Twitter has only started an advertising platform in 2010 and it seems to be  growing trend. What is unique, however is the active Twitter user base is quite small. Remember, there are over 300 million registered users but only a fraction are active and that fall into the demographic of “intent to buy” mentality.

Twitter, being the social network site that it is, will have a challenging time for businesses who desire to marketing in front of this audience. Only the early adopters will be taking advantage of buying from the ad space being offered on Twitter from their advertisers.

Some advantage for advertising on Twitter, is the immediate feedback the advertisers will receive from sending out timely “tweets.” It also gives added credibility to the “buzz” when combined with other channels of advertising.

It may seem that advertising on Twitter can be a valuable addition to your marketing arsenal. Be aware that the Twitter audience can be a fickle one since they are not used to being pitched with ads because it was originally intended as purely a social medium to communicate socially.

Many social media networks are going to have a tough time on selling lots of products if they want to go direct. Social media in it’s current form is strictly for social gathering purposes only and there is a fine line of “selling” from these sites.

Sooner or later most popular social network sites will be filled with online “commercials” and will eventually deflect many people who got on those sites for social purposes only.

Here is a video from an international blogger that gets to the point about blogging.

1. You need to carefully plan out your marketing strategy
2. Use the social media. “Plug in” your blog to the social media sites that make sense to your business.
3. Join in the conversation. Comment on other blogs and make new online connections.
4. “Stand out in the crowd.” Have a unique angle or twist to how you present your product or service.
5. Create videos. Videos is only getting more popular on the internet and if you put out more videos, it will only lead to higher rankings to your blog.

We have a video that goes in detail what we mentioned above.

It’s just a matter of linking each platform with a plugin or hyper link to the blogs or social media sites you want to connect.

Let’s say you have a Facebook page and you have 300 followers there. Let’s also say you have 120 subscribers in your email list from people opting in to your blog newsletter. You could conceivably make a blog post and hook it up so your Facebook friends and blog newsletter also gets the same blog post content without you having to repeat the post to the other sites. So, you get the leverage of making one blog post and spreading it to your 300 Facebook followers and 120 email subscribers at the same time. Now it gets better. Each of your Facebook friends may have hundreds of friends of their own. So making one blog post actually can reach thousands within a very short amount of time….even hours! People who are copied on the email subscription are able to forward the blog post to still other people and their email lists could be forwarding it to even more people.

Now there is no guarantee that hundreds or thousands will pick up on the blog post unless the post has interest to the reader. There are many other factors of getting your blog post noticed by many people.

So the total connection of blogging to the world becomes more real.

Blogging from mobile devices are another hot trend today. More and more people are blogging from their compact computer tablets and even their smart phones. It is predicted that, with trillions of text messages going on in the world today, the smart phone and portable computer tablets will be the platform of choice for your audience to communicate with. So get used to making your websites and blogs “mobile friendly.”

One last big trend going on with blogging is in the female population. “Mommie” bloggers and blogs with topics of interest to females is on a dramatic rise. So pay attention to that market if you produce a product or service related to females.

48% of all bloggers believe that more and more people will be getting their main source of news and information through blogs.

So if you have a blog already started, keep your focus on the trends, both emerging and current. You will profit sooner than later if you do so.

We have come a long way since 10 years ago. With the advances in computer technology, the costs of  making a website has gone down dramatically to the point where a “non-techie” type of person can put up their own site for just hundreds of dollars, not thousands.

Also, we missed the boat over the years because putting up a website is not going to get you noticed by your customers unless you practice search engine optimization. Search engine optimization is the practice of inserting keywords in your site that is related to the words people enter in a search engine that brings up websites these people are looking for. In other words, just putting up a website is not going to get you noticed unless you do certain things to get it noticed.

Now, you can put up a blog site yourself with simple easy to set up blog software, and turn it into your main website. The advantages of doing this is in using the blog function of attracting search engines. Blog software by it’s very nature in the coding automatically sets up an RSS feed that search engines “crawl” on a daily basis. In other words, when you make a blog post or any other change to your site, you are simultaneously “knocking on the door” of the search engines and alerting them of your change. Every time the search engines visit your site, it helps get your blog site rank higher with the search engine.

A great way of reducing costs while gaining the advantage of attracting search engines is starting up your business website with blog software. Blog themes and custom blog theme designers are able to make a blog look like a very expensive HTML site that you would normally pay thousands for.

So, when thinking of revamping your site or even replacing your website, think of using a blog platform to put your site on and utilize the functions of a blog at the same time.

In our next post, we will go over how to start a blog site and turning it into a full blown site that looks and feels like a regular HTML site.

Without a sign out front to identify your business, no one will ever know to come through your front door. Without the fixtures in your store, your customers will not be able to see any of your products you laid out there. Without decorations in your front window, no one will ever know what kind of products you carry. They can see samples in the window.

The same goes for an online presence. We won’t get into the value and benefits of a business blog here because we have many posts already covering it. But the most important thing you can take away from this post is that your business website or blog should be just as necessary as the content in your store front.

