If you have an online store or some online business venture a blog can be an important part of connecting with your customers. A bit more personal than your business website it is there where you can answer the pressing questions of your customers, update clients on related business news, and offer little peaks into your own life to come across more personable.
A blog, an online journal of sorts is a way to keep in touch with your customers. Not necessarily for showing all aspects of your personal life here are some tips to keep in mind for your business blog.
- Update the content regularly for your visitors
- Register with search engines so you can be found.
- Market your blog to draw traffic.
If you are new to the blogging world what you do is set up a free account at sites like Blogger.com, or Wordpress.org or get a really nice paid one at Typepad
Not all blog sites are created equally so your themes and added features can vary. Most of them are user friendly and have steps to walk you through the set up.
Before you start your blog decide what your theme and/or niche will. Usually this will be related to your online store. Or if you don’t have a store and are starting a blog as your online presence find your niche. If you want this to be a money maker a blog that goes in too many directions will not fare as well as a focused blog. Will your blog be about cooking, gardening, crafts, or parenting? Examples of course and as you can see the list can go on.
There are several profit making additions you can add to your blog. Things such as Google Adsense, Affiliate Marketing, Ebook Marketing, and Selling Ad space on your blog. Much of this can depend on the amount AND quality of the traffic coming to your blog.
Think of your blog as a way to help others. Offer insightful advice or stories of what happened to you (within your niche) and how you handled it.
Now if your head is spinning from this start slowly…
- Decide what your blog will focus on.
- Come up with a name (things like this stump me)
- Go sign up at Blogger.com, Wordpress.org, or trial at Typepad
- Start blogging. Don’t analyze your posts. If it comes to mind write about it.
- If you need ideas sign up for Lynette’s free blog service
As an online business owner you probably have heard that keeping in touch with customers and potential customers is key to your buess.
Well it is.
Long, or shortly after your visitors have forgotten about you a simple reminder in the form of a weekly, monthly or what have your newsletter can jog their memories and even entice them to buy.
Not only am I a small business owner but I’m a consumer too. I do much of my shopping, saving for food, online. If I find a company that has what I am looking for I tend to sign up for their newsletters.
Why?
Because I know I can be a bit forgetful. If I’m shopping then I want to keep in touch. When are your sales? What new products do you have? Do you have any great tips in your specialty that you think might help me get more from your product?
A newsletter is a good thing for both parties. But sometimes it can be a little difficult to put together.
- I mean first of all where do you start?
- How do you get subscribers?
- Then how do you set up the newsletter? Where is it ‘housed’.
- What kind of content do you put into it and where do you get it?
- How do you format it?
Well first of all start by deciding to do a newsletter. Then once you have made that decision there are several places you can use for managing your email newsletter.
The basics are you want a place that will…
- Collect the names and emails for you in the form of a signup box.
- Be able to create and send your newsletters now, or later.
- Give you an option of templates or let you create your own,
- See who clicks your links, who opens your messages
- Have that nice opt-in feature to guard against unwanted sign-ups.
- Provide auto-responders so your customers know you care
- Fast and reliable delivery.
Extra nice features are…
- Manage many campaigns so you can have all kinds of offers going at the same time.
- Web analytics
- and much more
One of the best email management sites is Aweber. Try it risk free for 30 days.
Next. You have your subscribers coming so be sure to provide content. Your readers are looking for information from you. Now this is just my own personal advice but a daily newsletter email is too much. Just too much. Give your subscribers a chance to digest the last email you sent them before you send another one. Unless you’re doing an email class where daily emails for a short amount of time are necessary more than once a week, from a consumer’s point of view is too much. I personally like monthly but you may have a need for more often than that.
Have relevant content. Not everything that’s on your mind but stuff related to your online business. Do you sell bath and body products? Send me a monthly newsletter that includes new products, tips on using the products you already have in stock and seasonal ideas for taking care of myself. Maybe you’re an informational site. Did I visit you for baby tips? Or more specifically cloth diapering? Same thing applies. Information on new kinds of cloth diapers, better methods of cleaning, stain removal, getting started, trying wool soakers (you can tell I have need for this information).
If you struggle for content ideas, as many of us do, there are places like ClipCopy. ClipCopy is a newsletter content solution provider. You’ll get articles, fun inserts, facts, quotes, and more. Sometimes we need places like this. Or a PLR solution such as All Private Label. I use them all the time. It’s not that I can’t write but sometimes I need ideas, the outline. All Private Label has what are called “Research Bundles” that get me going. Research on various topics so I can give it my own voice.
Are you excited now? Does this give you some good ideas?
For another great easy to read and follow resource for putting together an online email newsletter try How to Create an Ezine for Profit
or get the full Online Business Promotion Package which includes
- 38 Easy Ways Not to be a Slave to Your Business which includes and mp3 transcript.
- How to Create an Ezine for Profit
- 7 Totally Free Ways to Get More Traffic
Buy it here
K Quinn on October 1, 2009 | Filed Under Marketing | Comments Off
Blogs are popular ways to create an online presence for personal and professional reasons. You can build a blog for free and begin posting your content right away. But what many people find is, what good is that content if no one is reading it?
In other words how to get people to come to your site?
Well here are ten ideas that worked for me and should work for you too to bring in the traffic your blog needs to survive. And the nice thing is they’re free!
First of all know that of all the successful blogs on the Internet, hundreds more have failed. Running a blog is a lot like running a business website. Unless you are willing to put the time in and treat it seriously, you won’t be blogging long. Something doesn’t come from nothing. Whatever people tell you it is not practical to think that just because you exist people will come and buy. You have to put forth some effort and time.
