from www.seobook.com Aaron Wall discusses why new internet marketers are best off starting marketing by creating a blog.

Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag discusses the value of blogs and plans for his own blog at www.OMB.gov. (public domain)

Blogging is a great way to get traffic to your website, and if you create a blog for no other reason than that, you are practically certain to get positive results. Blogging and traffic are made for each other, and there are several ways of using blogs to promote products on your site.

The first question is what kind of blog? Although there are alternatives, the most popular blogging software packages are Google’s Blogger and WordPress. This offers you four blogging options, and three ways of creating a blog to get traffic to your website.

Why four from just two blogging packages? Here is the answer to that question, and how if you create a blog using each, you will maximize your earning potential from your products:

Blogger

Blogger is blogging software owned by Google. Most people run their blog from BlogSpot, Bloggers blogging host. When you do that you have less control over your blog than if you operate it from your own IP address. Blogger is very easy to use, and very easy to get started with, and is popular with those who don’t want to worry about templates, plugins and designing their own blogs.

Wordpress

Wordpress can also be run from the WordPress hosting site. However, where WordPress scores over Blogger is in the fact that the software can be uploaded to your website, and can be run from there. This enables you to use any of the thousands of WordPress plugins and templates that provide an almost unlimited degree of functionality in your blogging that will help to drive traffic to your website.

When you create a blog with any of these two different packages, whether run from your own computer or from the blog host, you are able to provide fresh content daily to your virtual website. Because that is what a blog is: it is in effect a web page, in the same way that a Squidoo lens and a page on a website is a web page.

Bogging and Search Engines

Blogging allows you a presence on search engines such as Google and Yahoo, and allows those with little idea of SEO or even of web design, to sell products online. There was a time when blogs were a rarity and something new, but blogging is now a way for anybody that knows how to create a blog can drive traffic to their website or to their blog page and help them make money through free advertising.

However, even a blog has to be advertised. Blogging in itself is not an advertising technique, but one of displaying your thoughts, idea, products or advertising your products. Now, you might think I am being a bit duplicitous here, stating that blogging is not a means of advertising yet can be used to advertise! Yet both statements are true. Let me explain why.

Is Blogging an Advertising Technique?

Yes and no. You can create a blog in order to get traffic to your website, and in that respect you are using your blog for advertising. You can place a link to your website: your squeeze page, sales page or just a content page. The question is, how do you get people to read your blog, and then click on one of these links? The link could be placed at the bottom of every post, and on a permanent page on your blog, but how do yet get traffic to your blog: you have the same problem now as getting traffic to your website!

What you have here is that blogging can be use to promote another site, whether it be a website, another blog or a social networking site such as Facebook, MySpace or YouTube. You can use all of these to promote and sell products. However, how do you get people, to find your blog? Creating a blog is fine, but that is only the start.

Use Article Marketing in Blogging

There is one way, and that is article marketing. By writing articles about your niche or product, and then including a link to your blog in the article, you can use the article to advertise your blog. If you can persuade a reader to click on your link, they will reach your blog on which you provide them with links to your website, your other blogs and your Facebook and MySpace home pages.

Perhaps you can’t write, and maybe don’t know how to use articles properly, or even where to get them. Well don’t worry. If you want to make the best use of the internet than create a blog, get blogging and then use the help provide online to make best use of your blog make money.

Blogging and traffic go together, and it is easy to create a blog to drive traffic to your website or any other online web page (such as another blog). You only need to know how.

This article is for those few brave souls, who have just initiated their journey into blogging, and need that amazing high one gets when your blog is finally getting read by a substantial number of readers.

Please track your blog readers using services like Google Analytics, it just takes 10 minutes, and it will provide you with a vault of valuable information on your reader’s preferences, where your readers come from, and how they interact with your blog.

For those of you thinking about right now “Hey, I like writing for the love of it, and I don’t need any readers for approval”, I would like to say kudos to you, and do continue the good work.

But if you are serious about sharing your hard work (its blood sweat and tears when you have to do it 5 times a week) with the millions of users searching blogs daily, then let’s continue our journey down the rabbit hole.

A quick look at the statistics on Blogging – comScore MediaMetrix (August 2008)
” Total internet audience 188.9 million
” Blogs: 77.7 million unique visitors in the US alone
” Facebook: 41.0 million
” MySpace 75.1 million

Well that the good news!

But the bad news is that with the thousands of new blogs churning out each day, what hope is there for a reader interested in your topic to reach you. You many have written brilliant masterpieces, but how do you let others know that (remember most poets and artists die poor and unrecognized because they don’t reach out to share themselves with others).

