Blogs are a great way to get your message across on the internet and have it published almost immediately. It is the ideal way to prodide information, education and if done well, can creat wealth and multiple sources of income for you. For your blog to be effective you need to ensure that it either solves someones problems, removes their pain or increases their pleasure. To me, it is the perfect online selling tool that will drive business, leads and sales. I have found that the best way of having an effective blog is to make it conversational, interesting with valuable content, but also engaging and involving the reader. As a businessperson or SME it has many practical applications in that it will: ? Increase targeted traffic to your site ? Boost your search engine rankings ? Build rapport for increased sales ? Increase the lifetime value of clients ? Prove your expertise ? Compliment your newsletter ? Generate press coverage There are many differences between websites and blogs: ? No need for a webmaster for updates ? Publish directly from your computer ? Content changes instantly ? No complex uploading ? Don’t need knowledge of HTML ? Automatic archives ? Customer interaction ? Instant syndication Another effective technique that I use is when commenting on other people’s blogs, I add a link back to my website as well as a keyword or phrase I want to rank in the search engines. With high ranking sites, I will quickly get targeted referral traffic. The most popular sites to host blogs are http://www.blogger.com and www.wordpress.org Once you have created your blog, it will be published almost immediately. I would suggest that you also submit you blog to the directories. Some of the more popular directories to submit your blog to for a free one way backlink include.: http://dir.blogflux.com/ http://www.blogcatalog.com http://www.bloghub.com http://www.britblog.com http://www.blogarama.com http://www.blogwise.com http://www.blogdirs.com http://blogs.botw.org http://www.blogrankings.com http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/World_Wide_Web/Weblogs/ http://www.bloggeries.com/ http://www.blogtoplist.com http://www.bestblogs.org/ http://www.findingblog.com/ http://blogannounce.info/ http://www.blogtastic.com http://www.addurlblog.com http://www.blogoozle.com http://www.blogsweet.com http://emarketingblogs.com/listings/index.shtml http://www.blogfinds.com http://www.spillbean.com So don’t wait, whatever your hobby, business or passion, share your stories with the online world. Take a look at my blog at http://blogger.frankfurness.com For more articles, please take a look at my website http://www.frankfurness.com and please download complimentary eBooks and software at http://www.frankfurnessresources.com Frank Furness CSP CFP TOT is a professional speaker and trainer specialising in financial services sales and sales management. He has educated, entertained and inspired audiences in 48 countries. His publications and sales CDs have been sold globally. For more information or to sign up for the free ‘Sales Tips & Ideas’ newsletter, email frank@frankfurness.com and for resources take a look at http://www.frankfurness.com and http://www.frankfurnessresources.com NOTE: You're welcome to "reprint" this article online as long as it remains complete and unaltered (including the "about the author" info at the end), and you send a copy of your reprint to frank@frankfurness.com Take a look at other articles, free software and e-Books at http://www.frankfurness.com/
Frank Furness CSP CFP is an international speaker and trainer specialising in sales, technology and management. For free software and ebooks go to http://www.frankfurnessresources.com
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