Bloggers R Us

seotips8 asked:


FeedBurner Application is a free service which helps you keep track of your RSS Feed traffic, It is a great way to package your existing feeds providing you a host of free and premium services that you can utilize. Feed burner can be used on the original content that you have created or just any thing that you have composed for your website. There are a number of Feed burner services which can be used in order to optimize web traffic. Here are some of the techniques and a brief description on how they are useful.

A Blogger blog is very easy to use and you will be able to get it for free from www.Blogger.com. It is one of the most popular places where many people create their blog. One of the biggest blog lie that Armand has revealed is a Blogger blog will be easily indexed because Google owns it. This is not totally true. He reveals that there is no Blogger Blogs that is on the top 100 world blog in the world.

Another great idea using articles on your blog comes from Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman of The Blog Squad. They give a teleseminar on “From Blog to Book” how to write your book or e-book by posting short and/or longer articles on your blog.

1. Make your blogs search engine optimized. Make your blog rich in keywords. This will increase traffic to your blog and make your blog profitable for you.

2. Update your blogs regularly. The search engine spiders list the blogs that are updated regularly so obviously this works seriously in your favour.

3. Put links to your web site on your blog. This will help you to use your blog as a source of increasing traffic to your web site too.

4. Use the feedbacks and comments on your blog as a source to improve your writings. This will help in increasing the popularity of your blog.

5. It is good for your blog if the visitors can leave their comments. In this way your blog becomes communicative.

Because blogs are useful for creating online interaction, you may find that some indexes will rank your blog based on its popularity, or the number of other blogs that link to it. Once again, Technorati provides and ideal example of this in action. They will measure your blog based on the number of blogs that reference your blog. This is referred to as your blogs “authority”. Technorati will also measure your blog by how many readers mark your blog as a favorite.

In searching for blog themes, you can also find blog sites that allow you to create an account to them and use their site as your blogging site and you will be offered with different blog themes that you can choose from, of course, you can pick the one that fits your taste and personality.

Now the last thing you need to do is make money out of your blogging. You can do this by selling affiliate products related to your topic or by using google adsense ads in your blog posts.

Read About Search engine Optimization Also Read About Blogs Writing and Blog Updation

donkeymailer asked:


WordPress is the most popular platform of blogging on the internet. Almost all bloggers who are making money blogging are using it. So if you want to take first place and make more money by blogging, you should learn how to optimize your blog. In this article, I will talk about how to optimize your WordPress blog in 7 ways.

1. Optimize your WordPress permalinks.

This is the first step when you creating a WordPress blog. The default permalink is not very good for Google and you can edit it easily. Clicking on the Settings->Permalinks menu in the WordPress dashboard and then use a custom setting such asyourdomainname.com/category/postname. This will mean that your blog post category and title will appear in the URL rather than a number.

2. Install the All in One SEO Pack (or a another similar plugin)

The plugin is suitable for beginners who want to optimize their WordPress blogs. I think it is the best plugin for Seo. The plugin allows you to add a custom title, Meta description and keyword tags for your home page and blog posts.

3. Optimize each blog post for a low competition long tail keyword phrase.

Do a litte keyword research before you make a blog post. Find a low amount of competition by visiting the Google AdWords keyword tool. Ideally this phrase will have just a few hundred monthly searches rather than a few thousand monthly searches. Use a different keyword phrase for every blog post that you make and put the keyword phrase in the blog post title and 2-3 times throughout the post.

4. Book mark each post by using Social Bookmarking services.

Submit your blog url to a social bookmarking service like Digg or Delicious. It will take additional traffic to your blog and give a backlink to your blog post.

5. Optimize the home page of your blog.

Generally, your homepage get more traffic than other pages in your blog. Optimizing your homepage can increase the number of visitors. Pick 1-2 keyword phrases for your home page using a keyword research tool such as the Google AdWords keyword tool and choose one or two phrases that are related to your niche. Ideally these phrases should get a few thousand searches per month and the competition shouldn’t be too tough. Ensure that you include these keyword phrases are mentioned in the TITLE tag, Meta description and throughout the permanent content of your blog home page.

