Blogs Are Websites Too

Why Is Blogging So Effective?

If there is one single phenomena that could best be said to represent the idea behind Web 2.0 - it is blogging.

A blog is simply a website that will usually provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.' according to Wikipedia.

Although blogs first came into being as online personal diaries, the blogs that we are going to concentrate on here are those that are used for business - which represents the vast majority of blogs today.

Blogs have many attractions, the main one being their simplicity. Anyone who has the basic ability to use two fingers on a keyboard can begin to create their own blog. And if you don't believe me, would the fact that one of my colleague's 7-year-old daughter has just started her first blog help prove it?

Blogs can also be updated as often as you like, and many people do update their blogs two or three times a day.

This means that there is a constant stream of fresh new content available on blog sites, which is the reason that blogs are fast becoming the favorite sites of the major search engines, especially Google, itself the #1 search engine.

There is no need to know anything whatsoever about website creation or scripting language to get started blogging. No matter which blogging 'platform' (system) you use, it is always a simple question of following a very small handful of simple instructions, and you are good to go.

And, as the Wikipedia definitions suggest, a core function of blog sites is that they invite reader input and feedback in the form of comments.

What a good blog site therefore does is start a 'conversation' between the blog site owner and his/her readership.

It has an inherent ability to begin building a relationship centered around a common area of interest, as expressed in the subject matter of the blog itself.

So, in simple terms, if for example you are an avid mountain climber and start a blog about your hobby, then the chances are very good that most of the people who visit your pages will be interested in climbing mountains too.

So, all you need to do is create articles that are interesting or controversial enough to prompt your readers to comment and you have generated a discussion or debate about a subject that is close to your heart.

The point here is that you can create your own blog about any topic under the sun, and publish it for the whole world to read literally within minutes of sitting down in front of your PC.

So, let's extend the idea of creating a blog about mountain climbing to creating one about your business.

It really does not matter what your business is about, the same 'rules' apply - you create your blog, and begin to make 'postings', which is a very grandiose way of describing the ability that a blog gives you to basically write whatever you want to.

Let's imagine a couple of different scenarios.

Situation one is that you own a 'real world' business that sells widgets. You have a customer list of people who have bought your widgets before, so you can use your blog as a regular newsletter to which you publish all of your latest special offers, discount deals, news and so on.

It is a fantastic way of keeping in touch with your existing customers. By publishing regular news bulletins through the company blog site, it offers a way to invite potential new customers to have a look inside your organization too, before they decide whether or not they want to work with you.

Of course, the limitation of using a blog for a real world business selling tangible physical products is that no blog or website can actually deliver the product for you.

However, in situation two, where you are using a blog to promote an online or Internet marketing business, even that can be achieved through your blog site to a certain extent.

Let's imagine that your business is selling a website traffic generation service to other businesses on the net who want to increase the people that see their own sites.

You can write about all of the latest traffic ideas that you have and promote your services through the blog.

You would also most probably have a 'buy now' button featured somewhere very prominently on the front page.

You might also review traffic generation products from other companies, and carry links on your blog that would take the reader directly to the sales page for the product in question, if they have an interest in finding out more.

Although (as Wikipedia points out) blogging was initially a text based publishing medium, it is now increasingly becoming linked to other media, such as video and audio (podcasts) as well.

So, not only can you write reviews but you can even create short movies to do the same as well, and publish them to your blog (and other places, as we shall see later).

You can create video presentations about your business, your products or basically whatever else you want, and have it out there in front of a potential audience of over 1 billion people in a matter of minutes.

It has been said that there are 'three cornerstones' to online success and that they are visitor traffic, visibility and perceived credibility.

This is a critical concept to grasp, and one to which I will return time and again.

A blog site is such a powerful marketing tool because it allows you to address all three of these requirements through the one simple site, as you are just about to discover.

Choosing Your Blogging Platform

For the sake of this article, we are focusing on online entrepreneurs and internet marketers who are selling, or planning to sell, digital products on the net - although most of what you will read can be applied to those selling tangible, real world products and services too.

So, here are some basic 'ground rules' for setting up as an internet marketer that you absolutely must follow if you want to be taken seriously and therefore be successful.

The first thing that you really must do is invest in your own domain name, that is, the name that appears at the top of the page like ABC.com.

Without a domain name to represent your own company or business, who is going to take you seriously?

And, given that such a domain name costs less than $10 per year, there is absolutely no excuse for not having one.

If possible, choose a domain name that represents what your business does or what your product is.

For example, if you sell pink widgets, then try to register a domain name like ThePinkWidgetCo.com or BigPinkWidgets.com.

The second thing that you really must have is a web hosting account, a place where you can build and then host your website.

This should cost no more than $10 per month for a basic account, and is again an integral part of starting of your business off with the correct professional image.

Free Will Cost You Money

As the web matures, free websites are seen to have less and less credibility as serious business tools. And let's be fair - when a website is a free one, it is always very obvious.

As pointed out above, perceived credibility is one of our three cornerstones of online success, so it really will not help you if you decide to launch or expand your online business with a free website that is filled with what is obviously third party advertising.

