WHAT IS BLOGGING? [BY B.S.BISHT]

 

What is Blogging?

Blogging is the spontaneous overflow of our heart's feelings in words. It's just the creating of minds. It's a huge writing of information which enrich the knowledge and information to society. Blogging 101 If writing is an art, then, blogging is one way of using words to come up with an art. This is because people who are into blogging are the ones who are artistic on their own sense, carefully choosing words that would best describe their feelings, sentiments, wishes, desires, and everything. Basically, blogs were first introduced as weblogs that refer to a server's log file. It was created when web logging hit the virtual market. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, web logging gradually saturated the virtual community making the Internet a viable source of greater information.

THE PART OF DIARY PAGES

 However, with web logging, you still need a web site and domain names, but with blogging, you do not need anything just an account with blog providers. In most cases, these kinds of blogs are free of charge. With the onset of blogging in the industry, personal journaling had been a common ground for people who wish to be known all over the world. However, not literally famous as this is not a case on being popular or well-known personality. Generally, blogs are created for personal use. Like a journal, people can write their daily adventures, sentiments, and whatever ideas they want to express online.

ONLINE BUSINESS IN VIRTUAL MARKET

 Nevertheless, with the advent of the online businesses, blogs had gradually taken the limelight in providing businesses a chance to boost their productivity online. This is where the business blogs have taken the limelight. Business blogs are, basically, created to advertise the services or products of a certain web site or online business in order to increase online sales. Moreover, business blogs are also one way of promoting the company so that the other readers will know that a certain company exists online. With blogs, entrepreneurs are able to establish a name in the virtual market through articles that can be very useful in the reader's life. From there, you can make money out of blogs by simply syndicating it to your business's web site. This can be done through the RSS technology. 

SOME USEFUL TIPS FOR CREATING A BLOG

So, if you are thinking to create a blog, whether for business or for pleasure, you need to know some tips that could help you get through and make your blog one of the interesting blogs online. Here's how: 

1. Consider your audience Even if your blog is generally personal, still, it would be better to consider the minds of your readers. You have to think of something that would interest them. After all, most of the reasons of people who write blogs are not at all confined to their own personal motives. Most of them would love to be heard (or read) and would love to be known, in some way or another, even for just a minute. Hence, it is very important to come with a write up that everybody can understand, not necessarily that these people can relate to it but they can understand it. 

2. Pictures speaks a thousand words To make your blogging worth the browsing effort of your readers, it would be extremely nice if you will put some pictures in it. It does not necessarily mean you have to place a picture of yourself. Any photographs will do as long as it does not pose danger or insult to anyone who will be reading your blog.

 3. Make constructive and beneficial blogs Even if you are free to write anything you wan to say to the world, still, it would be better to create some write-ups that would be beneficial to your readers. After all, its information technology that you have there so better be inclined to provide information rather than sheer quirky entertainment. 

4. Avoid making multifaceted and complicated blogs In order to have an interesting blogs, try not to use some highly technical and highfalutin words. After all, it is not a science discourse or a debate that you are making, so better stick to simple facts and short blogs. Bear in mind that most people who use the Internet usually do more scanning than scrutinizing each site word for word. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers just because you have these lengthy articles.

 5. Make it interactive As much as possible and if your capacity will allow it, make your blog interactive. Yu can do this by placing some video or audio clips in your blog. You can even place an area for comments or for some feedbacks.

 In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions of other people. Who knows, you might even gain some friends just by making them feel at home in your blog site. Indeed, blogs are not created just for the mere fun of it. It also has its own purpose in the world of the Internet. Therefore, for people who wish to harness their craft, as far as writing is concerned, blogs are the best way to do it. As they say, blogging is the contemporary term of creative and commercial writing.

Why You Should Blog!

I have been blogging for just over 12 months now. Many of my mentoring students have been asking my advice on blogging. I have so far hesitated to teach much about blogging, because it's not something I feel I should know about yet. I feel much more comfortable teaching about things I know. Well! I took a look at Alexa today and noticed that this blog almost hit the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet today. I have been seeing success with many of the methods that are unique to blog promotion. I felt it was time to write a post about blog promotion. BUT wait! I haven't even explained why I have this blog thing. I can't really jump into getting traffic to your blog without explaining why I have a blog and why you should have one too; now can I start helping you?

