Business Notion

All You Need To Know About Blog Hosts

All You Need To Know About Blog Hosts


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:
 
?    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;
?    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;
?    Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.
?     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.
?    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.
?    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:
?    create a style that meets the needs of the audience;
?    establish an open, credible tone;
?    schedule weekly updating of blog - ideally, a few times a week;
?    include weblinks of other website and blogs;
?    blog post should be in the “first person;”
?    focus on the business blog objective; and,
?    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.

Business Notion

Free Blog SetUp Guide

How to Increase Sales Through Streaming Audio

How to Increase Sales Through Streaming Audio

Many studies have proven that radio is a good medium for product advertisements.  People listen to the radio for entertainment, usually to listen to the latest music or to their favorite radio program.  In between the program, advertisements on products and services are being played.

For many years, this has been the trend in advertising.  But now that the radio medium is almost behind the audio-visual medium, the TV, and the Internet, other marketing strategies have to be employed to continue the benefits of advertising through audio.

It is then that the benefits of using music on websites were discovered.  Before, music on the Internet was just available in downloadable forms as mp3.  Even through hosting downloadable music on their servers, companies were able to get much traffic on their sites.  And everyone engaged in Internet marketing knows that website traffic plays a big role in boosting product and service sales.

However, there had been a problem with illegal music download in which artists, musicians and record companies have lost millions of revenues.

Then, came the popularity of Internet music streaming.  Unlike the former, radio streaming does not allow download of the music files.  Thus, the copyrights of the artists and record label owners are protected.

So, how can this be done?  There are several ways to stream audio from your site.  First, is to stream a radio program from your site or blog.  You can find free affiliate programs that allow you to stream their radio content from your site.

What will this mean to you?  This means that your site will have new audio content every time it is visited.  What's even great is that the content is being updated even without much effort from you.

In this case, what you needed to do is to signup with an Internet radio station and have the link embedded on your blog or website.

Another way is to stream mp3s.  To do this, you just need to upload your mp3files on a server and add the files' links to the page.  When the link is clicked, the browser opens a media player window and plays a file.  However, since the file is in mp3 format, it may also be downloaded.  Downloading music files without the authorization of the copyright owner is illegal.  Therefore, if you will be using this type of streaming, make sure that you have the appropriate permit to do so.

A third way to add audio to you blog or website is to stream music through organizing playlists.  Playlists are m3u files, which if downloaded, will not play music if offline.  Using this process, however, can be complex.  Here is a short instruction on how to do it.

1. Save your mp3 or wma file on the server.  You may skip this step if you know that the file exists on another server and know the link to that file.  Make sure that the link has a .mp3 or .wma extension.

2. Open your text editor and type the path to the file.   Include the http:// and the file extension.  Repeat this step until you have included all the links to the files that you would like to be included in the playlist.

3. Save the playlist with a .m3u extension.

4. Upload the m3u file on the directory where the music files are hosted or to your server.

5. Open your html editor and embed the link to the m3u file.  Through this, you can also set if you want to have the playlist to autoplay if someone visits your site of if you want your visitor to control playing the music.  You can also set the volume level.

After the code is embedded on the html file, and whenever your site is visited, the songs in the playlist will be buffered, streamed and played one after another.  If your playlist has several songs, the user can skip forward or go back a song in the playlist using the media player controls.

Doing this setup works for many website owners.  Through this you can customize the type of music being played on your site.  You can even play recordings related to your product to boost product awareness.

It requires knowledge of html to be done.  But if it will be the best way to increase traffic to your site, why not request assistance from programmers.  After all, having audio on a website is a proven way to increase sales.

Business Notion

Boost Your Business With Blogging!

Boost Your Business With Blogging!


Business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market. 


Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors.  Here are some advantages:
?    Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.
?    Awareness and loyalty.  Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.
?    Feedback. Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.
?    Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.


For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.


Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.


The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.


For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well. 


If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1.    Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea.
2.    Setup several test blogs right away.


If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.

1.    Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.
2.    Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.
3.    Remember the following safety measures in blogging:
?    legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging; it is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities;
?    corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business;
?    create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public;
?    avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers;
?    make content updated, relevant and fresh;
?    reinforce the company’s core values; and,
?    encourage employees to use it.
4.    Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.
5.    Begin marketing.
6.    Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results.
7.    Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.
8.    Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time.
9.    Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.
10.    Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging.

Business Notion

Getting started with videoblogging

Getting started with videoblogging


Videoblogging is the next generation of posting ideas and products over the internet.  Everybody knows about textblogging. Now they use videos for a better way of expression. This form of communication may entail a lot of resources, but it is all worth it. If pictures say a thousand words, videoblogging exceeds that by far.