In this article, we will not get into details about the quality of your content, and its assumed you have written good clean copy. Good copy being informative, entertaining and engaging (Don’t forget to get your keywords in the body content as well the labels/tags).

There are various ways to promote your blog and reach out to the millions out there. The strategies below will not only assist you in getting more traffic to your blog, but also get you higher rankings for your blog, as well as corporate site (if you have one).

Deep-Linking

Start a corporate blog for your employees, customer, vendors, associates and investors. The benefits of doing so are many, as seen in the trend where many corporate blogs are doing very well in building brand loyalty, customer loyalty and driving business through existing customers.

Also start a topic specific blog of your expertise. To give you an example of this, a SEO Expert Services Company, can start a blog on SEO tips, advise and attract marketing professionals, seo students, Internet marketing professionals, readers and businessman.

Now comes the easy part; Create relevant deep links between your corporate website pages, corporate blog posts and topic blog posts. Your website, corporate blog and topic blog are treated as separate sites as far as search engines go, so don’t hesitate to use you’re your content for link building purposes.

Each blog post is a potential to build another link to your corporate website. But don’t overdo it. Search engines dont penalize a site for too many links (unless the site is just a whole bunch of links for the pure purposes of link farming, and trying to trick the search engines to give irrelevant results), but it could a big turn off for your readers who just want to enjoy the story and don’t care much about your hair brained strategies to dominate the internet.

Cross-Linking

It’s easy to create links when you are the master of your website and blogs, but how do we get other websites/ blogs to give the same quality links back to your blog.

As in the real world if you have to build a new contact, you would approach that person, introduce yourself, inform that person of the value you offer, and maintain a good relation with that person.
In the blog world building links is no different.

1. Approach websites that has content/target audience similar to your blogs and offer some additional value to their readers, or even better write a good intelligent review about some service/products that website is offering. Send a nice email highlighting the same with a link back to your blog post. Online marketers like collecting testimonials so there is great probability that they will link back to your blog.

2. Approach other bloggers who command high loyalty. Most of the time if you have a professional approach, a good pitch and a value proposition, most bloggers will not mind writing a small review and linking to your blog.

After all these bloggers need to create content daily, so offer them a helping hand. Many bloggers advocate semi-advertising in their posts, and bloggers define their tastes, preferences, likes and dislikes about brands all the time. So why not get onto the bandwagon.

Another way is to leave intelligent comment on the bloggers post with something nice to say about the blogger, and then give a small link to your blog to explain in detail. Most times the blogger will leave a good comment and not delete it. I don’t personally use this method, but as they say, in this matter, flattery may get you what you want.

3. Some SEO experts and bloggers have good relations with other fellow bloggers. A good seo expert should be able to get some of these bloggers to write a good review and link to your blog/ website. It will drive traffic to your website and add to your link building campaign.

Create a RSS Feed

Most blog software’s like Blogger allow users to create an automatic RSS feed. If you notice a RSS feed is a very simple page, no major formatting, no pictures and videos.

RSS also knows as “Real Simple Syndication” is a mechanism used to distribute content without depending on the browser or email client. Users subscribe to RSS feeds to get latest updates (headlines with a small brief) about their favorite websites/ blogs across the internet in one place.

In your case, your blog posts form part of content that can be syndicated across news/content feeds. Once your RSS feed is published, you can submit the feed to many of the feed aggregators and have your content/ blog post distributed across their network of users. You can start by using this link http://www.rss-specifications.com/rss-submission.htm to submit your blog to many feeds.

Submit to Article Sites

Article sites are a great way for distributing your content to many sites without the fear of landing into soup for duplicate content. In addition you are building credibility as an expert in your domain, quality links, and driving traffic to your blog.

By submitting your blog posts to article submission sites having high page rank, you are basically syndicating the same content across various channels, getting links, and traffic. Now that’s a good deal!

A note of warning, don’t just submit your article to 1000 sites, rather be wise and work with a few key article sites. In this way it’s easy to build a good relationship with those sites and their audiences, as they feel that you have not plastered your article across every living website in the world.

Also its easy to keep the momentum up, otherwise submitting each blog post to 1000 sites would be rather time consuming.

Go Social with your Blog

Social bookmarking is the next wave to hit the new media landscape. Millions of users surfing the internet now have a voice and can rate/bookmark and suggest websites, blogs and share their likes and dislikes with the billions of surfers.

