Five Ways A Blog Helps You To Market Your Business

I discovered this interesting article about the value of a blog in one of the ezines I subscribe to. I thought it would be interesting to share this with you.

By Michael Murray

Want to advertise online without spending a fortune? Get a blog.

If you're an Internet marketer, you need a blog, because:

• a blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines; and
• a blog expands your customer base.

Blogs are often called social marketing tools, because they let you interact with your readers via comments and permalinks (see the glossary below.)

What's a blog? Get up to speed here:

• http://www.blogger.com/tour_start.g
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blogs

Let's look at five ways a blog helps you to market your business.

1. A blog helps your site to rank higher in the search engines.
   
   In 2003, when Google bought Pyra Labs, the company which developed Blogger, the reaction was Huh? At the time, blogs were seen by most as online journals, primarily maintained by the demented and teenage girls.
   
   How times change. In 2006, companies small and large are using blogs to promote their businesses. This is because Google and the other search engines love blogs because of their constantly updated content.
   
   Blog often, and you'll get more visitors and a good search engine ranking.
   
   
2. A blog expands your customer base – you'll reach people you could reach in no other way.
   
   A blog helps you to reach people you can reach in no other way because your frequent updates mean that you'll automatically get niche visitors – those people who have no clue about you or the product that you're selling, but who happened to type in a search engine query that mentioned words you used in a single post.
   
   Those niche visitors can become buyers, and this means that you don’t need to struggle to get top listings in any search engine. Write (or link to) quality content, and your visitors will find you.
   
   
3. A blog helps your site to differentiate itself.
   
   A blog is a form of stealth marketing. Therefore a blog doesn’t need to be about the products you're selling. A blog can be about any topic that you're passionate about. Blog about your passion, and mention – in passing – the products you're selling. You can also link to them, but don’t bother selling heavily – that's not what a blog is about.
   
   
4. Like a diamond, a blog is forever.
   
   Although the most-visited blogs update often, some of them several times a day, that doesn’t mean that you have post more often than you can fit into your schedule. Your permalinks (see below) mean that since your blog items are standalone pages, they’re indexed by search engines in the same way that any HTML or other page is indexed – your blog items/pages will continue to bring traffic even if you don’t update very often.
   
   
5. A blog attracts new opportunities. A blog makes your business visible.
   
   Your stealth marketing efforts will attract the attention of people who may become joint venture partners, or who will have other opportunities for you.

The time and energy that you invest in your blog can bring results beyond your wildest expectations. Create a blog – it's your hardest-working, and most cost-effective online marketing option.

GLOSSARY:

Blog = Web log.
Permalink = permanent link, an URL for a single blog post.
Comment = blogs have a comments section, where readers can interact with the blogger and others.

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HTML Resources

What exactly is HTML anyway? HTML is a computer language devised to allow website creation. These websites can then be viewed by anyone else connected to the Internet. It is relatively easy to learn, with the basics being accessible to most people in one sitting; and quite powerful in what it allows you to create. It is constantly undergoing revision and evolution to meet the demands and requirements of the growing Internet audience under the direction of the » W3C, the organization charged with designing and maintaining the language.

The definition of HTML is HyperText Markup Language.

•HyperText is the method by which you move around on the web— by clicking on special text called hyperlinks which bring you to the next page. The fact that it is hyper just means it is not linear — i.e. you can go to any place on the Internet whenever you want by clicking on links — there is no set order to do things in.

•Markup is what HTML tags do to the text inside them. They mark it as a certain type of text (italicised text, for example).

•HTML is a Language, as it has code-words and syntax like any other language.

Let’s start with the easy stuff. You can create an HTML page and not know anything about the codes used. To begin with you can use any word processing program, like Microsoft Word and create a page for you website. All you have to do is save the file as an HTML file, which is available in all the newer programs. You can work in a pre-existing site and use the wysiwyg editor which means “what you see is what you get.” You set up your page the same way you would in a document and the editor creates the HTML code in the background.

If you want to do the coding yourself, here are some useful links that explain HTML, give you codes for various features like text font and color and I’ve included and HTML reader so that you can test out your code before you put it into the website.

You will find this HTML Practice Board very useful. You can type out your script in Notepad or any other text editor and copy and paste it into the practice board. That way you’ll see if it works and if it doesn’t you can fix it before you go to the trouble to add it to your site. http://www.practiceboard.com/.

If you want to see what colors you can use and their codes then this site is extremely useful. Scroll down to the bottom of the page to get other color charts. http://www.brobstsystems.com/colors1.htm, http://www.isdntek.com/demo/internetcolors.htm.

This site will give you rainbow lettering. It does use a lot of code to produce the affect so use it where it will have the most impact. http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/tools/rainbow_text/rainbow_text.html

These sites give you directions on how to actually code your script. Even though some of them say they’re site specific, you can use the coding anywhere. http://www.eobcards.com/tutorial3.htm, http://www.bulls2.com/indexb/bobstips2.html, http://werbach.com/barebones/barebones.html

The following sites are tutorials and other miscellaneous sites that have useful information. http://www.yourhtmlsource.com/, http://www.snapfiles.com/get/umarklite.html and http://cooltext.com/.


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