Are you contributing to one of the estimated 36.1 million (and growing) blogs online? Or are you thinking of entering the fray and starting to publish a blog for your small or home business? Make sure you are publishing the right type of blog for your kind of business, or all that writing time will have been for naught.

The Blog Blood Test

Just as there are different types of blood, there are many different types of blogs, and each serves its own purpose. Giving your blog a blood test will help you determine which type of blog is best for your business and what may be wrong with the one you’ve got now.

Blog Blood Type 1: Customer Relations - Blogging is one of the best ways to put a face and personality on your business, especially if you operate entirely in cyberspace. Those that best employ their blog in strengthening relationships with their customers spend a lot of time interacting with customers, answering questions, providing useful tips, and keeping them informed of business happenings. These blogs focus less on the company’s products and more on the company’s culture and outlook. The goal of this type of blog is to engender customer loyalty and establish a consistent flow of interested website visitors.

Blog Blood Type 2: Sales - As you can imagine, most businesses that blog do so because of the perceived benefit to their bottom line. While very little quantitative research has been done with regards to the actual monetary impact of blogging on overall sales, the ubiquity of sales-oriented blogs indicates some kind of return-on-investment. Sales blogs focus on product developments and benefits to the customer. There is less online interaction with customers via the blog as the goal is to move readers off of the blog and onto the product pages. The goal of a sales blog is to encourage visitors to purchase a product, service, or information that the company is offering.

Blog Blood Type 3: Personal Web Journals - These blogs make up the bulk of the 36.1 million web logs online. The majority are personal accounts written without regard to size of readership or monetary value. Many have heralded free blogs as the Internet’s greatest achievement, allowing virtually anyone with an internet connection to publish literally whatever they want, and all in a matter of a few minutes. There are as many purposes for personal blogs as there are bloggers. Perhaps the most common theme is the chance to be heard.

I’ve Taken the Blog Blood Test! Now What?

Which category did your blog best fit in? Did you find that you’re writing one type of blog but desiring the benefits of another? If you haven’t already started your blog, which type do you believe would best match your writing abilities and desired outcome? Simply put, if you’re not writing the best type of blog for the benefits you want, you’ll never get them - and you’ll waste a lot of time in the process.

If your current blog is doing exactly what you want it to, leave it alone. If you find that some changes are necessary, consider the following questions:

Do I think I can drive actual sales from the blog?

Would I rather spend my writing time interacting with customers (both positive and negative) or writing about my product? (Remember the blood test)

Am I the best person to author my blog, or is there someone else who could do a better job?

Do I want to stage the blog as a company-sponsored communication tool or would I rather it appear as a kind of third-party, objective review?

How much time am I willing to spend writing?

How free do I want to be with regards to frequency of posting and responding to customer comments?

Millions of others are already blogging, but don’t let that stop you from starting. Give your business the blog blood test and see which type works best for you.

Blogs might seem like an old hat at this time as by now really everyone has one him- and herself. But exactly this fact is what makes them such a valuable promotion tool even for long existing websites (that are not blogs and don’t have one yet): The wide and large user base. There are thousands of bloggers around in every kind of niche that will visit every new blog they can find with great interest and thus making great new customers for your existing website. And the best thing is it doesn’t even take much work to add your own blog to your website and promote it. This article will take you through the only three steps that are needed.

1. Create Your Blog

I won’t get into the technical details of creating a blog here much. You can find more tutorials on how to set up a blog on the internet than anyone could ever need and in the end it doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger or any other blogging software. However make sure your choice provides a RSS Feed for your articles as this will be later for promoting your blog. It also matters what you add to the layout of your blog: Since you want to use it as a promotion tool for your website you will want to include one or several prominent links to your homepage on the blog and don’t give your visitors many choices through links to other sites.

2. Write Something

This one might be the hardest part for many people, especially for those with no earlier blogging experience. However it isn’t quite as hard as it sounds: You just have to write little articles, news and thoughts about the topic of your main website(and be sure to include a link to it in everything you write!) and the more often you do this the better your blog will perform.

