Tools you can use to become a blogging success!

It’s official.  Blogging is dead.

Wired.com declared it.

“Thinking about launching your own blog? Here’s some friendly advice: Don’t. And if you’ve already got one, pull the plug.”

Mike over at the DoFollow Blog Information shared it.  Oh, Mike also shares this in his post Blogging is Dead

The real key to blogging today, is to find niches to blog about.

For example, if you try to get traffic to a general political blog today, you will have a hard time competing with the big boys.  But, if you decided to blog about something like politics from a Christian’s prospective, or from a lawyer’s perspective, or an internet marketer’s perspective, you should be able to find an audience.

BINGO!!!

If you think of a blog as a “mystical magical money making machine” then it’s easy to declare that “blogging is dead”.

If, on the other hand, you view your blog as a MARKETING TOOL to use to promote your BUSINESS -well, then blogging is VERY MUCH ALIVE!

Blogs are kind of like online magazines - and declaring that magazines are “dead” would make about as much sense as declaring that blogs are “dead”.

Magazines are the poster child of target marketing.  Each magazine has it’s own “audience”.  Is it tough to launch a magazine that appeals to ALL women?  HECK YEAH - but Oprah seems to have succeeded there.

Do I recommend that you try to launch a magazine that appeals to all women?  HECK NO!!!

However, there are tens of thousands of small “niche” magazines that are incredibly successful.

Would I recommend that you launch a magazine that appeals to a tightly targeted audience - HECK YEAH!!!

There are two ways to use a blog and both are illustrated by using magazines as an example.

1. Your blog can act as a marketing tool to promote your business
2. Your blog can act as an “entertainment medium”.

YOUR BLOG AS A MARKETING TOOL:

If you’re using your blog as a marketing tool to promote your business - well, think of it like the quarterly magazine published by Kraft foods.

Every quarter a very slick magazine filled with dozens of informative articles and recipes arrives via snail mail courtesy of Kraft Foods.  This magazine is actually an ADVERTISEMENT for their many products, because each recipe calls for ingredients made by Kraft Foods.

However, that’s not ALL that appears in this magazine.  There are also informative articles - and of course, full page ads for various Kraft Products.

My local hospital offers a similar publication to area residents to promote their health care system.

Your blog can act like that - providing USEFUL information to people to people to whom you’d like to sell products and services.

YOUR BLOG AS AN ENTERTAINMENT MEDIUM

There’s another way to use a blog and that’s as an “entertainment” medium.

When you use your blog as an “entertainment” medium, you’ll be using it like a traditional magazine would.  Think Better Homes & Gardens Magazine.

It’s your job to provide articles (blog posts) that people want to read.  Just as magazines offer advertising space within their publication, the way you make money from this arrangement is to offer advertising space on your blog.

See, advertisers want to get their message in front of people and if you have people coming to your blog to read your posts, then you have something to “sell” to advertisers.

The thing is, advertisers like it BEST when you can tightly target your audience.  For example, if your blog is all about COOKING - that’s one thing.  You can try to sell ad space on your blog to cooking schools, cooking equipment manufacturers, appliance manufacturers, etc.

But if your blog is all about COOKING TO CONTROL DIABETES - ah, now THAT’S another story. A blog that is all about COOKING TO CONTROL DIABETES suddenly is very appealing to a pharmaceutical company selling diabetes testing supplies AND the company that makes foods especially for people with diabetes.

The thing is, the second blog can command a much higher rate for advertising (even with fewer “eyeballs” consuming the content) because their content is SPECIALIZED!

BEFORE you pull the plug on your blog, pick up a copy of the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.  In the 8 week course, you’ll learn not only how to pick a niche market for your blog, but you’ll also learn how to build content AND drive traffic to your blog as well.

Long live the blog!

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Blogging is easy - but getting traffic to your blog is another story.

One of the best ways to increase your blog traffic is to reach out to other bloggers.  One way to increase traffic to your blog AND reach out to other bloggers is to create an award.