6. Install the Google XML Sitemaps plugin.

Submitting sitemaps will help to ensure that Google or other search engines index all the posts and pages of your WordPress blog. You can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to create a sitemap for your blog.

7. Add more links to your blog.

It is the best way to improve your ranking in the search engines. There are so many ways you can do this. For example, you can add links from other blogs, directory submission, and forum and so on.

This is the primary way for WordPress blog optimization. Try it! It will take more traffic to your blog and make that you can make more money by blogging.

make money blogging.

http://www.bloggerearn.com/2009/10/how-to-optimize-your-wordpress-blog.html

deepak kulkarni asked:

You see, we should be very thankful that we are born in this modern generation due to the existence of the Internet. With the internet, every information (whether about email marketing blog or any other such as email marketing job, optin email, email lite 1.4 or even email marketing review) can be found with ease on the internet, with great articles like this.

The way to discover and use the best tips to develop your email promotion campaign is to start off with what you already know and then just keep on testing everything in your email campaigns. Both, other people’s best email promotion tips and also your own ideas.

Pay attention to non-responders. Most online business owners tend to target people who open, click and buy. There is however an even larger group of non-responders that you can nudge into paying customers. You should ensure that your emails are being delivered, then either change your message or phase out non responders to ensure you are targeting people that will become paying customers and not wasting your time.

The one thing to keep in mind here is that you MUST notify users that by submitting their business cards, they are agreeing to receive email communication from you. This can be as simple as adding a sign to the business card drop-off box saying: “We will send you an email to notify you if you have won. We may also send you periodical emails with special offers and announcements. If you do not wish to receive emails from us, please write ‘No Email’ on your business card.”

I know that as informative as this article is, it might not adequately cover your email marketing blog quest. If this is so, don’t forget that the search engines like Dogpile exist for looking up more information about email marketing blog.

If you want people to be reminded about you or your company, email promotion is the best solution to do. You can actually update your customers about your products, and you will have the chance of getting sales with the simple clicking of the send button your email.

Personalize your emails with the subscriber’s name. This is usually easily done with the auto responder service’s built-in personalization feature. By putting their name in the email, you’re giving it an added personal touch, and they’ll be more likely to open and read your email.

Identify target- Identify the target of the email promotion program. Identifying the target will assist you assist you to create a targeted email promotion program.

Many people searching for email marketing blog also searched online for email list solutions, targeted marketing, and even email promotion internet marketing.

babu2345 asked:


I am stuck, it has been suggested I come here and figure this out. I want to add podcasts of my blogs here, but can’t seem to figure out all the technical jargon and craziness involved with adding a podcast. I don’t seem to be able to see anything within my power or that is obviously visible for me to make this happen.

Post reply First, learn to find, and share, the blog URL directly with your family and friends.

blogging, blogger,blogspot,make money from blog

Next, we have several FAQs, which discuss how to get the search engines indexing your blog.  Indexing by search engines leads to traffic from people searching, which leads to readers, subscribers, and Followers, and to feedback from the readers, subscribers, and Followers.

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=14fa23d55246c1c4&hl=en

blogging, blogger,blogspot,make money from blog

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=58ce19749a46c003&hl=en

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/blogger/thread?tid=5ea78c91417dbbe8&hl=en

blogging, blogger,blogspot,make money from blog

Having your blog searchable on the web won’t happen automatically, nor will it happen immediately.  A lot of hard work, and patience, is required.