Wikipedia describes social bookmarking as a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.

In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. These bookmarks are usually public, and can be saved privately, shared only with specified people or groups, shared only inside certain networks, or another combination of public and private domains. The allowed people can usually view these bookmarks chronologically, by category or tags, or via a search engine.

Register your blog with services like digg, reddit, del.icio.us and stumbleupon. Give your readers an opportunity to suggest/ bookmark/tag your blog post across the social media landscape and watch the traffic come in.

Make a Noise

Hey you have worked hard to get your blog started. Now is the time to announce it to the world, atleast the online world. Submit your blog to blogger search engines like Technorati, and other blogging directories on the net. As you submit your blog to the various directories out there, your blog is reaching out to newer audiences.

You can also submit your blog to PR sites which allow companies to submit press releases and announcements. It may not do much for your rankings, but many journalists are known to scan press release sites for a good story. Could it be you?

You can also announce your blog by putting it on your visiting card, in your email footer, on your corporate website, Facebook (profile, posts on wall, comments etc), Youtube profile, Linkedin profile, and finally the good ol’ word of mouth.

These should keep you busy for the next few months, and by then you will be raring to get into more advanced techniques of marketing and promoting your Blog. But that my friend’s is another time, another story!

Zen of SEO Blog: http://www.seo-optimization-experts.com/seoblog.html

A corporate blog makes it easy for readers, be they customers or prospects, to find the latest and most accurate information about its new products and services. It can help achieve customer familiarity with the company products or services. Through the corporate blog, a company can converse directly with customers and prospects. Two-way communication creates trust and builds customer relationships. A corporate blog is the perfect choice for interacting with existing and potential clients. Corporate blogging serves as a channel for a company and its customers to meet on common ground and to know each other more. If a corporate blog can fit your company culture, selecting the individual or employee who will write your blog is doubtless to say the most important decision. An ideal corporate blogger is one who is an expert in his field. He should also write with passion and sincerity. The object of your blog is to engage your customers and prospects in conversation and the most effective way to start a conversation is to be sincere and honest in your blog while writing about topics that are important to your company. He should have good writing skills. More importantly, he should be one who is respected by his peers and reacts calmly to outbursts. Blogging is an intense medium. The individuals who will blog for your company should be the ones who can keep their cool despite critical comments. Most likely, the ideal individual is not your CEO. Corporate speak wonâ€TMt thrive in the blogosphere. In corporate blogging, goals/missions are of prime importance. For a blog to yield value, it has to be created with specific goals in mind. Some of these goals may be to increase company credibility, enhance customer service and interaction, and give customers a peek of the behind-the-scenes of the corporate culture, showcase new products or services and more. The important thing is to be clear about your goals. You have to be sure about what you are trying to get done and stick to them. As with any corporate undertaking, you also need to periodically evaluate how well you are meeting these goals. If blogging is proving to be futile, then make changes. If it still does not work, then discontinue blogging. Do take time to know your customers or prospects. Find out what your audience care about, what they are interested in. You have to identify what their needs are and what service you can perform for them. To get their attention, work out a way to participate in a conversation credibly. To be credible, come up with worthwhile content ideas, insights, news and information. Do engage your audience in lively and substantial conversations. Take into account what they say and reply to their comments. Respond in a professional and businesslike manner whether the comment is positive or negative. Allowing comments from your audience will definitely mean some complaints and criticisms. Don’t take them personally. Respond honestly and your company credibility will rise. Allowing audience to make comments is a distinct characteristic of blogs. Openness is important for successful blogging. For a blog to accomplish its mission, do update regularly. Post often and consistently, daily or weekly, at least. Do be generous with your links. Linking is one reason why blogging has become a popular online communication medium. The best corporate blogs, more often than not, have lots of links in each blog post. As for what not to do, do not close down existing employee blogs. More often than not, an employee is already writing a blog. It might be full of grievances about the recent spate of oil increases or it could be snapshots of a relaxing vacation in the Maldives. Maybe this employee is singing praises of the company’s new product. Why not engage this employee blogger in a dialogue about what your corporate blog aims to achieve. Don’t wait for a crisis to break out before creating a corporate blog. It takes time to see potential results of blogging. Don’t keep your corporate bloggers unidentified or hidden behind some make-believe characters. The audience will know and it will have detrimental effects. Lastly, a blog is not a miracle cure. It will not single-handedly turn your distressed company around. Corporate blogging should be incorporated with other marketing and communication tools to achieve desired results.

