Why You're Not Blogging - And Why You Should Start Today

Those of you who aren't ready to wade into the Blog pool are taking your time for several reasons, according to my informal interviews with people before and after they blog. Others start blogging and then abandon their projects too soon, unaware of the benefits.

Whatever your reason, you should get started now - or get back to blogging as the case may be. Here's some motivating enlightenment that you may find surprising.

Reason # 1 that you aren't blogging - You don't realize how huge the benefits are, and how much they may outweigh any monetary or time costs involved.

I think number one may partly the fault of people like me, who have a foot in the marketing arena, and don't explain the idea in detail.

We tend to tell you how great blogging is, but we don't tell you why, or better yet, show you. Or we tell you how to get the best results with your blog, but don't tell you where to start. Let's talk about some of the basic facts.

If you've ever dreamed of going from getting 10 hits a month to getting a few dozen visitors a day from search engines, blogging can make it possible, if you do it right. The structure of a blog, and the fact that most of them automatically generate content feeds, also make them the best food for your friendly neighborhood search engine spider.

If you would like to have visitors come back to your site over and over again, until they buy, you may want to be a blogger. An informative blog that engages your audience shortens the sales cycle. It also creates a courtship period. They can subscribe to your thoughts, see if they like you, even get to know you a little.

People buy from people they like. I don't remember who said it first, but I've learned that it's the truth.

If your visitors don't feel like they are getting a personality vibe from you, they are often less likely to buy. Vibe = buy. Remember that, and that blogs make it easy for you to vibe.

If you'd like to create new targeted search engine pages for your site without needing to hand-code a new page, or fire up your HTML editor every time, you may enjoy blogging. You log in to your blog admin panel, type your thoughts, proofread, press publish.

Presto. You're a blogger.

If you'd like free one-way links back to your site that contain your lucrative keywords, blogging helps with that too.

Even if you've made a mess of your SEO efforts, or been the unsuspecting victim of an algorithm change, as long as you aren't banned by a search engine, blogging can help bring you back into top results. Because they have a search engine friendly architecture, and can make use of your keywords automatically, without being gratuitous, they are an easy way to get into a search engine and stay in.

Reason #2 That you aren't blogging - You think it's hard and expensive.

Granted, especially if you're busy, or have a medium sized to large business, it may be in your best interest to hire one of the few consultants that works on these types of issues.

But if you're a small business owner or home business owner with an online element, you can get away with firing up a free blog and paying for an inexpensive custom template if you can't install one on your own. Most blog consultants will do all the keyword research, etc for you, so that all you'll have to do is log in and blog.

Many of the most common blog software systems are free or inexpensive, especially when weighed against the cost of only using paid methods to attract visitors.

Reason #3 That you aren't blogging - You don't think of yourself as a writer.

Not only can you get away with a few paragraphs, you don't have to write in professional-speak, or use industry jargon to blog. By nature, blogging is done in a casual, conversational tone.

And your blog posts don't have to be long article-type entries like mine are. I'm used to writing articles, and I'm just naturally verbose. My audience is used to my mini-brain dumps, just as your blog readers will likely be happy with, or adapt to, whatever your style is. Your audience will be thrilled with a few paragraphs every day, as long as they're informative and consistent.

So take the plunge. Start blogging today. If you're already a blogger and didn't see the benefits the first time around, try making it a part of your routine - and have a little fun. Give it time to work for you.

You'll be glad you did.

About the author: Tinu Abayomi-Paul, Tinu is a web site promotion specialist who writes about many different ways to get more visitors to your web site. If you want better search engine results, more visitors and return traffic she invites you to take a free ecourse on blogging at http://RescueYourBlog.com .

Using Social Proof To Boost Your Credibility

by Shawn Catsimanes



Ever hear of Social Proof? In his fascinating book, Influence, Robert B. Cialdini calls it the "principle of determining what is correct by finding out what other people think is correct. We view behavior as correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it." He adds that most of the time the crowd is right.