SUCCESS ON THE INTERNET

 Let's go back to my history. I made it online without many of the tools you see me offering today. I had no products. I had no copywriting ability. My search engine ranking data was my key to my original success on the Internet. I would simply create high ranking web-sites for some market and sell the traffic from those sites directly to those who did have copy writing ability and products. Obviously I no longer recommend that. Having your own product and copywriting ability are both multipliers to knowing how to get traffic.

FOCSS ON YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS

 Now-a-days I focus on all three aspects of your Internet business and recommend that you do the same. With that said I don't underestimate the traffic business. Consider this. Who is the richest man in soft ware business in the world? Right. Bill Gates. He sells software. Software is a good business! Consider this though. Who are the 3 leading sites on the Internet? Go check Alexa if you don't know. OK; don't check. I'll just tell you: 

1. Yahoo 

2. Google

 3. MSN (Microsoft)

 Now take a look at that third one. That's the company that Bill Gates (the richest man in the world; remember?) started. Now he's messing around on the Internet in the #3 spot. Now; let's take a jump here. What do those three sites sell? Ok; take a minute on this one. There will be a test. That's right. They sell traffic (or they mostly sell traffic. Yahoo and MSN are a tiny bit more diverse than that). Now isn't that interesting? The richest man in the world in software business? who go that way by selling software? now wants to sell traffic. OK; that was a diversion. We'll come back to that later. What I wanted to tell you about was my experience selling traffic (which is still the largest part of my business). I made a mistake. I sold traffic anonymously under corporate names. 

TRAFFIC PROVIDING SERVICE

None of my traffic customers know who I am. They just buy traffic from XYZ Corporation because it converts to sales for them. XYZ Corporation has no personality. In fact, it's fully automated and most of my customers seem to like it that way. I tried to change that a couple of years ago. I started sending them emails teaching how they could get the most out of my traffic service. I was too late. They didn't know me and they didn't want to hear from me. Then I tried one last attempt (I'm glad I did) by offering them a special on traffic that month. I think I did a two for one deal or something like that. Over 25% of my customers bought a new campaign that day. I made over $60,000 in one day with that one email. I thought that was cool! I still do. I can write a single email and make thousands of dollars in a single day. I think a lot of marketers like that. The power of your customer list is incredible! If you can convert 2% of strangers into customers with a sales page, you can convert 25% of your existing customers into customers of another product with that same sales page.

 SEARCH ENGINE RESEARCH PRODUCT SALE

That's powerful! I tried it with another product. It was a good product. It was mine. It was the search engine research itself that lead to the traffic those customers were buying. In effect, I was offering to teach them how to generate the same traffic that I was selling to them. It flopped miserably. No-one bought. I tried several other products. Nothing. Why? Some of the responses told me right away. Even though I was writing under the company name, they didn't know me. I'll repeat that. They didn't know me. They knew my company. They knew that my company delivered great converting traffic, but they simply didn't know me. An endorsement of one company by another isn't very powerful. It isn't nearly as powerful as an endorsement by an individual. 

So, I went on to do the Freedom Events. You know how they went. Based on the endorsement of a few well-known Internet marketers, they sold out. Lesson learned. To get that 25% number, you need one of the following: 

1. To be marketing to your customers as a company and selling a special offer on the product of your company that your customers already know about.

 2. To be marketing to your customers as a person and selling a special offer on any product that you personally endorse and have never given a bad endorsement on a product to your customers before.

 I wanted to do the latter with my own customers? not those of another Internet marketer. What is the best way to do that? As I look around, a blog is the absolute perfect vehicle for that. As I sell products (and cross-promote them on the owner's pages), I also promote this blog. I do it very early in the process. It is mentioned on the owner's page and is also mentioned in the very first email most people get after purchasing one of my products. They buy the product from a stranger, but I introduce myself as the creator of that product very early by pointing them (you) at this blog. Then, I don't hide the blog behind some corporate image. You do buy my products from a corporation, but do you even know the name of that corporation? Who cares what it is called? I want you to get to know me. That's the purpose of this blog.

