Successful Blogging.com

How to Create a Business Blog

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Making and maintaining a blog for your company is a challenging task. You need to update it every day and make the layout look nearly like your websites. So how do you do it?

Steps

Buy hosting and a domain if you don't already have a company website (not blog).
Choose the correct blogging platform needed - the best and most widely used is Wordpress. Typepad, Blogger, Moveable Type, and numerous others are all available as well, so shop around and look for the one that best fits your needs.
Develop your business marketing objectives.
Decide on the theme of the blog and find a template (or hire a web design company to create one) that best fits your needs.
Determine how many blogs your company will need. It is more than 1 in about 90% of the cases. No matter how small your business.
Decide who will be blogging and writing the content.
Have a blog promotion plan and learn some basic search engine optimization and search engine marketing techniques.
Choose a consultant that will help you achieve maximum results. Ask for specifics, case studies and references.

Tips

Look at the most effective blogging platform
Choose a platform that offers detailed reporting analytics, or install Google Analytics or one of the free or inexpensive analytics tools to track and measure your progress.
In order to get people to come to your blog you must post relevant engaging comments on popular blogs in your niche. Leave a link embedded in your comments. This will allow others to see your insight and access your blogs. Problogger has greater insight on the subject.
You should also link out to other blogs in your niche and authority websites; this gives your site credibility according to the search engines as well as helping you to network and make yourself known in your niche.

Warnings

Do not attempt to "Try Blogging Out". This only ensures failure.

Related wikiHows

Sources and Citations

http://www.leveragedpromotion.com/products.html Free 20 Page Business Blogging White Paper.
http://blog.leveragedpromotion.com 6 Blogs About Effective Business Blogging and How To use Blogs as Effective Marketing Tools.
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2008/06/05/the-power-of-commenting-on-other-blogs-video/
http://www.15minutestoriches.com/2008/11/01/how-to-build-a-blog-for-residual-income-part-3-choosing-a-wordpress-theme/ How to Choose a WordPress Theme for Your Business Blog

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Create a Business Blog. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Keep Visitors at Your Site Longer

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

The more time people spend at your web site, the more time you'll have to persuade them to buy your product or service. Below are ten powerful ways to keep visitors at your web site longer.

Steps

Provide your web site visitors with content they can't read anywhere else. People will stay longer at your web site to read the original content.
Remind your web site visitors they can print out your content. They may browse around your online store while it's printing.
Offer your web site visitors a freebie if they take the time to fill out your online survey. They'll be at the site longer and might buy something afterwards.
Offer your visitors free software that they can download right from your web site. While they are waiting they might read your ad.
Provide a huge online directory of information that your visitors could search. The directory must contain information your visitors would want.
Make sure all your web pages load fast or your visitors will leave fast. Time is precious; they won't waste it waiting for your site to load.
Tell your visitors what's offered at your web site at the very beginning. If people are confused about what's being offered they may leave too early.
Publish your web site professionally. People will get turned off and leave if they see a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes.
Make your site text easy to read. Most people won't strain their eyes trying to read text that is too small, light or bright.
Use headlines and sub headlines all over your your web site that will grab visitors attention. It will attract them to explore your web site longer.

Related wikiHows

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Keep Visitors at Your Site Longer. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

How to Build Your Blog As a Brand

from wikiHow - The How to Manual That You Can Edit

Most fellow bloggers are aware of the ever increasing blogs and blogger count in the web sphere, rather to be precise, in the blogosphere. So, there is every possibility that your blog is among millions of those competing for even small number of visitors per day to get some psychological happiness or to earn some Adsense cents etc. But the perfect analogy to the problem can be comparing yourself with one of the millions or I suppose billions of stars competing for stargazer’s attention. And you yourself think ---what is the probability of your blog being seen by a person on earth if you are just another star? So the obvious solution to this analogical problem is that you either become some sought of Pole star status star or be a part of constellation to get viewed by maximum.

