Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.

Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages: 
** Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.

** Awareness and loyalty. Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.

** Feedback. Blogs are good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.

** Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.

For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.

Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.

For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well.

If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea. 
2. Setup several test blogs right away.

If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.

1. Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.

2. Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.

3. Remember the following safety measures in blogging:

** legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities.

** corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business.

** create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public.

** avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers.

** make content updated, relevant and fresh.

** reinforce the company’s core values.

** encourage employees to use it.

4. Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.

5. Begin marketing.

6. Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.

7. Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.

8. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.

9. Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.

10. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.

Technorati Tags: Blogging Strategies, online marketing tool

Banner advertising fell into disfavor in the past few years due to overuse and poor performance. Text links replaced them as the preferred ad-linking method in most cases, and this still holds true today. However, banners aren’t totally dead. In fact, they’re alive and well on quite a few high-traffic niche sites, sometimes at bargain basement prices.

Sites to target for banner advertising:

• Online editions of local newspapers or your local news station’s website.
• Websites of talk radio or other niche related radio programs.
• Niche blogs or targeted, independent news sites
• Any targeted website that makes use of banners while strictly limiting the amount of banners in place

Are Banners Advertising Making A Comeback?

In a sense: Yes, banners are making a comeback, but in a much more targeted fashion.

What killed the effectiveness of banners in the past:

1. Overuse:  Webmasters went “banner crazy” during the early days of Internet advertising. Visitors began ignoring banners due to overexposure and poor targeting on the part of advertisers.

2. Over-Reliance: Over-reliance on banners as the primary source of monetization for content-driven sites. The dot-com graveyard is littered with sites that attempted to drive revenue solely through banner advertising. The idea of free content was a noble one, but it didn’t hold up economically.

Today, the most effective banner advertising takes a cue from Google Adwords. In other words, it’s all about contextual advertising.

Banners targeted to the content and to the audience of a given website perform, from an ROI standpoint, on par with text-link advertising. But, again, you’ve got to target the placement.

Proven Performers:

Banner advertising works best when you follow the rules of niche marketing.

Niche products ->Niche Advertising ->Niche Web Sites.

Here’s a hot tip: some of the best sites for banner placement are radio program websites. In particular, the official websites for talk radio programs, especially on the AM frequencies.

Why?

Well, if you’ll tune in to a program on any given day, you’ll hear the reason. There are literally dozens of small businesses advertising on these programs. You’ll notice, too, that the nature of the products they advertise are the kind you’d expect to find in mail-order catalogs or other direct-marketing mediums:

• Nutritional supplements
• Investment courses
• Specialty products

You’ll find the same types of products advertised on the program’s website as you do on-air. But that’s not the best part. The best part is that talk radio programs cull a select, pre-targeted audience. Let’s say you have an e-book related to automotive repair.  Where should you advertise?

Well, Car Talk (http://www.cartalk.com) would be a great place to start. This show has been on the air for years, and boasts a loyal audience - not in the thousands - but in the millions.

News Portals:

News portals and sites focused on alternative media are proving to be great investments for both banner and text-link advertising. Though these sites aren’t always laser-targeted from a content standpoint, the demographics of their readership makes them very attractive. Let’s look at what News Max (http://www.newsmax.com) has to say about their demographics:

• Highly Educated: 63% have a college degree
• Highly Affluent: 70% have a household income over $50,000
• Loyal Readers: 81% visit the site daily
• Online Spenders: 70% have purchased something online in the last year.

Sounds like any marketer’s dream come true, right?  But what makes this type of audience so responsive? Think about the visitor’s frame of mind for a moment. They’re open, curious and in “information gathering” mode. The news content itself may have them actively thinking about their own problems - and wondering where they might find a solution. Oh, and notice, too, that they’re already ‘awash’ in attention-grabbing headlines?

Use Your Own:

Right now there are thousands of sites which rely on auto-generated content (and auto generated advertising). Some of these sites are ‘blogs’ - featuring a mix of both auto-generated content and manually entered content. But there are also  sites created with ‘page generator’ programs, and these rely on content syndication to pull in fresh articles and fresh advertising. If you aren’t familiar with page generator software, here one example products to check out: http://www.trafficequalizer.com

Sites built with these types of programs tend to get search engines traffic if done right.

Most marketers build them for the sole purpose of monetizing the traffic that comes in. The primary method of earning revenue on these sites is Google Adsense. Adsense advertisements are sprinkled across every single page of targeted content.  If you own one of these types of sites, here’s an idea:

Why not place banner advertisements on select pages?  Take advantage of the opportunity to direct those visitors to one of your affiliate programs, where the payout is likely equal to or greater than the amount you earn per click with Adsense.

Now you might be thinking: why would I want to do this? I’m guaranteed to earn something when a visitor clicks away from my site on an Adsense link, but I’m not guaranteed anything if they click on an affiliate banner! This is true, but it also is going to depend on the niche you are targeting and what types of affiliate programs you’re involved in.

