The same applies to “publishing” on the internet. With a publishing platform such as a blog or website, there is great power that you, as a publisher have in your hands. You can make or break a business, you can position yourself as an expert to a mass of visitors who know absolutely nothing about you. You can influence your readers by virtue of what you present as content to your site.

Now with social media out there, in the form of “Twitter,” “Facebook,”  “Youtube,” etc., you wield that same “power” but also be aware that this medium can backfire on you in the form of negative reviews or feelings about your product or service. Make sure you think it through when putting any content up on your business blog or websites. Once the content is up, it becomes part of the internet where the whole world can view it and react.

Never in the history of the written word has the “power” been given to everyone on the planet who has access to the internet.

Some major concerns, when using social media are:

• write with the truth in mind
• don’t attack anyone or anything when publishing content
• develop a sense of fair play when writing about people
• write with the benefit of the reader in mind

A couple of years back, blogs were portrayed as a platform for anyone to rant or rave about any topic. Today, blogs and online publishing has tested the limits of social responsibility. All social media makes it so easy to offend others and also paint ourselves either in a negative or positive light.

Yes, we are a world of extra sensitive individuals and while we must not cause a wave of negative attention to ourselves, we should blog and publish more responsibly. Don’t want something you said to “bite” you in the behind later!

It seems that we are being bombarded with more “noise” in our lives whether it be in the form of advertisements or so many other forms of mass communication that we come in contact with. Somewhere it is written in the advertising trade publications that each day, we are exposed to over 50,000 references of advertisements through sight, sound or smell? How can that be? Well, it could be true, given that if that number of advertisements are being thrown at us, that we are not going to remember any of it. Actually it proves out that, if we are exposed to that many ad messages daily, it is no surprise we do not retain the messages given.

This brings me back to the social media like Twitter and Facebook that has taken over many peoples lives. For the people who have all the time in the world, more power to them for keeping up with all the followers and followed. For us business people or serious bloggers, how does this media serve us without being part of the problem or ineffectiveness of true “networking?”

In the end, we have to find ways to maximize our time, for time is very valuable for all business people, whether online or offline. We need to cut out “time wasting” activity and reel in what kind of “time” makes us money.

For online marketers and offline, brick and mortar businesses to prosper into the future, we all need to focus on where we place our priorities with our time. I am afraid that social media is a “fad” until it can be made useful and more complementary to our “money making” time.

Give me your thoughts here….

I have been researching many different sources for how blogs are evolving and discovered many intriguing things going on right now. With the changes in search engine technology, customer attitudes and buying habits, and world economy forces, the business blog has changed along with this whole “ball of wax.”

Stay tuned for my upcoming free report as yet to be titled!

Call to action includes opt in boxes to capture the name and email address, promenently display of your phone number to give the visitor a way to contact you, displaying a promotion or discount on specific products or services that would draw the visitor to make an in person visit to your store, and lastly, a contact form so the visitor can email you immediately while they have a question about your product or service.

All the above enhancements are actually “old school” marketing methods that have been implemented by the marketing greats for decades.

Can you see the effectiveness in the call to action? This one enhancement alone can beef up your web presence and also give the best chance on getting more paying customers.

You have to map out your blog so it is easily navigatible, pleasing to the eyes, and most importantly presents the product or service that the visitor is searching for.

After a couple of years research, many serious business bloggers have come to the conclusion that a simple 2 column blog with a cleanly designed header is all you need as an effective blog. You make too many “bells and whistles” on your blog and you will scare away visitors because of too many choices to make. Keep it simple.

Although it is important that you post articles on your blog that is relevant to your target market, it is equally important to develop online related products from your business, such as an ebook showing a “how to” method for the product or service you are providing.

For example, a dog groomer business could write and create an ebook about “do it yourself” methods about dog grooming at home. Don’t worry, after revealing the methods available, your prospect or customer is still going to hire your dog grooming service for the convenience and consider you even more of the “expert” since you now publish a book about dog grooming.

There are three main things you should include in your blog to make sure it is maximized for marketing of your business. We will reveal these things in our next post.

The video below may get a little “techy” for some, but take a look and you will get the idea of how powerful making comments on other blogs really is.

Backlinks are simply where other site are linking in to your site because your content attracts them as good reference material. Because you are considered the “expert,” in a particular topic, other sites will refer to your site and you get all the credit for it!

Of course, it often is not as simple as that, but there is a great chance that a qualified prospect is going to find your video and contact you.

Just last month, we put up a blog for a local customer and within a day after submitting a video, his business got a call for a sizeable piece of business. Now that is not typical of what happens when a business puts up a video, but it has been proven time and time again that video is definitely the way to go to attract customers on a limited budget.

If you make a video, we have several video sites you could submit to for excellent results.

1. Youtube.com
2. Viddler.com
3. Vimeo.com
4. Metacafe.com
5. Revver.com
6. Video.Google.com
7. Video.Yahoo.com

If you don’t want to bother about the time it takes to submit to all these sites at once, there is a free service called www.tubemogul.com that you register once, and it will automatically distribute your video to multiple video hosted sites, many of which I listed above.

Don’t underestimate the power of video if you want to get a wide online presence in the least amount of time. Think of the possiblities for your business.

We found a very inspiring and entertaining video from world famous blogger and author Gary Vaynerchuk. He currently has a book out called “Crush It,” that is available on Amazon. He started a blog on wine and has made literally millions of dollars through his dedication of putting in high quality content on the blogs. Enjoy.

I strongly believe that the business blog can serve as the main website and blog at the same time. Blogs have evolved to what is known as CMS, or content management system.

Wikipedia, the world renown online encylopedia defines a content management system as follows:

“A Content Management System (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based.”

Wikipedia goes on to describe these procedures:

1) Allow for a large number of people to contribute to and share stored data
2) Control access to data, based on user roles. User roles define what information each user can view or edit
3) Aid in easy storage and retrieval of data
4) Reduce repetitive duplicate input
5) Improve the ease of report writing
6) Improve communication between users

So, with all that said, blogs are your solution to these functions!

You may be surfing your favorite websites and not even know that they are blogs. The line is blurring between what a conventional website looks like versus a CMS style blog.