How To Use Blog for Online Marketing Business?

A lot of you will know what a blog is, and connection with blog and online marketing business. while some of you are sitting there scratching your head wondering what I am talking about. So for those that still do not know what a blog is I will give a brief explanation before moving on as to the differences with traditional blogs and Web 2.0 blogs.

A blog is basically an online journal that you can create and post entries into. The difference is that in most cases a blog is open to the public so others can read what you have entered, where as a journal or dairy is a private book that you keep hidden. That is the simplest explanation there is for what a blog is.

Traditional blogs and Web 2.0 blog sites differ in a large way. Traditional blogs allow you to create the blog and post the entries, but unless you market the blog no one is going to see it. Now once the search engines pick up on it, then you may see a little traffic trickle into your blog from it but not much. Therefore, you will need to do some major promoting to get people to your blog. Now with a Web 2.0 blog site you can create your own blog and post your entries but people will see your blog entries almost as soon as you post them.

Web 2.0 blog sites are a social site that does a lot of the promoting within for you. Other users or people surfing around on the site will see your blog entries and can visit your blog from there or read just that individual entry that interests them. Most blog sites such as this allow you to not only place your blog in a category that fits the blog but also allows you to place each entry into an appropriate category.

I use Tblog for one of my marketing avenues with Web 2.0 blogs. I use them because they have a few features that quickly allow me to get my blog entries seen. First off when I place a new blog entry in my blog that entry automatically appears at the top of the list of other entries from other users under that category. Therefore it is in a prime location to be seen. Also on the front page of Tblog is what they call a tblurt box. I can type in a tblurt telling other users that I have a new entry on my blog. This will appear on the front page for everyone to see. Both quickly allow me to drive users to my blog entry and from there try to get to them to the website I am promoting in that entry.

A good way to gain a little more traffic is to take the time to read other people’s blog entries and place an appropriate comment on their entry. Most blog authors will return the favor and go and look at your blog. I have converted traffic somewhat from this practice.

In addition for effective marketing, you need to leave the comment section open on all of your entries on any of the social blog sites that you use. The comment section can give you an idea as to what marketing tactics are working and which ones are not. Feedback on these comments are one of the best ways to judge what consumers or potential clients are thinking about what you are offering.

For those that are marketing a website that sales products you need to showcase those products. Most of these sites allow you to upload pictures and even videos to your blog. Upload some product pictures so that people can see what you are talking about.

Remember to add some text in to that entry as well. It has been proven that a picture entry with little to no text does not seem to convert very well. Do not forget to link that picture to your website, so that anyone who clicks the picture will be taken to your website. It is preferable that you link a product picture directly to that products description page.

For those that are offering a service, your posts do not have to always be just about what you are offering exactly. Let us use this as an example so that you understand what I am talking about. Say you are offering a
service to custodial parents to help them get their past due child support from the noncustodial parent. Now you can post entries on the services that you offer and such, but you should also post statistical entries as well. Do some research and post on the effects of failure to pay child support and the laws surrounding child support. Then remember to make mention at the end how your company can help.

For videos placed on your blog you need to keep them short. It is recommended that for the internet that videos be no more than five minutes long. Internet surfers do not want to spend a lot of time on one particular video and will tend to leave before the end if it is too long. Also make sure that your point is made during those five minutes. Do not leave the viewer at the end still trying to figure out what you were talking about.

The same can be applies to text as well. You do not want a long drawn out blog entry. The average internet surfer does not spend a lot of time reading one blog entry before moving on to something else. There fore while it is important to get their attention and give them useful information to get them to your website, it is more important to do so in as brief a post as possible. Therefore, brief and two the point along with some pictures or a video every so often and you should have people heading from the social blog site right to your website. Also if you are offering a service, place your company phone number at the bottom of your blog posts.

How To Use Video Submission Sites for Online Martketing Business?

Videos are a great way to market a product or service. The problem is though is that you do not want to clutter your website with to many videos. Your social networking profiles also should not be cluttered with to many videos. While you can change your videos out to showcase different products you cannot or should I say do not want to leave them all on your social networking site or your business website. To be able to have every video you created viewable to the public you will want to utilize a social video submission site such as YouTube. this article will help you that how to use video submission sites for online marketing business.


