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Choosing Between Facebook Profiles vs. Pages vs. Groups for Your Business

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Back in the olden days, there was a saying that goes like “if you want to spread news fast- tell a woman”, fast forward to the age of Internet, and the saying can be rephrased to “if you want to spread news fast – share it at Facebook”. This online social giant has sprawled into much more than just a place where friends wander around, checking and commenting on each others’ profiles- Facebook of today is a massive network with more than 500 million users (and remember that it’s not even one percent of the entire internet population, so there’s some huge potential of further growth). For businesses, especially ones who are looking to blog, Facebook is a great place to find and reach out to your targeted customers. You can do so by creating, either a Facebook profile, fan page, or a group (or using all three of them in tandem). However, as it is the case, with all social networks, you need to lay down your goals and a clear cut strategy before embarking on your journey of cyber success, or you will end up getting overwhelmed by so many options. [Read more…] about Choosing Between Facebook Profiles vs. Pages vs. Groups for Your Business

20 Unconventional Ways To Spice Up Your Blog

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Blogging has revolutionized the internet in a way that few other trends have been able to accomplish. Millions and millions of people have found an outlet for their writing and opinions. Anyone who can use a keyboard can literally have their own blog, their own journal up within literally three minutes of reading this article. It is really that easy. Then why are most blogs drearier than a Miley Cyrus concert? Why aren’t there more of creative writers that make the world stand up and take notice of what they have to say? If you have been around the internet blogosphere, then you have invariably stumbled upon those “me-too” blogs that are basically nothing else than online journals of every excruciating detail in the bloggers’ life. Things like what they had for lunch, what time they woke up, what they watched on TV etc. routinely find their way into blogs. The trouble is, no one other than the writer themselves really cares about these things. [Read more…] about 20 Unconventional Ways To Spice Up Your Blog

What it Takes to Run Effective Article Marketing Campaigns

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An article marketing campaign is useful when you’re trying to provide information about a business, increase sales and gain traffic to your website. When people search for information on the internet, they usually type in a keyword that relates to what they are looking for. Their search engines then take them a “search results” page where links to information on the subject they requested are displayed. The information they choose to read is usually in the form of an article.

People Want Facts
The entire point of writing an article is to provide information. Opinion and fact are two completely different things. Yes, people love an article with personality, but too much is simply a waste of time for the reader. Know what you are writing about and provide as many legitimate, verifiable facts as possible.

Articles Should be Readable
Take the time after you’ve written your articles to proofread them. If an article contains an abundance of misspellings and punctuation errors, it takes away from the quality of the article. Most of the time, article directories will display the name of the author. Because your name is displayed, people will not want to read your articles because they will know that your articles are of poor quality. This gives you a bad reputation as an author. It’s best to proofread your articles before submitting them. Knowing what type of tone to write your articles in also helps. Avoid switching up the tone too much in your articles. Decide whether you want to create content in a conversational or informational tone.

Hire a Qualified Writer
Not everyone is an expert at writing their own articles. Some people simply do not possess the skill needed to churn out an informative, interesting, fact-filled article. Others do not have the time or patience to create the articles they need to advertise their products and/or services, so they choose to hire someone who can. The person you choose to hire should have experience and work they can provide in order to help you to make a decision about whether or not you should hire them.

More is Better
The more articles you submit, the more effective your campaign will turn out. Submitting only one or two articles per month isn’t going to cut it. Since there are so many people submitting articles on a daily basis, the chance of your article remaining at the top of the list is very slim. It’s best to submit a number of articles each month, especially if you plan to keep your numbers up.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords
Keywords should be inserted into your article at least once every 100 words. Keywords are the terms that people use to search for information. The search engines are able to locate information by searching for those keywords in your article. Find out what words and phrases to use and strategically place them throughout your content. Avoid overusing your words and phrases, as search engines have a way of identifying spam immediately and practically overlooking articles with heavy amounts of keywords altogether.

Use More Than One Directory
Submitting to more than one directory is important. You’ll gain a lot more exposure, resulting in more success. The best thing to do is to find out what directories are the most popular, and submit a different article to each one. Only use article submission software to submitting to low and medium quality directories and take your time to manually (format) submit unique content to the top 50 sites (based on homepage PR and Alexa ranking).

