Money, money and money… Whenever we want to do something big, we always think it’s going to cost us a fortune. So, we dig a grave to bury our dreams without ever thinking about doing some research that whether our dreams of making our small business a huge success is possible in limited budget or not.

One thing that causes small businesses to fail is that small businesses don’t work on creating their corporate identity. Without creating a top quality logo, you can’t build your business image and, hence, your marketing efforts will only waste your time and money.

Corporate Identity, Social Media and Graphic Design are Connected:

Your logo design helps you create your identity. When you use online social media to promote your business, your campaigns won’t be effective without an attractive logo.

Yes, your logo design plays an important role in giving your business a credible look. If it’s not attractive, your business won’t look attractive. As social media is a free way of promoting your business globally, you still won’t get much benefit.

Secondly, even if you manage to drive traffic to your site through your social media campaigns, you will only enjoy high conversion if your website design is attractive and professional.

Hence, corporate identity, social media and your website or graphic design are connected and they all work together to make your business successful.

Let’s Talk About Them in Detail:

Corporate Identity:

To create your corporate identity in a professional way, you need a professionally designed logo. In order to understand the importance of this small piece of design, let’s look at all big brands. For example: Nike, Toyota, Target, Adidas, etc. They all have a logo and these businesses are easily recognized by their logos.

Luckily, in today’s tough competition, custom logo design prices are not high. You can now get a top quality logo at a fraction of the cost.

Long gone are the days when logos cost thousands of dollars.

So, before you start promoting your business, go ahead and get a top quality custom logo design to represent your business professionally worldwide.

Social Media:

After creating your corporate identity, you may start your marketing campaigns. Today, online social media is a powerful way of promoting your business. When you create your accounts on different sites, you can display your logo design on all different pages. This way, your market will begin to know about your business and recognize your logo.

If your logo design is of low-quality, the chances are, you will be perceived as a low-quality business and people won’t take much interest in you. So, start marketing on social media after you create your corporate identity in an effective way.

Graphic Design:

Now, it’s time you drive traffic to your site from social media. However, you won’t enjoy a good conversion rate if the graphic design of your website is not attractive. So, this is something you need to work on. Make sure your website looks attractive and your logo is prominent on all pages.

Just like logos, getting your website designed is not expensive these days. When you pay to create an attractive website, think of your payment as an investment which will eventually pay off and help you increase your sales and grow your business.

The bottom line is… Uncle Sam never told us that Corporate Identity, Social Media and Graphic Design work together to make your business a huge success. The best part is… You can achieve success even if your budget is limited.

This is a guest post by Ben Johnson from logoinn.com

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Back in Nov 2009 I posted Chitika + Adsense Ad Placement Guide. Chitika is still my 2nd largest make money online revenue stream. Since Nov 2009 my Chitika income increased significantly in parallel to the increase in the number of referrals and blog posts. The best is yet to come. Today I would like to share a very good news about Chitika.  I am very excited to let you know that Chitika is expanding their ad display to show to more than just your search traffic! What this means to you? Your Chitika ads will now show to some of your non-search traffic so you can generate more revenue. Great, isn’t it?

The new ads are called Chitika Select. Using their click-prediction technology, Chitika will display Select ads on your blog when there is a higher chance the ad will be clicked.

How will this affect your revenue/stats?

Whenever Select ads are displayed on your blog it will result in more impressions to your Chitika ads automatically. The more impressions to your Chitika ads, the higher revenue. Chitika estimates Select ads could give bloggers a 5 – 10% revenue increase on top of Premium alone. Not so bad, huh?

The good thing is, you do not have to make any changes to your Chitka ads; this will happen automatically starting Monday, March 8th, 2010. Excellent news!

You might have some questions about the new ads. Bearing this in mind, I copied FAQ section from the official announcement for your easy guidance:

Can I Still Use Chitika | Select With Google AdSense?

Yes! Just like the Chitika | Premium ads you can use the new Chitika | Select ads and AdSense together on the same page.

How Can I Upgrade My Chitika | Premium Ads?

You don’t need to, it will happen automatically Monday, March 8th 2010.

Are Chitika | Select Ads PPC (Pay-Per-Click)?

