6 Money Making Reasons To Setup A Blog For Your Business

Today still some business owners are not aware of the opportunities a blog can offer to their business.

To blog is not a question, it’s more a question to acknowledge that blogs are a great way to position your self as an expert in your field and to gain trust of your targeted audience and last but not least to win more business.

I have put together 6 good reasons to consider to setup and maintain a blog for your business:

1. Low cost and easy to setup!
You can easily go to word press http://wordpress.org/ and download and setup your free blog. You can do this in less than ten minutes. Here you can also find several templates to choose from to customize your blog.

2. It’s easy to publishing web content!
Wordpress is easy to use. Within thirty minutes will be ready to post your first article within your own blog.

3. Build a community of your business, some kind of fans like a rock star!
A blog offer you and your business to build some kind of community to communicate and to interact with your customers. You get valuable feedback on how your customers are satisfied and how you can improve your product ands services.

4. Position your self as an expert!
When you blog, you give valuable information and help to your reader for free. Focus to help your readers, to be useful and to improve their live. And within a short time period they will recognize you as an expert in your field. This gives you a great and invaluable advantage against your competition.

5. Gain trust of your targeted audience!
When you help your audience and not try to sell to them, than you will gain trust on the long term. Trust has become a valuable currency in our time.

6. Win more business!
As a result of your recognition as an expert and as a trusted person you will gain more business as your competition.

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10 Ways To Check How Much To Charge Or Pay For Blogvertising

In the last months I’ve got several questions from bloggers and business owners interested in blog advertising on how to evaluate what they (bloggers) can charge and what (advertisers) should pay for blogvertising.

I have put together some tips what you need to take care of when you step in this field as a blogger who wants to monetize his blog or you as a business owner who is looking for an effective way to reach you targeted audience.

For Bloggers:
1.    If you want to attract advertisers than you should be focused on a market or a niche. A mom and pop blog should not be interesting for business owners to advertise in!

2.    Work on it to gain as many RSS subscribers as you can. When you have you 1000+ than publish the RSS subscriber info on your blog. A big reach is interesting for a potential advertiser!

3.    Do you actually operate an email newsletter? If not, you should consider setting up one! To attract subscribers offer something of value in exchange for a subscription. You can put together an interesting info product .pdf as a summary of your past posts very easily.

4.    What is your posting frequency? Do you post daily, bi weekly or weekly? The higher the frequency the better. Consider to post daily.

5.    Do you have references? Put together a reference list within your blog of jobs you have done and include the links and if possible testimonials of your clients.

6.    Interact with your blog readers and commenters and comment back.

7.    Work on it to get your Alexa rank under 100k, with a quick growing ratio!

Alexa Rank Check

8.    Build back links, the more the better. A growing number of back links can help you to gain a better Google rank on the long term.

9.    Implement social buttons like these on the top of this post.

10.    If you want the code and a how to implement these buttons, just contact me here!

For Advertisers
1.    Check out if the blog really targets your audience.

2.    How many RSS subscribers do this blog have? Write this information down.

3.   Does this blog operate an email list? If yes subscribe to it and read the newsletter!

4.    What is the article frequency, how many posts are written per week? Subscribe to the RSS feed.

5.    Does this blog already have advertising or paid blog reviews’ from competitors displayed?

6.   How many paid blog reviews has the blogger written in the past? Read those past posts.

7.    Does the blogger interact with his blog commenter’s?

8.    How is the Alexa rank of this blog? Take a closer look on the offered information’s on Alexa and write this information down.

9.    Check how many link backs on Google the blog has and write this information down.

Google Back Link Check

10.    Does the blog uses social buttons to spread the word about the articles?

These are most important points I have in mind for now! If you have further ideas and suggestions, please leave a comment below!

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6 Reasons To Consider Blogvertising

The way consumers and businesses are shopping for products and services has changed did your marketing has changed as well?

The internet, as the primary source of information and research has become the number one hub for consumers and businesses to get that what they are looking for.

Today if you personally, or as a business, need a product or service, you go online hit your search term into Google and look what’s coming up.To the first five to ten results you will take a closer look to. And if you don’t find what you are looking for you will try it with a similar search term and so on.

Let’s take a closer look to the first five results which appear on the Google page after you have hit the search button.

Why do they appear on those top five places? Because they are relevant to your search term!

How did they become relevant for your search term? They have been rated in their relevancy for the back links they have related to the search term and some other smaller reasons.

Why and how did they get this large amount of back links? Maybe they have remarkable and fresh content on their website, or better they have a blog, or blog as a website.

You get back links when people find your content useful and link back to you. The more useful and remarkable content you have the more people will link back to you. So your relevancy grows.

“Did your marketing hase changed as well?”

Blogs and blog driven websites are increasing. More and more consumers and businesses research online for products, services and business partners.

There are more than 200 million blogs worldwide actually. This number is growing by 200k per day!

Why you should consider to include Blogvertising in your marketing plan:

1. Millions of niche blogs out there have a strong targeted audience of thousands of readers.
2. Blogs are a trusted information source and of high quality potential customers.
3. These blogs produce remarkable content on a daily basis.
4. A blog post set online, pings through ping services, social networks, simply through the whole World Wide Web.
5. These millions of blogs get thousands of back links each.
6. They are found on daily basis from millions of targeted, interested, and loyal blog readers and first time visitors also.

