Moms Online Business Coach» online marketing

5 Types of Blog Posts

Kristen — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 10:00:00 +0000

The time has come… I NEED to teach my mother how to blog. I have no problem teaching the theory of blogging or the “how to” stuff or even breaking it down to the simplest form so that she can do it herself and be successful. It’s the “finding the time” that is the hardest part. I’ve actually started recording short snippet videos for her and the last one I recorded was the video version on the article below about the types of blog posts.

Here are the 5 Types of Blog Posts

How you create your blog posts depend on the type of blog you are writing for and what the goal of that blog is.

If you want to keep your blog fresh and interesting, you should post often. Creating different types of blog posts will help to keep your audience interested. It will also keep you from getting bored with your blog.

It really doesn’t matter if you are blogging so that you can earn income from selling ads or affiliate products off your blog, selling your own products or services. You should try mixing it up with these 5 types of blog posts.

1. The Review Blog Post.

Review blog posts can help you monetize your blog. You “review” – take a closer look at – a product. When you review a product and include an affiliate link, you’ll make a commission off of each sale generated with your affiliate link. Review blog posts should go over some of the major pluses and minuses of the product. Even if you loved the product, you should keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your audience will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.

2. The INSIGHTS Blog Post.

Quick tips are great “in between” posts since they are so short. They are normally between 100 and 250 words. If there’s a great bit of information that you want to share with your niche but it doesn’t really warrant a full blog post, you can post a quick tip. The tip should be focused on one key area of the niche. For example, “How to Grease a Muffin Pan” is a perfect quick tip article for a cooking blog.

3. The Tips Blog Post.

Blog readers love lists! If you’ll look at the most popular blogs you’ll see that they make good use out of this type of blog posts. You can make lists fit any niche topic imaginable. They are great ways to convey information online because they can easily be scanned by web readers who like to skim over information. You can create resource lists that will help your readers find information on your niche. You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in a niche, like “5 Ways to Drive Traffic to Your Sales Letter.” The possibilities are endless.

4. The INTERVIEW Blog Post.

Although these require a bit of preparation, they can be very valuable to your blog. You can interview someone in your niche and share the results of the interview with your blog readers. This will not only help provide valuable content for your blog, but you can also get more traffic to your blog. Likely, the person who you are interviewing will publicize the event on their blog and around the ‘net which will bring more traffic back to you.

5. The Tutorial Blog Post.

Like quick tips, how to posts help you provide valuable information to your readers. However, unlike quick tips, these posts go into detail on a certain topic. Some how to posts are even separated out into two or three part courses. For ideas on what to create how to posts about, look at the most frequently asked questions in your niche and develop posts around those topics.

There you have it, 5 simple ways to juice up your blog writing and give your readers some variety!

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

5 Types of Blog Posts

Online persuasion – 7 ways to persuade people to buy

Kristen — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:40:17 +0000

How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? None, the light bulb has to want to change. So the joke goes. However, it’s possible that the light bulb could be persuaded to change. Persuading people to buy online (from TVs to groceries, holidays to services) can be achieved with techniques that marketers and psychologists have known for years.

Persuasion isn’t rocket science; it involves understanding aspects of human nature that are often automatic and work at a subconscious level. Here are 7 ethical ways to persuade people.

1. Show what others are doing

People look to others and will often do what they’re doing, especially when uncertain about something. This psychological phenomenon is called social proof. People feel reassured and often make decisions based upon what other people are up to – the assumption being that they possess more knowledge or are better informed than they are.

You can increase social proof online by showing:

Most popular items
‘Customers who bought this also bought’
Top sellers
Testimonials

Additionally, people will do what people that they like do.

2. Show user-generated reviews

User-generated reviews can have a massive influence on peoples’ buying decisions. Fuelled by the rapid growth of web 2.0 and social media they’re becoming an essential part of website design. Allow your site users to write reviews and express overall ratings for products and services on your site – after all, it’s free content for your site. Web users are more inclined to trust what people like themselves say, compared to marketers. Reviews are especially critical in sectors like travel and electrical goods, although they’re rapidly being adopted across all areas.

People generally want user generated reviews and if they can’t find them on your site, they’ll simply look elsewhere. There’s no hiding online so you might as well keep them on your site. Sites like Figleaves⁷ and the UK Apple store⁸ website understand this and implement them really well.

