reach.

RSS allows for content developers to:

1.) Increase exposure in niche markets.

2.) Communicate with user bases and reach potential customers via an alternate communication method.

3.) Disseminate relevant information.

4.) Define themselves as an industry expert.

5.) Automate content delivery.

RSS has effectively standardized the format for content delivery and has effectively defined the accepted standard for content distribution and syndication. RSS will likely rival email as a means of content distribution in another few years. The shear simplicity makes the technology very appealing.

The distribution potential, while albeit difficult to measure, is still attractive to all parties making the likelihood that RSS popularity will only continue to grow.

RSS Feeds to Try
Feeds exist for almost any topic consider trying these feeds out by entering the url in your feed reader:

Small Business Feed - small business tips and news
http://www.small-business-software.net/blog-feed.xml

Software Marketing Blog Summary - software marketing and online news
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/blog-feed.xml

SMS, Wireless Messaging Related News. - news related to telecom, wireless industry and NotePage's software
http://www.notepage.net/blog-feed.xml

Free Content Articles - collection of free content articles, updates when new article is released.
http://www.small-business-software.net/article-feed.xml

Software Marketing News - news related to software conferences, awards, software development and marketing
http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/feed.xml

About the Author:
Sharon Housley manages marketing for NotePage, Inc. http://www.notepage.net a company specializing in alphanumeric paging, SMS and wireless messaging software solutions. Other sites by Sharon can be found at http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com, and http://www.small-business-software.net

An Appeal To The Bloggers!

2006-10-25T23:24:00.001-07:00

Blogging is smart an art. Blog sites are the nicest portals which do aid people to unfurl their inundating mind streams, in umpteen aspects and share their ideas and experiences. It satiates several yearning hearts by being a platform for unleashing the artistic potencies from within, in writing reviews, articles, poems, stories, etc.

Personally, I've been craving for such a thing for a substantially long period, until my student and above that my friend, Mr. K. Rakesh, kraki@rediffmail.com, to whom I am grateful, came to my rescue by acquainting me with one blog site. (Visit - http://srinispree.blogspot.com) There is ample scope for registering our stuff, which might be of mammoth use to many others. To publish and later tweak it to the anticipated levels of perfection and subsequently seeing the transition for ourselves is an ethereal experience! I hope many of you know this better than me.

My humble plea is only this - please don't use blogs for perverted purposes or illegal intentions. There are lot more areas for such things. Spare blogs!

Certainly blogs are also for fun and frolic, but within the bounds of acceptability.

May it be a perpetual source of inspiration, nurturing sensational writings that vibrantly serve humanity, yielding reciprocal harmony and international integrity in a broader sense, in near future. In the present context... at least self-improvement.

About The Author

Srinivasa Moorthy

I've a innate craving to write and register many of my thoughts/values...I would like to start with reviewing PC games, movies and stories, writing articles of general/social values and publishing interesting snippets, poems, etc., in English!

srinivasa_moorthy@yahoo.co.in

Why Wordpress is now my Blog of Choice?

2006-10-25T23:20:00.000-07:00

The more I use Wordpress, the more I love it. It has 2 very important features that Blogger doesn't yet support.

1.you can set up Wordpress to automatically ping all the RSS and blog feed directories every time you make a post. This is a very powerful feature if you want your blog to get a lot of traffic right away. On top of that, you'll be quickly developing backlinks to your blog almost automatically.

Think about how long it can take you to build a regular site, get the search engines to index it, get backlinks to improve your listings, and then start getting traffic. A blog like Wordpress can do all that "grunge" work for you automatically.

2. Wordpress allows the use of Categories. Categories are a very powerful way to improve the structure of your site both for human visitors and for the search engines.

Let's say the topic of your site is Widgets. You could create a Category for black widgets, one for orange widgets, and one for green widgets.

Now when you add posts to your blog, you can choose which of your categories your post belongs to. Now your blog will archive your past posts not only by their month and date, as Blogger does. But also by Category.