Besides friends and family, your initial readers will come through the “Next Blog” link, randomly.  You get more “Next Blog” traffic from posting more, less from posting less.  And, you’ll need this initial traffic.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/01/more-traffic-to-our-blogs.html

Most long term readers will initially find your blog through search engine hits, from meaningful searches.  Not from searching for your blog by name.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/06/relevance-yields-readership-and-search.html

You have to get the search engines involved, but you won’t get listed by them, automatically.  You have to do some work, let them know that you’re there, that you want to be listed, and that you are worthy of being listed.

1) Get your friends to link to your blog, where your blog is relevant.

2) Participate in forums, where your blog is relevant, and include the URL.

3) Comment on other blogs, in relevant comments, and include the URL.

4) Put relevant and useful content in your blog.

5) Some search engines may index your blog using the site feed.  Be sure to activate the feed.

6) When you have done all of the above, your blog will have some weight.  Submit your blog to the search engines, for indexing.

7) Post frequently, and keep the content of your blog moving.

http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help/web/how-to-get-traffic-and-repeated-readers-for-your-blog

None of this happens overnight.  Search engines can take months to index your blog fully.  And even when indexed, don’t expect for a search to some key element in your blog to give you an entry on the first page of the search hits.  And remember that owners of other blogs, like yours, are actively working to be included by Google too.  Try to ignore the trolls who babble about SEO.

http://groups.google.com/group/blogger-help/web/blogging-is-all-about-patience

Use Google Webmaster Tools, and Yahoo Site Explorer, to watch the indexing progress, keep an eye for problems, and know when the blog is indexed.  And to setup a sitemap, which is useful to the search engines.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2008/05/google-webmaster-tools.html

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/03/yahoo-site-explorer.html

Google Analytics, that’s suggested by some helpers here, is more useful to small businesses and corporations.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2006/07/know-your-visitors.html

And understand the differences between followers, readers, and subscribers.

http://blogging.nitecruzr.net/2009/09/know-people-who-view-your-blog.html

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Post replyust curious. I did expect after joining blogger to be able to browse through other people’s blogs using blogger, searching by keyword, searching by tags, all the usual stuff that you can do on the other websites I use. However I can’t find any of this stuff. Am I missing something or is this just not how blogger works?

Douglas Smith asked:


Advertising Your Blog In Your Email Signature:  If you have a blog that you are particularly proud of, and that you want to share with other people, there are a lot of free ways that you can get your blog noticed.  One of those ways is something that you do everyday, and that you may not even consider as a way to share

your blog. Put the link to your blog in your email signature.  Chances are that you send out emails more timese that you can count during the day, Each time you send out an email, you can advertise your blog by putting the address of your blog in your email’s signature. It’s always a good idea to write something catchy like, See what I am up to now, or Read my latest chapter of my fanfic here, depending on what type of blog you have.  The thing to remember about putting an adveritsement in your signature for your blog is to make it short,

but eyecatching.  You want people to be interested enough to want to click on it, but you also don’t want to scare them off.  Just like it is with any adveritsement, you want to give them just enough to be interested and take a closer look at what it is that you are advertising.  Think about what it is that your blog is about. What is really going to interest people abuot it and want to visit That is what you should include in your signature, and that is what is going to get people to go to your blog.

Blogger Forums – A Great Place To Advertise Your Blog:  No matter what type of blog that you have, one of the best places that you can advertise your blog is to join a blogger forum. After all, everyone who posts there has a blog and thats the main subject.  It’s a great place to meet other bloggers and to advertise your blog.  There are quite a few blogger forums that you can sign up for on the Internet. One is known as Bloggeries, where you can show off your blog, get your blog reviewed or review other blogs, and find lots of tools that you can use for your own blog.  Another good place to go is to Blog Forum. Blog Forum, like Bloggeries, has spots for you to market and show off your blog, Blogger forums are a great place to advertise because everyone in them are of the same mind and want to make certain that their blogs get noticed and read.  If you use your blog to advertise something that you are selling, or you want to get a lot of traffic to your blog in order to make money, you want to go someplace where it can get exposure.  When you advertise on a blog forum, you know that you are placing your advertisement in a place where blogging is something that people enjoy.  Just remember when you are posting to a forum to read the rules and abide by them. That way you’ll get your blog noticed and you will know that you are doing the

