MarketingTypo.com

Brief introduction:
Sohu Blog is one of the leading blog service in China. Out of huge user numbers, Sohu has a large blogging user base(more than 10 million) who blog frequently on sohu blog. Unlike Sina’s celebrity blog strategy, Sohu label themselves as “grass root blog”, “web2.0 blog”.
Url: blog.sohu.com
Company: Sohu.com Inc
Private or public traded: Public listed [...]

View full post on China Online Marketing

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Yes, it’s true my friend. The cash strapped country is now taking to the blogging community for their next source of funds to blow. The first state on the list is Philadelphia, which has already sent out an undisclosed amount of documents to bloggers of all sizes to fork over $300 for a lifetime blogging license. To make things worse, a great majority of these bloggers aren’t even making over $300 with their blogging efforts. Many only making a few dollars a year, but are still required to fork over $300 for their blogger license.

In an article released by CityPaper, Bess is interviewed about her minimal blogging with eHow.com and her own personal, and the $300 blogger license letter she recieved from the state. Bess says:

“The real kick in the pants is that I don’t even have a full-time job, so for the city to tell me to pony up $300 for a business privilege license, pay wage tax, business privilege tax, net profits tax on a handful of money is outrageous,“.

Don’t think your blog is making enough money to be considered a business? An interesting statement from the article states:

“According to Andrea Mannino of the Philadelphia Department of Revenue, in fact, simply choosing the option to make money from ads — regardless of how much or little money is actually generated — qualifies a blog as a business. The same rules apply to freelance writers.”

While a $300 blogger license may not seem like a lot to full time established bloggers, how about the millions of bloggers hosted on free services like Blogspot and WordPress? Both of these services use ad serving on their sites, so all of these bloggers are potential targets. There is a wide range of speculation and questions to be answered here.

I’m sure this is only the beginning. Once the other states and law makers get wind of Philadelphia cashing in on bloggers, it will spread across the country like wildfire.

View full post on Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate – Zac Johnson dot Com

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

With more online marketers making the move to blogging to build their brand and product base, it’s important to make sure you are staying above the curve with your blog and making the most of it. Besides the obvious importance of having a memorable domain name and a unique blog design, it’s also important to make sure visitors can quickly navigate through your site while hitting they key spots and returning for future visits.

Today I will be focusing on ten (5 today, 5 tomorrow) ways for the new, average or advanced blogger to better monetize their blog for profit. How many of these methods are you currently practicing?

Direct Ad Sales

Yes, we hear it all the time…”I hate banner ads and never click on them!“… sure, as marketers we can see banner ads a mile away and if we click on them, it’s because we clearly want to. From within the affiliate marketing industry, ad networks and product launches love banners, and they are proven to work very well. However, selling direct banner advertising may not be as successful in other blogging niches, such as a sports related site or cooking. You have to test your audience and find relevant advertising and what they are looking for.

Selling direct advertising on your site can be frustrating at first as you will need to establish your site and grow your traffic before placing ads on your site. During my first 9 months of this blog, I focused on my content, growth and readership and had no banner advertising… now ad spots are in demand month after month.

I go into how I setup my direct advertising and my preferred sites for outsourcing advertising, in my free Six Figure Affiliate Blogging guide.

Referral Marketing

The affiliate marketing industry is very unique in how it operates. Not only is “ok” to talk about how much we as individuals/affiliates make, but we like to talk about how and who (what networks) we are using. With so much talk about new campaigns and what ad networks have the best performing offers, it’s only fitting that our readers and other affiliates would follow our advice and join these networks. Fortunately, someone thought of the genius idea to create residual referral program within these ad networks. If you refer a new affiliate to an ad network using your referral url, you will earn 2-5% bonus commission on that referrals earnings.

Having a very tight niche blog on affiliate marketing and how to make money online, it’s not hard to send a decent amount of referrals to a network. Though compared to years past, we are seeing a much lower success rate for new affiliate applications being accepted at networks. Many networks have also lowered their referral program percentages, limited “lifetime earnings” to just a few months, or have even removed their referral program all together.

