Create a Popular Blog

The fact that blogs have become an extremely popular marketing and promotion method is no surprise. There are advantages over the standard website.

An important advantage is being able to get your blog (and subsequently, future blog postings) indexed by search engines in a much shorter period of time.

This can be attributed to three factors:

• Search engines such as Google favor blogs, mostly because it’s fresh content that’s updated on a regular basis.
• Pinq capability means you can immediately notify search engines whenever new content has been added.
• Syndicatinq blog content through RSS feeds increases both the content value and the number of backlinks.

Just like any other website, you can also incorporate independent advertising in your blog template.

As long as your blog content provides valuable and interesting information, other bloggers will come.

The only difficulty is providing this type of inviting content on a regular basis.

The reason most blogs fail (other than the fact that so many of them contain nothing worth reading about) is simply because the owner can’t keep up the pace.

They open their blog, post some good content for a period of time, and then gradually run out of steam.

If you want your blog to be successful, you need to approach the writing on a casual and personal level.

Be yourself. Write honestly and from the heart, without all the hype and polished promotional agenda.

Granted, your goal is to make money. But you won’t be able to do that if you use your blog simply to hawk products. You need to entertain people.

But you do have to give them something that makes them want to keep reading.

You need to capture their attention to the degree that they actually look forward to hearing what you have to say next.

One of the best ways to ensure that you’ll retain reader attention and support is to choose specific niche topics.

The more targeted or specific the niche, the better.

Rather than trying to please scores of individuals with various interests, you can focus on subject areas that have very strong and targeted audience potential.

Don’t just write. Get people fired up.

Give them something to think about, to talk about with their friends and associates

Of all the advantages a blog can offer, the best one is the fact that people who frequent blogs don’t expect them to be literary works of art.

Instead, they’re looking for a place to be informed, amused, enlightened, and entertained.

If you’re on a more serious level, talking about a professional subject such as SEO or internet marketing, or financial investment, you’ll need to be careful about your writing, spelling, and grammar.

In those types of instances, you want people to respect your advice and view you as an expert in your field.

You won’t be able to pull that off if your blog posts are riddled with misspelled words and grammatical errors.

Your blog has the potential to generate a good deal of revenue.

But your first and primary objective should be to create and maintain content that keeps your readership alive and well.

Once you’ve accomplished that, financial success will automatically follow.

WordPress (free) is the most popular blogging platform that there is.

One very important thing to know is that with a free blogger account or WordPress account, your blog could get deleted at any time and without warning, which would mean that you would lose all of the content you had created.

Blog Self-Hosting Software

WordPress (free) www.wordpress.org

Currently, it’s the largest self-hosted blogging tool and has many desirable features which include ping support, management of non-blog pages, private and password-protected posts, and automatic spam protection.

Niche Blogs

One of the most important aspects of any blog is the topic or subject matter.

The more popular it is, the more readers and loyal fans it will enjoy.

How do you choose the best topic or subject matter? There’s no definitive or easy answer to that question.

It depends on your own knowledge and/or passion for any given topic or area of interest.

For the most part, however, you’ll want to pick a topic that is not only popular but lends itself well to promoting related products and/or services.

A niche blog will attract more targeted readers. And in most instances, more loyal supporters.

They’re interested in the topic, they like what you’re writing about, and they return on a regular and ongoing basis.

These types of niche-oriented viewers are also more likely to contribute comments and thoughts of their own.

And that’s exactly what you want. people who not only follow your blog postings but get involved as well.

From a marketing standpoint, you have the ability to promote very specific products to a very specific audience.

Assuming you’ve captured their trust and respect, they’ll be inclined to seriously entertain any offer you put out there.

From an SEO standpoint, you’ll be attracting viewers through the use of targeted and highly searched keywords.

That means they’ll arrive on the pages of your blog already interested in the topic (and most often, the product or products that are associated with that particular topic).

Get Traffic

Having a blog is all well and good. But you won’t experience much marketing benefit if you don’t receive a considerable amount of visitors.

It’s never too soon to start.

As soon as you’ve established your blog (which means you’ve written some compelling content that will capture viewer attention), you need to begin implementing traffic methods.

Following are several strategies that can be most effective in generating viewer activity.

1. Above everything else, make certain your blog content is search engine friendly.

That would include the following things.

• Place keywords in all the headings (titles) of your posts.
• Place keywords in your links. For example, if you’re sending viewers to a page where there is more information about optimizing their websites for better search engine position, don’t say “click here” but rather hyperlink the words “search engine optimization”.
• Place a primary keyword in the name of your blog.

2. Submit your site to all the major search engines as well as the following blog directories and websites.

3. Make certain you ping whenever you add new content to your blog. If your blog doesn’t come equipped with this capability, it can be accomplished through websites like Pinq-O-Matic at pinqomatic.com.

4. Create your own RSS feed to distribute your blog directly to readers.

5. Contact the owners of websites whose topic is relevant to what you write about in your blog.

Tell them you have free content available in exchange for a link back. Or you can simply exchange links by including a mention of their website within your blog content.

6. Visit blogs that you like, preferably ones that have content similar or complementary to yours.

Post quality and informative comments (along with your own blog URL address) as often as you can on average, around three times a week.

7. Write great content in your blog. The better the content, the more people will visit and the more word-of-mouth advertising you’ll receive.

Other blogs and websites will be more likely to provide links to a blog that includes quality, relevant content.

8. Write content in your blog frequently (at least two to three times a week). That way, search engines will take notice and assign it more relevance and importance, primarily because it’s active and constantly building.

Successful Blogging Checklist

• As long as your blog content provides valuable and interesting information, other bloggers will come.
• The reason most blogs fail (other than the fact that so many of them contain nothing worth reading about) is simply because the owner couldn’t keep up the writing pace.
• If you want your blog to be successful, you need to approach the writing on a casual and personal level. Be yourself. Write honestly and from the heart, without all the hype and polished promotional agenda.
• One of the best ways to ensure that you’ll retain reader attention and support is to choose specific niche topics. Rather than try to please scores of individuals with various interests, focus on subject areas that have targeted audience potential.
• Your blog has the potential to generate a good deal of income. But your first and primary objective should be to create and maintain content that keeps your readership alive and well. Once you’ve accomplished that, financial success will automatically follow.
• For the most part, you need to pick a blog topic that is not only popular but lends itself to promoting related products.
• A niche blog will attract much more targeted readers and loyal supporters. They’re interested in the topic, they like what you’re writing about, and they return on a regular and ongoing basis.
• On your basic website, hard-hitting sales copy is totally acceptable, mainly because it’s expected. With a blog, you need to find the right balance between a sales pitch and recommendations.
• Put your Adsense code on your blog template right away so there’s no delay in gaining income from any traffic you receive.

Traffic Strategies

• Make certain your blog content is search engine friendly by placing keywords in the name of your blog, your post headings, and your links.
• Pinq whenever you add new content to your blog.
• Distribute your blog content directly to readers through RSS feeds.
• Contact owners of websites whose topic is related to what you write about and let them know you have free content available in exchange for a link back to your blog.
• Visit blogs that you like with similar content and post quality and informative comments on a regular frequent basis.
• Write great content. The better the content, the more people will visit and the more word-of-mouth advertisinq you’ll receive.
• Write content in your blog frequently – at least two or three times a week. Because it’s active and constantly buildinq, search enqines will take notice and assign it more importance.