3 Useful Stats Plugins for Wordpress

The more information you can collect on webtraffic the better.  Marketers need to know how visitors are finding their site, and what they do when they get there.  This is important for Ecommerce site owners, and bloggers alike.  Recently I loaded up some Wordpress stats plugins on various sites I own, and thought I’d share my findings thus far.

Counterize II

This Wordpress stats plugin tracks the following information right within your admin panel:

Visits Based On:

• Day of Month
• Day of (current) Month
• Day of Week (nice)
• Month
• Hour of Day (nice)

Other Stats Tracked:

• Most Visited Pages
• Most Seen Referrers (great to understand off-page results)
• Most Used Browsers
• Most Used Browser Versions
• Most Used Operating Systems
• Most Searched Keywords
• Most Searched Keywords Today

Get Counterize II here.

WassUp

This is a stats plugin with a twist.  It actually allows you to Geo track (requires Google Maps API key) your visitors in real-time.

Top features identified with Wassup:

• Has 3 main areas in the interface-
  • Visitor Details- Charts a summary of recent visitors, and lists the most recent page visited, including search term, browser, and Geo location.
  • Spy Visitors - Shows current online visitors with map feed marking visitors location (screenshot below).  Map pushpins are clickable to reveal more information about the visitor.
  • Current Visitors Online- Simple view of what pages are currently visited.
• The first two views allow you to filter out spiders, and spam.
• Visitor details allows you to filter based on “Referrer from Search Engine,” and “Referrer from Ext link” which is very useful for a tighter understanding of where traffic is coming from.

Download WassUp here.

CyStats

While not giving the level of detail per visitor as WassUp, CyStats gives graphical and other information of all the relevant areas such as:

• Popular posts -  Most visited pages today, and all time
• Referrer stats – Who is sending traffic
• Clients – OS, and browser type/version
• Robots – Search engines, tools/scripts, etc.
• Pages – Most visited today and all time
• Time – Visits and hits per hour, day, week, and month

While there isn’t the level of control for what your viewing as WassUp, what makes this plugin stand out, is it includes blog oriented stats, such as most active comment authors, most used tags, categories, and recent commented posts.

You can download CyStats here.

FYI: If you want to make more of Google Analytics, here is a great post I found for enhancing and tricking out Google Analytics.

What Say You? Was this post useful?  Feedback on these or other plugins?  Chime in using the comment boxes below.

Technorati Tags: blogging for business, blogging software, Search Engine Marketing Strategy, wordpress plug-in

Free Membership Site Training from WishList Member

Last week they released a video about the 10 Membership Site Models, which I watched and found myself compelled to take notes.  One thing I learned: you can use a membership site to manage information and services rendered for consulting and coaching clients!  The information is exclusive to them, password protected, and etc.  The great thing is you can also grant support staff access to this information so they can assist coaching clients as well.  This was excellent content, did I mention it was free?

New Training Series by Wishlist Member

Today they are hosting a free call entitled, “21 membership Questions Answered LIVE!” (replay available) It will build on the theme of what you need to know to run a profitable membership site (scroll for promo video).  They are also announcing a course that will help online marketers run an effective membership site.  The course will talk about getting started strategies, content creation strategies, how to build an affiliate channel (something Stu is very experienced with), building a community, outsourcing and automation etc.  The course will fall under $500, and if it is anything like their wordpress membership site software, it will be wildly successful.  Get access to the call here.

Here’s the YouTube Video Promoting the Call:

Your Turn: Have your own experience with WishList products, or feedback on the call?  Other thoughts on membership sites and tools?  Chime in using the boxes below.

Technorati Tags: blogging for business, blogging strategies, wordpress plug-in, wp membership site software

Creating content for your blog is important, those that do it consistently will survive.  But let’s face it, there is a lot of good content out there already.  I searched on blogging tips in Google and came up with a few good ones that I thought I would share with you here.

Blogging Tips From Around the Web

When it comes to business blogging, I learn a lot by simply reading content produced by fellow bloggers. Below are a few posts I read recently, that I thought were worth referencing here.  Which ones do you find most interesting.  Chime in using the comment boxes below.

Blogging Tips – Using Ping To Get Links To Your Blog | Midas …

What is pinging? Pinging is a way of letting search engines know that you’ve created a new post, or updated an existing post on your blog. A ‘ping’ is a.