Build That List!

The success of a blog is all about growth and bringing your readera back on a daily/weekly basis. As important as quality content is, it just isn’t enough. How many of your visitors will simply forget the name of your site, or just to busy to ever return. Building a list is one of the best ways to keep your readers coming back for more.

At some point you probably visit this blog for the first time and you may have remembered some type of popup to grab your email. I’ve used both a lightbox method through Aweber, and my new solution through Popup Domination. Both of these solutions will display a popup like window in your browser after visiting a blog. I set my subscribe form to fade in and display after a user is on the site for 3 seconds. I also limited the subscribe form to display once every two weeks per visitor, so it doesn’t get annoying.

The bottom line here is that lightbox type forms dominate and convert your potential one time traffic to long term subscribers. Many bloggers have seen increases of 100-300% from just adding either a lightbox through Aweber or using Popup Domination.

Create a Free eBook / Bonus

Once someone starts a blog, it’s almost inevitable that they will create their own product or at least a free ebook or guide for their readers. Creating a free ebook is very effective and if you already have an established blog with a lot of content, you can easily go through and collect your best posts, rewrite and update the content, then pull everything together for a free ebook to offer your readers.

Being able to offer a free quality product ties back into having a lightbox subscribe form for your site. What’s the incentive if you visit a site and they just have a form that says “Join our mailing list!”?… almost no one will. Instead, come up with a value for your ebook (or product), then offer it for free to your readers as an incentive to subscribe. You will drastically see your blog numbers climb, while providing a valuable product to your readers.

Guest Posting & Time Management

For anyone that is already running a blog, we all can relate to the dilemma of not having anything to write about. As much as you may want to write a post everyday, it’s better to post nothing then to post crap. One way to relieve the stress of having to come up with a new post every day (or how ever often you post), is to bring in a weekly or monthly guest post. Not only will you provide your readers with an article for the day, but it may come as a new and refreshing source as it won’t be your own.

Guest posting can work in many different ways. I personally receive emails all the time for guest posts, but am selective on which I will post. If you would like to have your guest posts published on another blog, be sure to send the full post in an email, and not just ask if you can write a future post. Many well known bloggers receive hundreds of emails daily and your requests can easily get lost among the madness. If you are looking to spread awareness for your own blog, or bring in new content, guest posting is a win-win situation.

This was Part 1 of my 10 Quick Tips for Better Blog Monetization. Come back tomorrow when I will follow up with six through ten.

For more tips on blogging and how you can make money with your own blog, download my free guide at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com.

View full post on Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate – Zac Johnson dot Com

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

It’s been several years since I have seen TopRank CEO Lee Odden contribute to the panel ‘SEO Through Blogs & Feeds,’ so I was eager to sit in on this session to close out my first day at this year’s SES San Francisco.

Joining Odden on his panel, moderated by Craig Macdonald, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Covario, was PRESSfeed President Sally Falkow.

As Odden states, creation and promotion of a successful business blog is just as simple and just as complex as planning a friendly dinner party.  How, exactly? More on that shortly.

While Odden opened the session, let’s begin with insight from Falkow as her remarks help expand the notion of traditional blogging.

“According to Google,” Falkow states, “a blog is simply a webpage with a feed.”

While someone reading a blog would certainly not see a repurposed, subjective news release with the same viewpoint as an objective, personal blog post – the point is succinct.  Content marketing is bigger than blogs.

Content, especially content that carries SEO value, does not have to be a blog.  SEO-focused content can be made up of everything from articles to product info.  From alerts to recipes.

