ComputerHunter.org |
|
|
|||
|
 |
Top Ten Reason to Publish an Ezine AND a Blog
Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your messages and article to clients. They are a like personal web sites, easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites. Just when you thought you were mastering the tasks of ezines and newsletters, along comes blogging, and you have to ask yourself: Do I really need a blog? Isn't an email ezine or newsletter doing the same thing? Should I do both? Are these two marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money? What's the best way to spend my resources here so that I can get clients and results out of my marketing efforts? Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention to this new blogging revolution and do both and ezine and a blog. 1. Because a blog is web based, it is published instantaneously every time you post. This allows you to be spontaneous and current with issues that affect your readers/clients. Blog posts are short, ezines can be longer. One can complement the other. 2. Because blog posts are spontaneous, they tend to be more informal, friendly, and conversational. Blog posts show your personality. Ezines show your knowledge. Your readers/clients need to know who you are before they will invest in your services. Providing both an ezine and a blog allows your readers to get to know you. 3. You can set up a subscription form on your blog and your subscribers will get a short notice in their inboxes each time you post something new. This is a great way around the spam filter problem which blocks so many ezines and legitimate messages from professionals. 4. Blogs link to other blogs and web sites, which helps you create a viral marketing system, increasing your exposure to search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are text based and key word rich. Your rankings go up when you publish a blog and use linking and posting on a frequent basis. You can also link to your own web site(s). 5. You have instant access to all your published articles on your blog. A blog automatically creates archives of previous posts. You see them in a side-bar for easy access. You put them into categories for easy finding. One clever person we know spent a day posting all her ezine articles to her blog, so that it would appear she has been blogging for a much longer time. Also, readers of her blog may not have had the opportunity to read all of her other ezine articles. 6. You can use your blog to become a trusted expert in your field by filtering content on the web for your subscribers. Readers don't have time to surf and to collect information, but you can do it for them, thereby establishing yourself as a good resource. 7. You can set up links for ads, products, and for your affiliate programs in the blog side columns so you don't have to include them in the body of your article. In an ezine, you have to be careful about promotional stuff in the article because it annoys people and causes them to unsubscribe. A blog is a non-intrusive way to do this, and an ezine can link to the blog where more information can be found. 8. Readers can comment on your blog postings, which creates rapport and with readers. You can ask questions, stimulate responses by being controversial, and survey readers. It is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what readers want. 9. You don't have to mess with a web site, or pay a web designer to update your web site every time you have a new article or teleclass, or program or product. Blogs are user-friendly, and with a few instructions or tutorials, you can learn to use it yourself. It is less expensive than setting up your ezine in HTML. 10. Bottom line is this: using a blog and an ezine will help attract more visitors to your website, who become subscribers and who may eventually become clients. Think of the World Wide Web as a big fishing pond. The more fishing lines in the pond, the more fish you are going to catch! You have a web site, yet it is static like an online brochure. You have an ezine, which you grow through subscription links everywhere. And now, you should have a blog, where you can attract more readers to get to know you, where they can interact with you, and maybe take your bait! Happy fishing! Patsi Krakoff, Psy. D., CBC is publisher of Customized Newsletter Services, providing complete ezine services for coaches and consultants. Patsi is a psychologist and writer who has 8 years experience helping busy professionals build their client relationships through ezines, newsletters and blogs. Visit her web site and blogs to get helpful tips: http://www.customizednewsletters.com Denise Wakeman is Chief Implementor of Next Level Partnership, a company dedicated to partnering with you to take your business to the next level. Denise has nearly 20 years experience in small business administration and management. She has specific experience in leveraging Internet marketing systems to create awareness, build customer loyalty and increase the bottom line. Visit Denise's blog at http://www.biztipsblog.com to get tips and tactics for taking your business to the next level.