Make a Resource Box
A resource box provides information about the author, such as their name, the types of subjects they specialize in, their goal, their services, years of experience in business, etc. Creating a resource box at the end of each article is a great way to gain a much more positive reputation in regards to the services you provide. It also entices people to want to read more of your content.

Become an Expert
Whatever it is you choose to write about, it helps to become the ultimate expert in your field. For example, if you are writing articles to sell candles, find out everything there is to know about candles. Spending a few hours each week researching the background history of your product and finding out all information possible will make your content more interesting and help you to gain more readers. People will continue to look for your articles in hopes of finding out all the information they need.

The Right and Wrong Way to Use Social Media Marketing for Blog Growth

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Earlier this week, I wrote a post that explained the differences between social media marketing and content marketing.  Bloggers can use both methods of marketing their blogs in order to drive traffic to them.  In fact, you’re probably already doing social media marketing and content marketing activities.

But what are the right and wrong ways to market your blog on the social web?

My new book, 30-Minute Social Media Marketing, will be released any day now (you can check out a free bonus chapter here), and one of the things I talk about in the book is the difference between social media marketing success and failure.  There are three primary “rights and wrongs” that you need to be aware of as you venture into the world of the social web to promote your blog, grow your audience, and reach your goals.

I call these “rights and wrongs” the 3 Cs of Social Media Marketing Success or Failure, and the chart below can help you understand what these 3 Cs are all about.

Bloggers, just like businesses, who allow the online conversation to flow and let their audience take control of that conversation and experience that content in their own ways will achieve social media marketing and content marketing success.  However, those bloggers, just like businesses, who try to control the conversation and limit the flow of content across the social web will fail.  I clarify this concept in my book by explaining,

“There’s a fine line between behaving on the social web in ways that help you build bridges and acting in ways that cause those bridges to collapse (taking your messages along with them).”

Only you can decide whether you want to fully leverage the power, reach, and influence of the social web by giving up control and releasing your content into the virtual world.  You’ve already started by publishing a blog.  The rest is the easy part.

If you remember nothing else from my posts here on Performancing.com, remember this:

There is no bigger opportunity for businesses of any size (including bloggers and online publishers) to level the playing field, build their brands, and reach their goals than the social web.  You’re already there.  Let it work for you.

So what are you waiting for?  Get out there and publish amazing, shareworthy content and let the compounding effect of blogging deliver long-term, organic and sustainable growth for your blog!

How to Get Sales from Your Business Blog

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If you’re writing a blog related to your business then you’re already on your way to increasing sales!  The next step is turning the people who read your blog into people who actually make a purchase or contact you for more information about your business, products and services.  It’s easier to do than you might think using a few simple tricks!

First, if you run a retail website, it’s absolutely essential that your blog and the content of your blog posts link to your online catalog or store whenever possible.  At the very least, you should have a highly visible image link to your online store at the top of every page of your blog.  For example, a standard image calling attention to your online store could be placed at the top of your blog’s sidebar, so it’s easy to see and find no matter what page a visitor lands on when they come to your site.  Remember, your blog will generate incoming links from across the web over time.  Therefore, you can’t guarantee that a visitor will land on your business website’s home page.  Make sure it’s very easy for any visitor to find out more about you and find your online store with a simple click of the mouse from any page of your website and blog.

Next, don’t use your business blog as a place to constantly self-promote your business, products and services.  Instead, you should offer meaningful and useful information related to your industry.  Refer to your products (and include links to those products in your online store within your blog post) when it’s appropriate and adds value to the reader’s experience.  Simply overloading your blog posts with information about how great your business is, multiple links to your products which might be completely irrelevant to the blog post in which they appear, and so on creates a negative user experience.  In short, no one will return to your business blog if the only information they find there is self-promotional posts.  Instead, offer information that helps readers, and indirectly market your business within those posts with useful references and links that enhance the post rather than interrupt it and detract from it.

Finally, give your audience something extra or exclusive to reward them for reading your business blog.  For example, offer special discount codes that can be used in your online or offline store.  Provide tips and tutorials that are offered only on your blog.  In other words, people have to have a reason to read your blog rather than other blogs or websites.  Extra and exclusive information not only attracts new visitors but also boost repeat visitors.

