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Weblogs, more commonly known as blogs, are spreading feverishly across the Internet. According to Robyn Aber of Cisco Systems Inc., about four million blogs populate the Web. Though most private individuals maintain blogs, many companies are beginning to launch company blogs to communicate and interact with their clients, customers, and the public.

How can you create a company blog that outshines and outlasts every other blog? And how do you hypnotize readers to keep coming back? This article provides tips to write effective, attention-arresting blog copy and shows how you can develop reader and customer loyalty.

1. WRITE CONVERSATIONALLY.

The most engaging blogs speak to their audience in a casual and conversational tone. A big benefit of a blog is its ability to speak to readers in a way that is personal, candid and straightforward. Write your blog the same way you’d speak to your audience, face to face. The personal element is almost always what attracts people and keeps them coming back to your blog.

Amy Joyce of the Washington Post says, “Web logs—or blogs—started as a way to talk about new technologies, vent about life and interact in a no-holds-barred forum. Since blogs became the next big thing, an increasing number of companies have come to see them as the next great public relations vehicle—a way for executives to show their casual, interactive side. But, of course, the executives do nothing of the sort. Their attempts at hip, guerrilla-style blogging are often pained—and painful.”

To avoid this pitfall, simply be yourself. The best blogs reveal the interests, opinions, and personality of the writer. Your perspective, personal and professional, is unique in all the world. Let it shine through, and your blog will automatically be one-of-a-kind. An interesting blog will bring back customers again and again and will generate priceless interest in your company.

2. TELL STORIES.

Readers want to know things they already don’t know about your company. They want to know what the products, services, people, challenges, and innovations in your organization are really like. If you give them a glimpse of the inner workings, express your opinions boldly, and tell engaging stories, you will foster reader interest and loyalty. In a biography, both interviews and quotations usually are the most intriguing parts. Think of your company blog as a business biography. Personalize it with your unique thoughts and perspective.

3. MAKE IT PERSONAL.

Write about what you know. Draw from your expertise to inform the public about the finer points of your business. Detailing development ideas, setbacks, successes, and reactions reveals the human element and engages the reader. It’s fine to talk about new products and innovations, but blogs devoted mostly to marketing and promotion are the most boring and least popular of company blogs. Make these topics more appealing to readers by framing such announcements with personal impressions and insights. Customers want to feel a kinship with the brand. Letting them in on the details of your business will make them feel part of your company culture and increase the chances of their lifetime loyalty.

4. UPDATE FREQUENTLY.

Once you have established a good reader base, offer new insights regularly to reward surfers for coming back. Not only does this provide more information and exposure, but it also reflects that your company is active and on top of things. Link to current articles from other sources to keep readers abreast of developments in your sector. A rarely-updated blog feels stale and tired. This is not the reputation you want your company to have!

5. ADHERE TO COMPANY RULES.

You are personally responsible for whatever material you publish on your company blog. Respect the confidentiality of your organization and employees. Though you may express disagreements or concerns, do not make personal attacks or use the blog to air petty complaints. Do not reveal proprietary information; and avoid discussing revenue, share price, or other financial statistics. Observe copyright law, and quote sources as you would in any other document. Make sure what you write in the company blog reflects the company’s goals. Keep in mind the ultimate goal of most company blogs is to increase visibility and promote the exchange of information. While most companies allow and encourage blogging on company time, you should avoid letting your writing time interfere with your regular workload.

6. WRITE GRAMMATICALLY.

Finally, make sure that what you write is grammatical. Your blog entries reflect your company, and you want to give the best possible impression of the organization and its personnel. The Internet is rife with bad English. Though blogs tend to be relaxed in tone, it is no more appropriate to ignore standard English than it is to wear flip-flops and swimming trunks on casual Friday. Use a program like StyleWriter ( http://www.StyleWriter-USA.com ) or White Smoke ( http://www.WhiteSmokeSoftware.com ) to find and fix embarrassing grammar mistakes and help you write like a pro.