Chitika | Select will always show the highest-paying ads possible. This will include PPC ads as well as CPM image/banner ads (which pay per impression, whether a user clicks or not).

Will Chitika | Select Ads look different than Chitika | Premium?

Sometimes. Similar to how Google shows image/banner ads if they determine that it is the highest paying ad for a certain user visiting the site, we will do the same. Some of your users will see ads with the Chitika | Premium format and others will see ads that look different but will pay more.

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We’ve all been there.  Sitting in front of a blank page, blank screen, or basically any blank space that needs to be filled with fodder from your brain.  And yet, you just can’t seem to form the words that will culminate in a cohesive whole.  You struggle to put together some kind of sensible sentence, but all you get is gobbledygook that belongs in a Tim Burton/Johnny Depp vehicle, not in your serious writing.

Most of us refer to this horrible phenomena as writer’s block, but there is an especially heinous permutation of this syndrome known as Blogger’s Block.  Why is this worse for bloggers than other literary types?  Two reasons: first, most bloggers are called upon to write continuously, and let’s face it, sometimes you just ain’t got the juice, and second, if you write a blog, it may be a source of income, which you definitely can’t lose due to a battle with your brain.

So how do you combat this most deadly of writing diseases?  Good news.  There are several solutions.

One good way to start is by taking a break.  Yeah, you’re on a deadline, but psyching yourself out isn’t going to do you any good, so go think about something else for a while.  Watch some TV, listen to a little Led Zep, or read a magazine.  The logic behind this is two-fold.  Often, if you go away from a problem for a while, the answer will *magically* come to you (this is not actuallly magic, it’s simply your brain clearing the clutter).  In addition, focusing on something else may spark an idea.  It’s not uncommon to find inspiration in another source of inventive media.  Your brain is apt to look for connections in any sensory input, so fill up on that creative Kool-Aid!

Another trick that many writers swear by is…drum roll, please…writing!  Yes, the best way to get your gray matter on the think-train to literary-land is to start the ball rolling.  Try some descriptive writing about the things around you (…the curtains billowed lazily in the sweltering heat of the late August afternoon…).  Or if you’re really having trouble, tap into an online source like www.creativewritingprompts.com.  Old school writers bought books, but today we do it much faster.  Find topics like “If I were to barter my brain…” and beginning lines like, “She knew it wasn’t any of her business but Catherine couldn’t help wondering what Wade was up to.”  Is Catherine looking for love or is Wade getting taller at an alarming rate?  Only you can tell.  The point is, just getting into the right mindset can reboot your brain and get you back on track.  Another good source is www.theteacherscorner.net/daily-writing-prompts/.

So if you find yourself giving your monitor the thousand-mile stare and every time you look at the clock only eight seconds have gone by (rather than the thirty minutes it felt like), give yourself a break and go for some inspiration.  There are worse things than getting a little boost for your creative genius (like for example, missing a deadline).

Guest post by Sarah Harris, of Zen College Life, the premier directory for online schools. Find out more information about criminal justice degrees.

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Every now and then I test and review valuable ad networks for bloggers. Conridium is yet another one. It is especially suitable for gaming/entertainment bloggers. If you are blogging about games and entertainment you can make some extra income by joining this ad network.

Conridium is a CPA ad network which pays publishers for generating sign-ups for the most popular free multiplayer games online. They have the great offers and you can’t complain about the payouts. They are a gaming ad network that started a while ago and not to many people know about them.

You can get around 30% conversion on the clicks and around 65% conversions from your gaming site. Conridium was not so hard of a network to get approved. As a publisher you get paid for every sign up you bring them. From my experience they pay pretty well. They offer revenue shares with their publishers, and it varies depending on your site.

They have a great publisher relations guy. He is really responsive and always is happy to answer any of my question and concerns. One thing I learned as a publisher you can not have incentivized leads with them. Once you have created your account, you would need to submit your website details for approval before the ad code is provided to you. Personally, I would recommend that you put your best site forward [in terms of traffic]  and a site in the entertainment/gaming niche would have more chances of approval.

As a publisher you will have various banner ad options; leader board, half banner, sky scraper,The most effective ad size is their new Editorial links. the links are way more effective but you have to ask them so they can get you editorials.