Matt Cutts tells SEOs ‘no more’ sculpting via nofollow…

Some slightly sad news for the slightly unethical came on a live SMX Broadcast June 2nd 2009 – when Matt Cutts suggested that using the nofollow HTML attribute value when defining a link does not make the Google algorithm skip it when considering the sum of pages outbound links…

5 Powerful Business Blogging Tips

If you’re using a blog to promote your online business, congratulations! If used wisely, blogs are one of the best tools to drive traffic and increase sales. Unfortunately, many business bloggers are blogging ineffectively.

Jay Rosen’s Blogging Tips – mediabistro.com: MediaJobsDaily

Jay Rosen dropped in at Poynter today to participate in an online chat about blogging. He fielded questions for almost an hour. You can watch the replay here, but here are some highlights…

Blog Stats Addict? You Need Rehab – Earning, Blogging, Tips and …

Blogging Issues, Blogging Tips. Blog Stats Addict? You Need Rehab. Oh yes we are bloggers and aside from airing out our happiness and grievances on our blogs, we also make money …

*Post created with Utility Poster

Chime In: Use the boxes below to share your thoughts on any of these posts.

*Image Credits to Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

Technorati Tags: blog seo, blogging strategies, blogging tips

Blogging is a great way to communicate with customers, and lead in your market, but it is hard work.  Fortunately there are so many quality people blogging, a lot that can be learned from them.  I spent a little time this weekend doing just that, getting inspiration from some solid people (with great blogs), and I thought I’d share them with you in this post.

Business Blogging Inspiration Around the Web

Blogging is important for any serious online business.  Having a business blog helps you remain before customers, and creates an opportunity to dialogue with them.  There are always new ways to reach customers with a blog, effective strategies, and new technologies to make it easier, if we are willing to seek them out.  While some of the content contained in these posts will be review for some, if you are like me, you’ll find nuggets in each one.  Well, here they are (be inspired):

Blogging Tips

A long time back, I ordered Lorelle VanFossen’s book Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging. For over a year, it remained under a pile of other books I haven’t read, until I finally got around to it. …
Hunter Nuttall . com – http://hunternuttall.com/blog/

10 Wordpress Tips to Make Your Blog Look Like a Website (for Beginners)

Whatever industry you happen to be in, you want to stand out from the crowd and be unique, and not give the impression that your online presence is just a slightly modified cut and paste job. Of course, if you’re depending on a pre-built content management framework like Wordpress for the core of your blog or website, then that could prevent your online presence from truly standing out. http://www.impressivewebs.com/

Why You Need a (Blogging) Business Model

I have been able to make changes in the way that I blog with the help of posts here at Problogger and other blogs that provide useful information on blogging as a business. After participating in the 31 Day Blog Challenge…
ProBlogger Blog Tips – http://www.problogger.net/

Top 18 most downloaded WordPress plugins ever

Plugins are a big part of the WordPress community. Over the years I have used many of the WordPress plugins. WordPress plugins help you make a better blog and get more reader interaction. There are in total 4,245 plugins and these have been downloaded 22,152,788 times.
http://www.howtomakemyblog.com

10 WordPress Tips & Tricks for Your Comment Page

One of the greatest rewards a blogger can receive is the feedback given by their readers; this is why leaving comments should be fun, easy, and entertaining. Below you will find 10 of the top creative WordPress tips and tricks for your comment page that will surely make your blogging life not only simpler, but fun for your readers.
http://tutorialblog.org

Chime in, with your own blogging ideas, inspiration, or feedback on any of the referenced posts above.
*Post created using Utility Poster
*Image Credit to cambodia4kidsorg

Technorati Tags: blogging for business, business blogs, making money blogging

Let’s face it, blogging is hard work…if you want it to be successful.  Next week MarketingProfessor.com will be 6 months old (already), and it is slowly gaining steam.  From the beginning, MarketingProfessor.com is set to provide Real. Profitable. Advice. as I share my take with products or gurus that have made a difference in my business, or in the business of clients I’ve worked with (good or bad).  One of the greatest challenges for any business blog is making it a viable revenue generator for your business.  If a business blog does not have enough value to the business, it will go stagnant or die altogether.  This post reviews a product that makes blog monetization on a Wordpress blog much easier (almost instantly). It is a product I’ve been using for some time.

