The Silent Avatar Speaks

Evening all,

This post I want to bring you up to speed on what you should be doing when your website is finished,

I’ve always said that a website is nothing more than html code stuck in cyberspace unless you dive traffic to your site.

Given that there are over five and a half billion websites on the Internet and growing at an exponential rate, this figure is enough to scare the pants off any would be Internet merchant, or home entrepreneur.

There’s good reason that Alexa does not rank website unless they are in the top 1000,000 as below this you really aren’t getting enough traffic to warrant being part of their statistics. So unless you are considering throwing a LOT of money at advertising and branding, don’t worry about having a high ranking,

Your goal is to drive a steady stream of people to your website to give you an income, or increase your “authority status”, through your blog, articles and  comments posted back to your website.

To produce a website and not consider how it is to be marketed is just plain stupid.

The time money and effort to produce a website is for naught unless you promote your website.

So how do you promote your website?

This will depend on the type of website (which I will discuss later) but at the least all website owners should be doing the following:

1. Using their web address in all of their emails, along with their tag line.  I wrote about it using email signature sometime back. Review the post “Quick Tip – Using Email Signatures“.
2. Using their web address on all stationary – including business cards, letterheads, with compliment slips, invoices, brochures… In fact anywhere you can put your web address – put it! This includes all electronic stationary as well.
3. If you have a motor vehicle have a magnetic sign made to put on the side of your car (or if you’re really committed get the car sign-written with your website details. Driving around as much as we do this is a great way to advertise your website. Just think of how many people can see your mobile advertisement!
4. If you have a shopfront your web address should be clearly visible from the street.
5. If you have a product tag, your website address should be on the tags, labels, stickers (whatever)

It takes time for something new to sink into people’s consciousness. Repetition is the key. Whether you website name is reinforced through a variety of means doesn’t matter.

Let’s now look at specifics…

[Read more →]

Tags: Advertising, Blogging, Business Tips, Internet Marketing, Marketing and Advertising, Newsletters, Online Business, Promotion and Marketing, Traffic Generation, Web Development by the silent avatar
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The first question new bloggers ask is “which blog system should I use?” To know the answer is a bit like knowing what fuel your car runs on best.

TypePad, Blogger, and WordPress are the most popular blogging applications and while each have their own advantages the clear winner is WordPress.

You can download WordPress (it’s no-cost), install it on your host server, buy a proper domain name and then get blogging.

MSN Spaces blogging system is used by a lot of teenagers use because it is linked with the MSN Messenger chat service. If you are serious about blogging then take my advice and steer clear of it. If you just want to blog about your dog/girlfriend/how much you hate your job then it’s fine, but if you are blogging for any professional purposes then you need something professional.

DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU

This could be your story…

Here’s a story about Mike . Mike’s niche blogger. He’s set up lots of little blogs on all kinds of topics (niches) with the purpose of making a few dollars from each blog by placing Google AdSense advertisements on them (Google pays you when someone clicks on the ads)

After a few months he had built up his income. None of his blogs had a lot of traffic, but they got enough from search engines to earn Mike between $1 and $10 per day. In total he earned over $2000 per month from his blogs. All in all not a not a bad effort.

One day he turned on his computer and all his blogs had gone. Just disappeared without a trace…

So what happened to his blogs you ask?

He was using one Blogger.com account to manage his blogs and Blogger.com determined that what he was doing was violating their terms of service.

They thought all his blogs were what are called “splogs” – SPAM blogs.

Splogs are blogs set up to get traffic to other sites. They are usually automatically generated and the owners have no intention of producing a useful website – they just want to get traffic directed to their other sites. You could say they are the SPAM of the blogging world.

Mike contacted the support staff at Blogger.com to explain that his sites were not SPAM sites but try as he may he couldn’t convince them his blogs were legitimate, so they never reactivated his account. Overnight he lost his regular $2000 per month income in one hit.

Therein lies the moral of the story… OWN YOUR BLOG

If Mike had hosted his blogs using WordPress on his own servers with his own domains this simply would never have happened. It may cost a bit more upfront to buy the domain names and rent the server space (WordPress itself is free) but the security and control you get makes it worthwhile.