By expanding our definition beyond blogs, the dinner party analogy Odden offers can be applied across multiple types of content, just as the rules for a perfect dinner party across multiple types of gatherings:

• Who’s coming to dinner?
  Your dinner guests are your audience.  They are the sole reason for your content to even exist.  Respect their wishes by creating the content they hope to see.
• What does your audience like to eat?
  In other words, what keywords is your audience consuming?  Delight your audience by speaking about topics they want to learn about and speaking in their language.  And because nothing is more boring than a dinner party that serves nothing but mesquite short ribs, look for new derivative recipes.  Make hickory short ribs your reminder to blog about something new enough to be exciting, but relatable enough to cater to your audience.
• What do you have in the kitchen?
  Would you ever serve fried fish without Shore Lunch in the pantry? (If the reference is too Minnesotan, the answer is no.  No, you wouldn’t.)  Just as what you have in the kitchen will shape what you serve, the knowledge you possess can help shape the content you create.  Target your content creation focus by leveraging what you know about yourself and what you know about your audience. And don’t forget to ask your audience what they think about your content.  As a blogger, this means looking into your analytics.
• Should we use the good china?
  The answer here, is yes.  And for a blogger, the good China is a good blog CMS.  And the best blog CMS? WordPress.  Seriously.  Have you ever used Drupal?  Have you ever been to gala event that served on paper plates?
• Who can guests invite?
  You want your parties to be the most popular, right?  Then you have to spend time creating a party that is second to none while making it easier for guests to invite their friends and boast about the time they had.  For a blog, this equates to links and social sharing – two key success metrics of a blog.  Note that neither of these is likely to be easy.  It takes time, practice and a taste of failure to finally throw that one legendary dinner party.  It will take time to create the one post, piece of content, or even domain that will skyrocket in popularity.  But you can expedite the process by helping readers share your content with parting gifts like social sharing buttons and thank you notes (ie RSS feeds containing your newest posts.)

Because blogging, cooking and entertaining are best when they are collaborative, we welcome you to add to this recipe for success via a comment below.

Gain a competitive advantage by subscribing to the
TopRank® Online Marketing Newsletter.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Blog Marketing & SEO: A Recipe For SEO Success At SES SF | http://www.toprankblog.com

View full post on Online Marketing Blog

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Much has been said about IBM announcing plans to buy Unica.  We thought we’d provide a service to our readers and reduce the clutter by curating some of the most provocative analyses in a single post.  To be clear, these thought-leaders don’t necessarily see the news the same way as Eloqua does, but each makes a compelling point worthy of consideration and discussion.

We’d like to hear what expert blogs we overlooked.  What though-provoking perspectives have caught your imagination?  Lastly, note that the below list is in no particular order. 

1. Jonathan Block of SiriusDecisions

• Title: IBM to Acquire Unica
• Why read it: Jonathan simplifies, without oversimplifying, the logic behind the acquisition. 
• Conclusion: “This could be the tipping point we’ve been predicting.”
• Best line: “So will this acquisition start a domino effect? Most likely, but the row of dominoes is fairly short.”

2. Joe Stanhope of Forrester Research (with Suresh Vittal)

• Title: Suresh Vittal and Joe Stanhope Consider The News of IBM Acquiring Unica
• Why read it: Joe’s decisiveness (e.g., “Let’s make one thing clear from the outset – this acquisition is about Unica’s marketing automation and operations solutions not necessarily about the Web analytics products.”).
• Conclusion:  “The acquisition of Unica absolutely reinforces IBM’s assertion that they committing to marketing solutions and the CMO.”
• Best line:  “As with Coremetrics and many other IBM acquisitions, Unica is a small fish in a very large pond.  A $96 Billion, 400,000 employee pond.”

3. Cristene Gonzalez-Wertz of Covalent Marketing

• Title:  My take: IBM Buys Unica and What it Means
• Why read it: The perspective of a (former) IBM insider.
• Conclusion:  The acquisition could have farther-reaching implications (e.g., “What happens when sensors detect that a power grid is likely to be reaching brownout stages?  Is there a way to alert those affected via SMS, TV messaging, phone call, email?”).
• Best line:  “Connecting Unica to (iLog, Websphere Commerce, social media) is where the big money sits.”