During the attendance of a seminar in October of 2005, we watched (and participated) as two such scenes played out.

The first came in the baggage claim of LAX.

Like pliant sheep, we followed the signs and the throng to carousel #2 like the flight attendant had instructed us. After waiting ten or fifteen minutes, about half of our fellow passengers shifted over to carousel #1. We chose to stand our ground. Shortly afterwards, the circular device began to move, but none of our bags appeared. Then we heard someone close by say, "Kansas City's been moved to number one."We diehards scooted to the next carousel over and retrieved our luggage.

In this case, those who moved first were correct.

Never having seen an authority figure, we weren't sure how they came to this conclusion, so we only watched as they advanced en masse to the new location.

Some uncertain joiners jerked their heads back toward carousel #2 and stood slightly between the two apparatuses. This way, had their decision to go along with the dissenting crowd turned out to be wrong; their mistake wouldn't look so obvious. But it was those of us who decided to stick by carousel #2 that ended up looking the fools.

The second incident-an example in reverse-happened at the seminar itself.

We finished our first meal and headed back toward the conference room. In the very front, three or four small clusters lead the way. The group just ahead of us slowed our progress, so we fell into line behind them.

When we came to a small anteroom before the escalators, an odd thing happened.

Instead of walking straight toward the exit, the first group circled around both of the thick pillars in the center of the room. Everyone (including us) followed obediently behind.

Andy and I laughed as we hopped onto the escalator realizing what we'd just done. There seemed no obvious reason for our behavior.

At some point prior to our arrival, the room must have been overcrowded making it necessary to form a long line around the two posts. When the congestion thinned, the stragglers didn't bother to change course, but instead continued in the preset pattern.

This is Social Proof in action. What everyone else was doing seemed to be right, so the rest of us blindly followed their lead.

For years, marketers have used this strategy to promote their wares. As Cialdini points out, "Advertisers love to inform us when a product is the 'fastest-growing' or 'largest-selling' because they don't have to convince us directly that the product is good; they need only say that many others think so, which seems proof enough."

One of the most effective applications of this strategy is the use of testimonials and referrals. By including testimonials from typical customers in your sales and promotional materials, you strengthen your credibility, which in turn, increases the believability of your offer. And if you've ever benefited from an enthusiastic referral resulting in a call from a new prospect, you know just how powerful this form of social proof is.

Whenever possible, use testimonials in your written copy and on your website. And don't be shy about asking for referrals, either. You provide a valuable service/product and people need to know about it.

Take advantage of every weapon in your arsenal (including social proof) to make sure they do.

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7 Steps To Becoming A Better Website Writer

You can become a better website writer simply by writing well, but I wish it was that simple. Writing is a realm, just as sports and science are realms. Now if you are a sports person, you could be playing any of the odd hundred sports that come to ones mind. In science too, if you are a scientist, you can be a physicist or a doctor or a technologist. Similarly in writing, there are different kinds of writers — some write fiction, some right non-fiction, some write horror and some are children's authors. Then there those who write course books, instructional content, etc. Similarly, to write for websites and blogs you got to be a bit "different" kind of writer: a writer who understands how a typical online reader reads and assimilates content. To cut to the chase, here are a few guidelines you can follow in order to become a better website writer.

Be a Website Writer that Converses With Her/His Readers

Talk to your reader when you are writing for websites. Always assume you're talking to this particular individual who is interested in knowing what you have to say to him or her. For instance: you can definitely be a better website writer by following these guidelines . Or for instance, I really hope you find my writing interesting.

Be a Website Writer that Says Less But Conveys More

There is so much information to consume on the Internet. I have RSS feeds from scores of resources and I have only limited time. I assume the same is the case with you. You normally read long text only if it is very compelling or you really need to learn something from it. A typical online reader is a fast reader who prefers shorter text. This not something behavioral — it's difficult to read text on the screen and we normally read almost 25% slower when we're reading through our monitors.

First Things First

Mention all the important things in the beginning whenever possible. Although to keep the interest alive you should hold some things back, but in the first para itself your reader should be able to make out what the page is about what he or she can expect from the page.