Most importantly, be active.  Continually write new posts and content, interact with your readers, and begin building relationships with them that will help increase sales, brand loyalty and word-of-mouth marketing.

Image: stock-xchng

How to Use Elance to Scale your Blog’s Content Strategy

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Guest Bio: Charles Sipe is an online marketing manager at Criminal Justice Degree Schools, a resource for individuals seeking information on justice degrees and careers in criminal justice.

Creating high quality content that is useful and engaging to your target audience is one of the most important aspects of growing a successful blog, however it is often difficult to find the time to write great content on a regular basis. Many blog or business owners know how important fresh content is, but they often lack the bandwidth to write all the articles they want to. What if you could hire a team of talented writers to research and write the articles that would attract lots of targeted traffic to your blog for $10-$20 an article? Elance is an amazing tool that blog owners can utilize to build a staff of writers for a fraction of the price of hiring a traditional staff. In this article you will learn how to use Elance to scale your blog or website’s content strategy. [Read more…] about How to Use Elance to Scale your Blog’s Content Strategy

The Laws of Brand Focus and Contraction and Why Bloggers Should Care

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I’m a marketer by profession, and one of the basic laws of building a brand tells us that a highly focused brand is stronger in the long-term than an unfocused brand.  In other words, the most powerful brands own a word in people’s minds.

On the other hand, there is another marketing law that tells us it’s better to be the leader in a category than it is to be better.  That’s because the category leader, meaning the brand that is first to enter that market, owns the broad word that defines the category simply by being first.  Later entrants into the category are challenged with the need to differentiate their own brands from the category leader in order to steal market share from that pioneer brand.  For example, Microsoft might own “operating system” in the world of personal computers, but Apple owns “design”.  Apple effectively positioned its brand against the category leader by differentiating its brand as a market challenger that was focused on a very specific part of the category which the leader couldn’t offer as well as Apple could.  The strategy worked for Apple just as it does for many other brands in many other categories.

And guess what?  It works for blogs, too.

If you take a step back from your blog and the social web, you’ll see that your blog is just one within the broader category of blogs and websites that publish content about your blog topic.  There is probably a leader in that category, and there are many, many smaller competitor blogs in that category.  The first step to finding focus for your blog is determining what that area of focus will be, so you can effectively position your blog against your competitors.  What is the category leader doing and how can you bring your own niche expertise to the category to challenge the leader?

Think of it this way — if you write a blog about parenting, then you have a lot of big competition from established blogs and companies with deep pockets and pre-existing brand awareness to work against.  However, if you find your focus and contract your content and brand to that niche, then your chances of finding long-term blogging success are far greater than if you keep a broad brand and try to compete head on with the bigger players in your category.

Looking at the concept of brand focus from another perspective, consider General Motors.  This is a company that focused on the wrong thing for many years.  Upon seeing the dollar signs that selling large, gas-guzzling vehicles like Hummers could bring to the company’s bottom-line, focus shifted to these money-making brands.  Short-term earnings trumped long-term sustainability for General Motors.  When the economy tanked, so did General Motors.  Today, the Hummer brand is nearly gone and General Motors has been vocally touting its new focus on fuel-efficient vehicles for the future.

Suffice it to say, you don’t want your blog to go the way of General Motors, because a bailout for your blog is unlikely.  Instead, make sure you choose an area of focus, your niche, that has long-term potential, so you can stay competitive and hold your position against the market leader and other blogs in your category.

Image: stock.xchng

Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar

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Veronica Davis is a freelance writer and internet business columnist for Examiner. She works with and writes for businesses online, and recommends every business create an avatar to call their own.

Unless you have been hiding under your bed for the last few years, you know social media is the new norm. It’s how you meet people, communicate ideas, express your thoughts, interview for a job, grow business and just have fun. The days of a big smile and a firm handshake are no longer by any means a form of introducing one’s self. Your avatar is your first impression as you meet and interact with others on blogs, social networks, and in other online communities. [Read more…] about Branding Your Business or Blog with an Avatar