Review of Ninja Affiliate by MaxBlogPress

While I’m not a big fan of the name Ninja Affiliate (sounds of hype), yet the idea of doing what it does manually would be very time consuming and costly (I did a bad job of it on one blog for nearly 3 years).  And so, for that matter, I get what they are saying, you’d need to hire a ninja to get it all done (insert cool ninja fight sound here .

3 Challenges of Making Money Blogging

There are several ways to monetize a business blog, one being affiliate product marketing.  Since many are accustomed to ignoring ads, a powerful affiliate marketing strategy for a blog is linking to relevant products within the content itself.  Once you embrace that idea, this introduces some challenges:

• Long affiliate link on the link text, ahem, not super professional.
• The time it takes to identify and link relevant keywords in a post to an affiliate product.
• Reporting, what links are being clicked?  What products are making money?

If these are challenges you have also encountered and you are hosting your own Wordpress blog (see bonus tip in this business blogging post for more information on self-hosting), read on.
SPECIAL NOTE: This product only works with Wordpress blogs that are hosted on their own domain.  Products like this are another good reason to host your own Wordpress blog.

No More Long Affiliate Links

Have you seen or used these product links before? You know, something like this:

http://www.kickstartcart.com/app/?af=933128

That specific link takes a visitor to a product by Mari Smith on how to leverage social media for business.  However the affiliate link created with Ninja Affiliate looks like this:

http://www.marketingprofessor.com/rec/mari

At the time of writing this, every time (within thresholds) that Mari Smith or facebook for business is mentioned on a post or page, it will link.  Not only is this more professional, but it is continuing to brand the domain, not the affiliate links domain.  Also, sometimes people are reluctant to click a link if it is living on another domain or if they think it is an affiliate link.  They cover this on their sales letter here.

Automatically Link Keywords On Your Blog to Affiliate Links

This is truly the staple feature of the product. As you place your affiliate links in the product, and designate the keywords (in a post or comment), they are instantly linked.

This is a major time saver for folks who have existing content.  When you find an affiliate product you like for your readers, the instance of the keywords you designate within Ninja Affiliate on your blog will be linked.  Note: Concerned about too many links? See Link Limitations item in the Other Valuable Features section below. Here is their sales letter.

Reporting, Which Affiliate Links are Getting Clicks

One of the other challenges of a manual approach to affiliate linking is you either don’t know how many clicks occurred, or you have to log in to the affiliate partners console to see how many clicks you got (if they provide that information, that is).

They have a “Generate Stats” button, both raw and unique clicks are counted here, and because you can group the links, this allows you to see how many clicks for a group of affiliate links   (side note: you can also enable or disable links en masse). This allows you to make smart business decisions, if you are not getting many clicks, or the clicks aren’t converting, etc. so you can optimize for products that are most relevant and profitable.  This feature is discussed on their sales letter here.

Other Valuable Features

No Follow: For those SEO conscious, you can keep Google PR juice on your site, by automatically enabling No Follow attribute globally.
Affiliate Program Goes Away: Quickly change the link of the affiliate product to another relevant product.
Sub-campaigns: As you might share your affiliate links elsewhere, sub-campaigns are easy to create, and it allows you to track sources that are getting the most clicks (email signature, facebook, twitter, etc.)
Exclude Pages: Allows blog owners to exclude certain pages from having any affiliate links.
Exclude Categories: Similar to Excluding pages, you can exclude posts in a given category from having affiliate links.
Open Links in New Window: Keep your page open, and have visitors go to your affiliate page in another window.
Link Cloaking: Helps prevent stealing of affiliate commissions, and keeps your professional looking link in the browser address bar.
Link Customization: You can make the link text any Color, Font, Size, Style you like.
Link Limitation Per Post or Comment: Using this allows you to limit the number of keywords linked, as well as the number of overall Ninja keyword links for a post or comment.
Modify Status Bar Text: Lets you display relevant information in the status bar.
You can review their sales letter here.

