Blog To Great

E Mail Blog Tips and Marketing in the Twitter, Facebook Age

BLOG TIPS - Marketing your blog, business or business service through email is a great method to communicate with your costumers (and gain new ones).  With so much effort devoted to marketing using social media like Twitter and Facebook, don't forget the proven email method!  And just like any other marketing campaign, email marketing needs to be used appropriately for the maximum impact.  Be ready to adjust your campaigns and review the data to make the most of your marketing effort.  Email campaigns can give you many benefits to help grow your your business.  How?, well...

Cost Effective- Email marketing is so much cheaper than typical mass media print advertising, and is also cost-effective due to the lower cost of acquiring new costumers /  blog readers.  Email also allows you to retain your existing customers while getting new ones.  There is a cost to obtaining the email marketing software or an email marketing service provider if you make the decision not to manage mailings on your own yourself.

My Blog Guest, New Community to Find Guest Bloggers

Blog Tips - As we've mention, blogging communities and forums are plentiful, but as a great way to gain more blog traffic, you need to participate. Some are generic ones where people discuss all things blogging, while others are more focused and targeted such as, Blogher (which unites blogging women) and 20 something bloggers which pulls together bloggers between 20 and 30 years of age.

Blogger Ann Smarty recently created another community and it's specifically for folks looking for guest bloggers and / or guest blogging opportunities. She's named it My Blog Guest and if you're interested in guest blogging and plan to do it often, you should check it out.  Gest blogging is a good tool to help gain more traffic to your blog and to monetize a blog by gaining you more readers and establishing yourself as an expert in your blog niche.

Check it out and read more by Ann at her SEOsmarty.com blog.

BLOG Ethics, When You're Not Using Your Own Words

      Blog Tips- There has been much said (written, blogged) this week about TPM's post on New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd's "borrowing" word for word of a TPM blog post.  After reading up on the issue, it sure seems Ms Dowd borrowed word for word a previously published TPM post without crediting her source. Ms. Dowd has said she didn't know the material came from another blog and would have properly given credit if she knew.  Instead, she reported that the info came from "a friend".  It would certainly seem the friend simply copied and pasted TPM’s words and let Dowd use them as their own.   Aside from the obvious issue of how wrong it is to not give credit where credit is due, the outright lifting of other's work tends to worsen writing skills and the craft of blogs/blogging/bloggers.  Doing research for a blog post and learning about an issue is one thing, but the act of simply "cutting and pasting" does not help you become a better writer, authority or blogger. No way will you develope your own style for your writing or your blog, by using others without either crediting and/or adding something to the discussion.

Now, possibly some top writers/bloggers are too busy and are caught up in their fast-paced, high pressure world and find the ease of lifting someone's words in an effort to be the first out with a story too tempting.  But, as we see in this example, the world is watching and most high profile writers have too many followers that are tops in the field too.  People notice, and the word gets out.  It's not worth the embarassment, and for new bloggers, it's not worth the damage to your name and your blog.  You certainly gain an audience for a new blog by using other's words.

Like your blog, it's best to be an original !   See TPM's post at TalkingPointsMemo (and btw, great catch!).

RSS to Keep Your Blog's Readers Informed and To Increase Readership

BLOG TIPS- We've talked about the benefits of a blog for small businesses just a few weeks ago.   As mentioned, a lot of businesses which use a blog as a marketing strategy, especially because a blog reaches real people; it allows you to keep in touch with existing and potential clients. A blog can supply the personal touch, to sell your products, services, etc.  And if you're a blogger, you of course want to increase your blog's readership.  A great tool for bloggers, blogs & blogging is RSS ( Really Simple Syndication).  Using RSS you don’t have to e-mail your subscribers, all you is do produce new content/information, post it and you can be sure that you’re reaching your readers.  Compare this to email marketing, RSS is more effective because only the people who are really interested in your blog will subscribe to your RSS. !  Are there advantages to RSS over Email Marketing?  Yes, the main advantage is that you won't get spam complaints and you have a 100% delivery without any problems.

Once you have set up your blog with an RSS feed, you should submit it to the RSS Feed Directories. This way, your posts will have a much greater exposure to readers. You can do this in a matter of minutes and reach a bigger audience.   RSS is a fantastic tool for increasing rankings on the search engines too. You probably already know that search engines regard websites that continually update their content higher.  RSS Feeds will help your website to accomplish this. You will get higher rankings on search engines as well as increasing your website traffic, so what's not to lose ???   If you don’t take advantage of this great tool, you will be missing out and tons of opportunities to inform your blog readers and gain new readers to your blog.  Subscribe to my feed and learn more about FeedBurner (our choice at BtG).