A corporate blog makes it easy for readers, be they customers or prospects, to find the latest and most accurate information about its new products and services. It can help achieve customer familiarity with the company products or services. Through the corporate blog, a company can converse directly with customers and prospects. Two-way communication creates trust and builds customer relationships. A corporate blog is the perfect choice for interacting with existing and potential clients. Corporate blogging serves as a channel for a company and its customers to meet on common ground and to know each other more. If a corporate blog can fit your company culture, selecting the individual or employee who will write your blog is doubtless to say the most important decision. An ideal corporate blogger is one who is an expert in his field. He should also write with passion and sincerity. The object of your blog is to engage your customers and prospects in conversation and the most effective way to start a conversation is to be sincere and honest in your blog while writing about topics that are important to your company. He should have good writing skills. More importantly, he should be one who is respected by his peers and reacts calmly to outbursts. Blogging is an intense medium. The individuals who will blog for your company should be the ones who can keep their cool despite critical comments. Most likely, the ideal individual is not your CEO. Corporate speak wonâ€TMt thrive in the blogosphere. In corporate blogging, goals/missions are of prime importance. For a blog to yield value, it has to be created with specific goals in mind. Some of these goals may be to increase company credibility, enhance customer service and interaction, and give customers a peek of the behind-the-scenes of the corporate culture, showcase new products or services and more. The important thing is to be clear about your goals. You have to be sure about what you are trying to get done and stick to them. As with any corporate undertaking, you also need to periodically evaluate how well you are meeting these goals. If blogging is proving to be futile, then make changes. If it still does not work, then discontinue blogging. Do take time to know your customers or prospects. Find out what your audience care about, what they are interested in. You have to identify what their needs are and what service you can perform for them. To get their attention, work out a way to participate in a conversation credibly. To be credible, come up with worthwhile content ideas, insights, news and information. Do engage your audience in lively and substantial conversations. Take into account what they say and reply to their comments. Respond in a professional and businesslike manner whether the comment is positive or negative. Allowing comments from your audience will definitely mean some complaints and criticisms. Don’t take them personally. Respond honestly and your company credibility will rise. Allowing audience to make comments is a distinct characteristic of blogs. Openness is important for successful blogging. For a blog to accomplish its mission, do update regularly. Post often and consistently, daily or weekly, at least. Do be generous with your links. Linking is one reason why blogging has become a popular online communication medium. The best corporate blogs, more often than not, have lots of links in each blog post. As for what not to do, do not close down existing employee blogs. More often than not, an employee is already writing a blog. It might be full of grievances about the recent spate of oil increases or it could be snapshots of a relaxing vacation in the Maldives. Maybe this employee is singing praises of the company’s new product. Why not engage this employee blogger in a dialogue about what your corporate blog aims to achieve. Don’t wait for a crisis to break out before creating a corporate blog. It takes time to see potential results of blogging. Don’t keep your corporate bloggers unidentified or hidden behind some make-believe characters. The audience will know and it will have detrimental effects. Lastly, a blog is not a miracle cure. It will not single-handedly turn your distressed company around. Corporate blogging should be incorporated with other marketing and communication tools to achieve desired results.

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Knowing “how” to think is much more important than knowing “what” to think. Those among us that understand how to gather knowledge, then how to use and apply what their small inner voice suggests are truly wise. The realization that our “inner voice” is our higher self (inject your own term, i.e., God, Angel, Spiritual Guide, etc.) asking to manifest itself can be a life changing event!

Okay, so what is a blog anyway? A blog is basically an online journal in which you can digitally pen down your thoughts, ideas, and opinions and practically anything that you want people to read. For more details go to: www.bloggers-guide-to-profit.com Blogs come in different styles, formats, and settings, depending on the preference of the user. Many blogging sites, offer built in features such as hyperlink, straight texts, pictures etc. Instead of writing texts, some bloggers choose to make their blogs more audio friendly, by using spoken word entries. This is called audio blogging.

Some blogging sites, even allow you to put video and mp3′s on your blogs. Blogging is popular all over the world.
Blog is short for the term web log. There are very few rules when it comes to blogging which means that bloggers have the freedom to express themselves in most any way they want. Perhaps the best thing about blogging is that most blogging sites are free. Anyone who wants to start a blog can do so by becoming a member of a blogging website of their choice. Once they’ve become members, they automatically become a part of that particular blogging community. They can browse through other blogs, and link them back to their own blogs. They can also make comments on other members’ blogs.