Also, don’t be scared of bad reviews – people can smell sites that have been ‘edited’ a mile away, forcing them to simply not trust anything you say. Instead, be prepared to act quickly on your customers’ feedback.

3. Show scarcity of products

Scarcity generates demand and encourages people to buy sooner. People want what they think they can’t have and social psychology would indicate that loss is a more powerful emotion than gain. So, a person who loses $100 is estimated to lose around twice as much satisfaction as another person will gain from a $100 windfall.

You can show scarcity online by displaying:

‘For 1 week only’
’2 items in stock’
‘Sale ends today’
‘Out of stock – Add to wish list’
‘This offer ends in 2 days 4 hrs 3 mins 17 secs’ (Count down timers)

Webcredible⁹ shows the number of places remaining on training courses on its site. The numbers decrease daily until all places have gone, giving visitors a sense of urgency to book their place before it sells out. Research on decision-making also indicates that people value something more so if they felt they lost out on it, rather than if they never had it in the first place.

4. Persuade with pictures & videos

Imagery is a very persuasive tool in increasing product sales especially for high value and luxury goods, so be sure to provide good quality images of products. They go a long way to reassure people about what they’ll be getting.

Images should:

Be of professional quality
Offer different views
Be enlargeable
Show scale and context of use

Oli¹⁰, which sells clothing online, has gone a step further. They have 15 second video clips of models wearing the clothing, walking down a catwalk enabling you to get a better feel for how a product looks and moves. With increased bandwidths, this may be the future for some types of sites. Watching videos requires less effort than reading and offers a richer experience – be sure to give users the choice and not to start videos automatically.

5. Cross- and up-sell

The person that suggested “Hey, why don’t we ask customers if they want fries with that?” was on to something big. Once people have committed to a purchase, persuading them to buy more becomes easier as one foot is already in the door. The same applies online too.

Don’t underestimate the potential profits to be had by up- and cross-selling. Display related items and extras near products like they do in real stores. This will make it quicker and easier for people to buy more items. If you browse for bagels on Ocado¹¹, for example, they also show you cream cheese and when you checkout they display any offers you missed out on – a clever tactic to persuade you to buy more.

6. Show authority

The principle of authority states that we’re more easily persuaded by those with authority. If Tiger Woods gave you advice on your golf swing, you’d be more inclined to follow it compared to the same advice from your mate, Bob. Likewise, websites showing authority and expertise are trusted more. This is particularly important for B2B sites.

You can show authority by:

Showing you’re an expert
Backing up facts with links to 3rd party sites
Referencing governing & authoritative bodies
Displaying symbols and imagery of authority e.g. VERITAS, padlocks for security

7. Allay people’s fears

What if I need to return items? Are there any hidden costs involved? These are the sorts of fears web visitors may have and you need to reduce them if you want to persuade people to do business with you. Answering their concerns upfront and quickly will positively influence people and lower their fears.

Conclusion

Persuasion in its simplest form means giving users the information they need to make an informed choice, helping them to trust you and allaying any concerns they have. It’s not about manipulation. Always remember, these persuasive tactics will only get you so far – your site still needs to provide a good service and be highly usable to guarantee success.

This article was written by Lisa Halabi. Lisa’s crazy about usability – so crazy that she’s head of usability at Webcredible, an industry leading user experience consultancy¹², helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone. She can often be found developing information architecture¹³ and is extremely talented at writing for the web¹⁴.

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Online persuasion – 7 ways to persuade people to buy

Home Business, Extra Income, Little Effort.. Scam or Real?

Kristen — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 15:17:42 +0000

I talk to people everyday that are interested in earning some extra money from just enough to pay for the groceries every week to being a full business owner.

Their challenge?

They don’t know where to start. I know that feeling, when I started my first business 8 years ago I made countless mistakes while trying to teach myself the world of online business from my kitchen table. Just take my website for example..

The first option I used was Yahoo Small Business because I didn’t know html or even what pieces I needed to make a sale. Well, Yahoo Business became limiting as I got comfortable and wanted to start to add new features so I decided to hire a web designer to make my own personal “branded” website.

Then I decided to outsource the tedious acts of updating my site (because I still wasn’t very techie). That became REALLY expensive, REALLY fast.. so I wanted to take control of my website again. The problem? I didn’t realize the web designer created it in a manner that I was unable to take back control.. so back to the start, I found a NEW web designer and I paid her $600.00 to re-create the website and another couple hundred dollars for the software I needed to control my back end inventory.