Besides the ownership benefit WordPress has many other advantages:

• It’s free, very powerful and runs of a MySQL database so it’s quick.
• It has a very easy installation procedure.
• There are hundreds of free themes you can download and install allowing you to change the look of your blog.
• There are hundreds of plug-ins that provide extra functionality.

All of the above benefits are available because the WordPress system is Open Source Software, which means anyone can look at the code and modify the program. Consequently there are hundreds of programmers working to make WordPress the best blogging system and they do it for free – just for the good of the software.

GET STARTED BLOGGING

By now you will have seen the benefits of a WordPress blog.

If you haven’t done so already, here are the 3 steps you can do right now to get your new WordPress blog installed.

1. Go to http://wordpress.org/download/ and download WordPress.

2. Buy a domain name and hosting package. At the moment I use and recommend Bluehost.

3. Install your blog. Done!

If installing a blog is beyond your capabilities then take advantage of the one click installation option in Bluehost. This option allows you have a WordPress blog installed with one click so you don’t have to do the WordPress uploading process.

You can skip step one above if you do this.

BACK-UP YOUR BLOG

I’ll leave you with this one last very important note…

If you are going to stay with Blogger.com, TypePad, or even if you use WordPress there is one task you should add to your weekly “to-do” list – and that’s back-ups!

Make sure you have an offline archive of all your content so if for whatever reason you lose your blog just “disappears” or malfunctions you can restore all the content. If you own your domains you won’t lose your traffic either because you can restore things to exactly how they were.

So the choice is yours.. do you want your latest blog to run on ethanol, standard or super? The choice is clear.

Here’s to your blogging success!

Tags: Blogging by the silent avatar
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Blogging has come of age! Hallelujah I say!

No longer content to sit back and be whimsical  musings of teenagers and bored housewives, blogging has become an essential tool for your business.

Blogs and blogging has become so commonplace a well designed blog can even take the place of a conventional web site!

Here are my top 7 reasons for your business to have a blog:

1. Blogs are a powerful marketing tool.
A blog is a simple, effective way to communicate with the public and your customers. Your blog is a means of communicating new product launches, business news, tips, and articles of interest. You can even have a photo blog of your products. It’s also a way of keeping your visitors up-to-date with what’s happening in your industry.

2. Blogs are the easiest way to add content to your site.
By adding blog posts which are relevant, interesting and compelling to your visitors you will be increasing the unique content of your site. Adding unique content to your site increase the search engine rankings. Of course this isn’t the only way to increase your site rankings, however adding fresh, meaningful new content consistently will always be rewarded with increased rankings. Every article you post is an opportunity for SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

3. Blogging allows you to share your expertise with your visitors,
which in turn establishes ongoing trust and credibility to your business. A blog is an effortless way to share your knowledge. Blogs compel you to share more of your knowledge more often.

4. A blog allows your visitors to get to know you.
Sharing your knowledge through writing your blog uncovers not just what you know about a subject, but also more about who you are – it’s an opportunity to engage your customers (or potential customers) in personal dialogue. A blog humanises you and your organization.

5. It’s inexpensive
Setting up a blog whether you decide to have a stand alone blog (which doubles as your core web site), or a add-on to your business web site, requires nothing more than time to set it up. This blog uses WordPress. I can’t speak highly enough WordPress and it’s distributed under the GNU Public Domain Licence – so it’s free!

6. Blogs deliver instant feedback.
One of the best advantages of having a blog is the instant feedback you receive to your posts through vistors leaving a commeng to your posts.  If there is a problem you can adress it before it gets out of hand. Other times feedback will be positive – comments praising what you are doing right will keep you doing it!

7. Blogging keeps you focused.
Given all of the above reasons  for adding a bog to your website, or creating a stand alone blog, the nature of a blog means you have to keep updating your blog.  Now as you go about your day you can be thinking about your next blog topic. Simple!

No matter what your business or interest blogging  is a surefire way to market your business.

Got any comments you would like to share about your blog or blogging? Feel free to leave a comment.

Tags: Blogging by the silent avatar
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I’m evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they’re letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I’ll let you know what I think once I’ve had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it’s still free.

Tags: Blogging, Freebies by the silent avatar
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