Successful Blog

Blog Branding versus Blog Marketing

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Blogging is all about being personal.

It may sound too simple that anyone will understand it not more than a personal online diary. Hence, let me just explain a little bit for you to understand from another perspective.

I may not be the expert to give you an educational answer about branding and marketing. But in my opinion, if anyone can understand the difference between branding and marketing, that person will definitely understand the true meaning of being personal.

Both marketing and branding have different goals. Let me just explain to you in my own understanding after working for a while in the society.

What is blog marketing?

Marketing aims to effect an eventual sales transaction. Hence, it gives the person an instant gratification as he/she tries to tell the world who he or she is. It is very similar to a person who is devoting himself/herself to be extremely sales-driven. He or she will go out there to tell the world through Twitter, Facebook, Friendfeed, LinkedIn or any other social media that he/she can reach.

What is blog branding?

Branding aims to communicate by means of “impressing” what this blogger stands for. It is not so much about looking out for maximum exposure. But rather, it leaves an impression to anyone who notices him/her.

This blogger will usually focus a lot on building quality contents, beautifying his or her blog design, and making sure that everybody perceives him/her as who he or she really “is.” Isn’t blog branding about “being personal”?

Marketing versus branding

Some experts believe that perception is everything. Branding — which shapes perception — leads everything!

Some believe that marketing is the key to business viability, especially when it involves product development, market development, channel development, sales force management, etc. Thus, it is more directly impacting revenue.

Both marketing and branding aim to affect higher profitability. In general, marketing has a wider effect but lesser depth (volume, sales, etc). Branding on the other hand usually tries to enable clients to pay a “premium.”

Mix and match your marketing and branding

Both are really important in its own way. While marketing is pretty straight-forward and is more like a how-to strategy, I wish to emphasize on this phrase “blogging is all about being personal.”

Author’s Bio: This post was written by Charles. He has been an Internet reviewer since June 2007. He pours his passion for Internet marketing and Internet branding into his Twitter account actively at @charleslau.

5 Simple Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

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Be Irresisible!

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If you’ve been developing a business online in the last few years, you’ve probably heard statics regarding the brief amount of time we have to get and keep the attention of first-time visitors. What was almost 20 seconds in 2005 now is being described as something between 8 seconds and 10.

Getting folks to arrive is the first step, of course. In that, an attention-grabbing, killer headline is everything.


Click image to access complete podcast at The Onion.

Whether it is something completely original and novel, ultra-specific and geared towards a niche, or just incredibly compelling, good headlines on the Web always win.

They always win, except when they don’t.

If a headline delivers traffic, but the traffic immediately bounces away, can you say the headline wins?

A killer headline will get traffic, but what keeps folks reading?
We have to deliver great content to give that headline legs or that traffic will bounce away.

5 Ways to Deliver Irresistible Content and Lower Your Bounce Rate

Strong businesses are built on strong relationships. What transforms a headline clicker into someone who hangs around? What turns first-time visitors into people who want to stick around? What makes them stay and already thinking about their return? Here are five things you can do to make it more likely they get what they came for.

Five Ways to Deliver to the Clickers Who Follow a Headline to Your Blog …

  1. Deliver content that your headline promises.
  2. Deliver content in short paragraphs using subheads surrounded by lots of white space so that people have room to think and breathe. Add a picture that supports the text and illustrates the content. First impressions count.
  3. Deliver it without making folks jump over ads or through hoops to get to the prize that the headline promises. Decide whether you want me to stay … there are other ways to get me to buy.
  4. Deliver it by responding to the people who take time to comment.
  5. Deliver it by making it easy to find more of what brought people to your site.

It’s not the visitor who never came that’s a loss. It’s the visitor who comes to find that we’re not what he or she thought. A great headline followed by something less doesn’t win. It doesn’t even finish.

The most important thing is deliver — do what we say we’re going to do.


Click image to see complete article from The Onion.

If the content you deliver is easy to access, faster to enjoy or employ, and adds value and meaning to a visitor’s life, you can bet that visitors will be glad they came and ready to come back. Easier, faster, more meaningful is irresistible. That’s a fact.

Great headline, lame blog post — who wants to deal with that? You’ve been there. What’s your response when you end up on one of those?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

5 Steps to Increasing Your Blog Comments

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How to blog series

by
Virginia Cunningham

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You’ve created a blog, made a few posts, maybe even installed some ads for the extra income. You’re locked and loaded to take the Internet by storm. But where are all the comments? Where is the dedicated audience breathlessly hanging on your every word?

Don’t worry, you don’t have to succumb to the tumbleweeds just yet. If you’re eager for more fans, here are five steps to increasing your blog comments.

1. Comment On Other Blogs

Before anything else, you need to establish your presence in your field. This is most easily achieved by commenting on other blogs and making a name for yourself as someone worth listening to. By making smart, funny and helpful comments on other blogs, readers will be interested enough to follow you back to your own.