Some Things to Be Aware of – No Software is Without Bugs

As it is with software, they have bugs, and Ninja Affiliate is no different.  Some would argue these as minor, but I think they are worth mentioning, especially if you are considering purchasing it.
Modify Status Bar Text: I have had a hard time getting this to work, when users hover over a keyword, they are currently seeing the link in the status bar, not the text as specified.
Ninja Links Dropdown in Editor: This feature was intended to allow you to quickly drop ninja links in a post manually, however, with this enabled, it causes odd behaviors with the editor.  To date I haven’t seen a fix for it.  I didn’t use the dropdown anyway, so I really don’t miss it.  It is easy to disable via the “Troubleshooting” section at the bottom of the main configuration page.

To be fair, they have continued to update the product since I purchased (at least 10 updates), which is a good sign.
More on Ninja Affiliate here.

Ninja Affiliate, the Bottom line

If you host a Wordpress blog, and want to monetize with affiliate marketing this may be one of the best investments you can make.  I’m not sure what the product direction is, and if the price will change, it seems very fair at the current price point.  No, it’s not perfect, but they have covered all the bases, and if I were to do it over, I would have bought it sooner…would have made more money, and saved quite a bit of time.  Check it out here.

Talk it up: Was this review useful?  Have a blog?  Are you monetizing it? Using Ninja Affiliate?  How have you found it?  Share your take using the comment boxes (scroll) below.

Technorati Tags: Affiliate Marketing strategy, business blog, Reviews

Social marketing is one of the hottest trends in online business today.  A common social marketing strategy is to drive people to your business blog.  A companies business blog is their own social network, and should be a platform to engage visitors in meaningful interaction that allows for relationship building and commerce.  This post talks about 3 ideas to make your business blog more useful to you and visitors, and keep them coming back.

3 Ideas to Make Business Blogs More Interactive

Social marketing is arguably one of the biggest opportunities in some time for small business marketers to extend their reach.  It’s not limited to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn, business blogging is a great way to bring people into your companies social world, here are a few ideas to consider to make your business blogging more engaging:

1.) Twitter Feed

If you have a Twitter account (and you should), you can provide the search engines (and visitors) with fresh content by putting your most recent tweets on your blog.  You can do this easily by simply getting the code for your blog at the Twitter widget page .  They currently support the most popular blogging platforms.  If you host your own wordpress business blog, you might consider the Wordpress plug-in, Twitter Tools by Alex King, available here .

2.) Enhance Your Business Blog Commenting System

Commenting is the hub of a blog, consider what these services provide to take default commenting to the next level:

• Seesmic : Allows commentors to drop video comments, indeed video is very powerful.  You can get the Seesmic plug-in for wordpress here.
• Disqus: Great interaction and commenting system, allows commentors comments to be tracked across the web (not just your site), so commentors benefit from commenting, because their comments are spidered by search engines, and are centrally available for those made through their Disqus account.
• Intense Debate: Taking interaction further, Intense Debate allows you and others to rate commentors comments with a simple thumbs up, or thumbs down.  It does a lot more than that (FriendFeed comment retrieval, sending a Twitter tweet when commenting, OpenID support, etc.), and is worth looking into.

3.) Your Slide Presentations (or others)

Slideshare allows you to upload slide presentations (like those created in Microsoft PowerPoint), and share them with the masses.  If this is useful to your audience, consider using the slideshare service on your blog.

Like other content sharing sites, not only can you embed a specific presentation into your blog (perhaps to reinforce the content of your post), but you can choose from a wide array of widgets on the Slideshare Widgets & Badges page.  While not highly interactive for a blog, I decided to include it because presentations hosted on slideshare generally do very well with the search engines, and slide shows containing a specific calls to action; go to this (blog) page, register here, etc. can do very well in driving interaction on a blog.

It’s important to make the most of your business blogging by capturing visitor interest and building interaction.  Whether it is your Twitter feed, interactive commenting system, or slide presentation.  Doing so will increase interaction, and help build community, and your brand.

Your Turn: This is far from a comprehensive list.  What have you seen and found useful to build interaction on a blog.  What are you using?  Chime in using the comment boxes below.

*Image credits to Foxtongue

Technorati Tags: business blog, business blogging

You’ve invested time in your business blog. You are getting traffic, and people are commenting on your blog. Certainly you can monetize the site with ads, but what if you wanted give subscribers an option for paid access to premium content, month to month? There has been a lot of buzz about paid membership sites as an online business model, and rightly so, they are a great passive revenue model. In this post I’ll review this Wordpress plug-in that turns your blog into a membership site.