3. Promote The Blog

That’s easy again! The first and best thing you can do is to ping your blog. That actually means to tell all those big blog content aggregation sites out there that you have added a new article to your weblog. They will then spider it some time later and place a link to your fresh content on their site thus driving visitor to you. The best thing about pinging is that you can ping all the important blog aggregators out there at once with the Pingomatic. The next step is to add your new weblog to all the RSS directories out there. Those are basically the same as normal directories, just that they index the RSS Feed and not the site itself. You can find a big list of them here.

After those three steps everything should start to get rolling automatically. How far it will roll however is totally tied to your content: The more often you update your blog the more success it will probably have and therefore drive more visitors to your website.

Just what is a blog and why should you use one? A blog is an online diary or journal where you can post your thoughts, opinions, articles or anything at all for that matter. What it really is is a ‘web log’, and that is where the term ‘blog’ comes from.

Why should you use one for your business? Well first of all search engines love content. They especially like new and frequently updated content. So updating often will help get your site indexed in the search engines. You are also able to notify the blog directories when you make an update, and this will help get your site spidered much more quickly.

So will this help you make money from your blog? It is another tool in your arsenal. Used well, it can certainly help you make money. There are millions of blogs online and growing daily. If your blog becomes popular, you will gain a lot of inbound links from other sites. If you are an expert in your field and post informative, newsworthy, thought-provoking or even controversial posts you will benefit from traffic sent by others who think their own visitors would benefit from what you say.

There is also software available to automatically generate hundreds of pages targeted to specific sets of keywords. RSS feeds can be used to display your blog on other web sites, and this gives you an inbound link back from them. If your site gets used as content for the automatically generated pages this will also result in inbound links and potential traffic for you.

These inbound links and updated fresh content will help you achieve higher search engine rankings. This will translate into more traffic and potential sales. You can also display ads on your blog targeted to your content and get sales in that way also.

Blogging is here to stay so it would be foolish not to consider using it. A lot of marketers are now using their blog as a ‘newsletter’. Because of the problems delivering newsletters by email, due to spam filters blocking them, it is easier to send an email to their lists advising them there is an update on their blog.

So you can see that is indeed possible to generate money from your blog. Especially if you are an expert in some niche area and gain a reputation for that. It will also help people to get to know you, as you can be more candid and informal in your blog, building up closer relationships with your readers. Another major benefit is that readers can post comments. From these comments you get to know your readers better also, and could identify possible areas where they need help or assistance. This would help you see recurring themes which could profit you greatly if you come up with solutions for which you now have a readily accessible market waiting for them.

In summary, it is well worth the time and effort into starting your blog. Let it be another area of your main business, supplementing and assisting it. Keep it alive with daily posts, read all comments and the bonus is that you can certainly profit from it, both financially and as a way of building trust with your readership.

When it comes to building and creating profit pulling niche blogs niche sites, Wordpress really shines and really beat Blogger.com heads down.

Wordpress is more than just a blogging software.

In the past when blogging first evolved, marketers did not give it much thought…until they discovered the power of syndication through RSS feeds.

With RSS feeds, they can now reach out to a target markets they normally would not have been able to.

Wordpress has an in-built syndication function, unlike Blogger.com where it still needs some configuration.

In addition, Wordpress has some powerful features that make it a marketer’s dream tool:

(a) Automatic Pinging

Wordpress will automatically ping the blog directories listed each time you publish a post.

(b) Categories

It might not seem like a big deal, but when you realize that you can name the category using keywords you want to target, then BAM!

It hits you like a rock. You can have multiple categories named using keywords you want to target, and write your post under that category. With proper planning and carefully spreading the same keyword in your post, you can achieve higher Search Engine rankings easily.

(c) Plugins

Plugins give Wordpress additional functions and features. All you need to do is upload the Plugin file, Activate the plugin file and you’re set to go.

(d) Easily change the theme of your blog (site)

With Wordpress, everything is just point and click (or plug N play). You can easily change the theme and layout of your Blog without having to learn about web design. Wordpress is easy to master.

Did you know that Blogger is actually limiting your ability to get visitors to your blog?

That’s right. Although it’s free and provides a great service, there is one thing that Blogger could do for you to make it even better. But, as they don’t do that, you’re about to learn how to do it yourself.

Buried deep within the Blogger settings is an option called “Notify Weblogs.com”, which is described as “Weblogs.com is a blog update notification service that many individuals and services use to track blog changes.”