So if you have a visitor who is especially interested in green widgets, they can easily find all your posts on green widgets. They don't have to go through your entire archives to find them. With a blog that has been around for awhile and has hundreds of posts, that would be pretty discouraging. Using Categories makes it very easy.

Categories are also very search engine friendly. When you use Categories in your blog, there is a link on every one of your pages to your categories. Think about this: would you rather be #1 in the search engines for March 2003, or for green widgets, one of the main keywords of your site?

By using the Category feature, you will eventually have hundreds of pages on your site with links to green widgets, black widgets, and orange widgets. All those backlinks to those keywords can result in much higher search engine rankings.

Another neat feature is that you can easily create an RSS feed for each of your categories. Then every time you post to your blog, it could be pinging the Blog/RSS directories for each feed!

Compare that to putting up a new page on a traditional website. Even if the search engines find your new page right away, it might be a month or two before it actually gets indexed and starts drawing traffic. It might be a long time before it enjoys a first page position for its keywords.

It's almost amazing how easy all this is with a well-structured blog like Wordpress with Categories enabled!

For more tips and ideas on how to make money blogging, be sure to
visit my "Why Marketers Should Blog" weblog at (what else)
http://www.WhyMarketersShouldBlog.com

Tips for Better Blogging - Promote any Product or Service

2006-10-25T21:05:00.000-07:00

People start blogs for all kinds of reasons. Ego. Political comment or agenda. Staying in touch with family and friends. Marketing. Why did you start your blog?

If you want your blog to get read, and your readers to be loyal followers, you had better structure it to their liking. Here are some tips for better blogging and basic blogging advice for anyone who wants to promote a product or service using blogs and RSS.

Write in a conversational tone. Forget what you learned in school, and just write the way you'd speak. Think of yourself as talking to a friend, or writing a letter to a friend when you compose the entries to your blog.

Check your spelling and grammar. In spite of what I just said above, use your spell checker, and a grammar checker if you have it. You'll have zero credabilatee if you can't even spell it!

Pick an interesting topic, and stick with it. People don't want to know what you ate for breakfast, or who broke your heart lately. They read your blog looking for information, and they won't stick around long unless they perceive you as a credible expert on whatever topic you
are writing about.

Stay informed. Especially if your blog is of a business nature, do enough research to be informed of the latest trends and information. If you expect to maintain your credibility, you had better know what you're talking about. Be prepared to write about the latest developments and hot new trends. Don't just "rehash" old stuff that has been around forever, and blogged to death.

Be yourself. If you're naturally funny, or opinionated, many of your readers will love you for it. They want information, but they also want to be entertained. If you can combine the two, you have a ready-made formula for success.

Keep it short. Blog readers aren't looking to read a novel on your blog. Keep your entries short and to the point. A couple of hundred words is more than enough. If you have more to say, split it into a series of entries, or write it up as an article and post it somewhere, and then link to it from a shorter entry in your blog. By the way, that's a great way to use natural links to get both links and traffic to a website.

Update frequently, but don't burn yourself out. Many of the blogs I've visited seem to contain a few entries, and then go stagnant for months. Others will have a flurry of entries, and then nothing. In both cases, they're going to die. You need to update with some regularity, to keep your
readers coming back. It seems to me that a couple of times per week ought to do it, but I'm not aware of any studies that would back that up. Blog every day, or every hour, and you'll burn out quickly.

Don't post nonsense. If you have nothing new to say, keep your fingers off that keyboard! Better to have some really gritty commentary on an irregular basis, than to fill your blog up with fluff and drive away your fans.

Don't turn your blog into a blatant sales pitch. If you're using your blog as a marketing vehicle, be subtle about it. People hate the feeling they are being subjected to a sales pitch. You can weave references to your product, or affiliate links, into solid, informative content, which is what people will read your blog looking for. Give them what they want!

Happy Blogging!

John Barbour, Ph.D. is the author of a new blogging guide which teaches people how to promote any product or service online using blogs and RSS.

John also maintains several internet marketing educational websites, and manages a new directory for blogs related to intern marketing. Visit the emarketing blog directory and find an interesting blog, or submit your own for inclusion.