Now, my situation was a bit unique because I had my own, invented product that I was creating and selling- so I had to deal with the fulfillment, shipping, product creation, material sourcing.. yes, I had to do it all and what happened? I burned out.. I’m totally honest here- I got fried on trying to find the materials, switch material seamstresses, track lost shipments.

But what I did find is that I LOVED online marketing- I loved learning traffic tricks from forum posting to backlink building to social networking.

SO here is what I would advise someone that wants to earn some extra money, the EASY way, from my own experience…

I would find a one stop shop that has a proven successful track record and has done the work for me. I think this Online Kids Store opportunity is a great example of a “done for you” option for someone that doesn’t want to invest money and time into creating a full blown eCommerce store or wholesale/dropship memberships.

Next, I would set up a nice clean blog without a bunch of distracting links and banners. If you don’t know how to blog, I highly suggest the Beginner To Blogger eCourse series. This will help even the most technically challenged beginner from buying their domain, to setting up hosting to installing the free blog software and start blogging!

The biggest mistake most new bloggers forget is to use their blog to build their list. Statistics show that one person equals $1.00 per month if you leverage your email marketing by sending them useful information and either a promotion for your store or an affiliate product every month. That means even if you only have a couple hundred people on your list, that could be extra money every month! I use Aweber for my list management because it’s easy to use, I can set up messages once and they will go out automatically and the chances of them ending up in the spam folder are far less likely then if I send out emails from my personal email account. You can Try Aweber For Free here:

Can You Have More Sales, Too?

Helping over 57,000 businesses like yours raise profits and build customer relationships using AWeber’s opt-in email marketing software for over 10 years.

Next on the list would be to set up my social networking profiles and include the link to my new blog in the profiles on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace (don’t cringe), YouTube and a few more the “hot spots”. These are great for backlink s to vouch for your blog as the social networking sites have high page rank.

Create blog content by focusing each blog post on one product review. EXACTLY! You don’t need to come up with mind-blowing content and you don’t need to be a professional author. Especially if you are reviewing kids products using the Online Kids Store business you can just give your honest review. How do you use it, what do your kids think of it, what do you like or NOT like about it. Better yet, get a little FLIP camera and shoot a review of the product and upload it to YouTube and then you can cut and paste that into your Blog Post.

Next post your blog post on your social networking sites, you can do this manually or by using some “wordpress plugins”

Order up some free business cards from Vistaprint and put your blog and store URL on the card. Add a little freebie or what I call an “ethical bribe” to get people to visit your blog/store and get on your email list.

Then set a schedule and blog blog blog and make sure you link back to your products in your store. Add them to the social bookmarking sites like Stumbleupon and Furl or follow the easy steps for more traffic in my ebook for Beginners Website Traffic .

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So there you have it a full, second income in a box, what do you think? I would love to know your thoughts on this business model as an option for someone wanting to earn some extra cash and this home business model would fit you!
Get your Free* Startup Kit for a great 2nd income!

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Home Business, Extra Income, Little Effort.. Scam or Real?

Barefoot Bootcamp Review

Kristen — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:25:49 +0000

A couple months ago I created a Barefoot Bootcamp blog post about the new program offered by the Barefoot Executive. You might have remembered that I focused on Barefoot Bootcamp being especially for Network or multi level marketing professionals, however, that all changes this round!

The first Barefoot Bootcamp was such a success, and Carrie Wilkerson, the Barefoot Executive herself has such a loyal following of business owners from every background, that she just opened a second program that fits any business model!

Online Marketing Barefoot Bootcamp Open NOW

This program will run over the course of three weeks and will include the following Lessons via webinars:

Who is your target market
List Building
Affiliate Marketing
Product Creation
Using Video (from my favorite video guy AskMrVideo!)
Monetize Your Mind- this alone is priceless-everyone should be able to make money from what you already know right?

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Then video must be worth millions, go check out the Barefoot Bootcamp videos and you will see what the right information can do for your business.

New = Scary?

I have spoken before how my own online business has grown since I took the leap of faith (still with a rock in the pit of my stomach) to invest in my eduction and it has returned ten fold with the knowledge, earnings, networking and connections that it opened up to me. I can’t believe how much of a personal impact it has on your business when you start associating with like minded, motivated and dedicated people.