(Note: this update notification service normally called “pinging” - Blogger “pings” Weblogs.com with the update to your site).

This is one way your blog is promoted each time you create a new post - Weblogs.com lists your post’s title, the time it was updated, and a link back to your blog. In return, there is a chance that the search engines find that link and then find your blog. Once they find your blog, they’ll start to index all the pages and list them somewhere in the search engines.

Notice I said “there is a chance…”. Go visit Weblogs.com and take a look at the time that the first post was submitted, and the time of the last one was submitted. If you’re lucky, there are about 5 minutes between the two of them.

Which means you’re post will be listed for 5 minutes, and then it’ll drop off the bottom of the list.

That’s not long for the search engines to find your link, is it?

So how can you improve the odds?

Simple - submit to more sites like Weblogs.com. There are dozens (at the time I write this, about 50-60) well-known sites like Weblogs.com that list blog entries submitted to them.

50-60. And yet Blogger only submits to one of them.

So how can you submit your blog URL to the other 50-69 sites?

Simple. Each time you update your blog, visit http://www.pingoat.com or http://www.pingomatic.com, and enter the name and URL of your blog in the form. Then select the sites that you want to be informed of your update. Pingoat and Pingomatic will then contact those sites on your behalf (and for free) to let them know about your updates.

That’s it.

Start doing that on a regular basis, and you’ll start to see more traffic to your blog.

You’ve optimized your website why not your blog.

Picture it this way.

Each new post to your blog is fresh and new. I know you know this - search engines like fresh content.

It’s called feeding the spider.

In this case the food is the new fresh content. What’s more appealing fresh fish or fish that’s been lying around for a while? See my point? Fresh fish is always better, who’d stick around smelly old fish anyway?

The same with search engines, they like fresh content that’s updated often.

Even you return to a blog because of the new fresh content. Update your content often. The search engines like the fresh new content.

So, put a keyword or keyphrase in the title of each post and a few scattered out through your post and you now have optimized your content.

The search engines will love you for it!

Internal linking plays a part too. I’ve done this myself and the results are the search engine spider crawls my site everyday.

This is a tip that is so simple and cost you nothing but more free traffic to your site.

Wayne Hurlbert from Blog Business World says,

“Blogs are optimized using the same techniques as static websites. Keep in mind that a blog is simply another website. What works in the search engines for other sites will also work for optimizing a blog”.

Great piece of advice.

The reward for the fresh content (food for the spider), the search engine spider will frequent your site more often.

Now don’t forget to link to your main site with your rich keyword or keyword phrase. Many new bloggers just starting out forget to do this.

If your site is theme based, your blog page or the many pages you have on your blog can boost your PR (page rank), so by starting to blog it will benefit you in the way of more FREE traffic.

I’ve only scratched the surface on blog seo but you can see it is another strategy in marketing you can’t afford to neglect.

Believe me, everybody and his brother are talking about blog seo. The reason why? It WORKS!

To your blogging success,

Blogging- What Is It?

Authoring a blog, maintaining a blog or adding an article to an existing blog is called “blogging”. This ability to organize and present articles in a composed fashion is much of what makes blogging a popular personal publishing tool. Typically, blog authors compose their articles in a web-based interface, such as the ones provided by Blogger.com, Blog-City.com, Wordpress.org, etc. (you can find plenty of other free blog providers using your favorite search engine).

Blogs might be maintained from personal computers, or they might be updated using “moblogging” technology - web-enabled mobile phones or hand-held devices. However, the blogging community is vibrant and not restricted to technical elite. Where the Internet is about availability of information, blogging is about making information creation available to anyone.

Creating Your Own Free Blog Is Easy

For most free blogging providers, you simply create an account, then fill in a title and description for your blogging Web page. Once your blog has been setup, you’re ready to start blogging!

Blogging Software

In early 1999, blogging software entered the scene, enabling anybody to place a blog on their existing website or simply have a blog hosted under their own domain. Any tech-savvy user can download and install blogging software themselves. Most blogging software doesn’t require an extensive infrastructure. And because most of it is open-sourced, developers can extend it to work with other software or additional blogging tools.