Let’s say you have a highly trafficked page that is performing well for you in terms of generating Adsense revenue. This is a sign that the mix of content and advertising is very highly targeted -  in other words, it’s optimized contextual advertising.

If you have a related affiliate program that meets these criteria:

• High pay-out
• Commission earned as ‘pay per lead’ (e.g. Visitor fills out a form or takes some other simple action)

Then I’d say it’s worth the risk of adding that banner to the page to see what type of response you get. You’ve got a much greater chance of nailing that commission since the visitor isn’t having to decide whether to buy anything.

As for programs that do require a purchase for you to earn a commission, I’d recommend placing banners for those products on your under-performing pages. In other words, check your stats and find out which pages get fair traffic but only so-so conversion on Adsense clicks. Slap your banners there and see what you get. You won’t be risking as much revenue this way, and you also up your chances of squeezing more revenue out of that page.

Technorati Tags: Banner Advertising, Website Traffic Tactics

After all the hard work that you manage to get a certain traffic to your website, the next thing you got to do is get them to come to your website for more. Here are some tips to get repeat Web Traffic to your Site.

10 Tips To get Repeated Web Traffic

1. Update the pages on your website frequently. Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

2. Offer additional value on your website. For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

3. You can allow customers to ‘opt in’ to get discounts and special offers. Place a link on your site to invite customers to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter or valuable coupons.

4. Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

5. Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a prewritten title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

6. Brand your website so that visitors always know they are on your site. Use consistent colors, logos and slogans and always provide a ‘Contact Us’ link on each page.

7. Create a ‘Our Policies’ page that clearly defines your philosophy and principles in dealing with your customers. Also post your privacy policy as well so that clients know they are secure when they visit your site.

8. Create a FAQ page which addresses most of the doubts and clarifications about your product or your company that are likely to be asked. This helps to resolve most of the customers doubts in their first visit to your site.

9. Ensure that each page on your website has appropriate titles and keywords so that your customer can find their way back to your site if they lose the book mark.

10. Never spam a client, who has opted for newsletters, with unsolicited emails. Later if they decide they want to ‘opt out’ of the mailings, be sure you honor their request and take them off the mailing list. They may still come back if they like your products. But they will certainly not come back if you continue to flood their email box with mails they no longer wish to receive.

Follow these tips and Your Business Website will almost certainly see an increase in web traffic which ultimately means higher profits for You.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimization

Many studies have proven that radio is a good medium for product advertisements. People listen to the radio for entertainment, usually to listen to the latest music or to their favorite radio program. In between the program, advertisements on products and services are being played.

For many years, this has been the trend in advertising. But now that the radio medium is almost behind the audio-visual medium, the TV, and the Internet, other marketing strategies have to be employed to continue the benefits of advertising through audio.

It is then that the benefits of using music on websites were discovered. Before, music on the Internet was just available in downloadable forms as mp3. Even through hosting downloadable music on their servers, companies were able to get much traffic on their sites. And everyone engaged in Internet marketing knows that website traffic plays a big role in boosting product and service sales.

However, there had been a problem with illegal music download in which artists, musicians and record companies have lost millions of revenues.

Then, came the popularity of Internet music streaming. Unlike the former, radio streaming does not allow download of the music files. Thus, the copyrights of the artists and record label owners are protected.

So, how can this be done? There are several ways to stream audio from your site. First, is to stream a radio program from your site or blog. You can find free affiliate programs that allow you to stream their radio content from your site.

What will this mean to you? This means that your site will have new audio content every time it is visited. What’s even great is that the content is being updated even without much effort from you.

In this case, what you needed to do is to signup with an Internet radio station and have the link embedded on your blog or website.

Another way is to stream mp3s. To do this, you just need to upload your mp3files on a server and add the files’ links to the page. When the link is clicked, the browser opens a media player window and plays a file. However, since the file is in mp3 format, it may also be downloaded. Downloading music files without the authorization of the copyright owner is illegal. Therefore, if you will be using this type of streaming, make sure that you have the appropriate permit to do so.

A third way to add audio to you blog or website is to stream music through organizing playlists. Playlists are m3u files, which if downloaded, will not play music if offline. Using this process, however, can be complex. Here is a short instruction on how to do it.

1. Save your mp3 or wma file on the server. You may skip this step if you know that the file exists on another server and know the link to that file. Make sure that the link has a .mp3 or .wma extension.

2. Open your text editor and type the path to the file. Include the http:// and the file extension. Repeat this step until you have included all the links to the files that you would like to be included in the playlist.

3. Save the playlist with a .m3u extension.

4. Upload the m3u file on the directory where the music files are hosted or to your server.

5. Open your html editor and embed the link to the m3u file. Through this, you can also set if you want to have the playlist to autoplay if someone visits your site of if you want your visitor to control playing the music. You can also set the volume level.

After the code is embedded on the html file, and whenever your site is visited, the songs in the playlist will be buffered, streamed and played one after another. If your playlist has several songs, the user can skip forward or go back a song in the playlist using the media player controls.