As I stated above, the classes haven’t even started yet and the forum is already active with people connecting and sharing information, resources and encouragement. It’s exciting to think about it exploding after this group of motivated people start taking action and implementing the new techniques.

Is Barefoot Bootcamp For You?

I know I have a good number of readers that are ecommerce owners, and I asked myself if this would apply to anyone that is running an ecommerce store. I decided that it really depends on your personal situation.

There are some ecommerce store owners that are happy with a few extra bucks every week and are enjoy creating and packing their orders every day. Honestly, this may not be the best fit for you. However, if you are someone that wants to learn more about how to grow your business into different areas and learn how to leverage connections, affiliates and enhance your online business with other income streams then you could absolutely learn from this bootcamp and benefit from the masterminding that occurs in the forum.

There are two problems with this next round of Barefoot Bootcamp.

1. There are only 75 seats available and last time I checked it already dropping into 60 open seats. Due to the format and the personal interaction it can’t let in everyone that wants to attend.

2. The second problem? It starts this Thursday, Yes THIS Thursday, so you need to jump at the opportunity. I already have registered and the forum is already very active with everyone that can’t wait to put massive action into place.

Start by taking one small action item and checking out the videos, reading more details and see the incredible bonuses that are available and imagine what you can do with that knowledge, resources, support and encouragement- visit Barefoot Bootcamp now and get ready to kick off your shoes and get to work!

Hey, if you join, then let me know and we’ll work through the lessons together!

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Barefoot Bootcamp Review

Your Website Promotion Doesn’t Get Easier Then This!

Kristen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:15:22 +0000

I found this in my mailbox this morning- I love getting emails from people that find my information helpful. Thank you Tina, I hope everyone will visit your site and watch the video!

Kristen-

I have to tell you that finding your Beginners Guide To Traffic Tactics was incredibly perfect timing for me. As you know, I planned on you being my first Friend Friend as I relaunched the new look of my mommy site and its 3 sister sites. I got the video done, blog post set then I found this post.

Gotta tell you, you did an awesome job on your Beginners Guide To Traffic Tactics! I had touch on it in the video I had made but now that I have read it I wanted to change things up and focus on it!

The detail and effort you put into this project was great. The content was super and very easy to read. The screen shots were perfect especially for someone like me who is visual and I learn best when I can see what it is suppose to look like right in front of me (OK, maybe I’m not the brightest bulb on the tree!).

I feel that this guide is a perfect start for a newbie and an excellent companion guide for someone a little bit more advanced. Personally, I found great value in all the content but the copy tips and Resource links at the end were well worth the cost of the guide stand alone.

Both your site and this guide all most impressive! Kudos to you! Will tweet the links to you later today…hopefully!

Tina
www.newoldmomsentreprenuerclub.com

Quick Go Now and pick up your own copy so you can start getting more website traffic and increasing your sales today! MBC Beginners Guide to Traffic Tactics

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Your Website Promotion Doesn’t Get Easier Then This!

10 Action Steps To Your Online Success Today

Kristen — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 03:16:19 +0000

If you operate as a small business, especially, a one person show, you know how overwhelming your list of “To Do’s” can be. Prioritizing the needs of filling customer orders, online business marketing, offline business marketing, and just the daily operations can often leave you feeling like you are running from one task to another and before you know it, the week is over, and you aren’t sure what exactly you “accomplished”.

Here is a list of 10 Action Steps you can use for your own online business marketing today, post this list near your desk, and check off the items when you do them and at the end of the week, take a moment to reflect on your accomplishments.

1. Blog, plain and simple, it has been shown case study after case study, the more you blog, the more the search engines & visitors love your fresh content. You don’t need to be 100% perfect on all the right plugins, and strategies, just take action and make a point to schedule at least 3 posts per week.

2. Join Twitter, start tweeting and building those relationships. Even if you only have it open for an hour a day while you’re checking email. Visit Summize, also known as Twitter Search, and search for your keyword or niche and start following others with the same interest.

3. Join Facebook and spend a few hours a week networking, joining groups, posting interesting information. Add the Twitter App to pull your feeds into your Facebook profile and add your blog RSS feed into your notes section so all your new friends know what you are up too. I personally have “Share This” installed in my browser to make it fast and easy to share direct to Twitter and Facebook.