What does it mean for your marketing?

Focus on reach your targeted audience online with the help of blogvertising through text link ads, banner ads and paid reviews.

Become visible there where your clients and business partners of tomorrow research today!

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4 Steps To Generate An Lead Avalanche From Social Media

To operate your business a successful way you need a constant stream of fresh leads. That’s a fact!

To make customers out of the leads you generate you need more than an automated follow up system. Today people have built some kind of shield against marketing messages, especially those which they have not requested! This also belongs to automated email follow up systems.

1. Build an audience and gain authority and trust:

Did you thought about it to position your lead generation process where your targeted audience is? Maybe on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter or your blog?

To interact in social media is a very important step to gain attention. To give valuable information away, without to try to sell anything helps you to gain authority and trust within you audience! This is where your lead generation begins! And you still have lead generation process installed.

Your targeted audience comes and visits your Facebook Fan Page, they visit your LinkedIn Group, your twitter messages and list and maybe comment on articles and info you post there. And you still have no lead generation process installed.

2. Create a valuable resource to give away:

When you have grown your audience in on Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Group, Twitter and your blog RSS Feed and Email subscription you begin to setup a lead generation process.

You can summarize the content you have created with the best articles and include some more of your expert and insider knowledge plus on each page of your content a minimum of three times the link to the product or service mentioned. Now you have produced a valuable resource which you can give away as a pdf in exchange for the business information of your target audience.

3. Install your lead generation process on Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Group, Twitter and your blog:

You write a summarized ‘Kick Off’ blog post about your new content resource which you have created. You make some screenshots, maybe of the synopsis and the cover and include them in your blog post as well. One picture says more than thousand words!

Produce a lead capture page which should include a web form with First and last name, Email Address, Business name, Phone # and customer time frame of purchase. Make all fields mandatory!

When this lead capture page is finished and you are happy with it, than clone it and give the cloned pages names, for example: facebookfan.htm, linkedingroup.htm, twitter.htm, blogleads.htm. I think you’ve got the picture.

Setup a thank you message within your favourite auto responder service which includes the resource pdf. to get it automatically delivered when a lead signs up. You can try out AWeber Systems.

Here you can learn more about lead capture pages.

4. The Kick Off:

Now, kick off your lead generation process on Facebook Fan Page, LinkedIn Group, Twitter and your blog by starting discussions!

-    Your Facebook Fan Page: Post your introduction text, your head line and the lead capture page link for your Facebook Fan Page (facebookfan.htm) and invite your fans to discuss this with you.

-    LinkedIn Group: Post your introduction text, your head line and the lead capture page link for your LinkedIn Group (linkedingroup.htm) and invite your fans to discuss this with you.

-   Your Twitter: Post your head line and the shrinked  lead capture page link for your  Twitter (twitter.htm) and invite your followers to discuss this with you.

-   Your Blog: Include your blog related lead capture page link (blogleads.htm) in your said blog post.

Now you have kicked off an avalanche and you will see results in a short time.

Contact those who want to be contacted immediately. With those who are still not ready to become customers, stay in touch with them.

Do not bother your leads with daily messages; it is enough to keep them updated once per week.

The above process takes time, but it is worth the time investment.

Be patient!

If you need help with your marketing and lead generation, I would be happy to help. Read more about me here.

See also:  Social Media Marketing

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Steal Clients From Your Competitors?

Today I like to talk about on  ‘steal clients from your competitors’. In today’s time competition is a great word. Everybody try’s to get what the other has. Instead of to focus on to build his own vision, something new and innovative, and to make the way free for others to follow.

Some examples for companies who build something new and made the way for other to follow are: eBay, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google and thousands more worldwide.

With their innovation they made the way for thousands of businesses to follow them, thousands new jobs, thousands realized dreams and hopes! They did not waste their time on competition. They made their own thing.

Instead of building something valuable and new, and to make the way free for others who follow, we are still caught in the competition game!

“Instead of worrying about what people say of you, why not spend time trying to accomplish something they will admire.”
Dale Carnegie

We are so busy to make our competitor look like much worst than we are, instead of to improve our self’s and to make us look much better than him. And this is a waste of time and resources!

“Dale Carnegie didn’t say anything bad about somebody but all the best he know about them.”

By the end of the day the client himself decides if he wants to choose you or any of your competitors.

I think that it is not fair, unethical and against the law to steal. Why do we differ fairness, ethic and law when it comes to business? Is to ‘steal’ clients from a competitor ok by making him look like much worst than you are?

When I was kid I have read these sentences, may be you have read them as well …

…

You shall not steal

You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour

You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour

…

Sounds like the rules of civilization, fairness and ethics. What do you think?

“You are to become a creator, not a competitor; you are going to get what you want, but in such a way that when you get it every other man will have more than he has now. “
Wallace D. Wattles

There is enough for all and everybody out there. There is no reason to ‘steal’ anything from anybody!

Become a creator like eBay, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google and thousand others who made the way free for other to follow.

Build your own vision; build something new valuable and innovative. Make the way free for others to follow you, and your definition of success will follow you also!

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