A great point with video submission sites is that users are allowed to post comments on the videos that are on the site. These comments are a great way to find out how the public is viewing your videos. You get a free trial and error marketing testing by just using the site to air your videos. Remove the videos that do not seem to appeal to the public and replace it with a different video. Watch your comment section to see again how this new video is fairing with the users.

Use YouTube and Other Such Video Submission Sites.

YouTube and other such video submission sites allow users to create a profile and start uploading videos for other users to watch. With virtual millions of internet users watching the user submitted videos on these sites you are sure to see a turn around with your website traffic. There are however keys to creating a successful video because if your video bombs out then your traffic and sales are sure to bomb out as well.

Outline for Your Video.

First you need to decide upon the direction of the video and have a clear outline for your video. You do not want to start shooting your video and winging it as you go along. This type of performance is sure to not make for a clear video. Take the time to put together a clear outline to use during the shooting of your video.

Remember that internet users do not want to spend forever in one spot, so keep your video short. A web video should be no longer than 5 minutes. So realize that you only have 5 minutes to get your point across.

The previous point leads to the next point I am going to make. You need to make sure that by the end of your video that the viewer knows just what you are trying to convey. They should not be left at the end wondering what your video was about.

Place Your Website Link at the End of Your Video.

Make sure to place your website link at the end of your video. You can also place a text over the video of your web address as well throughout the video. For those that have a company phone number make sure to place that on your video as well. Make mention of your company name or your product during the video will help to drive home name recognition.

Avoid These In Your Video.

You need to make sure that the video that you created is not seen as annoying. We have almost all of us seen the annoying used car salesperson commercials. Avoid using these types of promotional tactics in your videos. After all if your video is annoying the viewer will move on to someone else’s videos.

Equipment for Video Creation.

Now that I have given you some of the outlines making a good video, let us talk about equipment. You do not need a high tech, high dollar video recorder; in fact you can make your videos using an average web cam. You will see a lot of decent videos on YouTube and other video submission sites that are created using just a simple web cam. A web cam and a microphone will allow you to create your videos without spending a lot on more expensive equipment when you are on a budget.

Use Still Pictures to Create Videos.

Another great thing with videos is that you really do not even have to have a video recorder or even a camcorder. You can create your videos using still pictures. Windows Movie Maker allows you to use still pictures to create videos with voice over. Therefore, you will need a microphone for the voice over. Alternatively, find the free to use music and use it over the still pictures and add some decent text throughout your video.

Use Windows Movie Maker.

Windows Movie Maker is great for creating videos with still pictures to the point that even a beginner can create some great videos. I used it when I was first starting with stills as videos and was able to turn out some great marketing videos. I had seen other users on YouTube featuring videos that were comprised of still pictures and decided to give it a shot. I found that they did work fairly well at driving some traffic to my sites.

The pictures that you use can be obtained on the internet from free stock picture sites. All you need to do is grab some relevant pictures and put them in the order that you wish them to run through the video and use the Movie Maker to add some text and incorporate your voice over or the music that you choose.

Video Should Be Brief.

Just remember that you should be working toward name recognition, your video should be short and to the point and that your web address is located at least at the end of the video. You want the viewer to know what it is that you are talking about and who you are, as well as how to purchase your product or service. Therefore make sure this is all covered in your brief video.

Add Keyword Tags Into Video.

You will be able to add keyword tags to your video so that it is easy for others to find. Make sure that your keywords are relevant and concise with your video. Use as many keywords that you can, so singular and plural forms of a word work as well as variations of the word. These are just as important as your video itself so make sure to take the time to give your videos adequate keywords.

Tips To Marketing With Social Media Sites?

You know that how to marketing with social media sites? Social bookmarking sites allow you to create a profile then bookmark your favorite sites. These bookmarks will be shared with other users. When you book mark a site you will give a brief description and then pick a category and add keyword tags to your bookmark. These keyword tags allow your book marked site to show up when a user searches for book marked sites for that key word. This of course is the basic explanation of social bookmarking. I prefer to use simple explanations for things over the tech talk explanations because that way everyone no matter what their level of knowledge can dominate the Web 2.0 market for their own marketing needs.

