Informal marketing channel

Big corporate or for that matter small businesses maintain a blog or multiple blogs . These blogs are  purely for marketing. Blogs by themselves cannot be an effective marketing channel but combined with other activities, blogging can become a potent tool for advertising and marketing. More and more customers are leaning towards blogs to provide information about products and services . Traditional advertising is seen as pushy and artificial whereas blogging seems like a soft sell. Marketers realize the potential of blogs and are devising new and powerful ways to influence customers through their blogs.

Feedback loop

Customer feedback can save an advertisement campaign or boost its effectiveness. Timely customer feedback allows marketers and businesses to correct course mid-stream and aligning their marketing efforts more towards customer expectations. Fine tuning advertising and marketing can be done effectively through blogging. This doesn’t mean blogging is only an adjunct of advertising. It can actually stand alone and create a buzz. Viral marketing can be achieved through pure blogging. In all these cases, customer feedback forms a critical part of the whole.

Building reputation on the net

More and more people and businesses are using blogs to build reputation. Once again, the informal nature of blogging is being used to influence public opinion. The advantage of such organic reputation building is permanence. An effective advertisement campaign usually lasts for the duration of the drive. On the other hand blogging can create an everlasting impression on the minds of customers. Obviously, the message has to be subtle. An ‘on your face’ kind of blogging experience can actually do more harm to your reputation.

Projecting image as an expert

Many bloggers use this platform to project themselves as experts in their respective field. The primary aim of these blogs is not to make money but to project their image. Once they establish their expertise online, they use it for lectures, presentations, workshops and talk shows. In a way they are monetizing their blog.

A blog can be used to sell books, biographies and expertise. Blogs can be used to create a roaring buzz.

Conclusion

Blogs can be used more creatively than simply used as money making machines. In the end blogs are meant to inform, interact and network with others around the world. Go forth and blog. Enjoy.

Victor Solovey  is the owner of crazyxhtml , where they do crazy stuff including ‘psd to xhtml’ and ‘psd to wordpress’ conversion. Victor is passionate about his work and also likes to write.

Making Money Is Not the Only Goal of Blogging is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

Writing n number of posts everyday

Okay, so if you are one of them who does a couple of posts a day and let the blog go without any post next day then this is for you. It’s good that you are writing too many posts in one day, I understand that not every day you feel like writing any posts. What you can do is, try posting only one article that day and save rest of them as a draft so that you can publish them on the days you don’t feel like writing any.

Broadcasting one liner posts to your blog

Sometimes I read blog posts which have nothing to say. They only information of one line and you get it just by reading the title of the post. It’s good to blog every piece of information, but it contains a couple of words then you can directly publish it to twitter of Facebook, this will make your readers easy to get the information right there rather than following a link to your blog and getting the same information. As a reader this really sucks.

Calling yourself a professional blogger

A professional blogger is someone who blogs and makes money out of it. But look around, almost every blogger is a professional blogger, he is making money from his blog directly or indirectly. Yes, I agree it’s a feel good factor, but don’t get carried away with it. It’s cool, but don’t forget your job to provide value to the readers. Be humble and work as a blogger. If you own a blog, you are a professional blogger, no need to add this extra line to your profile. No one gives a damn about it, well at least not me.

Competing with every other blogger

There has to be a competition, but it has to be healthy, this point of for a very less number of bloggers who write just to compete with other bloggers. Don’t be like that, blogging still a very small industry, so we all should work in a healthy environment and help each other. This is it from the 3^rd part, If you have anything else to add please use the comment section.

Few Things to Fix in Your Blog Immediately [3rd Part] is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

Some of the tips that can encourage you to be successful in creating a Google adsense account are as follows:

1. Use a top-level domain as this is where many fail. For Example, Apply for an account for www.mywebsite.com rather than www.mywebsite.com/blog. Nevertheless, ensure that you are the owner of this website, if so Google will instantaneously accept your application for adsense.