Blogging Directories – Great Advertising Venues:  If you want to have more people visit your blog, there are plenty of blog directories on the Internet that you can submit your blog to so that people will come and visit it. Most blog directories are listed by the topics that the blogs that are submited cover. Blog Catalog is a free blog directory that offers categories such as career and jobs, writing, Iraq, and many others. It has features such as featured blogs and other things to offer those who submit their blogs there.  Another great place to add your blog is blog-drectory.org. Not only do they have an an extensive list of categories with sub categories, you can get your blog reviewed. For the most popular blogs, it shows the amount of hits that blogs have and if they have any reviews. As well as listing by category, the blogs are also listed by location.  There are other blog directories on the Internet – these are only a couple of them. But blog directories are a great place to advertise your blog and to make

new friends. You never know what you will find when you browsing through the directory, and you may just find out information that you never knew. Some of the blog directories offer chat features as well, so that you can meet other people easily.  As you can see, blog directories are a great place to get your blog noticed and bring people to read your blog and look at your pictures.

Blogging Traffic – Give And Take:  Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship. Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your blog is by visiting someone else ’s blog.  Go to their blog and read one of their entries, or read a few of them. Chances are that you are going to find something that you have in common. When you find something that you find truly

interesting on a blog, leave a comment so that they know that you were there.  One of the best known blogs available is LiveJournal.  A great feature of LiveJournal is that you can search

for interests on their site and it will come up with results of those who have that interest.  Are you interested in horseback riding You can see what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding as well.  When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you like the post, say something about what you read in the post.  After you have commented on the person’s post, then you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and

then use it to link back to your journal.  But be sure that you sound sincere when you are

commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just fishing for traffic.  If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site and your efforts will be wasted.

Join A Community To Advertise Your Blog:  Something that you will find, especially if you join something like LiveJournal or GreatestJournal, is that users just like you have created communities for people with common interests.  There are communities for just about any subject, and if you find that there isn’t a community for the subject you can create one. This is a great place to advertise your blog.  The nice thing about communities is that there isn’t

any limit as to how many communities that you can join.  For example, say that you love blogging about books, horseback riding, and skiing in Tahoe. All you have to do is look through the communities for ones that have those interests and join them.  As long as you post something related to the topic to the chosen community, people will see you and perhaps

they will check out your personal blog.  Something to remember is that you don’t want to write

a post tht is one sentence long in order to get people to go to your blog. They will want to know that what you write is interesting and is something worth reading.  Joining communities can be a great way to advertise your blog and drive traffic to it. If you are referring to something that you posted about on your blog, you can use a link back to your entry in your post.  As with posting comments on someone else’s blog, you don’t want people to think that you joined a community simply to get traffic to your blog. Otherwise, people won’t visit your blog and you may get banned from the community as well.

Email Groups – Hidden Treasure Troves For Advertising:  Something that has become increasingly popular since the Internet has grown are the email groups that are available through Yahoo, MSN, and other venues.  They are a great way to meet other people who have a common interest, and are very similar to the communities that are available through blogging sites.  There is plenty of diverse subjects and there are communities for just about any subject.  These groups can be a great place for people who have a blog about the subject and want to share it with other people.  Most of the time when you join a group, you are

encouraged to take a moment and to introduce yourself.  This is a great opportunity to tell people about your blog, but make certain that you don’t overdo it.  Just like with any of the other places you will advertise your blog, you want to make people want to go to your blog. If you are too overbearing, you will turn people off.  If your blog covers different subjects, you can

advertise it on the other groups that cover those subjects as well. Make certain that your post to the groups is interesting and that you let people know what it is that your blog is about. There’s nothing worse than getting taken to a blog under false pretences.  When people visit your blog, make certain that you thank them for visiting and respond to comments that

they leave.  If they know that you appreciate the time that they

took, they are more likely to come back again.