Steps

The first and foremost solution is to have UNIQUE and frequently updated content in your blog. Be true and yourself to your visitors. The big search engines are smart enough of to detect which blogs are providing new, fresh and unique stuff, and reward them with better ranking in search results.
Try your best to make your blog heading, blog post title and blog post content ‘Keyword rich’. By ‘keyword rich ‘ I mean to say it should contain some of the phrases which you think are potential searches that people will do and your same post will act as answer to it. For example: I am writing a post on how to open a CD-Rom on others computer from your computer and a potential visitor must be searching for Open CD –Rom trick or prank etc etc …So, what I have to do is to write my post including these “Open CD –Rom trick or prank” strings in my post. This is really useful for coming on top in Search engine rankings hence improving your visitor count.
Take advantage of social networking sites. Blogs are social web elements and require a community or society of their own to sustain and grow, exactly the same way human ,being social animal , is dependent on society .So, do go for social bookmarking like Digg, Stumbleupon, Technorati, Feedburner, etc.
Be a celebrity blogger by commenting on various blogs of your taste and interest and leave a back link to your blog. This helps a lot in spreading the name .Also blogroll or do link exchange with blog you feel will be helpful for your visitor.
Submit your blog to various search engines, at least to the main search engines like Google ,Yahoo, AOL ,MSN etc is must to get name and fame for your blog .
Last but not the least always have the motto of spreading knowledge and enlightenment to the visitors and please don’t do blogging for the sake of any monetary benefit as your motto, take my word you will never be a successful blogger going this road.

Tips

Keep blogging, be real and be pure

Warnings

Donot start your blog with the aim of earning money

Related wikiHows

Article provided by wikiHow, a wiki how-to manual. Please edit this article and find author credits at the original wikiHow article on How to Build Your Blog As a Brand. All content on wikiHow can be shared under a Creative Commons license.

Advertising through Technorati

Featured Site

Technorati - $640 / wk
Technorati is the world's largest blog search engine and directory, and the de facto porta...

Avg Views/Ad/Week: 2,280,834

Avg CPM: $0.28

Technorati now offers an advertising option.

Technorati Engage, a self-service advertising network of blogs and social media sites is now in beta and open to a limited set of advertisers and publishers.

Currently, Technorati Engage offers a 125x125 Square Button display ad, Text and PhoText ads. Additional display ad formats are scheduled for release after the beta launch.

Text and PhoText ads can be very easily created from within the Technorati Engage platform. Text ads are the most efficient vehicle for communication or to drive response. PhoText ads can communicate your message more effectively than either a text or image ad alone, and convert more effectively than traditional text ads.

Ad units currently offered by the Technorati Engage beta program:

Weekly Ads

A Weekly Ad is an ad that is displayed on a single blog for a specified period of time. Because Weekly Ads are time-based, they are sold on a Cost per Week basis.

The shortest period of time that you can buy an ad for is one day.

A PhoText ad is a selected image or picture that is displayed beside a relevant text ad.

Technorati Engage will take any image and resize it to make the picture fit one of 4 set square dimensions: 25, 50, 100, and 200 pixels in width. The dimension depends on what the publisher selects for his or her particular blog for all PhoText ads in a single ad box.
Blogs that support PhoText ads are marked with a camera icon that is displayed in the Site Directory and on the blog's profile. However, to be certain, check the blog description and the blog itself to find out if they display PhoText ads.

Although Technorati Engage has guidelines pertaining to the size and quality of the picture, the content of the picture is entirely up to the advertiser and his or her advertising goals. All ads are reviewed by Technorati Engage before being displayed.

Technorati Media offers two types of ads: a Weekly Ad which runs for a period of time on a single blog priced in dollars per week, and a Targeted CPC (RON) ad that runs on many blogs priced in cents per Valid CPC click.

A Weekly Ad has the advantage of allowing an advertiser to target the visitors from a single blog and the disadvantage of only having historic information to predict how many times the ad will be clicked.

A Targeted CPC (RON) ad has the advantage of allowing an advertiser to know exactly what the cost per valid click will be and the disadvantage of not knowing from which blog the valid click will originate.

Technorati Media recommends Targeted CPC (RON) ads when an advertiser wants to:
1) Know the Cost Per Click before running the ad, and
2) Promote an offer across a large number of blogs without buying an ad on each blog.

You can target your CPC ad by choosing (1) the region(s) you want the ad displayed, (2) the ad format (text, PhoText, or display), and (3) the blog content category (e.g. Humor, Music, Movies).
C (RON) ads before they are displayed on the network. We will not approve a Targeted CPC (RON) ad if (1) the site that the ad is linking to is illegal, (2) the site the ad is linking to endorses "get paid to click" or "get paid to read" type offers and (3) if you use all capitals in your text description.
[top]
What Targeted CPC (RON) ad content restrictions exist?

Technorati Engage reviews all Targeted CPC

The period of time the Targeted CPC (RON) ad runs depends on:

1) The number of clicks purchased;
2) The compelling nature of the product being offered and the resulting Click Through Ratio (CTR);
3) The number of Targeted CPC (RON) ads running on the Publisher Network at that point in time;
4) The number of page views occurring on the blogs where the Targeted CPC (RON) ad is running.
For more information