2. Apply for an Adsense account, only when your domain is at least six months old and is necessary to ascertain that you are not a spammer and your website is real. Do not spam search engine with spammy contents.

3. In the first six months period your website, write as much as possible information that are unique, and have the credibility of being stated in the virtual world as a good and original content. Especially Google is being biased and unfortunately too stringent with application from countries like India. Google accepts only those applications of websites that have a very higher amount of traffic. Some of the important points that you need to work on your website will include backlinks and search engine optimization. Increase the backlinks for your website by writing guest posts and leaving comments on do-follow blogs. Google has the habit of updating page ranks once in three months, and is therefore good to check where your blog stands to get to know that you have a decent blog. As all these factors will definitely influence your approval.

4. Work hard to make your website prominent and improve the page views, page impressions and unique visitors. This will increase the chances of your website being approved much more easily.

5. Do not apply if your site has less content or your site is against Google TOS.

6. Use the same personal information that you have used during domain registration for your Adsense application, as this is necessary to get verified easily by Google Adsense. If not change, the details on your domain accordingly while applying for domain registration. Though they don’t verify it in all the cases, it is safe to have the same info.

7. Google likes serious bloggers and therefore it is good to show that you are not a spammer looking to make some quick money. Do not make Google innocently to turn suspicious about you.

Try these as the last means to get your account approved by Google, by applying through established services like Google Knol, hub pages, and much more. Hope these tips helps you out!!

Guest Post by: Praveen is associated with a website hosting company which has a very good website hosting reviews . You too can submit a guest post on Asiogroups.com, here is more info.

7 Tips To Get Your Google Adsense Account Approved is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

In this post, I am adding few more points which have to be taken care of.

Define your Niche.

Many bloggers do this, they mix severs things up, the have a blog on technology and they start writing update news which gets published on TechCrunch or Mashable. It’s good to get your readers updates, but you can simply share the links on twitter and Facebook, why waste time by rewriting it. IF your blog is about Computer tips, cover computer related things, your readers will not be interested in making money from blog, many technology blogs do that, they write about making money, WordPress or whatever comes to their mind. I would just say that you should define your Niche so that you get same kind of readers, which will be easy for you to handle.

Think About Each and Every Readers of your Blog

Okay, you have spread your blog on various channels. You give people options to connect with you or your blog by Different ways. Few are on Facebook, few on Twitter, few are subscribed to Feeds and plenty of people come from Search Engines. Now, you should treat all them in different manner. Use All in SEO plugin which gives your Option to write Two titles, one for the blog readers and one for Search Engines. Try it, be creative and treat visitors from different channels differently.

Serve Related Ads

Would anyone be interested in hosting ad on a technology blog? Well maybe few odd people, but your blog is meant for technology posts and your readers are technology freak, they have no interest in Web hosting, then why do you waste so much space by promoting Hosting products on your blog. I am taking hosting ads as an Example. You are smart enough to know what I am talking about. Serve ads which are related to your blog readers and somehow have got potential to provide value to the readers.

Engagement of your Readers

Twitter and Facebook can be used in a more efficient way than posting your blog posts on it. You can tip your readers directly on Facebook and Twitter by doing one liner posts. You must agree to me that even one liner posts have value than bigger posts, sometimes. Facebook might be a business tool for you, buy it’s an Entertainment or Social thing for others, always keep that in mind and feed them in that manner.

This is it for now, I shat be posting more like this, let me know what you feel others are doing wrong?

Few Things to Fix in Your Blog Immediately (Part 2) is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

If you are dedicated towards your work, you will be able to earn a respected amount of money within six months of blogging, and then you can take control of the expenses in your business. But if you want to start a personal blog and do not wish to invest any money, there are many options for you to take up. There are many Websites which provide free blogs. Here is a list of Free Blog Service providers.

Blogger is a good choice if you ever plan to buy a domain name for your blog. Signing up your blog with blogger will give you a blog address of www.yourblog.blogspot.com and later you can add a domain name to it and make it www.yourblog.com. Blogger gives you options to integrate your blog with Google Analytics and Google Adsense as all the services are by Google.