4. David Raab of Raab Associates

• Title: IBM Buys Unica: Will Acquisitions Now Shift to B2B Marketing Automation?
• Why read it: David’s attitude.  He challenges other big thinkers (“I’m looking at you, Jonathan Block of SiriusDecisions ”) and explores fresh angles (“…this acquisition may spur Web content management vendors to accelerate their own acquisition of marketing automation capabilities”).
• Conclusion:  “(This) acquisition is basically the completion of the consolidation of (the B2C) space, not the start of consolidation among B2B marketing automation vendors.”
• Best line:  “This is wholly unsurprising: as the last and only big independent left in its space, Unica was obvious acquisition bait.”

What’s my personal favorite analysis?  Well, of course it’s Stanhope’s comment, “The multiple IBM is paying for Unica is also encouraging. Why? Follow up deals, renewed interest from mainstream media that generates broader awareness, follow up investments that spur innovation all make this acquisition good news for Unica’s competitors and the adjacent categories.”

Which thought leaders do you agree (or disagree) with most?  Do you have an analysis of your own?  Share it here.

Share

email
Twitter
Facebook
LinkedIn
StumbleUpon
Digg
del.icio.us
Google Bookmarks
Reddit

View full post on It’s All About Revenue

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Cross Posted from the Google Small Business Blog:

Most every business, including ours, starts small. These days, technology is giving businesses even more ways to grow bigger… faster.

In our recent Small Business series on the Official Google Blog, a handful of real-life entrepreneurs have shared their experiences building companies from scratch and embracing Internet tools that have taken their businesses to the next level. We’ve received fantastic feedback about these posts, and realized that there’s a healthy appetite among small- and medium-sized business owners who want to know all about the latest web tools and tricks. Fortunately, we have lots more to share with you, too!

That’s why we’re introducing the Google Small Business Blog, a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community. Rather than having to sleuth around in many different locations for details about templates for creating video ads on YouTube, tips for your employees using Gmail or how to respond to the business reviews on your Place Page, you can find all of this helpful information right here in one place.

Of course, we’ll continue to post relevant news about individual services such as AdWords, Apps, Google Places and YouTube on their respective “home” blogs, but feel free to visit or subscribe to this Google Small Business Blog to get everything relating to your small business needs. We’re starting small today, but who knows what tomorrow will have in store!

Posted by Deanna Yick, Small Business Blog Team

View full post on Inside AdWords

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Quick heads up for small business owners: Google has started a new Google Small Business blog today. You might want to keep an eye on it, especially since the company is so very heavily marketing towards SMBs. Note that this is not just another local/maps blog. The first blog post outlines what future content will include:

That’s why we’re introducing the Google Small Business Blog, a central hub that brings together all the information about our products, features and projects of specific interest to the small business community.

(snip)

Of course, we’ll continue to post relevant news about individual services such as AdWords, Apps, Google Places and YouTube on their respective “home” blogs, but feel free to visit or subscribe to this Google Small Business Blog to get everything relating to your small business needs.

So, there you go. If you decide not to keep an eye it, that’s okay. I’ll do it for you.

This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

Google has a new Small Business blog

Related posts:

1. Google Targets Small Biz

View full post on Small Business Search Marketing

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

Where have you made some of your best “real life” contacts in the internet marketing space? I’m not talking about over email, skype or in a forum… I’m talking about finally putting a face to a name and really meeting up with people you’ve talked with forever online.

If it was at an internet conference, there is a good chance it was Affiliate Summit. It’s funny to look back nearly a decade ago before Affiliate Summit (and really any big conferences) was around, and the lack of internet conferences. From what was just a little over a hundred people meeting in NYC in 2003, is now over four thousand attendees and held twice a year. The importance of networking and new business and exposure brought to affiliate and internet marketing from Affiliate Summit over the years has been simply amazing.

The following is my interview with the co-founder of Affiliate Summit, Shawn Collins, which is also from my Six Figure Affiliate Blogging ebook. You can download the full ebook for free at SixFigureAffiliateBlogging.com, which includes over 130 pages of content and interviews with 25 highly successful affiliates and bloggers.

Interview with Shawn Collins

1.) Please tell us a little about yourself.