Wordpress Membership Software Plug-in, Wishlist Member

What it is…

Wishlist Member is an easy way to turn your existing blog into a membership site. There is no need to purchase expensive software, hosted on a different domain, move all the content there, etc. Using the familiar Wordpress Admin panel options to allow you to secure content, configure access and membership levels, and integrate one of the popular payment gateways. Get the full scoop here.

Important Features

Here is a breakdown of the various components of Wishlist Member.

Installation: Like many Wordpress Plug-ins, it is easy to install, just upload and activate.
Unlimited Membership Levels: If you have a service that tiers the offerings (Silver, Gold, Platinum), you can put those levels in Wishlist Member assigning different price points. If you add a new offering, add a new level.
Add to Existing Wordpress blog: After adding to an existing site you secure existing content, or you can opt to secure future content when you create it.
Paid Options: Wishlist Member lets you create Free, Trial, or Paid membership accounts. An effective approach is to give a $1 trial, which automatically puts them in a designated membership after 7 days.
Controlling Content: Using the “Hide Button” you can prevent content from being viewed from membership levels of your choosing.
Sequential Delivery: Sometimes new customers can feel overwhelmed when they see all the content available in a given membership site. This feature allows you to release content in a controlled manner, after 30 days Module 2 is released, then Module 3 after 60 days, etc. It is very flexible, and is important in avoiding the buy, download, and dash customers. Something I wish I had in my membership site a couple years ago!
Shopping Cart Support: Supports PayPal, Clickbank, Google Checkout, and 1ShoppingCart.
Secure RSS Feeds: This lets members see paid content in their RSS reader of choice. Since the feed is secure and tied to their membership level, it stops working when they stop paying.
Login Redirection: Control the member welcome page after logging in. This is helpful if you want unique messages for each access level such as news, updates, or inviting them to upgrade their membership.
Secured Content Options:

• “More” Tag Security, protects anything after this commonly used tag (creates the default “Read more” or “Read the story” links) allowing you to prompt the user for membership to the premium content.
• Custom Error Pages, when attempting to access content that is not available at the visitors membership level, and are encouraged to register, or upgrade their membership.
• Partial Content Display, Show what you want in a post and hide the rest. Allows you to reserve a key component for a given membership levels only.

What I Like

Simple Installation: If you have any familiarity with Wordpress plug-ins, it really is as simple as uploading and activating.
Great Interface: If you have been using Wordpress for any time, you find the interface to be familiar, and intuitive. You can have a look by reviewing any of the videos on the right hand side of this page.
Leverage Existing Search Engine Juice: Since you are using the same domain, and the same IP Address, you have little to worry about when it comes to the search engines.  Other products where you have to move existing content to another domain or IP address have to contend with this issue.
Plugin Updates: On the dashboard you see the version you are running, and a link to download the latest version if needed. Recently they added Paypal and Clickbank integration, as well as Aweber autoresponder integration.
Affordable: I personally have spent thousands on membership site software, and have friends who have spent much, much more for custom solutions. For under $100 (at the time of this writing) what you get this hits the sweet spot for many, and the fact that future updates are included is also nice. There is also a multi-site license available for those who need it.
Reputation: I know the maker, Stu McLaren and Tracey Childers to be solid guys. I was hard pressed to find any complaints about the product; thus far, their customers seem to be happy with the product and the support.

Large Site Considerations

Scalability question: since it is relatively new, I am uncertain how well it scales. As much as I would like to test the scalability, I was unable to in time for this review. There are products that have been out for a long time, and proven to scale well, but obviously are not at this price point. I have friends who have the potential for 10s of thousands of members, and I’m not sure this is the best fit if you are in this situation. Again, I haven’t tested it with 10K or more members, but I am curious how it will handle such a load. Perhaps the creators or larger customers can comment on this.

Conclusion

If you have an existing Wordpress blog, or have an idea for a membership site, this is a great way to turn business blogging into profits. I’m not a big fan of FREE solutions for paid products; if it goes down, I want to be able to get support. $97 as a one time fee is not a lot compared to other membership site solutions, and you can begin working with it in about 15 minutes. Get more info here.

What are your thoughts on Wishlist Member or membership software in general? Leave your comments below.