The power of being seen is the up most importance and blogging is one the best ways you can make sure others know of you, don’t let it pass you by.www.theonlinenbiznetwork.com, www.marinisgifts.com, www.onlinenichenetwork.com

 

Phyllis Zimbler Miller asked:


If you are a book author who wants potential readers to find you on the internet, you want to be as visible as possible in places that those readers might be. And in almost every social media place that you sign up for – such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – you are given the opportunity to write a profile about yourself.

What should these profiles say to effectively attract potential readers?

Twitter Has Only 160 Characters for Your Bio Info

Let’s start with Twitter with 160 characters max for your bio. Obviously you are going to put that you are a book author (perhaps fiction or nonfiction) and presumably you will have a book website URL for the “more info URL” field in your profile. What else are you going to say in those 160 characters? That depends.

Do you have a business besides being a book author? If so, you may want to put info about that business in your bio. Or is there a particular hook about your book that you want to get across in your bio? Perhaps your book is a novel based on a true story.

Your goal in the brief Twitter bio is to make yourself interesting enough (although all true) that people can find “connections” to you and want to follow you.

This means that you must not leave this bio blank. If you want people to follow you on Twitter, you have to be willing to share about yourself.

And remember that you can change this info easily. For example, if your book wins an award, you should consider changing your Twitter bio to reflect that award. Revisit your bio every couple of months to ensure that it presents the most up-to-date version of yourself.

Facebook Has Much More Space for Bio Info

Now let’s move on to Facebook, which has a longer bio section under info on your profile page with the ability to include as many of your own website URLs as you want.

Now here’s the often-overlooked extra of Facebook:

You can have a very brief bio section under your photo that people can see when visiting your wall page as well as your info page. This is a golden opportunity to get the most important points across in a very short space. Because, honestly, how many people are going to read all those long entries on your info page? (And for the long entries, do use lists instead of long, dense paragraphs.)

Take advantage of this brief, easy-to-read bio with the info you most want to share with your Facebook friends. Note that this may not necessarily be the same as the info you choose to share with your Twitter followers, even though in both cases you want to emphasize that you are a book author. And, again, update this brief Facebook bio every couple of months.

LinkedIn Has Its Own Peculiarities

Now for the third social networking site – LinkedIn. This site gives you a very brief space to put a few words under your photo along with the opportunity to provide a brief summary of your business. Book authors should take advantage of both places to convey their most important information. Then the rest of the profile info on LinkedIn is more job and career-oriented.

There is one important “trick.” LinkedIn only allows three website links. But don’t click on “My Company” or “My Website” or “My Blog” before putting in the links. Click on “Other” in each case. Then to the right of “Other” put descriptive words such as “Book Blog” or “Book Site.” You want potential readers to know they can find out about your book(s) at your sites.

As with your other social media profiles, revisit your LinkedIn profile info every so often to ensure that the info is up to date.

In conclusion, don’t make the mistake of thinking that these profiles are unimportant and thus you dash off writing the info. These profiles provide the information that helps make you interesting to potential readers. Spend as much time writing and revising these social media profiles as you would spend writing and revising any paragraph or page in your novel or nonfiction book.

Robin Dale asked:


The major issue bloggers face is that over time their blog archives gets fill up with thousands of posts and by default a blog normally only shows the most recent posts that you have posted on the front page while the majority of your previously written posts can’t get noticed once they drop off the front page.

The new technique is called Sneeze Page. The idea behind it is simple – to create a page that forces the people in different directions deep inside your blog by highlighting a variety of previously written posts.

In simple words – A sneeze page is all about exposing those archives.

There are many types of Sneeze Pages that you can create on your blog. Few types are explained below.