I got started as both an affiliate and affiliate manager in 1997. I spent ten years managing affiliate programs, and have been an affiliate the whole time. In 2003, I co-founded the Affiliate Summit conference with Missy Ward, and we’re about to host our 14th Affiliate Summit, which takes place August 15-17, 2010 in New York City.

2.) When did you start blogging and how did you first get into it?

I started on Blogger in February 2004 with infrequent posts on affiliate marketing (my first post), and moved on to using Movable Type (MT) several months later. I started, because I wanted an alternative to putting all of my content in somebody else’s forum, and while I was publishing some newsletters, I wanted to do something where people could publicly respond.

3.) When starting your blog, did you ever expect it to grow to where it is today?

No, I didn’t imagine blogging itself would take off as it has. As my blog gained momentum, I invested more time in it. At this point, I think it’s been four or so years that I’ve blogged every single day without interruption. I’m a big believer in the importance of consistancy.

4.) You’ve been in the affiliate and internet marketing space for a very long time, how much of an impact have affiliate / marketer bloggers made in the industry compared to before blogging went mainstream?

I think blog software as a CMS has revolutionized affiliate marketing. At first, I looked at blogs as a type of affiliate, but using WordPress and other platforms as a CMS has become increasingly popular. In the past couple of years, I’ve moved all of my sites over form being hand-coded to running them on WordPress.

5.) How have you incorporated affiliate marketing into your blog?

I was using affiliate marketing on my blog from the time I left Blogger for MT. At first, I was going with banners and buttons, but eventually shifted to contextual text links. I’ve used various programs to automate the links, but came back around to manually insert the links, so they are products and services I can hand-pick to promote.

6.) In your opinion, what is the single best way to monetize a blog?

Banners and buttons are a waste of time. Pop-ups, sliders, etc. are a bad experience for visitors. I think the soft sell is the best sell – relevant text links.

7.) What would you recommend for a new blogger, that wants to create their own brand or presence in blogging?

I’d urge them to blog about something where they have a passion – a topic they will love six months from now, so they won’t abandon their work before it takes off. I’ve mostly followed my own advice, but there are also many blogs I started to monetize on a niche and quickly lost interest.

8.) Any recommended blogs or resources for bloggers looking to bring their blog to the next level?

I think the most useful resource is Google Alerts, so bloggers can set up alerts for all of the terms relevant to what they are doing. This can act as a source of posts for their blog on a regular basis. Also, I would suggest making the full posts available via RSS. Some people won’t bother coming back to your blog all the time, so make it as easy as possible for them to consume your content.

9.) Do you have any big announcements or upcoming projects you’d like to tell us about?

My main focus is Affiliate Summit East 2010, taking place August 15-17 in NYC. Then, there will be an Affiliate Summit unConference in Orlando on September 27, followed by Affiliate Summit West 2011 on January 9-11, 2011 in Las Vegas.

* If you enjoyed this interview, be sure to download my free 130 page guide to “Six Figure Affiliate Blogging“.

View full post on Inside the Secret Life of a Super Affiliate – Zac Johnson dot Com

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk

• ISBN13: 9781906465704
• Condition: New
• Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Product Description
Anyone in business can use social media to increase brand awareness, customer loyalty and sales. This is Social Media shows you how.

You might already be social networking on Facebook, or even microblogging on Twitter. One thing’s for sure though; you’re too busy to muck about on these sites all day, not really knowing how to get any decent play out of them. You’re looking for profitability, not gimmicks.

Many organizations, large and small, are using social media and social networking to build robust communities of followers, stay ahead of the competition and increase profits. Are you missing a trick?
 
This is the definitive guide to using the whole spectrum of social media in an efficient and measurable way in order to market your business. It covers Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ecademy, Flickr, YouTube, Bebo, MySpace, Blogs, Podcasts, Mobile and much, much more. Each site is assessed not as an end in itself but as means of delivering a business result.

With simple, practical steps, real life examples and quick definitions to explain the jargon, you’ll soon understand the world of social media and have access to a range of social networking tactics that will help you reach new customers and clients, as well as get your existing ones to do more business with you.