A company blog is an excellent tool for promotion, communication, and information. The tips outlined here will help elevate your blog and generate traffic and interest. Good luck, and welcome to the wonderful world of blogging!

For more articles on business writing and writing for blogs, visit http://www.ElectronicWritingCourse.com or http://www.ReadabilityFormulas.com and click on “Free Articles.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
BRIAN KONRADT is a freelance writer and founder of FreelanceWriting.com (www.freelancewriting.com), a free web site to help writers master the business and creative sides of freelance writing; he also is founder of BookCatcher.com (www.bookcatcher.com), a free website to help authors promote their books.

Social bookmarking websites are becoming more and more
popular. They allow you to save bookmarks online and
Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them
as bookmarks in the favorite’s list of your browser.
This is particularly useful when your browser based
bookmarks have become unwieldy. It’s also help since
you can access your bookmarks from any computer where
you have an internet connection.

I have compiled a list of Social Bookmarking websites from
a number of sources. You can find it here:
http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/social-bookmarking/social-bookmarking-top-links.html

Once you have bookmarked them, you can view them, sort
them by category/keyword as well as see links from others
that have been categorized like yours.

You also establish RSS feeds for each category (tag) that you
’subscribe’ to. This alerts you to new links in your areas of
interest. Your bookmark collection/RSS Feed becomes
viewable to others who can also copy your bookmarks to their
own collection. So now you can aggressively promote your
RSS feed to the RSS Directories and Search engines,
syndicate them and make them available to a much wider
audience.

Social bookmarking sites also help you to meet other people
who are interested in the same topics you are and who may
also have knowledge of web resources that you don’t.

On Social Bookmarking sites, you first create an account.
Then you bookmark interesting and useful things in the area
of your interest or expertise. By doing so you create a
useful Feed. Once you’ve done that you intermittently,
(or aggressively), add useful and interesting items, (that
could use additional exposure), from your own content.
Make an honest effort to contribute USEFUL information
and links. This is all about sharing and exposure. Done
properly, you can be as aggressive as you want to be about
sharing information. You can share your blog(s), links to
your informational/resource sites etc. Think about the fact
that when you share links to other’s resources, you’re also
effectively promoting their content as well.

This is a way you can aggressively and ethically promote
your content and the content of others. I personally
have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and
information of others, connected to my notebook. In the
final analysis, it’s doing me no good what-so-ever just
sitting there. But by organizing it, online, I can help
myself, (getting organized, getting my content exposed,
etc.) and help others at the same time.

If you spice up your feed with too much sales and
marketing related or self promotional stuff, people
can and will easily drop their subscription to your feed.
And instead of gaining good will and doing a service
to the internet community you could get labeled as a
spammer and suffer the consequences.

So while being aggressive is possible and acceptable,
being careful to consider the best interest of the
community is certainly warranted.

Balancing being ethical and providing a useful service
to others with promoting your own content enables you
to be as aggressive as you like. But remember, in the
final analysis, others will make the decision on whether
it’s ethical and useful or spam.

Gregory White, Internet Marketer, Author, Consultant and Project Manager has been running successful web projects since 2001. His sites and blogs cover Blog Marketing Tactics, Internet Marketing Tactics and a variety of ‘Niche’ topics, in addition to starting and marketing profitable web project.

http://www.blogmarketingtactics.com/

http://www.blogmarketingtactics.blogspot.com/

Over the past year or so, more and more webmasters have been creating their own blogs (web-logs). If you don’t already know, a blog is sort of an online diary which is updated at regular intervals by the author(s), and can be viewed by the public.

Blogs can have a wide variety of topics, including personal thoughts, news, sports, politics, technology, or virtually anything else you can think of. And like any other website, a blog can be used to make money.