Themed Sneeze Pages – these are posts or pages on your blog or site that revolve around a single theme. The sneeze pages (and others) are linked to prominently around the blog – including the ‘best of blogs’ section of the front page, if you have. These pages generate a lot of page views both themselves and the pages that they link to.

Time Related Sneeze Pages – these pages are based around a defined period of time. They are usually a ‘best of’ post that highlight your key posts from that period to either remind readers of previous posts that they might want to revisit or to highlight posts that they might have missed.

The period of time that you choose can really be anything from a year through to a month, week or even a weekend (ie a post that summarizes the posts from a weekend that those readers who don’t read your blog on a weekend might have missed).

Retro Sneeze Pages – Another variation of this ‘time related’ sneeze page is to do one that unashamedly shows off a number of posts from your blog from a particular point in its history. The most common way to do this is to do a post highlighting posts from the blog from a year ago.

Series Sneeze Pages – many bloggers use the technique of writing a series of blog posts that allow them to explore a topic over a period of time with lots of interlinked posts.

One key with writing a series of posts is to make sure that readers have a trail of links between posts so that they’ll not only read one but the full series.

A great way to help readers discover a full series is to develop a sneeze page. All of the posts in the series should link back to it and it links to them. Series Sneeze pages can become key pages on your blog.

Advantages of Sneeze Pages

Exposure to your archives – I don’t know about you but when I spend hours (if not days) crafting a blog post, I want people to read it! Sneeze pages lengthen the time that people interact with your older posts.

Benefits to SEO - search engines not only look at the links that other people make to your posts in order to give them ranking but the internal links on your blog. Linking to old posts can help them grow their search engine ranking.

Help’s create a Sticky Blog – I’ve not seen stats on this but it is my suspicion that a person arriving on your blog for the first time increases the chances of coming back to it the more great posts that they view on it. Get someone to read 10 great posts that you’ve written previously instead of 1 and you’ll exponentially increase the likelihood that they’ll subscribe and become a regular reader.

Sneeze pages can be an effective way of driving people deep within your blog – but they’ll only do that for as long as you’re able to drive people to the sneeze page itself. As a result – a sneeze page is something that you’ll want to promote and position prominently on your blog in a place that people will continue to see it.

Link your sneeze page from the navigation menu, sidebar or other hot spots on your blog. It works beautifully for both SEO and user experience purpose.

Nicholas Cifuentes asked:


Blogs.

As an Internet strategist – my life daily is consumed with social media feeds, blog alerts, feedburner stats, google alert updates, monitoring, strategizing, execution – all of these overused terms and time consuming tactics certainly take a toll on you.

But one thing I do often, as I do for all my clients, is research – taking notice of the growing digital space around me – thinking of ideas to implement innovative strategies among the community and with my clients.

One of those key strategies that are a must in today’s Internet spectrum is a blog.  A blog is key in driving not only traffic, but interest to your brand, product, or company.  Blogs help you appear authoritative in your industry – allowing you to give views on the latest events in your trade, offer reviews, insights, and so on.

This expands into relationship building tools, as you are able to speak more freely and in a more informal and personable style, as compared to how you direct the voice on your main website.  Through the blog channel, they are more likely to trust you, and then all the more likely to visit your main website and then click your links and possibly purchase your product.

It also offers insight for your customers, and allows them to leave comments and ’speak’ to you on a key level. In addition, blogs are extremely search engine friendly – through thousands of possible keywords and fresh, updated content on a regular basis – blogs are simply great facets to have on your website today.  Your simply misguided if you think otherwise.

*Read More for a detailed blog breakdown of the popular clothing line Free People.



Now, another aspect of blogs I enjoy are creating them, not only content strategy, but programming and designing them on a unique level.  One aspect of ‘branding’ a blog is considering the number of possibilities you have when actually build the blog.

