Marketing With Blogs - Part 4

In the first three parts of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips on using your blog to brand yourself, boost your reputation and sell your products and services online.

In this article, I provide specific tips on using your blog help you boost your marketing ROI and visibility online.

#7: Use Good SEO Practices

Besides using keywords appropriately, take the time to learn about using trackbacks, pingbacks, good linking practices and basic SEO techniques.

Remember that in blogging, public relations equals PageRank. The more you link to others, the more they will link to you.

Submit your blogs and feeds to directories and search engines.

#8: Track Your Results

Keep track of your sales, inbound links, citations by using tools like adtrackers, Blogpulse and Marketleap. Also offer your readers incentives to participate in surveys.

This information is very valuable because it will help you understand what your market needs and how to give it to them.

It will also help you understand how much your blogging is helping your marketing efforts so you can tweak your methods and get more out of them.

#9: Listen And Learn

When we're blogging we usually stating our opinions openly. As bloggers it's all right to be controversial and frank while blogging.

But what happens when a potential customer posts a nasty or rude comment? Some bloggers think its OK to be rude right back, and even go so far as to call that person names.

I don't believe that's the way to treat someone who take the trouble to sign-in and post a comment on your blog. For all you know they may have a genuine problem and could be speaking for others who have experienced the same.

Being rude will not only lose you a customer, it will also expose you as someone who is too immature to handle customer complaints.

Granted, some customers can be a pain in the butt, but everyone deserves to be heard. And handling nasty or rude comments with restraint will not only demonstrate your maturity, but build your customers respect for you.

People prefer doing business with someone they like and trust. So if you want your blog to be a place where your potential customers can interact freely and openly, I suggest you learn how to handle brickbats as well as bouquets with grace and maturity.

It used to be said that the internet was the great leveller because it empowers small businesses to compete with big businesses. But blogs have completely levelled the playing field for marketers.

Anyone with an internet connection can now sell their products and services solely on the basis of the quality of information they provide.

And that's the reason blogs are creating a revolution in marketing online.

Priya Shah is the CEO of eBrand360 and writes the Marketing Slave blog.

This article may be reprinted as long as the resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.

---

The 7 Steps to Promoting Your RSS Feeds on Your Website

RSS gets 100% of your content delivered, but it's no good if no one subscribes to your feeds.So your first order of business after planning and creating your feeds has to be promoting... Read More

Web Blogs, Defined, Explained and Understood

What are Blogs?Having heard the term previously but not having paid much attention most are just to afraid to show their ignorance and ask the question, what is a blog? Lets face it;... Read More

Small Business: To Blog or Not To Blog

A weblog, or "blog" started out as a personal journal on the Web. They have evolved far beyond that initial concept. Now, weblogs cover as many different topics as there are people writing... Read More

Writing Quality Blogs

Writing?Blogs?Blogs are on-line journals where people express themselves through writing. Writing?Writing is the process where one puts down words of a language on a format that others can read. This process has not... Read More

Internet News Services Explode Online

It seems no matter how much information comes available online, people thirst for more.To illustrate this point, just take a look at all the online news services sprouting up on the web like... Read More

What Blog Can Make Money?

How to blog to make money from it?Truly the whole picture of making money blogging is simple:you blog (B), traffic comes to your blog (T), you PREsell to them (P) and finally monetize... Read More

Business Blogging - 5 Tips to Help You Smashl Through Writers Block

It's inevitable. Everyone hits the wall. Whether you've been blogging ten weeks, ten minutes, or ten months, eventually you'll find yourself with absolutely nothing to say. Or so you think. So... Read More

Improving Your Customer Relationship Management by Blogging

Before I address the following questions:* What is a blog? and* What can a blog do for my business?let me pose a few "What if . . ." questions to you.Keeping in mind... Read More

Utilize The Power Of Blogs To Market Your Business On A Budget

Budget marketing with blogs is one of today's top methods for cost-effective advertising to the consumers you want to reach, whether they're in your neighborhood or across the global community.'Blogging' is a fairly... Read More