How to Start a Blog for Free is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

It’s good to be cool, but If you really want to be a professional blogger then you will have to think beyond posting articles to your blog on a daily basis.

Here is one small tip I want to share with the new bloggers out there.

Instead of publishing 5 articles in a day by taking titles from blogs like Techcrunch or Mashable, try writing only one post which can provide and value to your readers. Because someone has said that Content is King, but he forgot to mention that the content has to be good on quality.

Suppose you give 5 hours to write 5 posts on your blog thinking that the frequency of post will increase the frequency to visitors to your blog.

If I am in your situation I will use 1 hour to think about the best topic to write a post on by doing little bit of research in my Niche. After selecting the topic, I will do a little  bit of research on it and write an in depth article which has some value in it. This one Article might will take 5 hours alone but it will be worth more than those 5 Random articles.

There are plenty of blog that produce tons on random low quality articles on a daily basis. You definitely don’t want yourself to be included in this lot of bloggers.

SO, try to be a Smart Worker instead of being a hard working blogger.

Smart Tip for Bloggers that Worked for Me is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

The world is fast growing, people want things done faster and more accurately; thus they go to places that looked satisfactory. Imagine you have an image that accompanies your post on “how to open a Facebook fan page”, showing people the first page they will navigate to, where to click and so on. Nothing looks and sounds more real than that, you will agree. Imagine now you land in another page with the same topic that gives no image at all. What you will probably do is to bounce back in a matter of seconds and look for something better.

What Will Images Do For Your Article?

Images complement articles, making them beautified and memorable, especially when what is talked about is shown

• They increase the stickiness of articles

• They give readers a better impression and offer some real picture for reference.

• They offer precise details on the topic of the article

• They are used to show statistical data, as in charts and graphs

How Do You Make Images Effective?

You may be wondering how many images you must insert in an article and the best format that will work. Well, from my short experience with my software reviews and Symantec coupons blog, the number of images depends on the kind of article you are writing. You should not stuff the whole page with images, but you must also add as many images as necessary. For example: if I want to put up a post on “What are the Norton 36o four basic components”, I will write it in four main paragraphs and insert a relative image for every component, giving my readers a clear view of the product. So, if there are 4 aspects of a topic in all, I will likely have 4 images too and maybe one generic in the beginning of the post. Note, that you want your reader to take a good grasp of what you are trying to say in order to maximize the effect of your article.

On the other hand, a post on “Youth Demonstration In The State House”, may just have 1 image showing the activities of the demonstrating youths and another showing the reaction of the security men or the Police. So you must use as many images as necessary to the title of the article. Do not overdo it. It’s very important when it comes into products to give a clear, true and complete picture of it. Your goal is not to cover the truth but to demonstrate the reality.

SEO Your Images

People forget that images can also be optimized; for Search Engine Optimization and for easy loading. So get rid of those thoughts telling you that images will slow down the loading of your page or blog. Of course, it is annoying to wait for what seems like forever to download all the images in a page. Your readers can’t possibly wait that long too and they will leave. To avoid these unfavorable affects:

• Use a .gif format for text type images

• Use a .jpeg format for picture images

• Ensure that the resolution is 72dpi or lower. Don’t cover the whole screen with images. Understand your target; texts should be visible enough and images are but reference points only.

• Also, save the image with the primary keywords of the article. Say you are writing on “Potential Blogging Problems”, the image can be saved with bloggingproblems.gif or powersuit.jpeg if you sell power suits. This way, potential readers can also find your article through Google image searches.

Effective use of images in an article details the article, beautifies it, makes it self-explanatory, and sticky. Images can also be used to increase the keyword count of the article and thus increase the chances of being found by potential readers.

Steven’s new venture is VeryBestSoftware.Net Reviews & Coupons where he gives blogging tips, reviews and discount coupons for the top selling digital products and software, like the Symantec Endpoint Protection and the Norton 360 promotional coupon.