No one is using the Yellow directories anymore. They are going online to the search engines to look for businesses where they can purchase goods and services.  So the logical place to have a presence is the internet.

Blogs are becoming more important to your business because it is building your brand while at the same time is generating customers to your physical location. If you do not have a domain name reserved with your business name, I highly suggest you purchase it now, even if you plan on putting up a website or blog later. You don’t want to get caught not having your own business name online because someone else already took it.

Blogging is serious business and should be taken as such. If you don’t know how to start up a business blog, contact someone who can set one up for you. In any case, get started today!

For example, if you are cleaners located in Atlanta Georgia, you would write a blog post about “Atlanta Georgia cleaners.” If you write a blog post about 500 words long, you will start ranking for this same phrase within the search engines.

Next, think about what kinds of words and phrases people would type in to find your business online. Remember that people who are searching for a cleaners in a particular city and state are most likely ready to purchase something from that business.

This method is quickly replacing the Yellow Pages as the immediate source of media to find a business when someone is searching for a business to buy something from.

You should generate a list of about 20 search words for your blog. Use each search word, one at a time and dedicate a blog post to each one. You should also add “categories” for each search word in your blog. Eventually, you will be writing more blog posts for each search word to add more pages to your blog site. The more content you can write in each search word category, the better the search engines are going to find your blog site for people who are looking for your business.

The secone most important way to optimize your blog with the search engines is to make comments on other blogs that link back to your blog. In the following blog posts here, we will explain further on how you can use this method to help you get higher rankings with the search engines.

Many search engine optimization companies make it much harder than it seems for optimizing your blog with the search engines. You can save yourself many hundreds of dollars just doing the above methods yourself. The only way you would consider hiring a search engine optimization company is if you do not have any time to do the tedious work.

Inserting an “opt in” box in either the upper right corner or within the header of your blog site is the “tried and true” way to maximize the chances of growing your customer list online.

If you were to check the upper right corner of our blog, Blog Marketing Experts, you will see our opt in box. We offer a free report on how to grow profits in your business if you were to enter your first name and email address. We pledge to keep you, as a subsciber updated on the lastest things in the business blog world as well as notifying you of our products and services at substantial discounts.

There are many advantages to both you and your subsribers in this method of marketing. First, the subscriber gets to keep in touch with you and is available to give you direct feedback on your business since they now have a way to contact you. Second, it gives you the opportunity to develop a relationship with your subscriber that will eventually turn into a paying customer.

The greatest advantage is that both you and your subscriber become long term connections and therefore help to perpetuate your business way into the future. With a solid customer base, you stand to generate sales through any economic climate.

Smart business people know that they have to spend more time on “money making” activity within their store. They know they have to have a business blog in conjunction with all the marketing efforts they do in store. But blog posting can be a tedius chore and can take a lot of time away from making sales.

Blogs are a marketing device that works along with other marketing channels. Blogging is all about branding and educating their customers and getting feedback from them so that the business can improve on the product or service it provides.

In our opinion, you should outsource blog posting if:

1. You are serious about using social media to generate new customers
2. If you don’t have time to post yourself to the blog on a regular basis
3. If you believe that blogging contributes to raising revenues in your business
4. If you believe that your customers are semi active online

Whatever you decide, just take note of the process in which you blog and make a training manual to give a step by step guide to give to your outsourcer.

We, at Blog Marketing Experts truly believes in blogs and how it is necessary for you to have one in order to better connect with your audience. Starting one now can go a long way into the future regarding helping your customers to be more informed about your business and your industry.

1. Print advertising
2. Online presence
3. Press release
4. Special events

Let’s take a look at print advertising. While our main philosophy is to get most of your advertising “bang” on the internet, we also believe in print advertising, in moderation. We feel that having some brand presence in print advertising helps to a certain degree. With print advertising, such as local newspapers, magazines, and coffee house newspapers, you will get credibility built up.

The most important of all ways to attract customers is through an online presence. With the “death” of the Yellow Pages advertising and other phone book directories, getting local online seach rank is the only place to be now. Instead of grabbing for a 4 inch thick soft bound directory, the majority of people are going online to the search engines to find what they are looking for. It is imperative that you have a website and that it is ranked at first place for the locality that you are in. Along with local search optimization, you need online coupons, video, and mobile phone presence.

Press releases through the internet will gain you a very large audience in no time. When submitting a press release, make sure the organization that is doing the submission for you hits all the national news agencies. You could end up on Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, and other big media conglamerates.

Special events involves holding fun activities at your store location. Go all out with this method. Line up local TV, radio and newspaper reporters to attend for dramatic impact. You will find that, the combination of all these ways will garner more visitors to your site sooner than later.

Long after your grand opening, you should be ramping up all 4 of these methods throughout the year. Remember, never let up on the marketing methods, especially during an economic recovery. You never know when the economic rebound will happen, but in doing all these methods in the meantime, you are guaranteed to succeed far beyoung your dreams!

It is easier than you think to develop and implement an online “store front” within your blog. As we write this post, we are in process of adding a “store” tab in this blog to show you how easy it is to make a virtual shopping cart on a page of a blog.