4. Add value. Forums, blog posts, free reports, social networking give information to those around you.

5. Participate in Forums. Visit Google and in the search box enter your niche + forum and find the active forums, create an account and make a point to visit an hour or two every week.

6. Be creative and smart but don’t be detrimental. Meaning, we all want to be savvy and smart business owners, but there are very few “new” ideas and for those that are already mult-tasking and it can waste your time and money trying to be creative. Find a model that works, find a mentor that’s been there, and copy the system – I’m not saying rip off someones work, I’m saying copy what is already proven to work just modify to be “you”.

7. Find your target market and get in front of them. They are where the money is, spending hours at your desk trying to understand your html code to change a word for SEO will not bring in sales. Find where your target market hangs out, what they are already buying, where are they shopping, what else are they interested in? Your odds are better to go to the herd then try to slowly drag the herd to you one at a time.

8. Track and Test. Never stop tracking and testing. Each advertisement should be coded so you can track results, drop the low performing ones – create more of the high performers. Link your banner ads to different pages so you can tell from a glace what ones are giving you targeted visitors.

9. Prioritize and outsource what you can. A good Virtual Assistant can improve not only your productivity but also make you money by allowing you to focus on strategy and business builders instead of time eating busy work.

10. Content, Content, Content. Never stop creating your content for your site or blog. If you struggle with content, outsource it or learn how to use PLR – Private Label Rights-you can’t go wrong with good content.

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

10 Action Steps To Your Online Success Today

Quick Question Tuesday- SEO, Spiders, Content

Kristen — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 09:05:22 +0000

Image by hongxing128 via Flickr

“..part of SEO is to attract the spiders. I know that making changes on your site attracts them to come back and check out the changes. To what extent do changes need to be made? In other words, does that mean that full paragraphs of text need to be changed frequently on each page of your site, or is it more behind the scenes, like with titles, keywords, etc? Common sense is telling me it is the visible text that ‘customers’ may see, but I can’t understand how to continually change all the text on my site.
To sum up…my question is really how much needs to be continually changed in order to attract the google-bots and other spiders?”

Answer:

As with any SEO question you can get as technical as you want, but I like to keep it short and practical, so in a nutshell; It’s more then just changing text it’s adding content.

Go back to your keyword list and pull out your long tail keywords and add a page of information, like an article, for each of your keywords. Just think of how your site will grow if you add one article a week to your site focused on your keyword or topic. That’s an extra 52 pages that you can have “floating” around the internet and showing up in search engines that people can use as a front door to find you.

Of course, I’m not saying never change your base content, you should always keep testing and tracking and tweaking the content on your base pages for conversion purposes.

However, writing an article that is 400-600 words long should only take you 1/2 hour of work and less then that once you get used to the format.

Add linking to your other pages within the article to help the spiders effectively move around all your pages. An easy swipe line for doing is adding a line such as “As I stated in my earlier article, 5 Tips for SEO, print out your list of keywords and use those for your content base”

Let’s pause for a moment and look at this tactic:

I referenced you to an earlier article I wrote- keeping you on my site longer
I created an anchor text link that spiders will be attracted to with my keyword in it
I created a gateway for spiders to move from one page to another since they will follow the url
I added more value to you as a reader by giving you more information you were looking for, understanding SEO.

Blogging As A Free Marketing Tool

Installing a WordPress blog (remember that’s free too) on your host account, attracts spiders to your site because it’s always giving fresh content. Spiders don’t see free WordPress.com or Blogger blogs as adding to YOUR site, but to WORDPRESS.com. Even if you have a link to the free blog site from your website, they live on different IP addresses so the most it will do is follow the URL. For more information on free blogs vs self-hosted blogs you can check out, 5 Reasons You Should Host Your Blog.

The extra benefit of using a self-hosted blog, is the fact you can schedule your post. This cuts your time by allowing you to spend a few hours with your keyword list, create your articles and load them and have them scheduled to go out on certain days automatically. You can do it once a month and not think about it again.

Back to the nutshell, there is your 2 choices, add an article page to your site every week or install the free WordPress.org on your host and post every week and use this tool for passive income in addition to fresh content made easy.

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Quick Question Tuesday- SEO, Spiders, Content

Your Personal Guide to MyBlogLog

Kristen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:17:14 +0000

Online Marketing for your home based business can be a time consuming process and trying to complete with millions of other online businesses can become disheartening.

However, there are ways to simplify your online marketing or “get more bang for your buck” with your efforts.