Google News - Top Stories
|
|
|
|
RELATED ARTICLES
Why It Took Me So Long To Blog When I saw my first blog, I wasn't impressed. Is Your Site Ready For The Coming RSS Revolution? Recently, there have been many developments in the RSS arena. Changes that will make RSS a major force on the web and a dominant contributing factor to your computing experience. Online marketers should pay special attention to the RSS wildcard in any future marketing ventures. Why I Use Bloglines as My Default RSS Reader Choosing a decent RSS reader to browse and read your favourite RSS feeds was not a straight forward task. I tried and tested many different windows desktop readers but I ended up uninstalling them for one reason or another. Then I found Bloglines and I am pleased to say I have not yet been disappointed with it. The 7-Step RSS Marketing Plan If you're wondering how to get started with RSS marketing, here's a basic 7-step plan that should provide some needed guidance. Use these steps as your personal RSS marketing checklist to get your started and help you see whether you're on the right track. Business Blogging - 5 Tips to Help You Smashl Through Writers Block It's inevitable. Everyone hits the wall. Whether you've been blogging ten weeks, ten minutes, or ten months, eventually you'll find yourself with absolutely nothing to say. Or so you think. So what in the world do you do when you're stumped? 1- Talk about what you've already talked about Pick a topic you've gone over before and give it some spin. Try a new angle, like playing devil's advocate. For example, if you are a search engine journalist, and last week your position was that most mainstream sites need Google traffic to survive, try proving your point from the "con" perspective, instead of the "pro" position. There are dozens of ways to write about the same thing. By putting your point another way, you might give someone in your audience what a client of mine referred to as an "Ah-ha!" moment. That's when they realize the true value of the items for sale at your site to them and their business. 2- Talk about what someone else is talking about If you want to have a popular blog, find other bloggers in similar areas, and talk about what they said in their posts. Friendly debate can often spark the soap-opera like drama that will have both your audiences visiting both blogs to see what "the other fella" had to say. As an added bonus, if both of you are using Trackback in your blogs, you've got yourself a mini-link party that other people who are speaking on similar topics will want to join.. 3- Have yourself a good rant The intimate nature and voice of blogs lends itself well to the opinionated, angry ramble. But as a professional, don't let yourself get too unfocused, and remember to back up your opinion with facts. 4- Feature someone, something or somewhere I like to call mine "of the Day". As I zip around the Net conducting my business and research, if my attention is called to a resource or tool that my audience might find useful, I hit my blog bookmarklet and save that bad boy for later. Then when I get too busy for a full blown tip, I'll crown the resource, feed, tool, download or freebie the featured "Deal of the Day", changing the word deal to something else more appropriate as needed. After a while, my audience started to look for it as a feature, as opposed to being upset at the interruption in my mad, mad rambles. 5- Let someone else talk for a change Invite a guest blogger, or post an article that offers free reprint rights, the same way you would in a newsletter. Of course you want to leave the resource box intact, or let the guest promote their site, which brings me to the most common complaint about this tactic. "But I don't want to send people away from my site." Guess what? You'll never believe what I found out. Ready? In a recent startling discovery, I've found that 100% of my visitors eventually turn off their computers or take otherwise drastic measures that cause them to leave my site. Apparently this is beyond prevention, though you can stall them for hours sometimes with good content. Of course you don't want to send them on their way prematurely, but if you're a good blogger, and have done what you can to make sure they sign up to your blog email updates or site feed, they'll be back. Just be sure that you're giving them a good enough reason. In the meantime, since they're going to leave anyway, it might as well be somewhere that gives you some direct or in-direct benefit. So there you have it - enough material for five more days of posts. Happy Blogging! RSS, Feeds, and Aggregators When you work online all the time, immersed in bits and bytes, hands automatically resting on the keyboard, where the lingua franca is a mish-mash of acronyms and abbreviations - it is easy to forget that the average person has no clue what we talk about. It can be very daunting for the Internet neophyte with all these terms, technology and hardware. That's why I wrote this. Because I don't want people to be afraid to either ask (via comments on this thread) or to click/use buttons they don't know or use. Making Money With Your Blog I've sure you've heard before that it's a possibility to make money with your blog and you may be wondering how this is possible. And were they really meant for making money or just for journaling your personal thoughts? I'm not sure what they were intended for but they are great ways to make money. Cash In Your Blog - 4 Ways to Profit From The Hidden Revenue In Your Blog Most webmasters and online business owners know that a blog can bring you additional revenue from advertising, and more traffic from search engines. Then there's the additional benefit of having a great way to spark productive dialogue between you and your prospects. But did you know that your blog itself may be worth thousand of dollars to you in its present form? The day I learned that my blog held such hidden treasure was one of those happy accidents that can make life such a fun adventure. All I wanted to do was find out why some of my newsletter subscribers had not crossed over to my blog audience. In an informal poll, I found that many of the fans of my newsletter were overwhelmed with the amount of free information on my site, and felt that they'd never catch up to reading it all. This led to several discoveries about how I could find a way to make the information more accessible to them without disrupting the enjoyment of my feed subscribers. If your blog has export capabilities, you can use any of these techniques to generate revenue from your blog and make both your newsletter and blog subscribers deliriously happy. Method One: Monitor Your Popular Blog Topics as Ideas for Future Products As you begin to monitor which topics have the most responses, you'll be able to see a pattern that tells you what your audience likes the most about your site. These themes often give you clues about what your next product could be. For example, as I continue to cover free Google tools, tips and news in my blog on Tuesdays, I've noticed that this is the day that I tend to have the