2: Respond To Comments

No one likes to be ignored, and if your commenters feel like they’re shouting into an empty void, they become much less likely to comment in the future. To gain (and keep) an active community of followers, you’ll need to make a habit of responding to their comments. Answer their questions. Suggest new tech. Outsource their problems if you have to. Regardless of the content, just make sure their comments don’t go unnoticed. They’ve taken time out of their lives to comment on your blog; the least you can do is offer them the same courtesy.

3. Create A Community

It’s basic psychology: people like to belong. Take advantage of this by turning your commenting pool into a community – a place with its own language and lingo, a place where people can build friendships and swap stories without feeling out of place. If something happens to one of your followers, spotlight it. If you think two people would really get along, mention it. Make introductions among your followers. Create memes. Reference inside jokes in your updates. When new visitors feel the urge to “fit in,” you’ll know you’re doing it right.

4. Ask For Opinions

The best thing that can happen to any blog is a lively debate, so inspire some passion by soliciting the opinions of your followers. Make polls, ask leading questions (“what do you guys think?”) and encourage the most vocal of your readers. Don’t be afraid to touch on scandalous topics, because those often create the most heated (and long-running) exchanges.

5. Be Interesting

What makes you comment on a blog? What pushes you from a mere reader to an active participant in an exchange of ideas? It wouldn’t have happened if the blog wasn’t interesting or engaging enough to merit your response.

To this extent, if you want comments, you just have to be a good blogger. You need to be active, interesting, and well-informed in your field. Your post should be entertaining and relevant. Your comments should be smart and useful.

Simply put, if you want more comments on your blog, make your blog worth commenting on.

Author’s Bio: Virginia Cunningham is a freelance technology writer based in Los Angeles, California. She currently blogs about id security, social media and gadgets.

Thank you, Virginia! Engagement is always a noble quest.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

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How to blog series

The Key is Know What You Want to Say

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Recently someone told me that he’s been trying to write a a blog post for almost a week now and every time he tired he ended deleting it.

“Everything I write sounds like a valley girl talking to alien first grader. Nothing makes sense. It’s all over the place.”

“What is it that you want to say?”

He started at me and then admitted, “I don’t know.”

It’s hard to write clearly if you don’t know what you want to say.

Try constructing an idea like a three-course meal.

Construct Your Post or Presentation Like a Three-Course Meal

If you think of an article or a presentation as a fine meal, the middle is the main course. That’s where the fine dining is. It’s the centerpiece. The entree takes the longest time and the most care. The executive chef is the one who plans it and prepares it. Put your best effort there–where it counts.

So decide what you’ll be serving as the key part of the meal first thing.

  • Is it something you’ve just learned, observed, or read about that’s set you thinking?
  • Is it a pattern of behavior that keeps appearing that you want highlight and encourage or discourage?
  • Could it be your view about an event you’re about to be attending?
  • Have noticed something in another industry that seems to apply to the one that you work in?
  • Have you found a solution to a common problem or a problem with a commonly promoted solution?

Gather the thoughts and proofs that will make the message of your post or presentation delicious to take in. Once you’ve got that underway, you can choose the appetizer and the dessert.

Maybe you’ll whet the audience’s appetite with a story that brings them to the problem you’re solving or a question that you’ll answer fully in a very satisfying ending. Take the time to see how the beginning and end compliment each other to tie all together.

In this manner …

  • Course 1: Give readers a taste of your topic. This gives you a chance to capture their attention and focus their minds on your ideas. You can draw them in and prepare them for what you are about to say. By starting in the middle you already know what that is. So writing this part is much easier.
  • Course 2: Serve up your ideas with facts and details to support them. By starting in the middle, you can spend your time polishing the finer points and placing your brand in the best light for readers to discover its value on their own.
  • Course 3: Leave your audience satisfied with tidbits of why your ideas are important to them or give them reason to reflect back on what you said. Show that you fulfilled your promise. Let your audience savor the fact that your article was a service to them, and they’ll understand why coming back to see you is a good idea.

There’s added value in presenting your information as a three-course article. Starting in the middle establishes a clear structure that’s easy to follow. It frees your audience to concentrate on the information that reveals your story and shows your expertise.

How do you structure your blog posts and your presentations?

Be irresistible.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

How Images Can Make Your Blog Post Demand to Be Read

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How to blog series

A Guest Post by
Chris Lamphear

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Successfully Working From a Home-based Office

Be Compelling. It’s one of the most important commandments for any successful blogger. But after you’ve written a post full of value for your reader, your job isn’t done. You have to figure out how to make your post jump off the page and demand to be read, otherwise all the work you’ve done writing the perfect post will be for naught.

I’ve been writing articles and promotional copy for more than twenty years and have learned that an attention-grabbing image is a must if you want to be read. I even started creating my own images and over time figured out the type of images that do the best job. Here’s what I’ve learned …

1. The image should communicate a concept.

Your reader wants to learn about a certain topic; that’s how he or she landed on your article. An accompanying image must clearly illustrate the same concept the reader is interested in. Don’t go with a pretty but generic picture. Ask yourself, “If I just stumbled here and didn’t know what this post was about, would this image tell me?” Make sure you pick a photo or illustration that clearly makes the very same points you’re writing about.