By far the most popular way make money with your blog is to put some sort of pay-per-click text ads on it. Some companies that will pay you for doing this are Google Adsense and BidClix (MSN and Yahoo plan to launch similar programs in the near future). Depending on the topic that you choose to write about, and the current pay-per-click market conditions, your ads might make anywhere from $0.05 to $1.00 per click.

In addition to generating direct income, creating a blog can be a great way to publicize your existing websites. Simply placing a link to your site at the top of your blog can potentially bring in a nice stream of targeted visitors.

To start publishing your own blog, you should visit Blogger.com, and to pick up some free traffic for it, check out Blog Explosion.

For more internet marketing articles and online business resources, please visit WealthStream.info…

About the Author: Jeremy Maddock has been a successful internet marketer for over three years, and is the webmaster of http://www.WealthStream.info.

In case you haven’t heard, the net is buzzing with talk of
blogging and RSS. Once the province strictly of people who
got a kick out of publishing online diaries, and later of
political and social commentarists, blogs and RSS are being
adopted by the internet marketing community.

This is the hot new trend for 2005. The word “blog” was
actually selected as the word of the year for 2004, and
2005 promises to be the year of the blog.

So what is all the fuss about? Well, especially with the
increasing restrictions on email marketing, including ISP
blocking of mail amounting to estimates of 40% of all email
never getting delivered, marketers began to look for new
avenues to get their message out. Enter blogs and RSS.

Delivered straight to a user’s desktop, the content of an
RSS feed is unfiltered by anyone. Users can subscribe and
unsubscribe anonymously, with the click of a mouse, and
have no fear that their personal information will be
shared. RSS is “pull” technology, meaning that the user
asks for it, in contrast to email, which is often unasked
for, and thus is often “push” technology.

Blogs, which are usually publicized by way of an RSS feed,
among other venues, are the current darlings for the search
engine spiders. Search engines love blogs, because they
are full of content, are frequently changing, are devoid of
“flash”, graphics, and other distractions, and are full of
outgoing links.

If you know anything about search engine optimization, you know
that those are the characteristics that should you strive for
when optimizing a conventional page for the search engines.
The pages in a blog are that way by their very nature, and thus
attract the search engine spiders.

Why do marketers love blogs? Numerous reasons.

They are simple to create and maintain. They afford the
opportunity to publish links to other sites, and to the
interior pages of other sites. Their popularity with human
visitors makes them natural targets for traffic. Their
constantly changing content attracts the search engine
spiders, which then follow the links that they find, and
index the pages of other websites.

Many savvy internet marketing experts have suggested that
the best way to capture an audience of potential customers
is to provide them free information, either through a
“content site” that does little direct selling, or through
publication of an informative email newsletter that gives
free information and at most employs a “soft sell” when
endorsing products.

A blog is the perfect blend of the two. It has often been
suggested that the best way to start an online business is
with a free newsletter, which allows you to develop your
“list”. While a blog doesn’t develop your “list” in quite
the same way, it does afford you the opportunity to develop
a loyal following among your readers, which accomplishes
much the same purpose as having a “list”.

Whether you announce or endorse a product through an email
list or a blog, you are announcing it to people who want to
hear what you have to say. Your blog readers are probably
more eager, in many cases, than are readers of your mass
emails.

I could go on and on about the merits of blogs. If you are
promoting any product or service online, you owe it to yourself
to check out what can be done with blogs and RSS.

John Barbour, Ph.D. is the author of a new blogging guide
which teaches people how to promote any product or service
online using blogs and RSS.

John also maintains several internet marketing educational
websites, and manages a new directory for blogs related to
internet marketing. Visit the emarketing blog directory and
find an interesting blog, or submit your own for inclusion.

What is a Blog? In simple terms, a Blog is a website journal. Blogging has been around for many years, but has recently seen a huge surge in popularity. The main reason I see in the new trend of Blog marketing is the ease of use and the plethora of free services available to host and maintain your Blog.