This is Social Media: Tweet, blog, link and post your way to business success

This is a guest post by Kristi Hines, social media and blogging enthusiast, on the benefits of business blogging, best practices when starting out a business blog, and ways to find topic ideas for your industry with some examples.

When I first began blogging almost ten years ago, blogs were used almost soley for personal diaries and online journals meant to be shared with only friends and family, or kept private. Within the first two years, however, blogging as a source of income started to rear its head with affiliate programs being pitched to the most known personal blogs. Fast foward to today, and blogs are not only used for individual gain but also for businesses.

Benefits of Blogging for Business

Business and corporate blogs can be valuable assets to a company’s website. They can help a business:

• Build their brand identity and positively manage their online reputation by putting positive content linked to their name out on the web.
• Help them go beyond simply offering products or services to gaining credibility by becoming experts in their industry.
• Allow them to build a stronger relationship and community with their customers, potential clients, and even others in their industry through blog comments and social sharing of new information.
• Give their site fresh new content, inviting visitors and search engines to return to their site again and again, boosting overall traffic.
• Get them ranked for long tail keyword search terms and phrases.

These are the main benefits of business blogging. Now, let’s look at how to make a business blog successful.

Questions to Ask When Getting Started

Probably the most important benefit is, if a business blog is done right, blog posts can lead to conversions and sales. What are the main things to keep in mind when starting or maintaining a business blog?

Who is Your Audience?

B2B businesses will want to write posts targeted towards businesses who are in need of their products and services, whereas B2C businesses will want to write posts geared toward their targeted customer demographic.

When corporate bloggers are coming up with post ideas, it is essential to put themselves in their targeted reader’s shoes and ask themselves:

• What would I want to learn about this business and industry?
• What hook would make me want to subscribe?
• What topic would make me want to comment?
• What kind of post wold make me want to inquire about products or services from this company?

Asking yourself these questions will help you determine just the kind of writing that you need to do to get a good response from your future blog community.

What Do My Competitors Do?

Business bloggers should do a bit of homework to see which of their competitors also have a corporate blog, and look at how well it goes over with their audience.

• Do they get a lot of comments?
• Do the posts do well in search?
• Do the posts get a lot of social shares? A quick way to check is by installing the Topsy bookmarklet or Delicious Bookmark history bookmarklet (all the way at the bottom of the page) to your browser and seeing how many tweets and bookmarks the posts’ acquire.
• What elements of the posts and blog do I like? What elements do I dislike?

This kind of “competitor research” will help you more easily determine what results you want to get from your blog as well as what will help you get your results.

Blogging Best Practices

Whether you are blogging for personal or business purposes, there are some basic best blogging practices that you should always keep in mind.

• Make each post easy to share and more socialble by using social sharing buttons and comment plugins to encourage more interaction.
• Write like you are talking to your audience – business blogging should be professional, but is also less formal than press releases and article marketing.
• Don’t think of your blog (or social networking) as just an advertising platform. Blog readers like information, how-to’s, and, once you have built their trust, occasional recommedations. If they feel like they’re being pushed to buy something in every post, they will likely not come around again.
• Link out to other sites that are informational as well. Remember your goal is to create a valuable resources for your readers. Seeing you share quality information will make them trust you even more.

Business Blog Topics

Probably one of the biggest hold-ups in a business creating a blog is what to write about, especially if the business is in a very tight niche.

Finding Inspiration

If you have answered the above “Who is Your Audience?” questions, then you will have a general idea of what topics will interest your potential readers. Other ways to generate ideas include:

• Using Twitter and HootSuite (or other Twitter management tools) for monitoring influential twitterers in your industry and what is being discussed by the general public about it.
• Does your business have a support department or help desk? What questions are commonly asked by your clients or potential customers? These might be good topics to answer on your blog.
• Cover your views on current events and other hot topics in your industry by following major blogs on specific niches using major news networks and sites like Alltop, Technorati, or PostRank.