CREATE YOUR OWN BLOG TO PROMOTE BUSINESS

 Now some folks are finding this blog before they purchase one of my products. That's OK too. Some people buy a product based on the sales page. Some buy because they know the author never produces junk. Some have a combination of those reasons. OK; so. yes. you should have a blog. I suggest that you create your blog between your 3rd and 4th product in your primary market. That's when I created this blog. That is also when you want to start cross-promoting your 3 or 4 products on their owner's pages. Here are some other things that I think are important: 

1. Register your name for the domain for your blog.

 2. Put your name at the top, not some cutesy blog name.

 3. Share of yourself. Do not post to your blog like you are a customer service rep answering the phone for a large company, never revealing anything of yourself, only the corporate script. Chat with your customers like they are dear friends. Don't give out your home address or phone number, but within the context of the blog, what are you afraid of? Let your blog readers get to know you.

 4. Post often. People can get into the habit of doing something daily or hourly very easily. It is much more difficult to get into a weekly or monthly habit. Post at least daily so your blog readers can get into a daily habit of reading what you have to say.

 5. Don?t worry about giving away secrets of your products. That's one reason I only sell software, video and mentoring products right now. It's simply not possible to accidently give away too much in text on your blog. Software and video are both more robust mediums than text. I can explain in words all day long how to do something, it will still be useful to buy the software to automate that task and/or buy the video to actually see how it all works. 

6. Get a subcribe link up on your blog (and all of your content sites). Some people will want to follow your blog, but won't remember. You need to give them a way to allow you to send them reminders when you post. This will dramatically increase your number of repeat visitors over time. 

SUGGESTIONS

OK; I think that answers the question about why I have a blog and why you should too? and how you should set it up. Now, I can jump into the specific ways to get traffic to a blog that only exist for blogs, not other types of sites. I'll do that in a future post. For now, go register your name and get WordPress installed on that domain. Get your subscribe link up. Write an article and submit it to your blog, and then submit it via Artemis Pro with your blog mentioned in the resource box of your article. That's how I started just a little over two months ago and as of today. I'm almost in the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet. See if you can beat me in the next couple of months.

The Future On SEO For Bloggers!

You write a blog religiously every day or so. You provide informative, interesting content for your loyal readers. You?ve even got a couple of affiliate links in there, too. But is this enough to get great search engine results for your efforts? Probably not. Sure, you'll get listed with the search engines easily. But without a top twenty listing at one of the majors (Google, Yahoo! or MSN), you won't have traffic, literally, banging down your door. In order to get better search engine results you need to make sure you are using the right keywords (and know how to use them), have links pointed your way and regularly check the results of your hard work. Here's how. Choosing Appropriate Keywords Do you know what search terms your visitors are using to find you? Most blogging sites give you the option of checking up to see just how people found you. If you don't have this feature available, hop over to http://www.statcounter.com/ and install their free service on your blog immediately.

HOW TO SEARCH KEYWORDS

 Next, research those keywords. Visit Overture's free site (http://inventory.overture.com/) and type in the most generic of the terms people are using to find your blog. You'll get a list of related keywords used at a major search engine in the past month. Although it is an oversimplification of the search engine optimization process, try and stick to the more unusual but natural-sounding keywords as your top picks. Putting Keywords in the Right Places Once you've picked a keyword that applies directly to your blog, make sure to incorporate it into the following portions of one complete blog posting: # The title; # The first sentence; # Each header (if you have any); # Once a paragraph; and # The last sentence. If you have any links to outside sources, use the same keyword as your link text where possible.

POST THE KEYWORDSTO THE ARTICLE 

 Also, for each blog posting, try and pick a different (but related) keyword to use. Feel free to reuse keywords every 30-45 postings. Submitting to Directories Your third step is to take these keyword optimized blog postings and post them to the article and blog directories. Most of the search engines determine the relevancy of your blog by how many outside websites link directly to you; therefore, posting your blog entries (with a link back to your site in your resource blurb) is an easy and straightforward way of doing so. Checking Your Progress It may take a couple of days to see any results, so try and wait a week before you take a look at Stat Counter. Have your hits increased at all? Are there any new search engine referrals?

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES

To track your blog's ascent up the search engine rankings for any given keyword, try Digital Point's free Keyword Tracker Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/). It is an excellent way of ensuring your blog positioning efforts are paying off. With all blog postings, content is key. Without useful, interesting information that cannot be found elsewhere, your visitors won't come back for more. Incorporate these simple search engine optimization techniques into your blogging practice however, and you'll both keep the visitors you already have and dramatically increase your readership through high ranking search engine placement in no time.