A videoblog requires larger disk spaces on websites, a faster server, and a whole new set of programs to support it.  Videoblogs can be fed through RSS. This is technology of syndicating your website to other RSS aggregators.

Videoblogging works with people on the internet expressing their selves. Now if you put this on a business prospective, you are up to a lot of benefits. Think of it as a powerful tool in making showing your prospective customers your line of products or your services. It’s just like showing a commercial all for free. And if you videoblog through RSS, then most probably you are getting your target market.  

People like to see what they are going to buy. Some would like to see proof and be sure that they are getting their money’s worth before shelving their dimes on it.  All of us know the influence of a thirty second commercial. The effect of videoblogging is similar to that. You show your product, people watch it. If they like it, they buy it. If you present it good enough, they’ll buy the product even if they don’t need it.   

Now on the web, things are pretty much static, unlike in television in which all are moving. If you post something that is mobile, it would most likely catch attention. Now imaging your product parading in all it’s royalty through videoblog.  You’ll get phone call orders in no time.

If your business is just starting up, you can create a videoblog right at your own home. All you need is your web camera, microphone, video software, and lights. For as long as you know how to use your camera, then you can create a videoblog.

Invest in a good web camera. The higher its resolution is the better the output. And you like to present your goods in the optimum way so get the best one possible. Make a short story, or just capture your goods in one go. Just make sure you are getting the best profile for each. Get those creativity juices flowing.

Lights are important in a production. Make sure you illuminate entirely the area you are going to use to create videoblog. The brighter the area, the crispier the images will be. You can also use lighting effects for added appeal to the presentation.

Should you require sounds for your videoblog, you need a microphone. Record you voice as a voice over for promoting the product and its benefit to consumers. Sounds are as important as videos on a videoblog.  It is advisable to make your sound effects as enticing as the video.

Your video editing software can be any program. You need this to finalize your work. You can add sounds, delete some bad angles, or insert some still pictures in there too. Some programs              are user-friendly and can be used even with zero knowledge on video editing. Even simple video editing programs should do the trick. Select your background carefully too. The light affects the presentation so make sure that the background and the light complements each other.

Videoblogging is a great tool but it also has it downside.  It may slow down the computer so other may steer clear of it.  Download time may also be time consuming especially if customer is still on a dial- up connection.

But don’t let those stop you. Let videoblogging be an alternative for you, though it is best to still keep the text and pictures present in your presentation to accommodate all possible viewers of your site.

Nowadays, the more creative you are in presenting your product to the market, they more you are likely to succeed. Videoblogging offers an interactive way of selling. You involve the customers. You instill in them the advantage of your goods.  And at times, those are enough to make a sale. 

Business Notion

SEO Importance In Blog Advertising

SEO Importance In Blog Advertising

Having a blog on the Internet that gives people some
good informaton doens’t do a lot of good if people
don’t know that it’s there.


If you want people to be able to find your blog,
something that is important is that you have good
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

Whenever you put one or more words into a search bar
to look for something, the SEO of a website is what
helps bring up those websites.

For example, if your blog is about Harry Potter, you
are going to want to be sure that your blog includes
popular terms such as Harry Pottter, JK Rowling, and
other things that are related to Harry Potter.

Think about the things that people look for when they
are interested in Harry Potter, and the kinds of
things that come up when you search.

It’s always a good idea to use your own experience
when you are optimizing your blog for searching.

Think about what has worked, what hasn’t worked, and
use them for your own blog SEO. This way, when someone
puts one of the terms that you put in your blog into a
search engine it will be one of the sites that comes
up.

Of course, there are other factors that come into play
that determine where your blog will come up in the
list, but everyone starts somewhere.

The more keywords that your blog uses, the more people
will come to your blog. It just takes time and
patience.

Business Notion

Join A Community To Advertise Your Blog

Join A Community To Advertise Your Blog

Something that you will find, especially if you join
something like LiveJournal or GreatestJournal, is that
users just like you have created communities for
people with common interests.


There are communities for just about any subject, and
if you find that there isn’t a community for the
subject you can create one. This is a great place to
advertise your blog.

The nice thing about communities is that there isn’t
any limit as to how many communities that you can
join.

For example, say that you love blogging about books,
horseback riding, and skiing in Tahoe. All you have to
do is look through the communities for ones that have
those interests and join them.

As long as you post something related to the topic to
the chosen community, people will see you and perhaps
they will check out your personal blog.

Something to remember is that you don’t want to write
a post tht is one sentence long in order to get people
to go to your blog. They will want to know that what
you write is interesting and is something worth
reading.

Joining communities can be a great way to advertise
your blog and drive traffic to it. If you are
referring to something that you posted about on your
blog, you can use a link back to your entry in your
post.

As with posting comments on someone else’s blog, you d
on’t want people to think that you joined a community
simply to get traffic to your blog. Otherwise, people
won’t visit your blog and you may get banned from the
community as well.