Use Images In Your Posts And Have Better Results is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

But you can definitely lower the possibility of mistakes by learning from other’s. Here are few mistakes I did.

1. Not updating My blog regularly
2. I created too many blogs together.
3. Not updating any of the blogs.
4. Spending too much time in designing and coding
5. Spending too much time in read other blogs
6. Spending too much time in commenting on other blogs.
7. Not taking action ASAP.
8. Not working hard enough on one blog.
9. Started Monetizing before even promoting a blog.
10. Promoting a blog without Writing great content.
11. Writing less quality content.
12. Changing the design frequently.
13. Selling it off before the blog takes off.
14. Not giving Importance to Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
15. Not networking with Other fellow bloggers.
16. Spending too much time of Facebook.
17. Spending too much time on Twitter.
18. Getting Involved with too many Ideas.
19. Working on more than one Project at a time.
20. Quitting the Project too early.

These are of my blogging Mistakes which I did and I see many bloggers do it, you should try avoiding them.

Learn from These Blogging Mistakes of Mine is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

Here is the simplest rule to make more money from blog or websites.

The Larger your audience is, the more money you are going to make.

Now, this fits for every niche. Yes there are few niches which don’t require a lot of traffic, but it’s too technical and there is a lot of game to be played. So let’s talk simple in this post and talk about something which can be implied everywhere. Well, try to get more traffic to your website or blog and try to make people visit again and again, try to go out where they hangout on other social networking sites. So they can recognize you.

Here is a mathematical calculation, for 100 visitors you are making 1$ (or whatever) try getting 1000 and this is obviously increate your profits too. What if its 10000o visits? Well your profit may not go to $1000 but it will obviously be great. This is the simplest way.

Now, your motive should be, to get more traffic for your blog. Read How to get 1000 visitors to your new post.

Once you get a decent amount of traffic, you can always try different methods to make money from your blog or website. Read few ways to make money from your website.

Want to Make More Money? Read this! is a post from: AsioGroups.Com

Image by Mountaineer

This shows the frustration in bloggers to get visitors on their blog and turning them into a regular reader. But, one thing they forget that their blog should be worth subscribing or coming back to read again. I have seen blogs with two articles (yes two damn articles) and they start doing guest posting, just to make people visit their blogs, let me tell you something if you are one of them,

Dude, fill your plate first, and then go feed others!

Yes, I agree that you are working so hard to achieve success, but it’s not you who is going to benefit from it. First figure out what do you want with your blog. Set it up. If you are offering a service then make people land on that page. Do the design or hire someone do it for you. At least get a logo for your blog. Write about your service, do few tutorials on how to use it. Search for competitors and observe their sites.

Build your social profile first

Your blog is on World Wide Web, exposed to millions of internet users, still you want to hide behind your laptop and keep writing your blog to express yourself? Get a Twitter account (everybody is hanging out there nowadays) create a Facebook profile (almost the whole internet world is on it) talk to other people promote your Product or service there, talk about your blog. Get some idea about how people are reacting to your blog posts. Be famous there and then think about writing guest posts, you will easily be able to convince people as you are known to many other people in your Niche ( thanks to Facebook and Twitter), and of course your Guest Posts quality should be great.

If you still don’t get what I am trying to tell you then there is a checklist. Complete these tasks and check that you have done everything.

• At least 10 Quality posts on the blog
• Nice Design and Logo
• Easy Subscription Options (use Feedburner)
• A descriptive About page, Who the author is and what the blog is about.
• You should already have some visitors on the blog (try getting them from Twitter and Facebook).
• Decide where you want the visitors from your guest posts should land.

You motive should be to impress them with your blog. They should feel that they are missing something or they are going to miss something if they won’t visit your blog again. Make them feel that you are already famous.

Let me also give you a time period. Devote initial one or two months to your blog only. Work hard on it create quality content.

When Should You Start Guest Posting is a post from: AsioGroups.Com