Blog Marketing has become the newest trend in terms of Internet Marketing. What most people don’t realize is that creating a Blog is completely free and with a lot of the services out there it doesn’t take a technical genius to figure out how to create a blog and maintain it. I recommend Google’s Blogger.com due to the easy setup and fast ranking on Google’s search engine. The way that you benefit from your Blog is by having people visit the Blog and in turn they will go to your actual website which should be based on the same subject. Another form of Real Estate marketing via a Blog is to actually place your listings on your Blog with photos. This would be an easy extra you could offer your customers.

Why do Blogs work so well? Not all Blog services work like Blogger, the Blogger service was purchased by Google, which as of 2006 is the largest and most widely used search engine in the world. Due to the fact that Blogger is owned by Google, it seems to really help with getting your Blog seen by the masses and showing up much faster in search engines. Traditional methods of getting your information seen via a website could take months, doing a quality Blog can get you to the top in weeks if not days depending on the subject matter and popularity. Next I’m going to go over in detail how to make your Blog work for you.

Naming your Blog is a very important piece of the puzzle. When I create a new Blog I always make sure to use the term “Real Estate” or “Realtor” in the Blog name as well as the title. For example if you are focusing on Tampa Real Estate, a great name for your Blog would be tampa-real-estate, if that is not available, adding in other keywords is a great alternative. I would try tampa-real-estate-homes, don’t spend too much time on this, you could have a very successful Blog even with a name that has no correlation to your subject matter. What you will notice when creating an account is that a lot of the most common names have already been taken, so it is very important to start blogging as soon as possible.

Putting information into your Blog is the next step. This is the most important element of your Blog. A single Blog entry can be a short as a sentence and as long as 50 pages. I always recommend keeping a single entry to around a paragraph or two. If your entry is too long, most people viewing it wont get thru the whole entry, so keep it short and to the point. I always try to update my Blogs on a daily basis to keep it fresh and to get people in the habit of visiting my Blog often.

If you follow these few easy steps, you should have no problem getting visitors to your Real Estate Website in no time. Don’t forget to place your Website in every Blog entry you create, this will help visitors find your real website which in turn, could turn into a high quality lead.

Copyright 2006 Phaedra Hubbard. You may republish this article in its entirety, only if you leave the author’s note & website hyperlinks intact.

Phaedra Hubbard is a Realtor that specializes in Tampa Bay Real Estate as well as Clearwater Real Estate. If you need to sell your home or buy a home please visit our website http://www.myfloridahomestore.com, we offer a free Comparative Market Analysis as well as free MLS Home Search.

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 own business.

A blog is a form of online journal that business owners use to develop customer relationships and establish credibility. Blog authors write and post relevant content frequently – daily, every couple of days or weekly.

After publishing an ezine for some time, I decided to give up my monthly ezine for a blog. Of course I could do both — for the more points of contact with my target the better. But for now, I’ll share my top seven reasons why I choose to blog over a monthly ezine:

Interactivity: Blogging puts the humanity in technology. Readers can leave comments and respond to each other. Adding video and audio to a blog also significantly enrich the learning experience, allowing for various learning styles. Ezines on the other hand, are fairly static.

Convenience & Ease: I can communicate with my audience quickly and efficiently without the elaborate set-up and content requirements of an HTML ezine.

Inexpensive: Lots of blogs are free. For example www.blogger.com. I like Typepad at www.typepad.com. For a minimal charge of $4.95 per month, I get a professional looking blog with upgraded features. Compare with a professional ezine/contact management program costing $19 per month.

Increases Visibility: Search engine spiders love blogs for the simple reason that they constantly seek new content. Frequent postings are crucial for success. As a result, bloggers gain increased Web presence and higher search engine rankings. For example, Google, Yahoo and others often index blog entries within days of posting as opposed to waiting weeks for ezine postings.

Content Management: When I set up this blog I created keyword-based categories for the topics that I’ll write about in the future. Each time I post, I select which category my post applies to and voila! My posts are catalogued by category and date. This feature is essential fodder for future e-books and other informational products. Try content management with your ezine articles on your website – things can get unwieldy fast.

