We will cover the “social triad,” which is Facebook, Twitter, and Blogs.

Stay tuned for more information on this exciting new seminar. For those of you who are out of the local area, we will be recording this event for future posting on this blog.

Testing an idea could never be easier today. The most successful businesses today failed many times to get to a successful idea that no other business caught on to. The rest of us may think that business was lucky or was in the right place at the right time, the business owner had some kind of advantage over everyone else. The fact is that this business owner was not better than 100 per cent of every other business person out there. They simply took action and that action proved the idea worked or not. That business person simply tweaked the idea and made it better or just dropped it completely and went on to the next idea.

Starting and making a business very successful takes a lot of trial and error and Seth Godin tells us that is reality.

We all know what Facebook is and what it’s for…socializing. Google wants to get more “eyeballs” viewing and using their own site so they came up with a way for their following to “socialize” on their site.

Here’s how it works. When you first sign up to Google Plus, you have started your own social space. You can then send out invites to the people you want in your social network. You can then divide each group of people into distinct categories such as; friends, family, co-workers, customers, etc. These groups are called “circles.”

There is a second part of Google Plus called Hangouts. This is a place where you and your groups can share videos, pictures and various files.

Another part of Google Plus is a section on managing all your multimedia items such as videos, pictures documents and anything else you want to share with others.

Google Plus has originally been by invite only from a small amount of  “early adopters” but in the recent weeks, it is open to everyone.

If you want to experience a demo of this new feature of Google, click here.

Blogs have morphed into many different ways of presenting offerings from businesses. About 8 years ago, blogs have started to resemble conventional websites and many people who visit these sites could not tell the difference between an HTML site or blog site.

Blogs have become the standard in large and complex websites now because of the ease of use and most importantly, the built in features of search engine optimized coding within them.

What you are reading here in this post is based on a WordPress blog platform. WordPress is the world’s most popular blogging platform with Google’s, Blogger not too far behind.

A great advantange that the WordPress blogging platform has is the amount of third party developers who make so many plugins for it. You can use a WordPress based blog to be a time management tool, use it as an online calendar, hold contests, picture gallery, sales page for your product or service, polls for voting for a favorite topic, immediate connect to Facebook pages, post advertisements, able to get people added to your email list, able to add audio and podcasts, and so much more.

There are thousands of plugins and enhancements available that you can turn your blog site into something completely different that won’t even look like a blog. Blog plugin developers show no stopping of making new and improved plugins for this platform.

So blogging will continue to be a strong medium to bring your message or your brand to as many people as you want. Remember to add blog postings as often as you can because every new change and new blog post will attract the attention of search engines.

For more information, you can go to: www.helpmybusiness.com

He states that we have seen the end of the industrial revolution. Although he doesn’t mention the information revolution, he does mention how valuable the small business person is to our economy here in the USA. He wrote a book called “Linchpin,” which he refers to the entrepreneur as the true element that can make the difference in jobs in America. We no longer are “cogs” in the wheel who takes instructions and works within a specific set of rules. We are now individuals who are indispensable to the success of the company. We think on our feet, defy the rules and dedicated to a successful outcome.

Today’s successful worker is one who takes chances, thinking outside of the box and is truly personally interested in other’s benefits.

More and more bloggers are getting creative with their blogs with unique promotions. Here are a few ideas for you to consider:

1. Have a contest
2. Have a drawing
3. Offer online discount coupons
4. Alerting blog visitors to come into the physical location for free gifts

It is one thing to get people to your blog, it is a totally different thing to get people to act on your offerings.

Be creative and make sure you follow up with any promotion you do on your blog. You should realize that your blog is more than just a “simple ole’ website” about your business. It is a total online marketing tool that you should think outside the box with in terms of marketing your business.

80% of your target audience uses the internet to find you and your business. Make it easy and interesting for a blog visitor to come back for more useful information and to get the chance to buy your product or service. Remember that the web surfer who found your business blog is interested in solving a problem that your product or service can render.

There are no set rules on how to blog. Once you get the hang of blogging, think of what you can do to further promote your business with it.

You are the publisher from now on that is responsible to make your customers aware of how valuable your product is to them.

It is as simple as that. Let’s say your business sells automobile parts. You should have “automobile parts” in the blog content of your posts. You should have pictures of auto parts somewhere in your blog with an “alt tag,” a description of what kind of auto parts they are. Your blog should have outbound links to auto related websites.

You should also have keywords of your physical location tied to the auto parts you carry. For example, if you have an auto parts store located in Atlanta Georgia, you should have “Atlanta Georgia auto parts” as a keyword phrase within your blog content.

If you can find pictures of Atlanta Georgia, insert them in the blog and/or blog post. The more you emphasize your location along with your business terms and descriptions, your blog will start to attract readers that are interested in your blog because of the niche topic and location.

Blogs, as mentioned before are very well suited to make the search engines “happy” because of the way it automatically alerts these search engines via “pinging.” For a great definition of what a ping is, click here.

Every time you make a change, whether it is adding a picture or a new blog post, the blog software automatically pings the search engines.

Always remember that keywords and keyword phrases are the life blood of getting visitor traffic to your site. Always write blog posts with this in mind and you will find that every blog post and every piece of content you add to our blog will contribute to getting higher search engine rankings.

