Blog To Great

Reflect and Be Thankful, Importance of Blogging

     BLOG TIPS - Tomorrow, in America, we celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. It’s a time when family and friends get together to share in what hasy been a bountiful harvest.  The majority of us are far removed from the farming and harvest cycles, but we still know the importance of pausing to recognize how much we have to be thankful for.  Please reflect, wherever you are in the world, during these difficult times and recognize what we have.  Let's also strive to help others more, while blogging and in every part of your life.  Not only with your money, but with your actions, both personally and on your blog.  For one, post off-topic periodically to include important social issues/causes that use help and assistance.  Sign on to Blog Action Day too.  Blogs are a great way to have impact and to help others.  Remain thankful and hopeful this Thanksgiving.   Share with all, What are you thankful for?

Blog BANNER ADs, Are they Useful???

     Blog Tips- If you missed it, note that the AdWeek put up a good post onweb and blog banner ads.  Due to the current world economic turmoil, most all advertisers are reviewing their ad spends, and that includes internet buys to determine their effectiveness.  Some are starting to notice that most readers ignore banner ads.  “Internet ads are small and out of the way,” said Greg March, digital group director at Wieden+Kennedy. “Advertisers want to deliver impact, and I don’t think the impact for these ads is always that strong.”  At Time Inc, Vivek Shah, group digital president, he says that when budgets are tight,advertisers prefer spending their money on direct response ads over harder to measure brand ads. Shah says display advertising is "under assault."  Read full post, here.  Will this impact all blogs, too soon to tell.  But, as always, know who your readers are and make every effort to offer new ways to improve your blog and make your readers pay attention.  Try new marketing campaigns, try one advertiser per page!  Keep your blog easy to navigate and clean, without ad clutter.

Are You Using Twitter the Best Way You Can For Your Blog ???

   

Blog Tips - The answer should be obvious, but many are still not on Facebook or Twitter.  These two social networks are the best for everyone to spread the news on a great blog !!  To be visible online, you have to make yourself and your blog visible.  Says the New York Times, Twitter is “one of the fastest-growing phenomena on the Internet”. This free social network messaging service provides individuals (and bloggers/businesses) the opportunity to connect and stay connected with their network.  Twitter users simply answer - “What are you doing” in 140 characters or less. Using a rich set tools, hosted by twitter and 3rd-party developers, twitter users then connect around these conversations.

Are you doing enough to get your blog known ?

Register on Facebook-  Find groups you that are appropriate for your blog. Learn the best ways to be effectively and efficiently build your visibility on Facebook.  Check out these great Facebook Etiquette advice from PCWorld.

Get on Twitter NOW-  It's a microblogging platform and an ideal way to make new relationships and build a following of people that are interested in what you and your blog can offer.  Don't worry, you have to spend to spend hours daily to be visible. Check-in a few times per day, post helpful links, respond to interesting conversations, retweet other people's links.

After you start building a community of followers to you and your blog, you can then host teleseminars, interview other experts in your field and write reports to give away and increase your list. Like of most of what you need to due to build your blog and increase your rankings / readership, it's not difficult to do but requires your readiness for hard work! By taking the time to learn some to the best practices to promote your blog, you'll see the benefits quickly.

And of course, join BtG at Twitter, here.  Share your best Facebook and Twitter tips, feel free to comment below....  Don't just tweet, Blog to Great !!

Internet- Best Source for News & Information, Good News for Blogs

    Blog Tips-  As a blogger, it's good to know that most people now regard the internet as the best source for news!  Yes, according to a new poll by Zogby International most folks in the USA consider the Internet the most reliable source of news, 20.3% consider national TV news most reliable and 16% said that radio is the most reliable source.  This certainly reflects what we already know, the internet, and blogs /  blogging are a great way to get information to readers!  And, blogs are able to put out news and information much more quickly than traditional news sources (tv and radio).  This should invigorate you and your blog!   It may also give you ideas on a new blog or blogs to publish.  Consider a niche blog that has regular news updates (though note that politic blogs are usually shuned by many advertisers. 

What's your reaction to this?  Where to you get your news?  Will you expand your blog empire now? See story here on Read Write Web.

Technorati Profile

Blog and Web Ads, Are They Dead for 2009 ?