Business Notion

Email Groups - Hidden Treasure Troves For Advertising A Blog

Email Groups - Hidden Treasure Troves For Advertising
A Blog

Something that has become increasingly popular since
the Internet has grown are the email groups that are
available through Yahoo, MSN, and other venues.


They are a great way to meet other people who have a
common interest, and are very similar to the
communities that are available through blogging sites.

There is plenty of diverse subjects and there are
communities for just about any subject.

These groups can be a great place for people who have
a blog about the subject and want to share it with
other people.

Most of the time when you join a group, you are
encouraged to take a moment and to introduce yourself.
This is a great opportunity to tell people about your
blog, but make certain that you don’t overdo it.

Just like with any of the other places you will
advertise your blog, you want to make people want to
go to your blog. If you are too overbearing, you will
turn people off.

If your blog covers different subjects, you can
advertise it on the other groups that cover those
subjects as well.

Make certain that your post to the groups is
interesting and that you let people know what it is
that your blog is about. There’s nothing worse than
getting taken to a blog under false pretences.

When people visit your blog, make certain that you
thank them for visiting and respond to comments that
they leave.

If they know that you appreciate the time that they
took, they are more likely to come back again.

Business Notion

Blogging Traffic - Give And Take

Blogging Traffic - Give And Take

Blogging traffic is a give and take relationship.
Sometimes one of the best ways to get traffic to your
blog is by visiting someone else ’s blog.


Go to their blog and read one of their entries, or
read a few of them. Chances are that you are going to
find something that you have in common.

When you find something that you find truly
interesting on a blog, leave a comment so that they
know that you were there.

One of the best known blogs available is LiveJournal.
A great feature of LiveJournal is that you can search
for interests on their site and it will come up with
results of those who have that interest.

Are you interested in horseback riding You can see
what other bloggers are interested in horseback riding
as well.

When you are commenting on someone’s post, you want to
make sure that you don’t leave generic comment. If you
like the post, say something about what you read in
the post.

After you have commented on the person’s post, then
you can say something like, ‘I really like horseback
riding too. I had a similar experience to yours.’ and
then use it to link back to your journal.

But be sure that you sound sincere when you are
commenting, and don’t make them feel like you’re just
fishing for traffic.

If someone thinks that you are using their blog to get
more traffic to yours, they won’t visit your site and
your efforts will be wasted.

Blogging Directories - Great Advertising Venues

Blogging Directories - Great Advertising Venues

If you want to have more people visit your blog, there
are plenty of blog directories on the Internet that
you can submit your blog to so that people will come
and visit it. Most blog directories are listed by the
topics that the blogs that are submited cover.


Blog Catalog is a free blog directory that offers
categories such as career and jobs, writing, Iraq, and
many others. It has features such as featured blogs
and other things to offer those who submit their blogs
there.

Another great place to add your blog is
blog-drectory.org. Not only do they have an an
extensive list of categories with sub categories, you
can get your blog reviewed. For the most popular
blogs, it shows the amount of hits that blogs have and
if they have any reviews. As well as listing by
category, the blogs are also listed by location.

There are other blog directories on the Internet -
these are only a ouple of them. But blog directories
are a great place to advertise your blog and to make
new friends. You never know what you will find when
you browsing through the directory, and you may just
find out information that you never knew. Some of the
blog directories offer chat features as well, so that
you can meet other people easily.

As you can see, blog directories are a great place to
get your blog noticed and bring people to read your
blog and look at your pictures.

Business Notion

Blogger Forums - A Great Place To Advertise Your Blog

Blogger Forums - A Great Place To Advertise Your Blog

No matter what type of blog that you have, one of the
best places that you can advertise your blog is to
join a blogger forum. After all, everyone who posts
there has a blog and thats the main subject.


It’s a great place to meet other bloggers and to
advertise your blog.

There are quite a few blogger forums that you can sign
up for on the Internet. One is known as Bloggeries,
where you can show off your blog, get your blog
reviewed or review other blogs, and find lots of tools
that you can use for your own blog.

Another good place to go is to Blog Forum.

Blog Forum, like Bloggeries, has spots for you to
market and show off your blog,

Blogger forums are a great place to advertise because
everyone in them are of the same mind and want to make
certain that their blogs get noticed and read.

If you use your blog to advertise something that you
are selling, or you want to get a lot of traffic to
your blog in order to make money, you want to go
someplace where it can get exposure.

When you advertise on a blog forum, you know that you
are placing your advertisement in a place where
blogging is something that people enjoy.

Just remember when you are posting to a forum to read
the rules and abide by them. That way you’ll get your
blog noticed and you will know that you are doing the
right thing.

Business Notion