*Image Credits to Wordpress Wishlist

Technorati Tags: business blog, business blogging, membership site, membership software, RSS, Wishlist, Wordpress, wordpress plug-in

With the pervasiveness of blogging technologies, many of which are free, the bar has been lowered so that any aspiring small business marketer with minimal technical skill can get started in 5 minutes or less. In this post I’ll share with you 5 resources to get your business blog rolling fast. For the small business marketer, business blogging is becoming a “must do” item.

Business Blogging 5 Sites for Starting  in 5 Minutes or Less

Wordpress.com

Go here, open account, and start posting. They host the blog software and server space, at no cost to you…and there are no ads. This is a great model, and works well because they have a host of integrated templates to choose from, widgets, and common plug-ins which enhance the use of any business blog.

Wordpress.org

If you plan on hosting your blog on your own domain, this is the site you can go to get the downloadable install. It is also a great resource if you need support, or want to download one of the many plug-ins that extend the functionality of your Wordpress blog. This can also be a great resource if you need technical support with Wordpress.

See the bonus tip at the bottom for more information about hosting your own business blog.

Blogger.com (Google)

Blogger has been around for some time and was acquired by Google a few years ago. If you have been paying attention to some of the posts here about Google Friend Connect, Blogger accounts are tied into your Google profile as well. They are also really easy integrate with Google Friend Connect.

They too have a wide variety of theme templates, and are fairly customizable. If you don’t have a blog yet, and you have a Google account, this is a great place to start your business blog.

WetPaint.com

Wetpaint is another good service for small business bloggers because they make it easy to setup, and have a great range of templates to choose from. Wetpaint is a free website creation and hosting service, which includes wikis, blogs, and social networking features, but I lump them in here because they make it really easy to get started, fast, and for small business marketers, isn’t that what we need? Public sites are indexed by the search engines, and can be “joined” by other webpaint members.

Weebly.com

I’ve always liked the name of this service. Similar to Wetpaint.com in that they are more of a website hosting service, what makes Weebly different is, while Wetpaint is an interactive social site with many “wiki” features, Weebly offers more of a basic blog/comment format. They have a drag and drop interface, and have a wide range of design templates to choose from. They even boast of no cost domain hosting.

Bonus Tip if You Want to Self-Host Your Blog

Sometimes small business marketers wish to host their business blog on their own domain. Some of the common reasons for doing that include:

• Branding their domain name
• More control over the content display, and the functionality of the blog
• Search engine traffic is flagged with their domain name, not the domain of one of the content hosting sites listed above
• Risk… if one of the hosting companies goes out of business, or is hacked, or has a technical issue, the content you created is unavailable, and will eventually be de-indexed by the search engines.

I’ll talk more about the pros and cons of your business blog hosting options in a future host, for now, you just need to take the first step.

Time to Get Started

Pick one of these sites and spend a few minutes getting a page up. Don’t go through all the options before publishing, just get the business blog up and have a short celebration (YOU did it!). Then, focus on providing great content to your prospects and customers, and tweak the site as you go.

Discussion: Have a business blog already? Using one of these services (or another one)? Discuss your experiences in the comment forms below.

*Image credits to jphilipg

Technorati Tags: blog marketing, Blogger, business blog, small business marketer, Weebly, Wetpaint, Wordpress

Corporate blogging or even small business blogging is often haphazardly tossed onto the Web. It gets immediately filled with PR-speak and marketing promotion. Then management wonders why it is not returning and value. Unlike typical web publishing, business blogging is meant to be like a conversation. There is a give and take–a necessary genuineness that must be there.

Transparency

It all starts with transparency. Consumers, especially Internet consumers, want to be able to dig into your business and your offering. They are looking for the real you.

Granted, some consumers like the quick, easy, convenient transaction the Web facilitates. However, in the emerging age of blogging and Twitter, consumers are looking for conversation–brand interaction. In some ways it is like going back to the Main Street shopping experience. It is as much about the cup of coffee you share as the stuff you buy to make a profitable customer.

Nothing makes this easier than good business blogging. You get to quickly post up thoughts, initiatives, reactions, and solutions to your market. Yet, at the same time you can sprinkle in pictures, audio, and videos from around the office–pics of your cool office, audio of a funny sales call, or video of the Halloween costume contest.