     Blog Tips- With the current economic downturn worldwide, you may have seen/heard discussion about the demise of digital advertising in the near future.  This has gotten a lot of media coverage, see Nick Denton's post for one.  And with online ad estimate growth for 2009 reduced from 16% to 6% (and may decline further) you may think it's all doom and gloom for your blog ads.  Though it IS a great time to blog to earn revenuse, don't be overly concerned about these ad estimates.  These numbers are at the top level of things, which you and I aren't part of, yet.  It is important that if you are running ads pn your blog as part of an affiliate network, that you're with a strong network that will continue to provide you with good advertisers and pay on time!  Check out Widget Bucks, for one.   They can offer you a wide range of advertisers, with new companies coming on regularly.  If you're able to sell you own ads directly to advertisers, good for you!, you're able to react quickly with pricing and negotiate with you clients, like the big guns at PointRoll and DoubleClick will.   In fact, blog ads may be the best use of ad budgets to appeal directly to the right consumer.  With niche blogs, advertisers know who the reading is and how to reach them.  So know who reads your blog and what they are all about, be prepared to have all the stats for prospective advertisers.  Know that survival of the quickest is the key here durint tough times !

Six Apart Announces Blog "Journalist Bailout Program"

     BLOG NEWS - Our friends at Six Apart have come up with a clever offer to get recently laid off journalists to start a blog. They call it the TypePad Journalist Bailout Program.  Quite simply, it allows journalists the following at no charge:

• A Type Pad Pro Account at no charge. Normally, $14.95/month.
• Enrollment in the Six Apart Media advertising program, to get a piece of the ad dollars.
• Additional promotion on their Blogs.com.

Six Apart will also offer support and help at no charge.  Journalists only need to send a link to their most recent newspape piece (or similar) to bailout@sixapart.com (tell them Blog to Great referred you).  And according to the announcement, they've had such a great response, so they’re a little slow on setting up the accounts, luckily they haven't set an actual closing date.  Aside from being a great marketing campaign, this is a great effort to get journalists blogging, since most of them only need an economic incentive and a good established platform, like TypePad to get them started.   Spread the word if you know of any recently laid-off writers.  And if you're searching for a quality blog platform, check out TypePad today.  See Simon Owens thoughts on the program here, from a post at MediaShift. He asks; is the offer a gimmick ?

 Great work, Six Apart and TypePad !  Feel free to give Blog to Great a few months free too!!

New On Line Social Network Launched, By WWE !

     Blog Tips - The CT based, World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) announced on Wednesday the launch of WWE Universe, an online social network that already has over 200,000 members. The site features message boards, blogs, discussion groups and exclusive access to live blogs during WWE programming, special events and pay-per-view broadcasts. If a wrestling fan is your reader and you want a piece of the 200,000 members, than your blog might benefit from your participation here.  As always with social networks, you need to have your blog regularly involved to make some impact, so choose which networks you on wisely!

Google AdWords News to Help Your Blog

    Blog Tips- Today, Google AdWords released a new keyword tool.  It will let you enter in your blog name and a few keywords and this new tool will give yiou a better idea of what potential customers are searching for and which keywords you should advertise on.  The tool, dubbed Search-based keyword tool, takes a look at the site and makes suggestions for keywords that may be relevant to your paid search campaign.  The premise is that you're likely missing out on terms or words that are being searched for.  Google says the tool can be useful even if you don't advertise with AdWords since it allows you the opp to view what related products or services potential customers are searching for that you may be overlooking. The Search-based Keyword Tool is now available to all advertisers in the USA and UK.  Google plans to expand the tool to more languages and countries in the near future.
Check it out here.  

Good advertising to you & your blog and Blog To Great !

Best Web Directories for Your Blog to Check Out

     Blog Tips - I came accros this great list of web directories and have started checking on each one of them for results.  This “Top 25 Most Powerful Web Directories” is certainly not a comprehensive list, and may already have some casualities, so feel free to comment. It does though, list a good number of the top paid directories you should initially focus on to submit your blog/s to.  There is a lot of debate still going on over the best SEO techniques and whether blog directories should be a part of your blog's plan.  Now, there are a lot of great directories that aren’t included on this list because they are either too expensive (BOTW, Yahoo! Directory) or it just takes much too long to get approved (DMOZ, Illumirate) when you’retrying for a quick boost for your blog/s.   Bear in mind that many of them will require a recip link.  This, of course is not as good as a one way link.  Also, the page your link goes on will most likely have no PR so you won't get a PR benefit.  So keep this in mind before signing up to every directory you come accross.  See the full list compiled by Paul at Search Engine People -

Practice Safe Computing and Blogging, Especially on Nov 24 !!

    BLOG NEWS -  Internet users/bloggers: You're warned to stay vigilant next week says researchers who believe that Monday (11/24) could be the worst day the year for computer attacks.  After reviewing information on viruses and internet worms taken from more than 500,000 pcs from all over the world, security experts at PCTools have pinpointed November 24 as the potential peak of malicious software activity for 2008.  Data from 2007 shows that the high point of action from viruses, worms and other internet-based attacks came three days before our (America's) Thanksgiving holiday, leading PCTools to advise that the same day could prove the most dangerous 24 hours of this year for your computer and the interact.  So, update you virus protection and back up your system (and write a "tent pole" blog post over the weekend) !