With new blog plugins and features being developed all the time, the time is now to add this feature. Now you don’t have to place hundreds of products in your online store. It could be as low as 3 to 4 items just to “test” the waters to see what things your customers may be interested in buying just from your blog site. You could promote your online store items as “website specials” or limited time sales items to get people moving to buy quickly.

You could rotate items on a weekly basis to give your customers a wide variety of selections to show what you have on hand for them.

The opportunity to actually develop a wider selection to eventually offer up a full blown online store is not out of the question! Some online store sites have started with humble beginnings of offering one or two items and eventually grown to offer over hundreds.

This can be a very lucrative way to add profits to your business!

For example. if you operate a cleaners in Atlanta Georgia, a great domain name could be “AtlantaGeorgiaCleaners (dot) com. It does not matter what the exact name of your cleaning business is. You can always design your site with the exact business name, but the domain name should be different and targeted to the local part of where your business is located. This is considered “local marketing.” To direct people who live and do business in your immediate marketing area is only effective if you attach keywords to your domain name.

It can be fairly easy to rank high in the search engines for your local business because competition for keywords is a lot less than if you were to rank for “cleaners” in general. Without including your city or state in your domain name, you will be competing with literally millions of other websites and it will be almost hopeless to get a good rank to beat those sites.

It is much easier to beat most of the “cleaners” websites in your local area when adding relevant keywords to your domain name.

Blog writing is necessary to keep your search engine growing in rank, to keep growing your visitor count, and continue to keep your online brand going. We strongly recommend no less than two blog posts a week. If you are serious about your online promotions, you should post once a day. I have many students that are blogging several times a week. Sometimes they blog once a week, sometimes 4 times a week. It can get inconsistent sometimes with the ongoing task of running a store. But if you assign someone to dedicate time to write and post regularly, you will reap rewards many times over and over again.

When outsourcing your blog writing, make sure they have some kind of background in writing. If you choose an intern, a high school or college student will work out very well. If you choose someone who freelances writing, they are the best but it may cost you some money to get you a good writer.

When outsourcing blog writers, make sure you give them enough information about what your business is all about and have them do additional research in your industry. Quite often they can find out more resource information on their own that could feed into the content they could write about and it will greatly benefit you.

You want to also train your blog writers to pick and choose royalty free photos to insert in various posts. Remember that just posting text as content in blog posts are not as interesting to the reader as with text and pictures. It is a very simple process to insert photos in blog posts and a blog writer with no previous experience can learn how to do it within minutes.

An additional bonus when getting a blog writer on board is research skills. This is also “trainable.” Thank goodness for search engines, you can research anything with just typing in keywords of your research topic and out pops thousands and possibly millions of references to that topic. More than enough to find things to write about.

You would not believe how much time and effort bringing an outsource writer can save you. Don’t be afraid to hire someone because if you are serious about marketing your business online, you need a constant flow of good quality content in your blog.

Here are 5 ways to get visitors to interact with your blog:

1. Invite visitors to make comments on your blog posts
2. Insert an opt in box on your blog to solicit subscribers
3. Hold contests for a 30 day period to make comments on your blog in order for them to have a chance to win a prize
4. Offer a limited time coupon on your blog that will allow visitors to get a steep discount on some item in your store
5. Insert a multiple choice poll on your blog sidebar that takes votes for a compelling question your customers would be interested in voting for

Of course there are many more ways to get visitors to interact with your blog, but these appear to be the most common one’s used in many blogs today.

The object is to get people to do something that they can be interested in on your blog while have some fun. Interacting with a blog should not be so hard. If you can be creative, I am sure you would come up with at least 5 more things that help make it an interactive experience.

If you post information daily, even if it is useful information, if there is no other feature in your blog other than getting information, you will lose your audience.

As mentioned before, your blog is like the daily newspaper that gets delivered to your door and is meant for consumption by the reader. But if you are to get people on your email list or to come by to visit your store, you need to keep it interesting. You will find that blogs are very beneficial to your business.

A good example of this is a website called Archive. This is a site that is dedicated to showing a web surfer how a website looked in the past, even if the website currently was taken down.

Moral of this story? When putting website content online, just think about all the ramifications it can have on you, your business, your reputation, and your industry. You want to portray yourself as the qualified expert in your industry that is well respected and is full of relevant information about your product and service.

Now it is ok to put controversial content on the internet as long as it is in good taste and making a valid point in your industry. Also remember that any part of your content could be quoted by someone else and used to feed another website for their content purposes.

A good way to monitor the content that you put on the internet is go to copyscape and enter your URL of your site and this site will check all your content, (text) and compare it for any other website that may be “copying and pasting” verbatum, your content. If you do come across another site that is plagiarising your content, simply contact them through their website and kindly ask them to remove your copied content, or at least give you and your website credit for writing the material in the first place. Most often that will solve the problem.

Just remember how powerful your site is. Content may be taken for granted when inserting it into your blog, but the overall effect it has on your company is huge. Be wise with the power you have!