That is not to say that the failed bloggers weren’t serious about blogging. Usually new bloggers aren’t prepared for the work that goes into creating a successful blog. They see other women building up their blog and getting lots of traffic and hits and they think it’s just their dynamic personality or something. Just building the blog doesn’t mean that people will necessary come to you. You must pursue the audience and give them a reason to see what you have to say.
- Fresh Content: No one wants to visit a blog day after day and see the same old posts. They’re coming for new information and it’s up to you to provide it. Update your blog content at least twice a week. This will be easier if you write several posts ahead of time and upload them at the appropriate times. Your blog account can hold articles in draft mode until you are ready to post.
- Article Marketing : I love this because it has been what has worked for me best. Now the niche you’ve chosen for your blog is one that interests you. This is key because if it is interesting you will spend more time doing it. Article marketing is where you create articles on this niche that will be posted at article directories for other to put on their blogs or websites. You use the resource box to advertise your blog so people can find you. Tada!
- SEO Marketing: Whenever you are writing, whatever you write, use relevant keywords. Keyword density between three and ten percent is good for getting higher page rankings in search engines. Base your keywords on a research you do to find the most popular words used in search engines for your niche. Does all this sound like Greek to you? I highly recommend Cricket’s class SEO Training Class by GNC Web Creations.
More information: Blogger’s Paycheck
Are you looking to start an online business that you love? A hobby you enjoy is a great place to start when looking for an online business.
With an online business you can provide a service, a product and/or information.
Providing information is good because people are always browsing the internet looking for ….INFORMATION.
A good way to format this information is on a blog. With a blog your information is in articles which can be formated for easy searching promoting your latest post of information first.
There is no end to the kind of informational blog you can start. People are online looking for information and you may have the information they needs.
Ideas for types of blogs to start:
- A craft you are good at
- Gardening
- Cooking
- Kids and Parenting
Next you need figure out how to set up and use your blog. There are a few online places to start your blog for free. Blogger and Wordpress are the two big ones most people use. Blogger is nice because there is no end to lovely blog templates, meaning the look and style of your blog. With Wordpress if you decide to do the free version then there are some restrictions as to making money with your blog. You’ll have to read about this. Then you need to think about hosting it yourself.
So once you have decided to blog now you need to know how you can make money blogging. Again an endless topic but the three main ways are advertising, that is selling advertising on your blog, affiliate programs, and selling something of your own creation.
So you have your idea, where you’re going to put your site now what to blog about? You would be surprised but instead of getting deep and heavy with your blog many people just want to know the basics. When I first started online the main thing people came to my site for was how to bathe a baby. You would think this was basic but after having to do this 6 times in the space of a few years (foster babies) I knew that it was something I wanted to share. I was especially nervous with my preemie baby and I figured other people were too. I was right!
Finally how to get traffic to your blog and make money. Many new online busines owners start off paying for traffic and joining traffic farms to get people to come to their site. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say DON’T DO IT!
Read this article on getting traffic to your site free and easy for great no cost ways to get traffic to your site.
All Green Content is a PLR (Private Label Rights) article membership program, which provides enough content to sustain a blog or website, build a list and/or regularly publish a newsletter or ezine in the lucrative green living or eco-friendly market.
Woo hoo!
What you get in All Green Content…
All Green Content provides a monthly supply of green-focused content.
Every month as a member you will receive
- 30 PLR articles
- 10 product profiles or reviews
- 10 how-to sheets or step-by-step guides on various green topics
- a 7-10 page special report
- a list of affiliate programs you can join in the green niche
- resources to help you make the best profitable use of PLR content
- access to a private forum, where you can interact with other content marketers and discuss:
- - creative ways of using PLR content
- – increasing traffic and understanding the search engines
- – making profit from affiliate marketing
- – how to produce and market your own informational product
- – joint venture partnerships
While an active member you will also get Speedy APLC Publisher, a WordPress plugin, which makes it easy to load PLR content (text files) into your WordPress blog, and schedule them for publishing.
How it is delivered…
All PLR content is delivered monthly through digital zip files. The articles, product reviews/profiles, and special report are in raw text file, making them easy to edit in any word processor.
Thoughts on All Green Content…
All Green Content is a valuable resource for anybody with a blog or website in the green or eco-friendly living niche. With 30 fresh articles a month, you can easily publish a new post to your blog or website every day, which will do wonders to your search engine rankings and traffic.
In fact, with the 10 product reviews/profiles and 10 how-to sheets in addition to the articles, you’ll have more content than you need to publish a new post every day.
This leaves you with plenty of content for content marketing in feeder sites, such as Squidoo and Hub Pages, or even to create your own marketing videos.
The monthly special report can be offered as a freebie to build a list of “green” subscribers. You’ll have enough content to give your subscribers useful eco-living information at least once a week – with still plenty of material left over.
The articles are well-researched, clearly written and quite long. You can even break some articles into 2 or 3 blog posts and run a series. These aren’t hastily written articles, that’s for sure.
As with other PLR content, you can combine articles to create an eBook. Or why not bunch up related articles with how-to sheets and product reviews for an information package to sell?
The possibilities are endless with All Green Content.
If you’re in the green market, you’ll be sure that each month’s content will be highly relevant to your readers.
All you’ll have to do is have some ecovers created (who uses the ones that come with other PLR packages anyway? You want to be unique, right?), then you’re good to go.
If you want to check it out before committing to a monthly membership, you can try out a set of free all-green PLR.
Where to Learn More: => All Private Label Content