most subscribers reading every entry. With that information I was able to create a free Christmas gift for my audience that they'll be able to use as a reference guide. Your next best selling software idea, book or tool could come as a result of watching topic popularity, if you learn how to track audience response. Method Two: The Subscription Model When you're blogging daily, sometimes several times a day, and much of the information on your blog continues to be useful months after you publish it, your audience is probably aware of this. Search engines may be doing a fine job of helping your fans find the information they're looking for at your site, but you'll also find that a cross-section of them would rather digest a periodic collection of your posts for use at a later time. Should you find this to be the case, instead of purging your archives, you can create a "Best of" compilation on a weekly or monthly basis, and charge for electronic distribution. Or you could charge advertisers to be featured in these periodicals the same way you would a newsletter, and offer them to your audience at a discounted rate, as a premium version of your present ezine. Method Three: Turn Your Archives into an Ebook With a blog that focuses on a narrow, popular theme, you could be sitting on a gold mine and not even be aware of it. Whether your blog contains tips for newbies in your field, expert advice for veterans, or success strategies that build on each other, you could be in the position to supply a demand for needed information. There are a couple of tricks you'd have to learn to convert your archived blog posts into an ebook, but you'd be surprised about how easy this process can be. Method Four: Make Your Entire Blog Into a Printed Book I know what you're thinking. "Why would anyone pay for my blog as a book when it's free at my site?" Under certain circumstances, you'd be surprised to find how many people would rather have a portable collection of your blog posts when the quality is consistent. The online version of your blog is the ultimate free trial. Many sites have been using this logic long before the web log came along to allow users to preview their services. For example, the sheer volume of the free traffic generation tips on my site was repeatedly described during my informal poll as "overwhelming". It's one thing to try and read 2000 web pages in front of your computer, but it's not as daunting to peruse a 400 page book in the comfort of your home. Converting your blog into a yearly volume may be a viable solution if consuming the amount of data in your archives is a daunting task. And there are ways to accomplish this that have no start-up costs. If you're still not convinced that it's not worth the set-up to convert your blog into a periodical, ebook or printed edition, consider this. On Monday morning I issued a press release regarding the transformation of my blog to a book, as a test to measure interest. It's almost 4 a.m. Pacific time as I write this, and so far it has been read over 23,000 times, resulting in a distinct increase in general traffic, not to mention the best initial sales debut of any product at my site since this past summer. Just imagine what that kind of interest could do for your site - and how much money you may be leaving on the table right now. Making your blog available in other formats is worth a look. Use Blogging to Manage Your Entire Web Sites Content Blogging is a term that means different things to different people. To some people it means keeping an online journal. To others blogging is about creating a community of people who can contribute to a growing discussion on a specific topic. To me, however, blogging is about creating and running an entire web site. That's because blogging can actually be used as a complete content management system for almost any web site. RSS Explained What is RSS? To begin with, it's one of those things everyone says is easy to understand. And it is, as soon as you have your own 'ah-ha' moment. The Fearful, Ignorant Guy Has Got A Blog On The Internet - It Must Be Easy! Of all people in the world I was easily one of the most pessimistic about computers, the Internet and now that I even know they exist-blogs. I think blogs are pretty cool but I never thought I could have one. I thought the processes of getting a site; domain name and the actual building of the blog would just be out of my league. I'm a complete novice when it comes to technology, but I do like writing a journal, and I thought having a journal on-line would be both fun and make life simpler for me. No more writing with pens, other people can read my stuff and comment on it, and I could add pictures to illustrate my points and make things look more interesting. How To Create A Blog A blog is an online diary or as some people call them a weblog. They can be about any topic you would like to comment on. How To Build Traffic To Your Blog RSS Responder is a new script that allows you to keep in touch and follow-up with your subscribers without the hassle of email. RSS as a Change Agent To better understand how RSS is changing the way companies and individuals deliver and consume content on the macro scale, let us first remember how content is traditionally delivered and consumed. Internet News Services Explode Online It seems no matter how much information comes available online, people thirst for more. Why Wordpress is now my Blog of Choice The more I use Wordpress, the more I love it. It has 2 very important features that Blogger doesn't yet support. How to Make Money with Your Blog -- What Is A Blog Blogging Policies, Does Your Business Need One? Weblogs or Blogs as they are more commonly referred to, have become extremely popular in the last several years. So popular in fact that many large businesses are letting some employees post Blogs on their corporate websites. While many businesses are jumping on the Blog bandwagon for use as a creative marketing technique; a few businesses have fired employees for what they posted on a Blog. These businesses accuse the employees of allegedly disclosing trade secrets, proprietary information, and making statements that showed the employer in a bad light. Do You Know The 3 Key Ways to Blog to Promote Your Online Home Based Business? Most People who Blog and Ping only use 1 Method to promote there online Home Based Business. Their are actually 3 Keys ways a Blog can help you promote your Online Home based Business for little or no cost to you. If you aren't using all 3 Methods then you are missing out on some huge marketing opportunities. The Holy Grail that Online Advertisers, Merchants, Publishers, and Shoppers have been Looking for! For Online Publishers/RSS Feeds users - RSS (Real Simple Syndication) is a popular way for online users/publishers to pull news and information from across the web. RSS allows web sites to publish real time content to online users/shoppers easily and the trend is growing. Some site have taken advantage of this technology and created RSS/XML feeds using products data feeds from top online merchants/advertisers.
|
|
|
|
|