Blogging Tips

1. Blogging completely anonymously is not a good idea, because people reading your blog will feel disconnected from you and your writings- and with all of the bogus information on the internet today, gaining trust from your audience is a must if you want them to keep coming back. If privacy is a concern, consider blogging under only your first name, or for even more privacy, a pseudonym.

2. Update your blog often- posting new content regularly attracts readers and search engine spiders. If your blog contains fresh content on a regular basis, your readers will visit often. Search engines will visit and index a website or blog more often when it is updated constantly.

3. Allow and respond to comments. Allowing your readers to interact with your blog will boost it’s popularity. Yes, there are spammers out there who are ready to pounce on your blog and post a spammy comment with a link to their website. But closing the comments can be equally as hurtful to your blog, and if you moderate your comments you can keep the trash outside, where it belongs.

4. Link building (trading links with other blogs with similar themes) is a pertinent factor in getting your blog seen. Search engines rank websites and blogs according to how many links there are pointing to them. Be sure you set up a link building program with each blog you maintain.

If you do these things, your odds of creating a successful blog will increase significantly. A good rule of thumb is to evaluate your blog from time to time, and ask yourself, “If I were browsing and came across this blog, would I want to read it or tell my friends about it?”

The Future Of Blogging

Blogging is growing as a national (dare I say “Worldwide”?) hobby for the younger generation. New blogging technology, such as video blogging, creates new communities that continue to develop tons of tools for the techno-blogger.

Expressing oneself has become the “thing to do”. Weblogging extends this trend of self-expression to a dynamic, vibrant and energetic form of communication. The importance of the blogging community (and its relationship to larger society) has gained rapidly increasing importance. Anthologies of blog pieces reached print, and blogging personalities have begun appearing on radio and television.

The synopsis- Thanks to the creation of the weblog, as long as there are people with ideas and opinions, and a desire to tell everyone they can all about them, there will always be a medium in which they are able to do so freely.

Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online discussion list, more dynamic than older-style home pages. They are more personal than traditional journalism, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person’s life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.

Blogs enable interaction and invite others to reward a person’s creative effort with feedback. They weave new social networks, introducing people with common passions. Another reason why one should start blogging is dissemination of “micro-opinions” important to a small audience – opinions that would never make it in newspapers.

Weblogs, definitely, are the mavericks of the online world. Two of its greatest strengths are their ability to filter and disseminate information to a widely dispersed audience, and their position outside the mainstream of mass media.

The XHTML family can accommodate extensions through XHTML modules and techniques to develop new XHTML-conforming modules. These modules permit the combination of existing and new feature sets when developing content and when designing new user agents.

With so many different ways to access the Internet, the XHTML family is designed keeping in mind the general user agent interoperability. Through document profiling mechanism, servers, proxies, and user agents are able to create best effort content transformation. This language is both RSS and XML conforming. The content can be readily viewed, edited, and validated with standard XML tools. XHTML documents can utilize applications (e.g. scripts and applets) that rely upon either the HTML Document Object Model or the XML Document Object Model.

InstaBlog
http://instablog.hit.bg/
InstaBlog appeared as a result of two things: responding to the simplest possible way to maintain a weblog, and trying out the extremely cool Perl MSN IM client. InstaBlog functions in the following manner: it is run as a background process on a machine with Internet access. With its own Passport identification it is constantly logged into the MSN instant messenger service.

OpenJournal
http://www.grohol.com/downloads/oj/
OpenJournal is a completely Web-based interface. The software’s features include: automated file creation; automated index updating; editing of all files through a Web-based interface; entries with or without titles and time posted; automated archiving based on a weekly or monthly format. All done through ordinary text files and no additional perl modules are needed to run it. Basically, the software allows the users to keep an online journal, customize and configure it. All needed to do after installation is to write in it from time to time.

BlogBack
http://www.tecknik.net/blogback/
Comment system that does not require server installation.

Enetation
http://www.enetation.co.uk/index.php?
Free hosted commenting system

BloggerBot
http://www.fibiger.org/bloggerbot/
AIM client for Blogger.

dotcomments
http://www.foreword.net/
Free PHP-based comment system for use on Blogger-backed and other weblogs.

By now you’ve probably heard of blogs or even considered starting one of your own. Weblogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photograph (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting). Blogs are a popular communication vehicle that are simple to create and maintain.