On my account I am generating an average of 50-1.50 per sign-up, I have not seen any network so far in the gaming industry with this high of payouts for signing up for a free game. They pay via Paypal or Check, subject to a $100.00 USD minimum balance.

Conridium’s minimum requirement is 50,000 unique visitors a month, entrainment/gaming content. Though from my experience MMO/RPG web sites do the best job for them.

Over all Conridum is pretty good addition to any earning strategy, and depending on how you place your ads , may end up giving your monthly revenues a real boost! Highly recommended for anyone in the gaming niche.

You can find more details at their website: www.conridium.com

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I’m always working on new projects and half of them are new blog sites, usually in niche markets. When setting up a new blog, I have a separate folder I use for uploading all of my important wordpress plugins. I’m always on the look out for ways to improve spacing, loading times and reader interaction, and many of the plugins do just that. Here is my breakdown on wordpress plugins that every blog should be using.

Stop Spam with Akismet
This one is a given, but it’s still a necessity. Without Akisment, managing your blog and comments would just be a pain. The bigger your site traffic the more comment spam you will get. You may be getting comment spam on your new blogs before even getting a real comment. The bottom line is, Akismet is your first line of defense for cutting down comment spam.
- Download Akismet for WordPress

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP)
You spend a lot of time writing your blog content, don’t let your old posts die and get lost for ever. Once a reader gets to the bottom of your post, instead of seeing just a comment form, add in the YARPP plugin and show a list of your older related posts as well. This is a great way to bring new traffic and attnetion to your older posts.
- Download YARRP for WordPress

Improve Your Chances of a High SEO Listing
Bring your blog’s search engine power to the next level by adding the “All-in-One SEO” plugin. This plugin is at the top of many designers lists as a must have. All in One SEO allows you to add in your own meta description, title tags and keywords for individual blog posts and pages.
- Download All in One SEO for WordPress

Threading Your Comments is a Must
It wasn’t til recently that I set this blog up with threaded comments. Before then, it was a mess and very annoying to respond to someone, as it would set all comments out of order. The blog is now running of Brian’s Threaded Comments plugin, which keeps everything clean and organized, while actually increasing your blog commenting activity.
- Download Brian’s Threaded Comments for WordPress

Bring in Free Viral Traffic with Twitter
There are a lot of different options to choose from when adding social media buttons to your blog. I’ve been using TweetMeme for a while now and have been happy with it. In short, this plugin will create a short redirect link and allow other Twitter users to “retweet” your post in a single click. This is great for bringing in free viral traffic.
- Download TweetMeme for WordPress

WP Super Cache to the Rescue
Any digg, resource or social media related blog already understands and appreciates the value of WP Super Cache. This plugin is responsible for saving a ton of downtime and server crashes for blogs overloading with traffic. WP Super Cache plugin increases the page/post loading time and reduces the resource consumption on your server.
- Download WP Super Cache for WordPress

Is Your Blog iPhone Ready?
Last year I finally got my hands on the iPhone and there is no going back. Unfortunately many sites just didn’t look that great, or where overwhelmed with content. I came across a plugin called WPTouch, which make your blog completely accessible and easy to read through the iPhone. This plugin is definitely worth checking out. (I also did a full post on this plugin a while back)
- Download WPtouch iPhone Theme for WordPress

Other top notable wordpress plugins on my list include; Contact Form 7, Subscribe to Comments, WordPress Automatic Upgrade, WordPress Backup & Google XML Sitemaps.

There’s hundreds of amazing plugins out there, and I’ve only mentioned a few. Feel free to leave a comment with your favorite wordpress plugin that isn’t on the list.

Don’t forget to visit www.ZacJohnson.com and comment on new posts! Top Commenters are rewarded with fun prizes every month!

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As I continue on with my mini hiatus, I promised on my last post that I will leave you with something to get you entertained until I resume with my normal online activities (hopefully very soon).

For this yearly recap, I have chosen some posts which are amongst my favorites and are not based on any type of popularity nor most commented or anything like that. And so, without further ado, here are my favorite posts for 2009.