• For your use you are going to bookmark your website and your blogs to better enhance your marketing potential. You will need to pick the appropriate category, give a short but to the point description of the bookmarked site and then pick the appropriate keywords to tag your bookmark with.

• Not all social bookmark sites will have a category that fits your website. Some social bookmarking sites are geared toward a specific theme or a limited amount of topics. Should your website not fall into their theme or any of their topics then do not try to bookmark your website or blog on those social bookmark sites. This is considered under some circumstances as spam. Even when it is not considered spam to do this, it is still unprofessional. So stick with social bookmarking sites that offer your theme or category for your website.

• Keywords should cover what you are bookmarking. Use as many keywords as possible that are relevant to your website or blog. Your account can be terminated by some sites if you are loading your bookmarks with a lot of irrelevant keywords. So refrain from doing this. Do not be afraid to use both singular and plural forms of words or variations of words for your keywords.

• In addition to creating a profile some bookmarking sites require that you download an application that will run in your browser bar. The purpose of this is so that when you are on a website and you wish to bookmark it all you have to do is click on their icon in your browser bar and you will be able to bookmark that site. Not all bookmarking sites will require this.

• Most bookmarking sites offer you a feature so that you can place their buttons on your website so that your website visitors can bookmark your site themselves. Now while you are going to bookmark your site yourself, it is still a benefit to have these buttons on your site. Your site visitors who wish to bookmark your site will click one of these buttons and discover that it has already been bookmarked, now they have the option of voting on it. Since they were going to bookmark it themselves the chances are they will go ahead and take the time to vote it up. This means that you are moving up in the ranks with no extra work on your part.

• To increase your review on these social bookmarking sites you should also bookmark other quality websites or articles that you find on the internet. Now you are probably wondering why I am telling you to bookmark other people. The reason is that if you are seen as a contributor who contributes quality bookmarks then your other bookmarks that you are bookmarking to promote yourself will also get good reviews.

Therefore, bookmark things that are of quality that are informative, useful and you will gain a reputation and thus increase your own traffic. In fact some social bookmarking sites will terminate your account if they feel you are spamming their site with your own promotions. While it is ok to promote your own website and such, you do not want to give the impression of spamming.

You need to understand that a lot of traffic can come about as a result of bookmarking your website on one of these social bookmarking sites. Digg is one of them that if your content is good, other users will digg, your bookmark and thus raising you up in the ranks. As you rise up you will be hit with more and more traffic to your website, there fore make sure you have a server that can handle this possible traffic overload. While this does not happen to everyone there is still that chance that users on the social bookmarking site will love your content and thus your traffic increases. Reddit is another social bookmarking site that can drive a nice amount of traffic to your website.

While you can end up with more traffic than you know what to do with, remember that this can take time to happen. As mentioned in this chapter you will need to have your website placed in the right category, use lot of relevant keywords and offer a good description. When you apply all of this you will have a better chance of getting known and rising in the ranks on these social bookmarking sites. This is all needed to see the huge amount of traffic that these sites are capable of delivering to your website.

What Is Viral Traffic Generation?

In recent years there has been more and more written about Viral Marketing and why you should be using it to drive traffic to your site. So, what is viral marketing, What is viral traffic generation? and why should you care? Is this just another fad that will soon fade away? 

In short, viral marketing involves getting other people to willingly spread your message for you. People who like what you have done tell other people, and the message spreads from person to person like a virus. When that happens, it is referred to as your message “going viral.”



It relies heavily on word of mouth advertising; someone sees or reads what you have to offer and tells a couple of their friends. Their friends see or read your message and they tell a couple of their friends, and they tell a couple of their friends, and so on. The number of people who are aware of you and your message increases exponentially. The more people hear about your site, the faster your traffic grows. How large will it grow? There is really no way to tell. The only real limit to the amount of traffic possible is how many people your site host can handle.