How to Increase Your Blog's Feed Subscriptions

     BLOGGING TIPS - Returning readers are key to your blog's success.  A steady base of subscribers and returning traffic will increase visits to your blog and it's ad revenue.  Energize your existing readers and make it easy for them to receive your feed.  Otherwise, what happens if all of a sudden the main search engines reduce or removes your pages?   You never want to rely on Search Engine traffic to find you readers.  Instead, you need to make the most of the traffic you receive and already have. Get your readers to bookmark your RSS Feed into their reader. How?  Following are some great ideas to help you get as many new feed subscribers as possible.

Yahoo! Buzz Opens Up to All Bloggers !!!

  Yahoo! Buzz Opens Up to All -  A new, cool opportunity for bloggers is Yahoo! Buzz.  It's an extension of Yahoo! that finds content from blogs and websites. Buzz gathers timely stories and videos (and more) from an assortment of Web publishers throughout the day, and give readers the chance to be an editor by voting (“buzzing”) content up and down (either on Yahoo! Buzz, or on publisher partner websites) generating a "Buzz Score" for each article.  The good news for bloggers is now anyone can submit to Buzz.  Previously, only four hundred "invited" publishers contributed. Buzz looks like it could be a serious threat to Digg, as Buzz has something Digg doesn't; the attraction of Yahoo's front page and it's millions of viewers!  Now, I like and submit to Digg, but they've had some detractors lately and their viewership has declined.  Buzz will be a great additional way to find an audience for your great blog posts and your blog/s.  It's simple to sign up and to submit.  So, check it out today and Blog To Great !!!

Converting Blog Readers to Subscribers

     A lot of bloggers (count me in) seem to check blog stats on a regular, if not hourly basis.  I like to establish goals for myself and my blog each month.  And the stats are one of several ways to measure my progress.   But, stat numbers mean nothing (other than hopefully a little ad $$$) if readers don't come back.  So, don't we need to find ways to get visitors to come back and subscribe? Readers can become subscribers and subscribers become repeat visitors and your most loyal readers when your content is stellar! They are the core of every blog. Without subscribers, where would any blog be?  You'd have to post more often and hope to ride every hot trend to get as much traffic as possible.   Receiving traffic is great, but don’t forget about developing ways to convert those visitors into subscribers. Here's six easy tips-

Get on Track with Trackbacks !!

     A great tool for all great (want to be Great) bloggers are TrackBacks.  If you didn't know, they automate the interlinking of blog posts. You understand blog comments and commenting, I'm sure.   That's easy, visit other good blogs and comment often to engage blogger conversation. You write a post on your blog. Someone reads it and thinks you’re either a genius or the devil and comments to you.   What if decide to leave a comment about your blog post on my BtG blog? That’s when TrackBacks work for you.   

How to Be a Great Guest Blogger, and Be Invited Back

     Being a great guest blog writer is important to your blogging career. But it's not easy to do well, especially the first time.  Once you worked on building your network of "blogger friends" you should be able to write on someone else's blog periodically (btw- reciprocate to them).  There are many points to consider, such as how to best blend your post into the host's blog, impressing & pleasing them and making the most of potential new traffic that you can receive from your guest post.  Below are some tips that you can use to improve your guest posting skills (let me know if you have other ideas/tips).

• Know the blog you’re posting on
  By far the most important point.  Just as you spend time continually learning about your blog's audience, make sure you know the audience of the blog you're posting on. Once you know them, make sure that you adapt your writing style so it appeals to the right audience.  If you’re going to write on a blog about advertising, don’t go on about blog design.  Don't lose your personality or blogging style, just adjust so that you conform to the blog’s style and audience.

The "Pickens Plan" for Ways to Help Your Blog Traffic

     As the Pickens Plan for energy includes re-investment, your own "Pickens Plan" for your blog, should include constant re-investment in what you do with and for your blog. To get additional blog exposure and readers you should be submitting your blog post or content to social media sites, like Digg and Propeller and add their buttons to your blog post. Assuming your post is beneficial to readers, it can work its way into the top 10 lists. Once you submit your content on these websites and if people like what your write, they will digg or vote for your content. If you can get 100 votes in a day, your content will get to the homepage resulting in a huge number of hits.  By far, this is the easiest way to drive traffic on your blog at no cost. You could also use niche specific social media sites (Sphinn, PluIM, PPCad, etc) which could help you to bring in additional readers without a lot of effort .  Another excellent way to get traffic increases on your blog is with Stumbleupon. There's a huge inernet audience through Stumbleupon who use it to browse through websites and blogs. There are many blogs who do get over 100,000 visits in a week from a single blog post with the help of StumbleUpon.  Whenever people will select any topic related to your blog subject, your site will appear at random on their screen when they stumble.  Bear in mind that many of these readers may not be in your key audience, resulting in clicks, but not regular readers or RSS subscribers.  That's OK if you're also continuing to build your core audience. 

Keep blogging and Blog To Great !