Bloggers usually communicate within themselves. This is one of the appeals of blogging. It creates a community of people sharing their ideas, thoughts, and comments with each other. Blogging is not just limited to personal usage. There are a lot of blogs that follow a theme such as: sports, politics, philosophy, social commentary, etc. These blogs build on their specific themes. In this way blogging becomes a medium in which people can share their knowledge and opinions about a variety of themes and topics.

Many groups exist within blogging communities. Of course, the members of the group have a common interest and the blogs provide a place for the group members to share their interest. Chats and forums are also contained within blogging communities.

A lot of entrepreneurs benefit from blogging by promoting their businesses on their blogs. With the rapid growth of blogging communities, entrepreneurs have found that this is a very cost-effective way to promote their products/services.

Some bloggers use their blogs as a means to advertise things such as Ebooks, while other bloggers, and use their blogs to shed light on current issues, events, news and catastrophes. It seems the uses of this communication medium are limitless!

Blogs are also being used by many teachers and professors. Lessons that they have discussed and taught can be posted on a blog which allows students access to this information 24/7. This provides a way for students to keep up with assignments and projects.

One of the advantages of blogging is that it is made up of only a few templates. In comparison to websites that are made up of numerous individual pages this is a much simpler format. For help visit: www.feed-reader-links.com this make it easier for blog users to create new pages, because it already has a fix setting that include: slots for title, body of the post, category, etc. This is especially useful for first time users, since they can start blogging right away. They can choose from a number of templates that blogging websites provide.

But by far, the most popular blog type is the one that takes the form of a personal journal. This is the kind that is usually used by first time bloggers. Individuals who want to document the daily struggle of their everyday lives, share poems, rant about their issues or perhaps world issues, or simply post their opinions will find that blogging offers a place to do just that.

Blogs varying in topics, themes, and set-ups, can be found in blog directories. Browsing through these directories is beneficial for first time users. They can check out a number of blogs before deciding on any. This provides an opportunity to get acquainted with what these blogging communities are like. An educated decision can then be made about which blogging community better meets the needs and appeals to the interest of the newcomer…allowing a first-timer to get exactly what he/she is after. Blogging is fun, simple, and easy.

Apart from the chat rooms, instant messengers and electronic mails created for communication and dialogue beyond turf are the emerging innovations that help man build opportunities for interaction. The need for a personalized and human face aspect of building online communities is slowly changing the technological landscape of the Internet.

Blogs / “weblogs” or blogging are the newest gift of Internet technology to people all over the world. These are updated posts, crop up entries or personalized life snippets, of mundane or bizarre in nature. For most, a “blog” is a personal, unedited, and authentic journal meant to be shared in an online community. Blog site is a place where bloggers can publish anything; his thoughts, feelings, photos, special events, experiences, comments on issues and so on. It is more of an online diary with videos, links, documents, newsletters and opinions on just about any topics you are interested.

Blogs are made to welcome the insights and opinions of all and therefore, should not be written to sound intimidating and too formal. This kind of blog is a sure way to put off the readers. In the basics of blogging, conversational tone would be more appropriate to reach the desired audience.

Blogging is all about individuals reaching out to other individuals. Having a blog has its own set of advantages:

1.Freedom of Expression. If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinion, this is the best way to create a line of communication;
2.Networking is at its best. Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from consumers to you as marketer of a certain product. Sound opinion and point of view is better than just showing the price quote;
3.Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.
4. Gauging public opinion on products and services. The key is nice and catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This is an assurance of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs is an excellent spot for the exchange of ideas between the seller and the consumer. Good for measuring public opinion regarding services and products, even political and business matters alike.
5.Useful tool for internal communication. This will help your company to build a knowledge-based community of employees. Also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance.
6.Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blogs to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is very good exposure for your products and services.

Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet. But the basic question is which one of the services will be the best to start off your business blog program? Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which would help them maximize their marketing potentials. For these beginners, it is best to study first the services offered by blog hosts. An ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.

A company may decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a “blog aggregator page” and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals.

For business blogs, they are required to have the latest blogging features; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potentials.

Keep in mind that blogs should have the following basic essentials:

COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provide opportunity for dialogue. In business blogs, they are a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps develop better customer relations based from loyalty and trust. Blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.
TRACKBACK. This helps in maximizing company and product exposure. Through this service, consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you. If your blog is popular in a specific online community chances are links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.
CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These both help in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation and on site search. Categories act as libraries because it classifies posts by subject matter such as business, distance learning, e-commerce, online auctions, etc. Tags, help in the classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.
RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.