Blogging Tips

Tempted to Turn Your Blog into an Ugly Wasteland?
Commenting 101 – A Power Sometimes Ignored
The Most Annoying Things On A Website
8 Tips To Create Your Content and Beat Writer’s Block
6 Reasons Every Blogger Should Be Guest Posting

SEO Tips and Tools

What Does Google Know About You?
Ad Intelligence: Advanced Keyword Research Tool
Bing SEO Toolkit – One Of The Best SEO Tools
3 Step Guide To Simple SEO Article Writing
Become A Google Certified Power Searcher

AdSense Tips, MMO and related articles

Make Money Using Google’s Analytics Data
Make Money With Google – Increase Your Earning Potential With Ad Planner
Forget Making Money Online – It Sucks #2
Forget Making Money Online – It Sucks #1
More AdSense Tips To Improve Revenue
Using Google’s AdSense Channels – Video Tutorials #1

That’s it. A very Happy and Prosperous New Year For Everyone. See you all soon!

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Do Follow Blogs – Click for image credit

Time is our most precious resource. All bloggers and business owners wish they had more of it and continually seek ways to accomplish more each day.

KeywordLuv and CommentLuv are effective ways to make every comment we write or receive provide far more benefits.

I strongly recommend bloggers join the do follow movement and install the CommentLuv and KeywordLuv plugins.

We and many of our favorite bloggers are focusing more and more of our time and efforts exclusively in dofollow blogs. The CommentLuv community is especially strong and readers can easily see CommentLuv featured posts.

They may not be aware that installing CommentLuv and registering your site allows you to suggest one of your last ten posts. Andy has already acted on a suggestion I made to allow you to select your most important posts instead and he has even added the ability to select your own anchor text for that post! Used wisely, that new feature can allow you to get ranked in the search engines for your most important keyword phrases.

The benefits of using KeywordLuv are not as obvious to many so I want to spell them out and explain exactly why I so strongly recommend using it. First you need to clearly understand what anchor text is and why it is so important to you.

Anchor text is simply the words used in the actual link that tell the search engines what the page the link points to is about.

Many bloggers are NOT using anchor text effectively or do not even know what phrases are important to them. There is nothing more important to your getting more traffic from the search engines than clearly targeting your best anchor text. Read my building traffic post for how to do this.

BENEFITS OF KEYWORDLUV:

1. Most bloggers and blog readers dislike keywords in the name field instead of a name. The reason commentators do that is because without KeywordLuv whatever is in the Name field is what is used as anchor text – and that is NOT effective. Installing KeywordLuv fixes that issue by allowing commentators to separate their name from the keywords.
2. KeywordLuv allows business owners and bloggers to select their own anchor text and pair it with the most targeted landing page.
3. Bloggers can more clearly understand what their commentators do and what their major interests are based on the keywords they use.
4. When we blog about our regular commentators we can use the anchor text and links they shared to ensure we are providing them with maximum benefits.

KeywordLuv allows us all to combine commenting and SEO efforts so that we can interact more frequently, strengthen our blogging community relationships and make our sites easier to find in the search engines which will increase our traffic, subscribers and potentially our incomes.

HOW TO USE KEYWORDLUV:

KeywordLuv is simple to use. Instead of putting your name or keywords into the Name field of a comment, use YourName @ Your Keywords.

Here are some examples so everyone is clear on the idea:

• Adam @ Merchant Affiliate Program Manager or Adam @ OPM
• Gail @ Social Media Marketing or Gail @ Business Blogging
• Pete @ Gift Affiliate Program
• Michelle @ Poster Printing
• Jeff @ Wedding Affiliate Program

Notice that only the keyword phrase is linked and that is exactly what your comment name field will look like too. You can vary the anchor text you choose.

For maximum benefit choose specific pages or posts optimized for each phrase and link that specific page/post to that specific keyword phrase.

You will not end up with enough incoming links to any one page if you do not send specific keyword phrases to specific pages/posts.

You can maximize the effectiveness of what you write by optimizing a page specifically for each keyword phrase – especially if you are offering services or products.

That involves good timing in blogs using CommentLuv so read on for how to change your landing page to match your keyword phrase. When you register your site at CommentLuv you entered your URL.

For CommentLuv to work you must enter it into the URL field EXACTLY as you registered it including using or not using the www and including or not including the trailing slash / at the end. You may want to copy and paste it somewhere so you can paste it back in later.

If you don’t see your last ten posts in CommentLuv the most likely cause is the URL you entered is not exactly how you registered it.