These little sneak peeks into how you work and how you play create and solidify customer relationships.

Accountability

Of course, the flip side is that you are in a conversation, a relationship now. That means there are going to be times you screw-up or someone is going to take you to task.

Never underestimate the value of, “sorry, I (we) screwed up, we are going to try harder next time.”

This is the hardest of the blogging tips to get, but it is the most important. Accountability in any relationship can yield the biggest rewards. In fact, accountability may be the biggest component of the trust equation.

Blogging is not your traditional web publishing–it doesn’t work as a one-way conversation. You have to be willing to have a balanced and fair conversation with your customer. The return on this type of real, genuine conversation is that elusive trust.

Trust

Once you get to trust you have a powerful weapon. Customers who trust buy more, promote more, and refer often. The cool part about earning trust online is that the barriers to amplifying that promotional and referral effect is zero.

In a moment, a trusting customer can blog to hundreds, Twitter to hundreds more, Facebook, FriendFeed, MySpace shout to thousands, and email dozens more. In a matter of minutes you can have hundreds even thousands looking, endorsing, and trusting your business.

Return on Your Blogging Investment

What a powerful effect for a few moments spent on your small business blogging, not your old-time FrontPage web publishing anymore. You have a marketing megaphone. Your small investment in blogging and following a few simple blogging tips about trust-building, and you have leveled the marketing playing field.

image credits to Laura Chifiriuc

Technorati Tags: Blogging, blogging tips, business blogging, corporate blogging, small business blogging, web publishing

Email and blogging are complementary communications in my mind. One works to alert and stimulate interest, while the second informs and maintains a permanent destination for action. However, don’t get too wrapped into an inflexible marketing framework–there are times to use one, or the other, or both.

Using Email and Blogs Together
Email marketing has long been the secret traffic gems of web publishing, and now business blogging. Consumers use email everyday to communicate with friends, family, and business colleagues. There is no better way to get a modern consumers’ attention.Crafting a quality email campaign in connection with the valuable updates and offers from your blog is an idea way to enhance those results.

The reverse works for enhancing any email campaign with business blogging. Most emails can only contain a snapshot of the total concept, tips, or offer you are presenting. This is where a blog can close the deal for a skeptical or hesitant buyer.

By blogging tips and resources that extend the concepts and offers in your email, you can backstop your email with value, credibility, and ongoing benefits.

Driving Traffic with Email
Email is an ideal way to capture attention and drive traffic into your small business blogging. By blogging tips or simply corporate blogging about products, services, and new offers you are creating ideal landing pages for consumers.

Your emails can garner attention and stoke interest in finding out more. Then your blogging becomes the depth and the closing step, not having to do all the traffic generating heavily lifting.

Ideally you will also have the ability for your blog readers to sign-up for your blog via email as well. This sort of use of email and blogs together also helps drive traffic by alerting you email subscriber automatically every time you post.

Driving Sales with Email
Chances are ultimately you are emailing and blogging for profit, that means your email and blog strategies need to drive sales. This is where using the two together can get a bit tricky without some thought.

Often I see people simply blasting emails and linking to their corporate blogging or small business blogging. In some cases this mindless framework will increase sales, but often when used in the wrong scenario will reduce sales.

I have always been a proponent of stair stepping offers for maximum profit–that means having various product/offer tiers. You can implement that strategy perfectly with an integrated email and blog strategy.

Before I show you a formula, remember the number one “velocity of money” rule–if you can close in one step, do it. Now here is my email and blog sales formula:

1. Email: Value teaser + Step 1 of tips or how-to + Free offer link to blog
2. Blog: Value teaser + Step 2 of tips or how-to + Free offer fulfillment + Up sell
3. Blog: Up sell is access or ebook of complete tips or how-to
4. Blog: Walk-away down sell

This formula will get some level of sale out of your email. Meanwhile, the inclusion of some level of free offer will compel a high percentage of that traffic to your business blogging. This will ensure that you optimize your opportunities for sales.

Email Marketing and Web Publishing…Powerful
Combining email marketing and business blogging adds power to your marketing punch. The two marketing techniques together maximize you opportunity to monetize your web publishing and blogging strategies. Drive attention, compel interest with email, close deals and grab referrals with your small business blogging.

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