Clearly, blogging is an essential addition to my marketing toolbox. It’s also effective for any service-based entrepreneur who needs to build client relationships and increase visibility.

Copyright © 2005

Lena Claxton is a small business coach & marketing consultant, committed to helping self-employed professionals reach their highest potential. She’s author of the e-book “Small Business Boosts.” Download your free copy at http://www.ontrakmarketing.com and receive a subscription to the “Ontrak Business Blog.”

Those who blog partly because they want to earn some extra money
often ask the question:”Why is my revenue so low?” There are
people who think that blogs simply can not generate much money.
They are wrong! Blog can generate you the same amount of money
if not more compared to any other website. Now im talking about
PPC (Pay per click) sorces of revenue such as google adsense
here.

The main problem I have noticed is that people tend to
concentrate on wider markets. If you are running a personal
diary kind of blog, the chances are that there are thousands of
similar blogs around. The more competition you have, the harder
it will be for you to make some cash. Instead try concentrating
on smaller markets also known as niche markets. Not only it will
be easier for you to develop the traffic, the CPC (Cost per
click) should also be higher due to advertisers demand exceeding
publishers supply.

Secondly you need to have a unique selling point. You need to
give your readers something that nobody else does. This should
really help you get returning visitors.

Finally it’s the ads themselves. You should channel your ads.
This way you will be able to measure your ad block’s
performance. One of the most important things is to experiment.
Try different ad formats, colours and positioning. Run your
setup for a few weeks, note the performance and try something
different. Even if you think you have found the optimum ad setup
keep on trying to improve it. In most cases you can always tweak
something to make your ad performance better.

If you need help finding traffic for your blog, you can always
submit your blog stories to the new personal blog news
publishing system designed especially for the blogging community
at the Blog reporter

What is Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is all about users adding their bookmarks onto websites so that they can then share them with other users that are signed up to that particular website. This became an easy way to see which websites were becoming popular with Internet browsers. Also because this person is signed up to that website where they have just submitted their favorite bookmarks you can actually contact that person if you feel that they have the same interests as you. Maybe not the biggest breakthrough to hit the Internet but still a good option to have if you also sign up to that website. Finding other people with the same interests as you is always a good way to meet interesting friends.

While social bookmarking is a good hobby imagine if you could replace the website option with blogs? There are thousands of blogs out on the web there is no doubt about that and the most popular ones will be very hard to find.

This idea is very unique. Social bookmarking has been very popular and “blog marking” will be just as popular. Just think of the amount of people that will want their blog to be the most popular blog on any blog marking website. If you are looking for a great blog to read in the morning then you will love the chance to find out the most popular blog.

Blog Marking for the Future

If there is going to be a blog marking website then this website will need a lot of features to interest the masses.

Blog marking is all about popularity. You will add your blog to a blog marking website and then you will see what kind of response it will get from other members of the website. If they like it then they can save the blog. The blog with the most saves would then be the most popular. But there would obviously be a top 10 list so that you can see the other blogs that might be worth a look.

With social bookmarking looking a bit old now it is defiantly the right time to let another marking system take the limelight. There is no better marking idea then blog marking. Blogs are being used by nearly everyone. Your next door neighbor will properly have a blog and this does just show how popular blogs are. Everyone will want their blog to be at the top of every blog marking list within a year.

This blog marking list can almost be compared to Google, in the sense that everyone wants to top the Google list whenever there is a search carried out. Obviously more clicks for them means more viewers. Being at the top of a blog marking list will equal more views for you as well. Maybe a future addition could equal a blending of Social bookmarking and Blog marking. This could equal a very big fan base. Of course though blog marking has just starting and it will need some time to establish a good fan base before this can be thought of.

Visit the very first “Blog Marking” site, and start to add your favorite or your own blogs: CatchMyBlog.