To link your selected anchor text to a page different than the one you registered with CommentLuv, fill in your comment as usual, select the CommentLuv post you wish to feature and then do this:

Just before you submit the comment, paste the URL of your preferred post/page into the URL field and immediately submit the comment.

It takes CommentLuv some time to realize the URL field has changed. If you forget or take too long you will lose the CommentLuv featured post you selected.

If that happens just paste your registered URL back into the Website URL field and click into the body of the comment. That will prompt CommentLuv to find your last ten posts again. Select the one you want, and then change the URL again and immediately submit the comment.

By installing KeywordLuv you allow business and blog owners to help themselves to generate more traffic and more sales.

Some will notice that I keep comments most bloggers would summarily delete. I do this because I know that businesses are in dire economic condition and it is essential that small and online businesses survive and even thrive in spite of the current economic climate.

I encourage my fellow bloggers to be forgiving of those who are new and haven’t learned to write excellent comments yet. Is it not better to educate them and even the offshore SEO companies they hire so they can call learn?

Many businesses do not have the time or skills needed to leave their own comments and may not know the difference between spam and adding to the conversation. We can educate them and make the world a better place.

For those bloggers willing to do more I ask that you participate in my new BizLuv MEME and find out how you can Support Your Favorite Businesses and benefit your own blog at the same time.

Note that not all blogs using CommentLuv or KeywordLuv are Do Follow.

I suspect that many assume they are and I personally find it disingenuous to use  these plugins that are so connected to the dofollow community and make them nofollow. For this reason I choose not to include nofollowed KeywordLuv sites in my KeywordLuv Twitter List.

CommentLuv blogs are included on my DoFollow Twitter List. Would anyone prefer that I create a DoFollow CommentLuv List?

WHERE TO GET THE PLUGINS:

• KeywordLuv plugin – I claimed @KeywordLuv to make the KeywordLuv plugin and this information post easy to find
• CommentLuv plugin | How to use CommentLuv with IntenseDebate

I am currently compiling lists of Keyword Love enabled blogs, keywordluv lists and will add keyword luv tools if I find any.

Why should you link to bloggers who use KeywordLuv? Because they understand the importance of anchor text and are highly likely to add high quality links to your sites!

KEYWORDLUV LISTS:

• Dofollow.info Do follow blogs tagged as having KeywordLuv installed
• BlogAbout Everything KeywordLuv list (Updated Feb 12, 2010)

Please leave links to any additional Keyword Luv lists or tools you know of in the comments of this post. Thank you.

KEYWORD LUV BLOGS BY NICHE:

Use these lists to find KeywordLuv enabled blogs in your niche. I highly recommend going beyond exchanging comments to linking to and writing about each other’s sites.

Anchor text is so very important that if you appear in the list below I will edit yours on request. Just leave a comment in this post.

COMPUTER FINANCING:

Computer Financing Today – I thought some of my readers might be interested to know that Creative_Ace’s dofollow blog offers 5.99% computer financing with no credit checks. CJ is working on getting KeywordLuv working as I type this.

BLOGGING:

BloggerLuv (Twitter) Blog Collaboration
Kikolani (Twitter) The Art of Blogging for Blogging Tips and Social Media Marketing
Tycoon Blogger (Twitter) Blogging Tips
Andrew Rondeau (Twitter) How to Build a Blog Download your free blogging guide
Nice Blogger (BituMihau) Blogging Best Practices
Hot Blog Tips (HotBlogTips) Blogging Tips
Another Blogger (AnotherBlogger) Blogging Tips including How to Import Blogger Blogs to WordPress
Pot Politics (JSinKeyWest) Blogging Tips and Everything Else

INTERNET MARKETING:

GrowMap – this site
Don Power’s Local Business Internet Marketing and Local Social Media Marketing
Dennis Edell Direct Sales Marketing
I Do Web Marketing
Extreme John (Twitter) Business Reviews and Blogging Tips
Internet Marketing for Mommies (momtohanna) Making Money with Squidoo Lens – Get a Squidoo Lens Review

AFFILIATE MARKETING:

AffiliateXFiles (Twitter) Affiliate Marketing Advice

WEB DEVELOPMENT:

Activo Web Development Blog team of Web Designers dedicated to KeywordLuv

DOFOLLOW LISTS:

Blog about Do Follow Blogs

FREELANCE WRITERS and PRODUCT REVIEWERS:

Moomettes Magnificents (Twitter) Product Reviews | Add Your Contests and Giveaways
Creative Ace (Creative_Ace) Freelance Writing and Online Technical Writing

VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS:

Social Media Virtual Assistant (Twitter) Offering Social Media Marketing Services

HOME IMPROVEMENT / REAL ESTATE:

Good Millwork Architectural Moldings including Crown Moldings, Baseboards and Chair Rail and Exterior Shutters, Wood Siding and other Millwork
Tampa Florida Real Estate Blog (DannyinTampa)
Gulf Coast Beach Team Alabama Gulf Coast Real Estate (GulfShoresLife)
Las Vegas Real Estate

WEDDINGS and GIFTS:

ExecGiftsBlog Associated with Executive Gift Shoppe’s Personalized Gifts Store and featuring a Wedding Store
Valentine’s Day Chocolate Truffles and Chocolate Do Follow Blog with CommentLuv and KeywordLuv

GOLF:

NoBogies Golf Blog and Golf Store with comprehensive posts on the Rules of Golf
Putting Mat Improving Your Golf Putting Confirmed Do Follow CommentLuv KeywordLuv

MUSIC:

Remergence Rembeatz Electronica Duo (JJ_Remergence) and (Rembeatz)
Blazing Minds Music Blog (BlazingMinds)

TECHNOLOGY, HARDWARE, SOFTWARE:

Software Critics Software Reviews (MathDelane)

GENERAL:

Known dofollow KeywordLuv enabled blogs in all other niches (more sections to be added as needed):

The Blog About Everything | KeywordLuv list (Updated Feb 12, 2010)

Know of a Do Follow KeywordLuv blog missing from the above list? Let me know in the comments. If it is yours please also include your best anchor text phrases and landing pages and fill in the Twitter field too.

Posts like this take an extremely long time to compile and create. There are many more KeywordLuv enabled blogs to be added from Kikolani’s Dofollow.info Do follow blogs tagged as having KeywordLuv installed and to be found by searching.

We collectively need to decide on the best solution for compiling KeywordLuv blogs by niche. Please volunteer or leave suggestions in the comments. Thank you.

I am asking my readers to contribute to this project by adding your favorite KeywordLuv enabled blogs in the comments of this post. Please provide desired anchor text and landing pages.

As time allows I WILL move them into the body of this post to provide you with stronger editorial links.

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TopRank’s recent Blogging and SEO survey of in-house, agency and independent marketing, advertising and PR professionals revealed that 95% of respondents incorporate blogs as part of their online marketing mix. Nearly 88% have successfully increased measurable SEO objectives as a direct result of blogging.

Thousands of new blogs are started by companies and individuals each day. Yet getting a blog set-up, optimized, and launched are just the first steps. No one will know you have a blog to read, subscribe or link to unless you take an important next step: promotion. There are plenty of places you can promote and market a new blog:

• Add A Link – If it’s a company blog, or if it’s attached to another site, add a link to the blog from the main navigation on the parent website.
• Create A Badge – On the main website, add a badge to the homepage, or sidebar, that promotes the the blog. Images are a good way to catch a visitors attention.
• Email – Add a link to the blog in your email signature.
• Newsletter – Announce the blog in the company newsletter.
• Network – Announce the blog to your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, Linked in connections and any other social networks that you are apart of.
• Press Release – If you feel that the blog is important enough to support a press release, put one out.
• Submit – Submit the blog to blog & feed directories.
• Share – Share your blog with co-workers, friends and others in your network. You never know when they might promote it for you.
• Link – One way to get other bloggers to notice you is to link to them. Summarize someone else’s long blog post, expand upon someones shorter post, or just write your thoughts on a topic that someone else wrote about and link back to the original post.
• Give Away – If it’s a product blog, run a promotion on the blog giving away one of your products. Sometimes the value that can come out of giving something away can be more beneficial than all the items above.
• Guest Post – If there are other blogs in your industry, ask around and see if they’d allow you to guest post for them. In return, you’d get a link back to your blog in your profile, or post, on their site.
• Ask – Tap into the social networks within the industry you’re trying to reach and ask them what they’re interested in. Here’s an example of a post that did just that on Twitter for this blog. Show interest in the interest of your audience and they’ll pay more attention and share your content.