Use Headlines and Bullets Wherever You Can

When you use lots of headlines and bulleted text you make your web document more "scannable". This also enables you to express your thoughts more concisely and creatively. In headlines you can forego grammar and vocabulary and just concentrate on a few words that grab attention.

Use Smaller Paragraphs

Big paragraphs are hard to read and big chunks of texts on the screen seem very intimidating. Don't stretch your paragraphs beyond 2-3 sentences.

Use Descriptive Text in Hyperlinks

Instead of Click here to subscribe use Click here to subscribe or 5 ways to improve your vocabulary. This not only helps you put your keywords within the <a></a> tag ( a good thing from search engine optimization point of view) but also makes your links more descriptive.

Show Respect To Your Readers

Don't be too patronizing and don't make every page a for Dummies page. A prevalent perception among the online writers is that most online readers prefer very simple text. That's not the case. Keep your audience in your mind and then write about them. Be sincere, don't resort to hyperbolic claims and keep the interest of the reader at the top most level of your priority.

This is surely not a complete list but it more or less helps you make a good beginning.

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5 Blogging Dead Ends To Avoid

Blogging is a serious business if you really want to use it as your business and brand enhancement tool. Serious, because it can harm you if you don't do it properly, so you should rather not have a business blog if you cannot manage it properly.

Here are the 5 Blogging Dead Ends To Avoid. Blogging dead ends are scenarios where running a blog is proving to be burden. In such situations you should either turn it around or simply take it down before it can harm your image further. The 5 blogging dead ends to avoid in the above link are:

1. Avoid being boring: Blogs should be interesting and crisp. Post long posts only if they are extremely necessary. Your blog readers are looking for your unmitigated opinion, in as few words as possible.
2. Don't blab on your business blog: On your business blog your readers are not interested in reading your constipation problems unless it is somehow affecting them.
3. Don't post infrequently: Blogs that have very few, scattered posts — one post per month, or in two months — hardly retain attention. Blog frequently if you want visitors to come to your blog frequently.
4. Don't lag behind: Bloggers post fast, and readers want to be the first ones to know if something has to be known. Always try to be the first one to break news and link to new, relevant articles.
5. Don't expect your blog to directly get you business: Well, I don't completely agree with this point but yes, your blog is not your business website. Your blog is a tool to communicate with your customers and clients and open a two-way communication channel with them. It can help you establish yourself as an expert in your field. It can help you create a loyal audience for your thoughts, ideas and visions.

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9 basic steps to building a niche blog

If you're just starting out blogging you have probably been wondering how to set up a niche blog. Here is a quick and easy 9 step tutorial to get you started building a niche blog. Just a quick note here: This is a very basic tutorial and is aimed at those just getting started!!

Step 1. Choosing a niche for your blog

This is going to be your biggest stumbling block. Well next to finding traffic for your blog. (YOU WILL SPIN YOUR NOODLE trying to figure out how to get good targeted traffic to your niche blogging site).

And is the one of the most often asked questions. How do I find a niche, or how to I choose a niche for my blog or website.
You'll find building your niche blog alot easier if you're building it around something you're interested in, that's not say you should stick to just your personal interests but it's always easier doing something if you're actually interested it. Or look at it another way. People have problems and want solutions to them. A niche is a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, a review of a product. Basically anything that offers an answer or solution to something.

A quick start to get your creative juices flowing is trip over to ebay and check out the want it now (http://pages.ebay.com/wantitnow/) section. Once you've done that.

Here's a free tool that will help you check the popularity of some of those topics: (http://www.nichebot.com)

Step 2. Do Keyword Research

Don't skip doing this. I think we've all made the mistake of not doing good keyword research. And it is easy to do. You get all excited about something and go bang up a site with out having done good keyword research only to find you have to go back and redo it…. Skip this at your own peril.