You can start your very own blog in as little as 3 easy steps. After hearing about the popularity of blogs and learning about the multiple benefits of creating a blog, I set out to start my own. After doing some additional research, I found a number of popular sites that actually let you create and host your own blog at no charge. What’s even better is that the process of creating your blog is incredibly fast and simple. I suppose this is why blogging has become some popular.

Step 1: Choose a Purpose or Topic

One of the most important things you can do to ensure a quality blog is to determine the purpose of your blog and the topic you will be writing about. For example, a number of individuals who host blogs do so for the purpose of sharing their ideas on a particular topic. Others are simply looking for an outlet to make posts on just about anything- without a real agenda. Often times, these individuals are simply looking to drive Adsense revenue.

Regardless of the purpose you choose, select a topic that provides you the flexibility to contribute on a regular basis. Often times you will develop ideas for your next post based on the comments of others. This is one of the best ways to develop new content that is relevant to your readers.

Step 2: Select a Blog Provider

There are a number of websites that offer free blogs. However, the two largest and easiest to use are Blogger.com and WordPress.com. These sites have millions of users and have been offering free blogs for some time. The benefit of using established blogging hosts is the reliability and ease of use you can expect. I personally use Wordpress for my marketing blog. The service is very easy to use - even for a web amateur like me.

Step 3: Launch Your Blog

If you’re selecting Blogger to launch your blog, all you do is simply create an account, name your blog, and choose a template. From there, you can begin posting to your blog immediately. Many of the blog providers, like Blogger give you the ability to choose from a number of blog templates. Advanced users can design their own blog template.

Wordpress, another blogging tool is also very simple to use. After creating a username and entering your email address, you create a blog name and title. You’ll receive a confirmation email that provides instructions on how to begin.

Once you’ve launched your blog and made a number of posts, you should really focus on generating traffic. Not only will the traffic support any online business you may be supporting, but it can also improve the overall quality of your weblog.

Some simple techniques for generating traffic to your blog include:

a. Registering your Blog with DMOZ and other Blog Directories

b. Designing your blog for search engine optimization

c. Generating Links to your blog via link exchange and article marketing

d. Updating content on a daily basis

e. Establishing a pay-per-click budget

One thing you’ll find about starting you own blog is that blogging is both simple and fun. As you develop a loyal readership, you’ll find blogging to be a great learning experience as well. Simply put, there no reason why you shouldn’t start blogging today.

So what is this “blog factor”? Well, what a few thought was a novel idea some years ago has now morphed into something no one expected. There are currently nine million blogs out there with 40,000 new ones being added everyday. Some are informative and some are just downright a waste of your time. And while we hear a lot about blogging these days, what is blogging *really*? Blogging in its simplest term is like an online journal but much, much more powerful. Blogs (short for Web log) is a place where surfers can get up to the minute information on a topic or voyeur into someone’s life. Some blogs are nothing more than a daily glimpse into someone’s life, while others are so sophisticated, it’s hard to tell them apart from an online news service.

Why Blogs Matter

Google, the #1 search engine on the net, loves blogs. So much so that if you do it right Google will spider the heck out of your site. What does it mean to “spider”? Well spidering is when Google, or the like, searches your site’s content to establish ranking, and the more content you have (i.e. fresh content) the more Google will do its magic and push your site up the search engine. Another reason blogs matter is that they are interactive and, if you blog on your book’s topic, it will help to further your expert status on a particular issue. Because if you can get into a good blog that gets a lot of traffic, you can really start to gain some exposure for your book or newsletter.

What Would You Talk About?

This is the question we get asked most often. “If I start a blog, what on earth would I talk about?” Well if your ezine or newsletter is non-fiction it’s pretty easy to figure out what your topic would be, but if your book/newsletter is fiction it could get a bit tricky - but not impossible. This would give the reader a reason to return to the blog for an update. Getting readers to respond to your posts is a great way to gain interest and momentum for your blog and (more importantly) getting people to talk about it will grow your blog like nothing else!

How to Start a Blog

Starting a blog is super easy. All you have to do is register at a blog site (like http://www.wordpress.com or www.blogger.com) and get started. It’s that easy. The blog service will link to your site; you’ll need to ask your Webmaster to add a button to your home page so people can find your blog.

How to Blog Effectively

The best bloggers know that the more you add to your blog,