You might think that some subjects have been covered over and over again and can be found pretty much all over the internet, but what you want to realize is that, when someone is on your site, you want them to be able to find as much useful information possible about your industry on your site without having to go elsewhere (and possibly end up on a competitor’s blog instead).

Specific Examples

Using some of the sponsors of the recent blogging contest by Famous Bloggers (another great resource on how to blog) and The ComLuv Network (home of one of the most comment generating plugins for WordPress), we’ll look at some businesses that do not yet have blogs, and some topics they could be talking about.

Claims.com

Claims.com, the accidents at work specialists, handles personal injury, traffic accidents, and work-related injury claims. There are ton of great topic ideas I can see just from perusing a few pages into their website, including:

• Top 5 Most Common Workplace Accidents – What they are, and how much they generally cost if you are not insured.
• What is Sofa Rash? – What is it, how can it develop, and what you can do to prevent it.
• Whiplash – Where Can it Happen – Whiplash does not just happen when you are in a car wreck. Find out common ways someone can get whiplash, what the symptoms are, and what kind of treatment will be necessary to correct it.

Local Proud

Local Proud is a discount card program that helps you start your own business that will not only help vitalize the local economy, but also promotes going green. Some great blog posts for this site include:

• Why Go Local? – A look at the struggles of local businesses, and why it is more important than ever to support small businesses in your community.
• How Does Local Proud Help the Environment? – Describe how this program helps a community be more green by keeping things closer to home and not requiring printed out coupons. (Great link bait to possibly get on environmental blogs.)
• Case Studies – Go beyond a short testimonial and get a business owner to describe their experience with this kind of business, as well as how it has helped them boost local businesses and help the environment.

Online Recruiters Directory

The Online Recruiters Directory is an executive search firm that allows job seekers to connect with those seeking executive talent. This site actually has a small database of articles for jobseekers that could easily be turned into a blog for more interaction and traffic. Some other topic ideas include…

• What Do You Need to Get a 100k Job? – A look at the top earners in the most popular 100k+ careers and what they have in terms of college education, certifications, and experience.
• Top 100k Jobs for 2010 – A list of the most popular 100k jobs available this year.
• You’re Hired – Now What? – What to expect on your first days at a new job for career changers, from those who have transitioned from one field to another. (Could be a great interview series for those who successfully found a job through this service.)

ANS Gear

ANS Gear carries a huge line of paintball guns & gear at discounted prices. Coming from the perspective of someone who has never been involved in paintball, but has heard some very interesting stories, a few topics that would get me interested include:

• Paintball 101 – What essential equipment do you need to get started.
• Best Places to Compete – What are the top rated places to play in major metropolitan areas.
• Top 5 Common Paintball Injuries – What they are, how to avoid them (ie. protective gear), and if avoidance isn’t possible, how to treat them.

Now Relevant

NowRelevant.com is the best new search engine, an alternative to the major search engines for finding relevant niche information. Some interesting things to know about this search engine would be:

• What Makes Now Relevant Different? – Expand upon the information in the about us page and show some examples of search results for Now Relevant compared to the other major engines.
• PPC 101 – How does it work, and why advertisers should choose Now Relevant’s pay per click program over Adwords or others.
• Comprehensive Guide to Using Now Relevant – Cover everything from advanced search operators to where Now Relevant pulls its information from (blogs, social networks, etc.).

Your Thoughts on Business Blogging

Do you have a favorite business blog that others should follow the example of? What are your likes and dislikes about corporate blogs? If you have a business and have a blog, what positive results have you seen? If you are a business that doesn’t have a blog, what is stopping you?

Kristi is the author of Kikolani, a blog which provides blogging tips for successful personal and business bloggers alike, and an Internet Marketing Specialist providing link building services.

This post supports the some of the sponsors of the Famous Bloggers and ComLuv blogging contest. Please visit Kristi’s entry for powerful tips on how to promote your articles for more traffic, link value, and earnings.

View full post on GROWMAP.COM

Follow MarketingTypo on Twitter

Follow MarketingTypo on Plurk