Marketing With Blogs - Part 3

In part 1 and part 2 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing, and provided some tips on using your blog... Read More

Article Marketing For Bloggers - 4 Tips To Build Traffic For Your Blog

Bloggers blog. That's what they do. A blog is short for 'weblog' and it's really an online journal that can be updated easily and frequently without any knowledge of HTML code.Traditionally, article marketing... Read More

So You Have a Blog, Now What Do You Do With It? Blog Basics

(This article assumes that you have already set up a blog on your website. I highly recommend using sBlog: http://servous.se/)What started out as just a way for you to write an online journal... Read More

Blogs and Networking

In the middle 1990's everyone started talking about needing a website. Now, the new "must have" is a web log or blog. While blogs can come in all shapes and sizes, a blog... Read More

How to Increase Buyers Traffic Through Writing Articles and RSS Content Syndication

Benefits of Writing Articles:1. Every Webmaster would like to publish fresh content on their websites. Your articles can be published by these content hungry webmasters websites. Your must also add your small bio... Read More

How to Make Money with Your Blog

-- What Is A BlogA blog (or web log as what originally called) is the modern day equivalent of a journal?think 'captains log stardate?' and you're heading in the right direction.A blog is... Read More

Top 10 Places to Find the Most Popular Blogs

The easiest way to get acquainted with the conventions of the blog format is to start reading them. The more blogs you read, the more you'll get a feel for the depth and... Read More

Blogging for Business

Not long ago a blog was simply an online diary. Initially, people decided that blogging was describing, in excruciating detail, how their day went, what they had for dinner last night, and why... Read More

The Full Circle of RSS Marketing Power

RSS is a many-in-one marketing & publishing tool, although unfortunatelly most marketers still fail to understand this powerful concept.While RSS does provide a number of benefits when used for each individual marketing function,... Read More

The Power of the BLOG

Can a Blog earn you a prison sentence? Ask Mojtaba Saminejad. He is an Iranian whose Blog, published in the Farsi language, earned him a two-year prison sentence in June 2005.The online community... Read More

RSS is Not Only for Blogs

Contrary to popular opinion, RSS is not only good for delivering content from your blog, although blogs are what made RSS so popular.In fact, RSS can be used to deliver a great variety... Read More

Blog Your Affiliate Links

Blogging is a relatively new form of communication, closely related to the newsletters of days long past. Your thoughts, ideas, and activities are posted for the world (or a chosen few) to view,... Read More

Are Blog Meant for Raves and Rants?

Blogging is the latest internet craze and it may turn out to be just that and killed off if the avalanche of misinformation continues. One is amazed at how an excellent online medium... Read More

Blog or Ezine? Top 7 Reasons to Blog Now!

Many of my small business clients ask me: "What is a blog and do I need one?" As a marketing consultant and business coach, I too had to address those questions in my... Read More

Blogging For Business Bible

The items covered here are:1) Don't Wait before Blogging.2) Using Blogs to get your site found quickly.3) What have Blogs and PR got to do with Indexing.4) How to get your large sites... Read More

Introduction to Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Really Simple Syndication is exactly what it's name states. A very simple way to syndicate your websites contents to other websites and news reading programs. This article describes the benefits of creating an... Read More

6 Ways That Blogging Can Save You Money

Even though I've had several personal blogs for years, I've only been officially business blogging since 2003. So in going back over expenses for the last quarter, you can imagine my shock when... Read More

Make Money with Your Own Blog

Well, basically, setting up a blog means that you are creating a little space of your own on the Internet where you can make posts about anything that interests you. Of course, if... Read More

RSS is a Life Raft, Saving Us from a Sea of Useless Information

One of the main problems with the Internet these days is the fact that there is so much information out there; it can be quite hard to find the particular knowledge that you're... Read More

Top 7 Reasons Why Your Business Should Use RSS

In today's online world of high-speed websites and giant portals, every established Internet business boasts of delivering content via RSS.RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), a simple XML based technology allows... Read More