I have had a MyBlogLog account since March ’08 and have seen a fair amount of website traffic stats from people finding my site from the network. So, I decided to put a little more effort into learning how to use this free resource and here is what I found. Please note this is an introduction to MyBlogLog. Like all tools and resources you can get into heavy details but this is high level, beginner application stuff.

What is MyBlogLog?

Easy way to define MyBlogLog is by the Wiki:

MyBlogLog is a social network for the blogger community that is based in part on interactions facilitated by a popular web widget that many members install on their blog.[1] Bloggers sign up for free accounts on MyBlogLog and can initiate a blog community for one or more blogs they author. Other registered members can subscribe to these communities, effectively bookmarking them for future reading and sharing them with their own contacts. Bloggers can then display widgets on their sites which show MyBlogLog online community members who have recently visited their page. These widgets also contain links to visiting members’ community pages, and are one way in which users connect with one another. All members can see certain basic information about how many people visit their blog, what links they clicked and where they come from. Members may also view more extensive information about traffic on their site for a small monthly fee.

One more side note: Yahoo has acquired MyBlogLog and I think that offers good insight not only into the uses of the site but as an indicator of how Yahoo views social networking potential.

How do you use MyBlogLog?

When I originally joined MyBlogLog I thought it was only a way to see who visited your site in a nifty little widget in my sidebar. However, I have recently learned about the various other “powers” of this tool when used the right way.

Visit MyBlogLog and when you select the “Join/SignUp” button you will be given the below screen.

That’s right! You are seeing it right, you can simply sign in with your Yahoo ID since they are owned by them it does make sense.

The benefit of using your Yahoo ID is you will find when you hop from one blog to another it automatically recognizes you, as long as you are signed in to your account. I’m sure you have seen a blog that has the MyBlogLog widget on the sidebar that shows the latest visitors and once you have your own MyBlogLog account, Voila! You will show up there too! It’s an easy and fun way to see who is actually visiting your website.

Adding MyBlogLog Recent Visitor Widget to Your Blog

If you have a blog, and a MyBlogLog account you can create the above widget and customize the colors and options to fit your own theme, well, as long as it fits one of their seven color options.

For the Self Hosted WordPress Blog, this is sooo easy by simply adding the WordPress MyBlogLog Recent Visitor Plug-in.

If you don’t have a Self Hosted WordPress Blog you can follow the instructions that will fit your blog set up by following the instructions on MyBlogLog.

As you may have noticed by now, I am a big fan of conversational marketing. So, how can you use this as an effective, community building tool?

Now that you can see WHO is visiting your blog and it’s not just an IP address in your web stat counter you have a couple options to take it a step further.

If the person leaves a comment, return the favor and visit their site if they leave a site url in the comments as most do.

Or as Pixelhead suggests: “If the person does not leave a comment, but shows up on your widget, click on their avatar and either: leave them a message on Mybloglog or visit their site and leave a comment. Mybloglog requires you to add them as a contact before you can leave them a message on their profile page. In the message thank them for visiting your site and I would suggest making a comment about their site after you have visited it of course.”

Your MyBlogLog Profile

When you login to your MyBlogLog profile you will need to add your blog under “My Sites and Services”

VERY IMPORTANT: You also have the option to add your RSS Feed- take the opportunity and add your Feed both your original feed and your feedburner feed!

Once you have your blog settings created and the system works on your screen capture move along and click on the “ADD SERVICE” option. This is where you can add all your other social networking and make your own mini-powerhouse!

Add as many of your accounts as you can, and if you don’t have an account with one of the options, make one.

Connect with Cyber Friends

If you are interested in using social networking to create a group of followers and grow your network you can use this site to help you connect the pieces. You can find your fellow cyber friends with these easy steps:

1. As I stated above add your profiles. They make it easy for you by even making the list and providing the initial part of the url for you, all you need to do is enter your personal username for that account. So go pull up that spreadsheet I told you to make earlier and just copy and paste. It took me about 10 minutes to populate all the fields.

If you took my other piece of advice on trying to keep your usernames the same or similiar then MyBlogLog even has a button that you can click that will search all the sites for you using your common username and populate the fields for you.