While it is nice to write about grapple grommets or widgets and I am sure there is some demand for that kind of content, you have to kind of be serious about what you're going to choose as a niche and what kind of targeted traffic you're going to get from your keywords. You MUST include targeted keywords in your niche blog copy. A god place to start doing keyword research is Overture Keyword Tool for research:
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion

You can also use wordtracker. its a paid service but you can get a free trial for a limited time. I HIGHLY recommend you use Wordtracker .

Note: keywords must be relevant to the THEME (subject) of your site. Be careful not to over use them. Search engines don't like keyword SPAM.

Step 3. Get A Domain Name

Having a unique domain name is important. If your site is about canoes try to get hockey.com (I'm canadian, can you tell?) or something along those lines, if you have to hyphen space the name then do it. ie canoe-shop-extreme.com . I have read that using hyphens is a good choice as google sees that as seperate words as opposed to canoeshopextreme.com which I have read that google sees as one word. But I'm not an SEO expert. So experiment or read up on that before your choose your name. There are a whole load of places to get your name from, some like godaddy, which I use. The choice is yours.

Step 4. Write Keyword Rich Content

This may be a hard thing to do for you. Or for those of you who don't consider yourselves to be good writers. Have you ever explained how to do something to someone?, yes?, well its as easy as that. I write like I speak or so I have been told. I have a conversational tone. I'm not a good craft copy writer. Others are better at that sort of thing than I am.

You can go on about the benefits of your subject. And more than likely should If you're pitching a product or service. Need some help with good copy writing skills. Check out copyblogger This guy is just wicked at writing great copy and has loads of helpful hints and copy writing tutorials you should use.

Remember that you're writing to inform, or solve a problem or pitch a product or service. And your keywords should reflect that as well. There are great debates about what percentage of keywords there should be on your page. The basics are this: keywords in the title of your post. Mention your keywords on the first few lines in bold face. spatter them about a few more times through out the body of your copy in either Italics or different font colours and once near or at the end. Keep in mind that they should be used sensibly and in context. Again these are the basics. Its can get kind of complicated using h1 and h2 tags in your posts and a whole other host of other techno jargon which I'll go on about at great length in another tutorial for you.

Step 5. Build Your niche blog Site

Again, this is an area with lots of debate. and heated arguments. If you're just getting started You can start with blogger.com its FREE!!!. Some horror stories abound about people losing their blogs or having them mysteriously gobbled up by google without a mention as to why. I personally have never had this happen. And can only speculate that those who have had it happen have done something that violated their terms of service. I have a detailed post about choosing the right blogging software to use on my main site.

Blogger is relatively easy to, actually very easy to set up.
You have a lot of creative freedom on how you want your niche blog to look (I prefer black copy on white backgrounds with photos), but remember that people are looking for attractive, easy-to-navigate sites with useful information.

Step 6. Sign Up for Matching Affiliate Programs

You've created a niche blog about xyz subject. Now look for affiliate vendors who perfectly match the theme of your site. Integrate your affiliates attractively into your web site copy. Don't confuse your visitors by giving them too many choices.

If you want to list a lot of affiliates on the same page, you can create a helpful "resource guide" page.

Step 7. Include Google Adsense Ads

Google has a great program for web site owners who wish to make a little extra money for simply displaying google ads on their web site. It's easy to sign up and free. Just visit google
(http://www.google.com/ads) and sign up for their Adsense program. They'll give you some html code to copy and paste on your site.

While google decides which ads will actually appear on your site, you can decide how the google ads will look – choose colors, borders, etc. and where to put them on your pages. Again the definitive guide for optimizing your blog for google adsense is Google AdSense Secrets 3.0

Step 8. Find Link Partners

I found out that exchanging links with other web site owners is a MUST if you want to improve your search engine rankings. Google especially will consider your site more relevant if your site has other sites linking to it. Also the ad copy from other sites, if relevant, can add more valuable keyword content to your own site.

I use Linkmarket (http://www.linkmarket.net) to find credible web sites to exchange links with. It's free to join.