How do you want to approach a design? Are you a creative or less scalable brand? Do you have the ‘assets’ to build a ‘creative’ blog? Do you have a content strategy built before you blog? Do you know how to ‘market’ your blog on a daily basis?

These are all important questions you MUST think about before diving into the blog space – thinking you know what to do, when you might need a refresher.

And always remember that blogs vary, depending if you are in the business-to-consumer or business-to-business parallel – but your Plan of Action (POA) should always remain the same.

Case Study.

Free People. A blog that does it Right.

Free People is a ’boutique’ style of women’s and young girl’s clothing – offered both online and in brick and mortar stores around the world.  It is a sister-brand to another well-known bohemian-type clothing, accessories and furniture store – Anthropologie.

Now, the Free People store design is a very creative, bohemian look that stylizes the brand well, and does many good things as far as marketing the brand on the main website – but their blog page does an even better job in terms of look, strategy and content.



First, when you come upon the page – you have a nice flash banner on the top portion of the blog that draws instant attention.  It’s 3-D style and moving parts, keeps the user engaged enough to move the mouse over the falling curtain rod and press it – which then drags the screen over, as if you were in puppet show – making note of their blog’s name “Caravan of Curiosities” – to keep the user engaged enough to follow through the blog to discover its true meaning.

Another side point here – naming your blog something different and marketing that along side your main brand is a nice change of pace on occasion.  But it won’t work for everyone – so carefully think about that before you go off and name your blog something completely different.  The nice touch here is that ‘Caravan of Curiosities’ still has an engaging tone to it, and how they display it in the blog is effective as well.

Working your way down the page – you recognize the 3-D style curtain outline the navigation header, which is simple – and elegant. And then just three blog pages dress the navigation header:

 

Blog: links to the blog homepage Videos: links to a custom video channel page in the blog Shop FP: links back to the main website

 

And from a design aspect – you have to appreciate the look with drawn curtains going down the sides of the pages – very instinctual and effective.



Now, the opening page here is the blog homepage – which after the navigation has your standard blog format and layout with a search box, archives, categories, and a blog roll entitled ‘favorites’.  They also added a store locator and 6 products that are simple photos and text that link back to the main store. The column layout is a three-column layout morphed into two columns, and in that side right column they squeeze in the blog widgets.  All of this is complimented by a great ‘notebook’ style background.  As complex and rich as this design is overall – remember, it is their content that gets the job done…not the design.  Even though I truly applaud them on such a layout – very engaging for a user to traverse through.



Finally, at the bottom of the page — a nice connection with the footer, in relation to the header — similar to how you tie any story together — you must connect the beginning with the end of a story…as you do a website — design and content including.

Content of Free People.

Now, with any website, content is king, always will be king, and on the Free People blog – it is King.  Content on blogs are crucial for search engines because you can create thousands of keywords, all of it search engine friendly, and all the content you create is new and updated – so search engines will love you for it.

Free People does a fantastic job with approaching the all around marketing term – “On Target, Off Topic”. Free People have a target audience, girls, young women ages tween to 45; easily, and for the more trendy women who may breach beyond that age – even an older woman can wear their clothing.  With that target audience in thought – as a marketer – go ‘off topic’ for a bit, and consider talking about content that is not directly related to you, but still, in a way, is connected.



Free People’s breaks up its blog into 26 different categories; topics such as art, books, decor, crafts, food, home office, magazines, polls, music, and so on.  At the same time, they intermix direct categories related to some of their external social media tools, such as their flickr, myspace, facebook, and download pages.

The point is, their content is intellectually placed, and interesting…which is even more important!  They do occasionally drop in content that will push a new outfit, piece of clothing and so on…but not as often as you think.  And they are blogging everyday – with NEW content, and using this to their advantage.

Video.

Another aspect of their content they included was a blog page devoted exclusively to video.  This custom designed video player they added features behind the scene videos of their monthly catalog shoots, as well as a video featuring their 2007 holiday party.  These simple videos are barely 1:30 minutes long, edited with appropriate music, mostly indie stuff, and cut to look a bit grainy and eclectic, as their brand appropriately exhibits now.