Now, if you really have no choice but to use a free medium, then a free blog site may be okay for a while, but it is certainly not the best solution and longterm will not help your credibility.

If you must use a free blog site, then the simplest and still most effective choice is probably Google's Blogger.

There are some advantages of using this platform, the main one being that it is, of course, free. It can be used to build quite an attractive (but nevertheless somewhat lifeless) blog site, as seen below. And, as it is owned by Google, it is very easy to add AdSense advertising to your Blogger blog too, if you want to use this method of generating a little extra cash flow from your blog.

But there are also disadvantages which would, in my opinion, far outweigh the upsides of using the Blogger platform.

Here's a few of the major downsides:

• By definition, a Blogger blog is hosted by Google. So, they effectively control it and can dictate what you can and cannot do with your blog site.
• For example, Google can (and Google does) cancel or remove Blogger blogs seemingly without reason, and so your blog can literally disappear overnight.
• Blogger is relatively inflexible.
• It is one of the best known blogging platforms in the world. Thus, most people recognize a Blogger blog, and know that it is free. What kind of message does that send about your business? (think credibility again)

Blogger is the best of your free options, but it will still cost you money that might otherwise have come from people who will not deal with someone that does not take their own business seriously enough to invest $8 in their own domain name - so do not use it unless you have to.

Wordpress - The Choice Of Champions

There is no doubt whatsoever that a Wordpress blog, hosted on your own domain and web hosting account should be the way that you go when you create your business blog.

As you will read throughout my tutorials, the interactive element of Web 2.0 does present a massive range of new and exciting opportunities for promoting your site or blog.

But, that being so, you must have a blog site that can take full advantage of those opportunities.

In other words, if you are generating traffic from Web 2.0 activities, then you must send that traffic to a site that the visitors will feel comfortable with, and will hopefully like enough to add to their bookmarks folder.

If people find your content through a Web 2.0 related resource, and then end up on a dull and somewhat lifeless hosted blog (at blogger.com, for example) then your credibility and their stay on your site are both going to be extremely short lived!

See, you must appreciate that you want MORE than people coming to visit your blog or site.

You want them to visit and then STICK AROUND - you need them to interact with your site in some way, and hopefully you want them to come back time after time. That's because you know that it takes more than ONE contact before your visitor will buy and become your customer.

Eventually, of course, you want them to become your customer too, but they will not do any of these things if they land on a boring, lifeless blog or website the very first time that they visit.

Using Wordpress on your own domain is the simplest and quickest way of getting a superbly interactive blog website set up - a site that's fully in tune with the requirements of all the traffic (both Web 2.0 and 1.0 'styles') that I will show you how to generate.

Okay, so the first thing you need to do is set up your Wordpress blog (termed WP from here on out) will be to install a database - accomplished via your hosting control panel

Now - To Install the Wordpress software... To do this, first check your web hosting account. Does it have a 'cpanel'?

If so, then installing a WP blog is amazingly simple.

Just open cpanel and look for an icon marked Fantastico:

This is a built-in suite of software tools that comes pre-packaged in most cpanels. You simply click through Fantastico to arrive at a list of software programs that are ready to install with a few clicks of the mouse and right near the top, under 'Blogs', you should see Wordpress.

Follow the links step by step and install the software!

Now, maybe you do not use a web host who offers cpanel with Fantastico, but no matter.

You can simply go to Wordpress.org to download the latest version of the software and install it on your site manually, following the detailed instructions available.

So, what is it about WP that makes it such an effective content management system?

Basically, it is the fact that the whole of the WP system has been built and developed through interactivity between the people who initially created and designed WP and the worldwide user community.

What I mean by this is that the basic, plain, 'vanilla' WP that you have just installed on your domain is a superbly flexible system, but it is not perfect.

There are countless things that WP cannot do 'straight out of the box'. But what WP does have is immense flexibility and adaptability.

So, WP users all over the world have created 1000s of plug-ins and widgets for WP that you can install into the admin area of your blog (usually free) to add a huge amount of additional features and usability to your blog.

WP has plugged itself into the open source communities' ability to create any number of widgets or plug-ins that can massively enhance all of your marketing, seo, and conversion efforts. There is simply no other system around with this level of increased functionality.

In other words, everything that you could ever want to change, alter, or enhance about your blog site can be done by installing the correct plug-in or widget, or by editing the theme/template.

Now, let me just warn you that not everything about this is necessarily good, although it may sound crazy to say that after just praising WP to high-heaven!

But, the point about plugins for WP is that there are so MANY of them, with more arriving each and every day. You simply do not need (and definitely could not use) every one of them on your blog. And knowing which Wordpress plugins work best for your needs is a bit daunting.

So, here is a list of the Wordpress plug-ins that I would recommend that you add to your WP blog site in order to take maximum advantage of the traffic generation tactics that I'll be describing here over time.