Just think about how quickly it could spread. If one person saw your message and told 2 people, who told 2 people, who told 2 people, and it continued, your message would very quickly be in front of thousands of people. If each person just told two other people, look how quickly it can grow.

1 x 2 = 2
2 x 2 = 4
4 x 2 = 8
8 x 2 = 16
16 x 2 = 32
32 x 2 = 64
64 x 2 = 128
128 x 2 = 256
256 x 2 = 512
512 x 2 = 1024

Now just imagine if you started with 100 people spreading your message, or 1,000 people. You can see that it doesn?t take long before hundreds of thousands, or even millions of people are aware of who you are, and better still, are visiting your web site and buying your products or services.

Viral marketing effectively taps into pre-existing social networks that your customers are already using. By creating something that is worth talking about and passing along, you create a “buzz” that spreads across the internet, and traffic floods to your site to see what the buzz is about. Once they are there, if they like what they see, they pass the information along, and the buzz continues to grow.

Word of mouth marketing is by far the most effective way to get word out about your site. People will listen to others that they already know and trust much more readily than they will listen to you. These people do not know
you, so why should they trust what you are telling them? After all, you might be likely to say anything in order to make a sale. However, they will listen to a friend or family member, especially if the person spreading the word does not have anything to gain by telling them. It is just a friend passing along a great deal they found, or some useful or interesting information.

Why Should I Use Viral Traffic Generation?

You may be thinking that viral marketing techniques are only for the major players with big budgets, and that it can not work for small businesses with small budgets. If that is your thinking, I can assure you, you are wrong. You might not be able to afford to produce the highly polished ads like the big companies, but there are still a lot of opportunities for success. Any business or individual with a message to get out or a service or product to sell can benefit from a well crafted marketing campaign.

There are several reasons that you should be using viral traffic generation techniques to build your business and attract customers to your website.

1.) It is a fast, effective way to drive traffic to your site.

Like I mentioned above, once the word starts to spread, it can spread very quickly, and there is really no limit to how many people can hear your message. Because your message often comes to someone from a person they already know, it has more credibility than if the message showed up uninvited in an email from someone they do not know.

Once the message starts to spread it picks up size and speed as it goes, like a snowball rolling down a hill. You may start out thinking that your efforts were not very effective, then one morning you open your email to find it full of new orders. When it works, it can work very fast.

2.) It can be very inexpensive.

Once the word starts to spread, there is not much additional cost. The biggest cost you will face is paying for all the additional traffic to your site. All of the cost and effort of spreading the word about what you have to offer is taken care of by the people spreading the word. More than likely, the biggest expense will be the upfront set up or production costs. Depending on which technique you decide to use. After that initial expense, the cost remaining costs are nominal.

3.) It can help shield you from negative comments.

One thing to remember is that a negative message can go viral, too. Unfortunately, you are not going to be able to please everyone. If you do enough business, eventually you are going to have someone who is unhappy with you and your business. It only takes one customer that is dissatisfied to put a shadow of doubt in your customers minds about whether they should do business with you or not. Once that doubt is there, it is hard to remove it. If people are not happy with the service they received, they are more likely to tell people about it than if they are happy customers.

As unhappy customers start spreading negative messages about you, the word will start to spread, and there is not much you can do to stop it. The more it spreads, the more untrustworthy your business appears. All you can do is have enough of a buffer in place that the negative messages do not overpower the positive messages. If your message goes viral, not only will is send a flood of traffic to your site, but other sites will link to you, and your site will rank higher in the search engines. Your name will also appear on other high ranking sites. If a negative message does start to go around, it will have a much harder time getting out, because your positive message is already so highly ranked that the negative messages can not find their way to the top of the search engine listings.

4.) It can find hidden customers.

Despite the time and money you spend trying to narrowly define your customers, figuring out who they are, and more importantly, where they are, there will always be people that you have missed. Once your message goes viral, there is no telling where it will end up, or who will see it. Because of the widespread coverage that can occur, people that you had not even considered to be your customers will get a chance to see your message. They will decide whether they are potential customers or not.

As word continues to spread about what you are offering, you do not have to worry about finding all the possible niches your customers might be hiding. You do not have to go find them, they will find you.