2. The image should be simple.

You have about one second to convince your reader to spend time with your article, and the less complex detail getting in the way of communicating your message, the better. The reader should not have to study the image to get to an “Aha!” moment and uncover your point. Think of the picture as a billboard shooting through your field of vision while you speed down a freeway. The most effective and powerful images are those that make an immediate impact. Be clear and you’ll get attention.

3. Intelligent use of vibrant color is candy for the eye.

Certain colors like red are flags that tell the reader the image is important and pull the eyes in. Stay away from drab, dull colors; instead look for primary and bright colors that jump off the page and say “look at this!” Here’s an example of an image of the word Goal with a target and arrow. Red is a color that tells the eyes “This is important,” and when the reader sees it and absorbs the message, determining this is in fact the subject he or she wants to learn about, you have succeeded.

4. Words in pictures tell a story.

Sometimes the best way to make your subject matter jump out and demand attention is to pick a picture that embeds that very word right inside it. Here’s an example: a two-way street sign with the words You Decide. Sometimes an image that incorporates a word or two can pull double duty, telling a reader what your post is all about more quickly than a wordless image can. In this sense, a word truly is worth a thousand pictures.

5. Relevant images = good SEO.

As a bonus, having images with titles and alt tags that support your subject could help you with SEO efforts. Communication is becoming more visual every day, and Google Image Search is being used by more and more people to quickly find the content they need. Be sure to include the appropriate image information in your code, such as title and alt description, and make sure you title the picture file something that matches your content.

I’ve decided to share my images with others like you to help you communicate your messages. Use one of my pictures in a post and see if it makes a difference! I’ll give you one in exchange for a link and credit. Just take a look at my royalty-free stock photo website and let me know what image you’d like to use. Click on the Contact Us page at www.theideadesk.com and tell me what you’d like to use. Good luck!

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Author’s Bio:
Chris Lamphear is author and owner of the ideadesk blog. where he writes about how to use design to boost the effectiveness of your communication, from winning new customers to growing relationships. Through the blog, I also offer free images from his site for royalty-free stock photos, theideadesk.com

Write For A Blog Reader And Not A Book Reader

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By Terez Howard

How to blog series
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When you sit down to read a book, you read from left to right, paragraph to paragraph, page one to page two. That’s how I read a book, anyways.

When you read a blog, how do read it? I scroll like I’m looking for something, even if I don’t know what I’m looking for or what I’m going to find. I go up and down like a yo-yo, deciding whether or not a post is worth my time to read it. I check out subheadings, bullet points, bold characters, italics, a discernable font, and I love short paragraphs.

Time for a new paragraph. That last one was getting too long for my eyes. Why should you care how people read blogs?

First impressions – the worst impressions?

Because if readers don’t like the way your blog looks, even if you’re a first-rate writer, they are not going to read what you write. I do it all the time. I discover a post with an interesting headline and excitedly click on that link. When I see huge clumps of text and yellow-colored, size 8 font on a black background, I’m done.

It doesn’t matter what that blogger wrote. I’ve made a judgment call. Slap my wrist and tell me that I’m wrong. I don’t care. I’ve decided that if that writer doesn’t know the basics about blogging, then he/she couldn’t possibly have anything worthwhile to say.

It’s not the nicest way to be. I wasn’t always like this, tough. I’ve stumbled upon poorly constructed blogs that I have attempted to decipher. A deeper dig reveals typos galore, poor English and terrible content again and again. So why waste my time trying to translate?

You never get a second chance to make a first impression

Make a good first impression on your readers. First and foremost, you need original, well-written content. That is the foundation of a great blog.

Second, and this may seem ridiculous to say, but please make sure that people can read the size and style of your font. If you try to be too fancy, say with a script-type font, people will click away. If your words are too small for the average pair of eyes, people will click away. If the font is too big and overbearing, people will click away.

Either while you write or after you write and edit, you should try to include:

  • Subheadings. These break up text and summarize what readers can expect as well as build anticipation.
  • Bullet points/numbered lists. These are my favorites to read and write. They, too, break up text so well. I notice that if I read nothing from a blog post, I will read the list.
  • Bold, italics, underline, etc. Pepper your post with these font features when you want to stress something. But do not inundate a post with them. No need for the entire post to be bold.
  • Short paragraphs. Don’t write an entire blog post with just one paragraph. Staring at a computer screen with one long block of text is rough on the eyes. You can’t see anything. Experienced bloggers recommend three to four sentences per paragraph.

Use common sense

When you write for blog readers, don’t be a stickler to any rules. You’re thinking, And what’s the reason for this post if I can do whatever I want?

Well, of course you can do whatever you want. I’m saying that you don’t have to count the number of sentences per paragraph or include a bulleted list in every single post. Be natural. Think about your audience. Remember, write how you read.

A computer screen looks much differently than a book. Make it easy for people to read your blog.

How do you write for blog readers?

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Terez Howard operates TheWriteBloggers, a professional blogging service which builds clients’ authority status and net visibility. She regularly blogs at Freelance Writing Mamas . You’ll find her on Twitter @thewriteblogger

Thanks, Terez!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!