• What Would Seth Godin Do? - This adds a note at the top or bottom of your blog post reminding the reader to subscribe to your RSS feed.
• AdSense Deluxe - Makes it easy to add AdSense as to your posts and blog site in general.
• aLinks - Automatically links keywords in your blog post, so you can link to affiliate products, your own sales pages or basically anywhere you want your reader to go.
• Subscribe To Comments - Allows you to tell your post readers when new comments are posted to an entry. If your posts get some really great conversations going, you want to try to make sure that your readers stay involved.
• diggIT - Automatically enables a dynamic Digg button to show up in each post. If your post gets dugg, having a button showing the number of diggs encourages more people to click too, and the more visitors you have already had, then the more you will get as well!
• Sociable - Automatically add links on your posts to popular social bookmarking sites. Crucial to add this.
• Head META Description - You don't need to waste too much time knowing how or why, but this can be a big help in convincing search engines that each page of your blog is unique.
• Tagalize It - Enhances your tagging ability and works very well in conjunction with
• Ultimate Tag Warrior - Adds tags to your posts in pretty much any way you want, and is an especially attractive plug-ins for the major search engines by all accounts.
• WP Cache - As the name suggests, it caches WP files, and can reduce the load on your database server significantly as well as improving the site load speed.

note: In the latest version of Wordpress, there is now a built-in tagging feature that can be enabled. But older WP versions can still make good use of tagging plugins like Tagalize and Ultimate Tag Warrior.

These are just ten of the plug-ins that I would recommend that you should install in order to try to maximize the sites attractiveness in traffic terms. There are others that I would also recommend to expand on Wordpress's functionality. But for now, these ten will add a strong basis of performance to your blog. Because there are hundreds of plugins available (many of which do the same job as one another), only you can decide which plug-ins will work best for your site needs.

The key thing here, however, is not really about the exact plug-ins that you should or should not install.

The main thing that you need to appreciate is that whatever you could ever want to do with WP, someone, somewhere has probably already created a plug-in to do the job - So you CAN have a site that will adapt for almost any purpose.

Now, if you want to skip all the 'downloading and adding' plugins, widgets, and manual theme and template editing necessary with basic Wordpress... an EASIER, and more Powerful solution is to grab the Semiologic Pro CMS for Wordpress. In fact, I use Semiologic Pro exclusively for ALL my own blogs, and the custom blog installations I do for my clients.

Why?

Because Semiologic Pro has everything you need rolled up into one, nice, neat package. It's a stand-alone content management system that's easy to use, even EASIER to customize, and has very POWERFUL SEO features and convenient built-in functionality for internet marketers and business owners - Semiologic Pro has too many features and additional functionality to list here. But, Just a handful of examples...

• Advertising management system (I love this feature, and it's POWERFUL)
• Easily add subscribe form (widget) to your blog pages
• Easy, fast theme 'css' and layout switcher
• Easy breezy header graphic switcher
• Easy to customize
• Quickly and Easily Incorporate 3rd party scripts, etc...
• Add video and audio with one-click
• Puts RSS feed output on steroids
• Robust search engine optimization way beyond standard Wordpress

Plus, Semiologic Pro offers a myriad of Web 2.0 interactive features for your visitors that also makes your blog a VIRAL machine. Definitely check out Semiologic Pro.

Either way, start out blogging with Wordpress, hosted on your own domain. This type of installation can actually serve as a stand-alone website for your online business. And you can install Wordpress blogs to additional domains to drive traffic to your main site, your sales pages and products. The search engines love Wordpress, and your web visitors like the interactivity and open style.

Happy blogging.

How Good Is Your Web Presence?

If you want to make money online, but haven't had any luck, what I'm about to tell you might have a HUGE impact on your future.

[WARNING: The following might sound a bit harsh... But it just may be exactly what you need to hear.]

So what, exactly, is the problem???

Here's my guess: YOU PROBABLY HAVE NO ONLINE PRESENCE!

This could mean that you haven't even been able to get a site up yet. Or, it could mean that you have a site -- but it hasn't attracted so much as a glimmer of interest.

In either case, you're going to find it tough to make a penny online!

So... what's the easiest way to create an online presence?

And how are SOME people able to make MORE money even FASTER these days than in years past?

(What is it THEY know that you DON'T know?)

The answer might surprise you: It's blogging.

If you want an online business that makes real money, but don't have a blog, then you're in BIG TROUBLE.

In today's "Web 2.0" climate, anyone who's truly serious about succeeding online has their own blog. It's the ultimate communications and "PR" tool for your business!

Maybe you've thought about starting up a blog, but are overwhelmed by everything you don't know -- such as how to set up a blog account or install a blog on your domain, what to write about, or how to get traffic.

There are loads of helpful blogging resources available to you online that can teach you what you need to know. And the great thing is that many of them are free - especially the basic 'how to' blog guides.

Blogs have evolved - Blogs have now surpassed the typical static website for ease of use, SEO, and especially for promotion - both automatic self-promotion and viral Web 2.0 promotion.

Stop dragging your feet. Stop being scared. Having your own quality and professional website is now easily within your grasp - The barrier of entry to an online presence for your business no longer exists.

You CAN have a professional-looking website up and running that's easy to manage, update, and promote as soon as TODAY - It's BLOG Simple.