If your company is to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies shortlisted for the services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are much appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages best for your company’s needs. You may want to suggest checking out some blogs that use the host first, read and examine their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is a reliable technical support the host has.

After, choosing the blog host, a team should be ready to plan the design and structure of the blog: The team should:
1. create a style that meets the needs of the audience;
2. establish an open, credible tone;
3. schedule weekly updating of blog – ideally, a few times a week;
4. include weblinks of other website and blogs;
5. blog post should be in the “first person;”
6. focus on the business blog objective; and,
7. maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.

Remember, whatever the look, style and content found on your blog is a reflection of you and your company.

http://evytaar.com

http://blogs-tutorial.com

Everyone Success can be achieved and interpreted in different ways. Most bloggers are inclined to measure success by the number of traffic or visits generated by their blogs while some bloggers claim themselves successful when they effectively monetize their blogs. However you define and measure success in Blogging, for more details visit to www.instant-blog-and-ping.com Blogging Mix will be a useful concept for bloggers who aspire to become successful.

Blogging has its own mix of elements that I wish to refer to as the Blogging Mix. Blogging Mix is made up of 3Cs, namely; Content, Connection and Continuity. These three elements are vital for the success of every blogger. Just like the marketing mix, the proper management of the Blogging Mix will lead bloggers to a successful blogging experience.

Blogging Mix or the 3Cs (content, connection and continuity)

Blogging Mix embodies all that a blogger should have or should accomplish to become successful in blogging. Content, Connection and Continuity are all that is needed for bloggers to achieve their goals and objectives. Let’s tackle the Blogging Mix one by one starting first with content.

Content

Content refers to the value of posts or entries that a blogger publish on his or her blog. It also refers to the topic, layout, theme, genre, for more details visit to www.instant-blog-and-ping.com tone, use of keywords, HTML and the format of the blog. In short, ‘content is a blog’s internal environment’. Take note that in content, bloggers are primarily if not solely responsible of its outcome.

Perhaps you have heard from other bloggers that content is king, king for the reason that according to them it’s the most important aspect of a blog. I believe that a blog is supported by three elements (content, connection and continuity) in order to be successful. These three elements share the same and equal importance and value. They work like a tripod and the absence of one element makes blogging a failure.

Here are a few questions that can be used to gauge the effectiveness of a blog’s content.

1. Is your blog’s topic timely, relevant, informative or entertaining?

2. Are the posts on your blog presented well for convenient reading? Are your posts free from errors? Are you using your keywords in your posts?

3. Is your blog optimized for search engines? Is it search engine friendly? Are you using tags?

4. Do you spend time to conduct research before writing your entries? Do you take time to understand what your readers need and want?

Any question with a NO answer needs your attention. Take note that these are basic things in blogging. Articles discussing the more technical issues of content will be posted at Blogskinny.com very soon.

Connection

Connection is another important element in the Blogging Mix. Connection refers to the inbound or incoming (link to your web page from another site) and outbound or outgoing links to your blog. It also pertains to a blogger’s network of friends, readers, admirers, competitors and community. Connection should also be understood as the ways bloggers interact with their networks. And lastly, connection refers to the techniques and strategies that bloggers employ to publicize or promote their blogs. In simple words, ‘connection is the external environment of a blog’. While bloggers have more responsibilities to their blog’s content, connection largely depends to the blog’s external environment (i.e. readers, admirers, competitors etc.).

To assess your blog’s Connection, here are a few more questions to guide you.

1. Do you receive positive and negative comments or feedbacks about your posts on your blog? Do you respond to these comments?

2. Do you have an RSS? Do people subscribe to your feeds?

3. Have you signed up in Technorati, Mybloglog, Blogcatalog or Squidoo?

4. Is your blog registered to major search engines? Blog directories? RSS directories?

Continuity

Continuity may sound easy or simple but it actually shares the same level of devotion and hard work that content and connection require. Continuity refers to the continuous development or improvement of a blog’s content and continuity. It also refers to the consistent and continuous updating or posting fresh articles on your blog. Most successful bloggers of today are those people who remained consistent in updating their blogs. Through continuous blogging, a blogger will be able to gain a wide number of readers and will receive more referrals from search engines and other websites and weblogs.

Conclusion

To be a successful blogger your blog needs more than just content, connection and continuity. You should have the proper combination of the Blogging Mix or the 3 Cs depending on the nature of your blog. The proper combination of the Blogging Mix is another article that will be covered in the succeeding posts.