This simple idea of placing video on the blog is a great marketing tool.  First, the video takes an editor, all of about an hour to edit and post.  From there…he can take this video – submit it to any external video channels, i.e. YouTube, Viddler, and so on.  They can then upload them to their Facebook, MySpace, and Flickr pages – only enhancing their exposure – through something as simple as video.

For those who don’t know what this is or means; essentially this creates secondary brand exposure that allows you to initially reach out to possible consumers who might not have seen your brand before, allowing them to now find you.  It also allows you to create ‘backlinks’ to your website – this all counts in that SEO puzzle so many clients and people I speak to are always trying to solve.

Final.

Here is the point about all this – what this blog does right is pretty much EVERYTHING. What they do wrong, next to NOTHING, nearly.  And let’s be clear on this, they have people who are supposed to be blogging and acting as community managers to maintain this blog, and update their external social networking profiles, and so on.  This all takes time, and we all know what time ends up being — $$$.  But, the effect of what they have created has allowed them to ‘connect’ with their consumers, and harness new customers, and so on.  Their blog has been around since November 2006, and has amassed a huge amount of traffic daily to the blog.  Agreed – they are a major brand and can spark that type of traffic, but honestly, the simplicity behind their blog strategy only enhances those numbers.

Any company or brand that is thinking of starting a blog strategy need to follow a similar model in structuring their content and direction when beginning or ‘changing up’ a blog for your brand or product.



If you need help in developing a blog strategy for your business, feel free to contact me @ anytime. nicholas.cifuentes@gmail.com

Ray W asked:


People have found ways to supplement their income during these stringent economic times. One of the avenues gaining popularity is through maintaining an internet marketing blog. For some, the positive financial returns from blogging is so rewarding that they have chosen to fully concentrate on this alternative income source.

Creating a blog is not difficult, but the ability to earn from one’s internet marketing blog is necessary to make the activity worth one’s time and effort. To create a blog that will bring in money, it is important to learn the tricks of this modern trade.

Blog creation does not require any capital or funds, and this is the main point that makes internet marketing blog a suitable option for those who wish to develop their business on a tight budget. A business does not necessarily mean having physical products to sell. A much sought for information, in the form of an advice, or simply creating a ready file of data for reference can be a valid way of providing service. Usually, an internet marketing blog is a compilation of information geared towards a specific topic, such as child care or cellular phones, for example. Any person who has the interest to actively share opinions and information about a certain topic can be a good blog writer. Sustaining a blog’s existence through regular entry updates and making the articles interesting and informative is a big challenge. However, if the writer has an innate talent paired with sincere interest in the chosen niche to blog about, writing for an internet marketing blog can be a profitable hobby.

Blogging can directly earn from advertisements. With millions of people surfing the internet daily, the potential to get a good following is easy. Successfully maintaining a good content can help keep a lot of readers and earn their recommendation. Searchers include not only potential buying customers but also marketers who are on the lookout for a productive internet marketing blog. Advertisers, who see the potential and value of a good blog may seek the blog writer’s service, propose a paid advertisement or purchase the entire blog for their marketing purposes.

Google AdSense and Kontea are some sites that a blogger can sign up for free to get maximum visibility and to be paid for quality content. Through this process, the blog writer approves related advertisement placement in one’s own site in exchange for payment per views. This works to the best advantage of both the writer and the advertisers.

Another way to earn through an internet marketing blog is through affiliate marketing. Simply put, this works as a referral program for some business sites such as Amazon or other online retail stores. The blog writer actively promotes products that will lead customers to the business site and earns commission from their purchases.

There is a way to earn from the internet without having to leave home and spending eight hours of work in the office. Internet marketing through blogging is fast becoming a valid means to earn passive income without spending a fortune.