Privacy Note: At the bottom of the screen you will see that they state “Account information you share on this page will be used to retrieve your publicly-available updates from those sites for re-distribution across MyBlogLog.com and Yahoo!. Public updates are also available to third parties via an RSS feed of your profile as well as the MyBlogLog AP”

2. At the bottom of your profile page you will see the link for the “friender”

You will have a few options under different tabs. The image above shows the “connector” tab. This tab shows all the services that I added to my profile and what other friends interact on what service with simple Green X’s. This means that they also have an account with that service.

If you want to connect with that person on that service simply click the Green X. You will then get a blue check mark in that square to show that you have connected there as well.

For anyone that has created multiple social networking profiles you will see how powerful this is. Instead of wandering aimlessly and searching and adding one here one there, boom, you can create a very solid network very quickly.

Now, in addition to the “connector” tab you have the “friender” tab. Click on the “Find my Friends” tab and you will see all the cyber friends that you can simply click a button and add to your network.

The downfall of this tool, as all tools and resources have potential downfalls, is the ability to have those people that don’t really care about you or your blog or your business and just want to make as many contacts as possible and get a really big number in their profile or worse use it for spam or porn. I can’t make them stop but I think the advantage of easily connecting with like minded people outweighs this potential issue.

One more important feature: I BELIEVE, I saw a post somewhere, and now I can’t find it (don’t you hate when that happens?) that when anyone you connected with updates any of their services you are notified automatically. I’m going to experiment with this one a little bit because obviousely, if that is true, then that has a great potential- like if you have 300 connections and you make a blog post and it updates your Facebook and MySpace page and notifies all 300 of your connections that you made a new blog post.. all automatically… are you catching my drift on the potential here?? So if you know about this feature or see another post about it, please leave a comment.

Blog Traffic

Depending on your blog you may have little traffic or a few thousand visitors a month, that’s the honest truth about blog traffic. While you can do your best to stimulate and promote your blog, you never know if readers will catch on or not. However, using MBL can help by performing a couple easy and fast steps.

Utilize the Search Box

Enter your keyword or blog topic and see what other blogs are closely related to yours.
Click on the profile avatars of members that show up and add them as contacts after you visit their sites and determine they are a good match to network.
Click on the communities that show up for the search term, and join the communities.
Visit the sites and join in the conversation on these blogs by making meaningful comments. This will result in visits to your blog from both the site owner and visitors to the site that may like your comments.

RSS Feeds

Take the work out of tracking your MyBlogLog account by subscribing to your own RSS feed in your reader or adding the RSS feed of those in your community you like. RSS has so many great opportunities that many people haven’t even started to use. But, for more traffic and backlink potential you can add your MBL RSS feed to RSS directories. And by the way, you can add the RSS feeds to your community members as well because they are all in one place in your profile.

Tools

If you are a serious blogger with multiple blogs then finding your real community and connecting with your readers has big potential. Here is a great option for you, and I’ll be honest I just found this but can’t believe the potential it offers. MyBlogLog Tools by SoloSEO. This company has created tools that specialize in MBL that allow you to:

Compare your visitors
Compare your communities
Compare your communities between contacts

I mean really, talk about getting to know who your contacts are! Why keep spending hours and months on what I call “hopeful marketing” when you can have the people that actually have the same interest and you already know like you delivered to your inbox?

Analyzing

Back in your profile, under your sites you will see the option for “statistics”.

They will provide you with a piece of code for you to copy and paste into your blog template. Once you have it in place and it can start tracking your site details.

In the future that link will bring you to a page showing you some great details and insights into who is visiting.

The FREE option will only give you the top 10 results but you will see each tab with it’s own tab and they provide you with the link details of where your readers came from, what they viewed and where they clicked. They also provide a summary of how many readers and pageviews you had.

Upgrade to MyBlogLog Pro for $3.00 a month via PayPal and you will have access to real time stats and longer lists. I find the stats in the free version fine for my needs.

Summary

Like I stated in the beginning, this is a general overview of MyBlogLog to further your home based business reach and kick around the idea of conversational marketing, but I hope it now helps you see the potential for using this site is much greater then you expected.

Using this as a way to build your community and further your online home based business reach can be cheaper and faster then more conventional methods of marketing.

If I missed an important beginner point, please feel free to leave a comment.

Additional MyBlogLog Resources:

MyBlogLog Blog

TopRankBlog Interview with MyBlogLog CEO

MyBlogLog on Social Media Marketing Explained

home based business

Post from: Online Business Marketing For Home Based Businesses

Your Personal Guide to MyBlogLog