Probably the best promotion tactic is to create good content, post often and share. The more content a blog has, the greater the footprint it has on the web in terms of pages to appear in search results and to link to from other blogs/web sites. Work on creating a posting schedule and according to resources and reader interest, try to get one to five posts out a week.

“Build it and they will come” doesn’t work with web sites and it certainly doesn’t work with blogs. Promote relevant and useful content to create awareness and the quality of your information will propel your brand to a much larger audience.

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Image from Flickr – New Gold Dream…

Since very long time I have dreamed of an e-commerce website powered by WordPress. I have tried various WordPress plugins throughout my journey. However none of them did not satisfy me. I decided to postpone my dream to future.

One day while I was surfing the web, I discovered ShopperPress by luck. Basically it is a premium WordPress plugin (with various theme options) that lets you setup your own shopping cart / online store quickly and easily in 10 minutes. It turns a standard WordPress blog into a feature rich shopping cart website used by thousands of people worldwide for many purposes.

Well, I was excited with the idea of having my first e-commerce website with ShopperPress that I immediately downloaded the free version. The theme was performing very well, thus I decided to purchase the VIP version.

Bearing in mind that the Christmas shopping rush was so close, I decided to launch my website at the beginning of December. Even though there wasn’t enough time to compete with other websites, I thought it was one of the best periods of the year in terms of testing a shopping website.

Having spent a few hours in Google Adwords Keyword tool, I came out with a nice name for a shopping website: Web Shopping Bag. I checked name.com and found out that the domain was free.  Bull’s eye! I grabbed the domain, installed WordPress via cpanel, and then installed the ShopperPress plugin. It took 3-4 hours in total to decide the domain name, grab it,  install WordPress&ShopperPress.  Finally my dream came true: Web Shopping Bag

It’s been only three weeks since I launched the website, but the number of visitors increase day by day. This can be expected from a WordPress driven website. All search engines like WordPress blogs. ShopperPress themes are also SEO ready. That is why it performs better than a standard WordPress blog.

If you are looking for an easy and flexible WordPress shopping cart plugin, ShopperPress could be the best solution.

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One challenge some companies face in social media marketing is how to bridge the gap between stale corporate or e-commerce sites and social networking websites.  What is the link between your site and social networking sites?  How do you get people FROM social sites back TO your corporate site and visa versa?

Some “experts” posit the best solution is to just to slap badges on your homepage saying “Follow us on Twitter” or “Find us on Facebook.”  Or “make sure your site links are on all your social profiles” so people will see your link, click on it and visit you.  These are foundational points, but there’s more to successful social awareness for your company than showing your site visitors where your official socials account are.

The important and missing link  for some marketers may be adding a blog to their main site. Why?

Online social media users are constantly looking for new and fresh content. A site blog provides an opportunity to reach these users with fresh content related to your business.  With ongoing, strong and effective content creation – and sharing of the site blog content into social – you can create a tremendously effective link between your social networking presences and your main company website.

To demonstrate, here’s a graphic:

Site Blog Influence in Social Media (click to enlarge)

Though a blog on a corporate or product site is not a new idea by any means, it’s often overlooked for its added social sharing and conversion value.  If you are not a publisher, you’re simply not producing a lot of content that can be shared in social media.  Blogs provide this platform.  A blog provides an opportunity for visitors from social sites (who saw the content you fed in from your blog) to click back to the blog and then be only one click away from areas on your site where they may convert for product purchase, inquire for service or RFP, or perform another action such as CPC, email sign-up, RSS subscription, etc. And though social is not about selling all the time, all marketers have a responsibility to make their efforts pay off at some point.  Being able to access more opportunities for conversion is a true benefit with blogs.

There are deep considerations as to what type of content goes on a site blog, the technology to use, what the editorial schedule will be and who will contribute, but if you can settle these questions and a few other key strategy issues, a blog can be a fruitful effort and a core link in your social strategy.  It can drive deeper connections to your social profiles, sending traffic from social back to your blog and main site, and can provide greater reach to new audiences in search, social news, other blogs and mainstream press.

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