That’s what the MommaWannaBe.com blog did.  A simple graphic, a few rules and suddenly, bloggers are playing “link love tag” with each other.

Dolly’s Daily Diary was a recipient of the award and she was nominated by Ray and outlined the rules for the award in her “acceptance” post:

Uber (synonym to Super) Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites who:~ inspires you~ makes you smile and laugh~ or maybe gives amazing information~ a great read~ has an amazing design~ and any other reasons you can think of that makes them uber amazing!

The rules of this award are:

• Put the logo on your blog or post.
• Nominate at least 5 blogs(can be more) that for you are Uber Amazing!
• Let them know that they have received this Uber Amazing award by commenting on their blog.
• Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.

If you don’t post awards on your site, that is ok. I just wanted to let you know I like your blogs all for different reasons. Keep up the good work!

This type of “tag, you’re it” is also known as a Blog Meme.

Some people may call blog memes “silly”, but it’s often a great way to connect with other bloggers and let them know that you’re paying attention to their blog.

I once had a client who was tagged for a Blog Meme - and he didn’t know what to do.  That’s why, if you decide to start your own “award” be sure to do as Jade did and make part of the “rules” posting exactly how to “play” the game!

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You’ve heard the term bandied about like crazy these days… blogs, blogging and bloggers are definitely the buzz words of the times.  What you may not know is the what, the how and the why of blogging.

• What is a blog?
• How to blog?
• Why do you want to blog?

What is a blog?

In a nutshell, a blog is simply an easy way to get content onto the web. See, back in the 1990’s, if you wanted to share your thoughts and ideas via the web, you either had to learn to program in HTML or find someone you could pay who knew how to program in HTML. Then, around the turn of the century, a new way to get content onto the web emerged. Known as Weblogs, these blog predecessors allowed people who didn’t know or didn’t WANT to know HTML to get their thoughts and feelings onto the web.

Little by little, blogs grew in popularity. Then internet marketers discovered that, “HEY! My Wordpress blog is doing much better in the search engines than my HTML websites!” Thus the explosion of blogging began.

Of course, there are other blogging platforms other than Wordpress, but Wordpress is the darling of the internet marketing crowd with good reason - with the right selection of plug ins, a Wordpress blog can do very well when it comes to the search engines and SERPS.

A blog is simply an easy way to get content onto the web.

It’s that simple.  If you produce good content, then a self hosted Wordpress blog can definitely help your quality content rise to the top of the search results.

How to Blog

For some people, blogging is merely a way to share their thoughts, their dreams and their experiences.  From weight loss to life changes such as death and divorce, people have blogged about the human condition for almost a decade now.

If that’s your goal… to simply share your thoughts and ideas, then head over to blogger.com or wordpress.com and set up a free account.  You’ll find it quite easy to get started blogging.  If you can write in a word processing program, then you can blog.

However, there are a lot of pepople who have different goals for their blog.  Some want their blog to be their business and to earn money with their blog.  (Money is earned by first developing a devoted audience and then selling ad space on the blog.)  Others want to use their blog to create marketing magic for their business.

For those who want to earn income from their blog, I have to encourage you to begin thinking like a business person.  Just as you wouldn’t expect to start any other business without a single penny invested in inventory, supplies or even office space, don’t expect to launch and run a business oriented blog from a free blog account.  When asked what they would change about their blogging experience, many successful “accidental” bloggers will say the biggest mistake they made starting out was not starting out on a self hosted blog.

Why do you want to blog?

You may have heard that blogging is your way to fame and fortune, and it may just be your ticket. However, if you do find fame and fortune thanks to blogging, the magic will be yours and not because of a blog.

Blogging is but another way to communicate.  A century ago, communicating with the masses meant writing a book or an article in the newspaper.  Today we can communicate by publishing content to the web.

Blogs are simply an easy to use CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM to easily and effectively get your content out of your head and onto the web!

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