Doing this setup works for many website owners. Through this you can customize the type of music being played on your site. You can even play recordings related to your product to boost product awareness.

It requires knowledge of html to be done. But if it will be the best way to increase traffic to your site why not request assistance from programmers. After all, having audio on a website is a proven way to increase sales.

Technorati Tags: Blogging Strategies, marketing strategies

There is no question about it that choosing an appropriate domain name as well as getting the domain name to the right web hosting is very important key in search engine optimization. First let talk little bit more about the why it is important to have good domain names.

First and foremost, when it comes to domain names, try to stay away from the silly, stupid, ridiculous or clever. Keep your domain name simple and make it something your customers can remember if they lose the link to your business website.

Take note that, while your domain name on Geocities or AOL may seem like the least expensive way to go, it may also get you dropped from certain search engines. Some search engines ignore domain addresses that reside on these ‘free servers’ or on the ‘cheap’ servers.

Even if your site is recognized and considered by search engines, a professional domain name that uses your primary company name or associated words is likely to get more attention and be considered as a stable business by your prospective customers.

Purchasing a domain name is not that expensive and there are many companies that can register the name for you, provided it is available and has not already been used by another company.

Using one of your keywords in your domain name can increase your score on some search engines. For example, solderingiron.com could be more effective as Electric-solder-irons.com, if that domain name was available.

You might also choose to establish more than one domain name using keywords and then link your ‘doorway’ domain sites to your primary site. But you will have to pay for each of the domain name and also the monthly hosting fees. It all depends on the type and size of your business and your competition.

Keep in mind that some search engines disregard ‘doorway’ sites. So put at least a page of content on the doorway site with some useful information and then link it to your primary site. But don’t design it as an empty page. The other reason being, you can have one, three, five, or even more email addresses that all contain your business name, and give your business a professional feel. When customers get an email, for example. from dominstone@solderingiron.com they feel as if they are dealing with a stable, professional business operation.

One last thing – There is no need for customers to understand how you manage all your email boxes on your domain. They just need to feel your business is dependable and reputable.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Optimization

The question of whether or not MySpace can be used to promote a business is certainly debatable. MySpace is intended to be a non-commercial website by nature but there is a different between blatant commercialization and mentioning a product or service you offer and providing a link as a useful resource to visitors of your website. This article will take a look at the opportunities to promote a business on MySpace by providing information on determining whether or not your method of business promotion is permitted on MySpace and information on how to promote your business without being accused of spamming MySpace.

Review the Terms of Service In MySpace Carefully

The terms of service provided by MySpace can provide the greatest insight into whether or not there are ways to promote your business through MySpace. Members of MySpace are asked to review the terms of service before becoming a member. Each member should carefully read through this entire agreement to come to a better understanding of which types of activities are allowed on MySpace as well as which types of activities are prohibited.

One of the stipulations of the MySpace reads as follows, “Non-commercial Use by Members. The MySpace Services are for the personal use of Members only and may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by MySpace.com.

Illegal and-or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services, including collecting usernames and-or email addresses of Members by electronic or other means for the purpose of sending unsolicited email or unauthorized framing of or linking to the MySpace Website is prohibited. Commercial advertisements, affiliate links, and other forms of solicitation may be removed from Member profiles without notice and may result in termination of Membership privileges. Appropriate legal action will be taken for any illegal or unauthorized use of the MySpace Services.”

This section of the terms of service stipulates that MySpace is created for non-commercial use unless Myspace.com has approved the use of a member’s website for commercial purposes. Therefore care should be taken when designing a MySpace website to ensure the website will not be deemed to be a commercial website by MySpace administrators.

When In Doubt, Ask Questions

Those who are unsure of whether or not their MySpace website, as they have designed it, will be considered a commercial website should consult with MySpace administrators. This step is not necessary unless the member is concerned their content will be perceived as being commercial. Reviewing the terms of use agreement can provide a great deal of information but some users may still be concerned with the possibility that their website will be penalized if the administrators deem it to be commercial in nature.

Contacting MySpace is a fairly simple process. Members can use the, “Contact MySpace” link from the MySpace.com homepage. The contact page enables members to select a subject and a subtopic and submit this information. Once this is done MySpace provides some preliminary information which may be relevant. If this information is not useful to the member they can email a detailed request to MySpace.

Avoid Spamming at All Costs

If you determine there is an opportunity for you to promote your business through MySpace, care should be taken to ensure the promotion does not cross the line into spam. Spamming is taken very seriously by the MySpace administrators and it may result in links or content being deleted or the privileges of membership may be revoked when a member is found to be guilty of spamming.

Links to your ecommerce website integrated into your MySpace website isn’t considered spamming. Depending on how it is used it may not even be considered advertising, and therefore prohibited, by MySpace administrators. However, visiting other MySpace websites and placing a link to your ecommerce website on each website you visit would be considered spam. These individuals may or may not be interested in the website you provide but even if they are interested sending these links to numerous websites unsolicited is often considered to be spam.

Technorati Tags: MySpace