Step 9. Write Articles to Promote Your Site

Oh oh. Here's that writing thing again. Well, you better get used to it, because writing articles like this one (normally your articles will be about the subject matter of your web site) will help give your affiliate web site much needed exposure. It doesn't matter if you write them yourself or hire others (ghostwriters) to write them for you.

You'll find that the best Internet marketers all write articles to promote themselves, their newsletters, and products and services. Remember, there's a reason the Internet is called the "information" super highway.

After writing your articles, you can post them to an article directory site like Article City (http://www.articlecity.com). People can easily find your articles to use as free content for their sites.

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Search Marketing: Pay-Per-Click Ad Writing Tips

Here is some advice on writing successful pay-per-click ads.

You're probably going to have to write a lot of ads. Even if you only have 100 keywords in your campaign, those ads need to be targeted to the keywords. You can somewhat reduce the workload by using lots of tightly bound categories and writing your ads at the category level. By tightly bound, we mean that the category refers to only a few very similar or complimentary keywords. For instance, you might have a category with the keywords "candle wax", "candle wax for sale", "buy candle wax", and "hobby candle wax", in which case you could get away with just writing one ad for all of the keywords.

A strategy that is often recommended is for your ad titles to match exactly the search phrase. For example. if the ad is for the search phrase "Nevada hunting trip", the title of the ad would be "Nevada hunting trip". This might be a good way to write headlines quickly, but in general we are not in favor of this approach. The title is the most important part of your ad. You only have 40 characters. You should use the keywords, but put some effort into writing a title that will compel the reader to click. In the above example, how about something like "Find freedom hunting in Nevada" or "Nevada hunting trips for your family".

This is a good time to point out that you really have no way of knowing what headline or description will be the most effective without testing. But when changing your ad, only change a single element at a time. For instance, only change the title, or only make a change to the copy, or maybe only change a single word.

As far as the ad copy goes, here are some writing tips:

• Write in a casual, conversational style. Don't over estimate the intelligence of the reader of the ad.
• Use a call to action: "Find it here", "Click here", "Click now", "Save now", etc.
• Mention a strong guarantee, a special offer, a discount, etc.
• The most powerful word you can use is "you".
  

Think from your prospective customers' perspective. If it were you, what would make you click the link? Your ad is nothing more than salesmanship in print - just like any form of direct marketing. You are using words to pursuade the reader to click the link and come to your web site for more information. Keep that in mind and craft your ads carefully.

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The Voice of Your Writing

One of the things I find most interesting about blogging is the concept of "voice". I'm often told by readers that my blog has an interesting voice which always I find so curious -- because it's not something that I consciously do (OK, now I'm really thinking about it as I write!)

This is all the most interesting because you may have noticed that I haven't blogged in over a month. This is because I lost my "voice", both figuratively and literally. It started at Forrester's Consumer Forum in late October -- in the middle of the conference I came down with horrendous cold, despite countless tablets of Airborne. And rather than call-in sick and put up my feet after the conference, I plowed ahead through a very busy schedule the next week. The result: the cold got even worse and I literally lost my voice. It's taken a month for me to recover but I'm happy to report that after a round of anti-biotics and some really wicked codeine-laced cough medicine, I'm pretty  much recovered.

Well, that takes care of the literal voice loss. But something else also happened this past month -- I lost my internal blogging voice as well. Sapped of energy and health, I could just barely get my work done and care for my family. But that's only part of the story -- I have a dozen half-written blog posts in draft stage, all waiting to see the light of day. I realized this past week that I'm suffering from analysis paralysis -- I've been holding myself to a level of analysis and writing that is simply unreasonable given what I want this blog to be. My last substantial post was on the YouTube acquisition by Google, which was quite the event. But those kind of blog post opportunities come roughly about once a year, and for some reason, I've been trying to write similar posts for the past month with no success.

So I've vowed to follow Nike's mantra and "just do it", or in this case, to "just blog it". Damn the idea of quality and depth of analysis -- I'm better off getting something out there and getting your reactions to it. So here I am, writing a stream of consciousness and finding my voice again.