With higher search engine rankings your site will be found more than not and you will gain new customers sooner than later!

The reason you want videos on the web is to give what search engines want in sites now days. The more video you have of your product or services the higher you get ranked from search engines like Google because they lean heavily towards all forms of social media such as blog sites, images, audio and video in order to rank your importance on the web.

Check out the video below of an interview with the founder of Tubemogul.

O’Rourke Interview with Brett Wilson, Co-founder of Tubemogul from O'Rourke Hospitality Marketing on Vimeo.

Wikipedia defines CMS as a “software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming to create and manage website content with ease. A robust CMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets that might be needed by the system.

A blog is based on a database system to be able to add each additional blog post to the database.

The beauty of blog software is that it allows a complete non-techie to be able to use this database system to have a two way communication with with a blog visitor.

The content you manage with your blog is your blog posts, digital images and audios. But today, it is not enough just to make blog posts or post pictures, you have to know how to present your content.

Think creatively when presenting your content. Provide helpful information that your customers can use now. Make some of your posts entertaining. Show some very unique pictures that your visitors will find no where else. Be unique.

Also, make a good effort to plan out your content in advance. Write at least three to four blog posts in advance for a timed release into the future. WordPress has a unique feature where you can write and submit a blog post and time it for release on your blog in a specified time in the future. Say you write a blog post and want to release it live on your blog for two weeks ahead, you can do so.

Study how other bloggers present their content. Take note of how often they post blog posts. Study how they design their blog, what colors they use, and how relevant their content is for you, the visitor. This is all the methods they use for managing their content.

If you stumble upon a great blog you like in the industry of your interest, insert their URL in alexa.com and check out their traffic rankings. Odds are, they have a very high ranking (low number) and that means they are masters at how they present and manage their content.

If you want to successfully manage your blog, imitate what successful bloggers are doing.

One of the main reasons is that the big search engines such as Google is using social media connections as one way to measure popularity of a site, therefore putting greater “importance” of that site in page rank.

In other words, if you have a site that is popular with your visitors and they are in turn referring to as massive amount of more people to read your blog, you will soon realize a higher page rank because of that popularity or authority that you carry from that site.

When blogging, mention your other social media sites you have such as Facebook or Twitter, and then, in turn, link from those sites back to your blog. This forms a “link wheel” of sorts. Once you get your blog and your social sites linking to each other, you have made it possible for your blog to further rank high within the search engines.

In the end, it is all about the mass attention you can get with your site. You have to effectively do many things simultaneously to get your popularity up there.

In our next blog post, we will go over some of the things you need to do simultaneously to get the job done.

Check out this very informative video he did regarding “The Law of Averages in Sales”

Second, if you write in a particular style about your product or service, that will further attract your audience. There are blogs who write in a casual conversational style, and others who write in vulgar language, still others who write as if they are the teacher and you are the student.  Whatever style you have, it goes without saying that your target audience will be attracted to your writing style as well.  This directly reflects on your own personality too.

The way you design your blog is also important in getting through to your audience. If your blog has a black background with little white lettering, or bright tan color with a good sized easy to read font in black, it will attract a certain audience who finds it comfortable to read in that format.

If your blog has way too many buttons, bells and whistles to click on, a visitor may become confused and surf elsewhere because it may appear to off topic for what they are searching for.

Always remember that the visitor is coming to your blog site to get information quickly in an easy to read format. They don’t intend on spending the whole day to read your blog. The attention span of web surfers are so short that it is important to get their attention right away and serve up the information or solution that they need.

Quite often, people will go to your blog site to get an answer to a problem quickly so they can get on with their lives. We live in such a fast paced world that our blogs need to adapt to this audience.

“Blog marketing is all about giving your visitors what they want, when they want it.”

First, blogs give a reason why your customers shop at your business. You keep them informed on the products and services you offer along with the benefits for them.

Second, it gives your business a “personality” that makes it come alive. Your business should be an extension of you, the business owner. No one likes to do business with a “cold” or impersonal entity.

Blogs can alert customers of special offers or discounts from your business. This attracts people to personally visit your store.

You can give rewards to your customers for paying attention to your blog by giving special prizes or gifts just for stopping by and reading your blog.

It allows you to gather and grow an email list where you can keep in touch with your customers and sell to them in the future.

Blogs allow for a “two way conversation” with your customers. Blogs, by their very nature provides a way for customers to comment back to the blog owner, giving feedback, glowing reviews, or even constructive criticism. The blog owner has the capability to moderate each comment.

Lastly, blogs are websites that have built in software to help rank high in the search engines. Search engines are attracted to all blogs because of the search engine enhancements that are “hard coded” within.

If you regularly keep up with your blog from month to month, it will become a big factor in helping your business grow. In the next blog post, we will go over some key marketing tips on how a blog generates business for you.

Blogs, of course, provide a platform to “converse” between the blog owner and the blog visitor. Facebook, as of this writing, is the best way of getting your message out to your target market. Twitter is what is called, micro blogging. The main benefit of Twitter is that you can communicate with your target audience in real time.

Check out the video below: