• How to Find Winning Ideas for your Blog Topics: A Blogger’s Online Manual
• 5 Reasons to Use WordPress as Your Blog System
• Search Engine Optimization Techniques
• Traffic Monday: Why You Should Use (NOT Abuse) Forums to Increase Traffic
• Making Yourself Identifiable In The Blogging Community

Thank you for understanding. James King of atmmultimedia.com

Twitter: If you don’t already have an account you should get one. Once you start using twitter, don’t jump right in with the “read my blog” tweets. Retweet other people and seek out people who may be interested in your blog. Post other websites that offer good information. Then, after you have been on twitter for a while, direct people to your blog. Interaction between the advertisements is critical for survival on twitter but it can bring you tons of traffic.

Forums: Join some forums related to your blog. Do nothing at first (except add a link to your blog on your forum “signature”, but occasionally join in some threads and topics. Again, once you have made your presence known, slip a link to your blog in one of the posts you make. Add the post casually such as “…and here is a blog where you might find more information”..Once they get to know your name and become interested in your niche, they will be more apt to follow a link you put up.

Set up feeds: Set up RSS feeds and put them on your website and any “free webpages” you may have. This gets the spiders crawling through your site. Try and see if others you know will put your RSS feed onto their websites, even if they are personal websites or blogs.

Email and business cards: Put a link to your blog under your signature on outgoing Email. You can usually automatically set a “signature” through your email program. Just be sure to include your blog link. For instance, you can put something like:
Justin Davis
Name of your blog
Blog URL

Business cards should have your blog URL on them as well. Put it somewhere that it will be seen. If you have a website and a blog, list both and give yourself title of “owner”. Your blog URL should be standard contact information.

Article submission: Whatever your niche is, there are people looking for information on it. Create some 300-500 words articles about anything concerning your blog topic or niche and in the bio box or part of the article, put the link to your blog. There are many different article submission sites so you will have a chance to get your name and blog name recognized and “branded”. Make the articles interesting and readable. You can do this yourself or hire someone else to do it.

These are only 5 ways to get traffic to your blog, but there are more. It takes time to build up a steady stream of visitors but it will happen. It also takes time to get your name and niche out there together to the public. Don’t make the mistake of pushing yourself or your blog on an unsuspecting public. Especially when concerning social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, you want to get the feel of the place before you start “spamming” your blog URL to anyone who will look. Where there are 5 ways to drive traffic to your blog, there are 50. Using the above methods will often open other doors for you to promote your blog but it does take some time. You want to be assertive about giving out the information but if you appear too pushy then people will never click on the link you provide. Be known for your niche or brand and people will be more likely to want to read what you have to say about a topic.

Without traffic your blog just will not succeed. Whether your blog stands on it’s own or is a stop gap to your website, you still need to find creative ways to get people there.

With the many twitter applications available you can basically zoom in on your target customers or readers just by getting to know your way around. Remember that others are searching based on keywords as well so the more you tweet your “keywords” the more interested people you will likely get who want to follow you. However, being a social site there are some spoken and unspoken rules in the community. If you want the number of followers (hence, more traffic) then you must interact within the community. Here are some ways twitter can help you drive targeted traffic to your website.

Branding: Establish yourself as an expert, but do it in a friendly way. Tweet casually for a while before you start tossing the link to your website out there. Recommend other sites of interest to your niche. By doing this your followers will begin to associate you with your niche and will be eager to visit your website. After all-you’re the expert!

Tweet carefully: You have 140 characters to make your point. Be witty, informative and helpful and more and more people will begin to go to your website. Again, use your keywords as much as possible but not in every tweet. People recognize an advertisement so you will have to be clever slipping the link in there.

Community: As strange as it sounds, the more helpful you are (including recommending other blogs and websites) the more people will trust you and know you are not just a tweeting sales pitch. Again, when people trust you they are more apt to find out what your website is all about.

Followers and Following: There are different theories on this but basically every follower you have is a potential visitor to your website. If you want to know how twitter can drive targeted traffic to your website then you will need to know that you cannot be too selective on who you follow back. Obviously there are some that you just know will have no mutual interest but basically every follower is a potential customer. People know who follows them back and who doesn’t (there is a twitter application for that too) so some will eventually quit following you if you do not follow back.

The reason Twitter continues to grow in numbers is that for personal use, it’s fun and for business use, it’s profitable. It has been proven time and time again that you can gain traffic via twitter. Just like in real time, people on social media sites tend to form some cliques but generally everyone communicates with everyone else. There are some people who may be following you that you don’t hear from for a week and then suddenly, they are asking you a question. This type of interaction is how twitter drives targeted traffic to your website. When they have a question, they know who to ask.

If you are already on twitter but not as an “expert” in your field then you may want to start a business account. You can send some of your follower’s messages to follow you under your business account. If you have not yet started a twitter account, it is best to join, follow a few people and then just watch the interaction for a while. Be fairly quiet at first but interact. There is a knack to learning to twitter in a way that will drive traffic to your site. Once you learn that, you will be able to drive tons of traffic to your website.

So What’s the Big Difference?

When you come to think about it, a blog that sells a product is essentially a sales letter. But why make a blog to sell if you already have a sales page with your own domain name? That’s because blogging is a whole different strategy in all aspects compared to selling with a sales letter.

For one, sales letter is a long content with tons of highlighted text and exaggerated wordings. It is published in a single webpage with no page break, tabs or links whatsoever. I know you have already seen one of these badly written contents that online entrepreneurs are expecting to sell. In fact, they actually sell sometimes, but more often than not, readers are easily turned off by such a sloppy way of presenting a product.

Imagine this: humongous headings, bolded texts of varying degrees, eye-straining font color and exaggerated punctuation-all the works to grab the customer’s attention! This is what you are able to trim down when you write your sales copy in a blog. Instead of huge headings, you simply type them in boldface, instead of highlighting, you indent or increase the size by at most, two notches, instead of exaggerating claims, you explain further.

You can do all these with blogs because they are dynamic and yet easy to use. Most entrepreneurs who do their own sales page have barely gotten passed through basic HTML. With blogging, you don’t need to exert too much effort with layout.

Strategy

Now let’s talk about the distinction between the two in terms of strategy. Sales letter are published on a single page because it aims to get the customer buying immediately after reading a bunch of generic copy. Blogging, on the other hand, provides several counts of exposition regarding the product to guide potential customers into buying. It is safe to say that sales letter is a desperate attempt to get instant sale whereas blogging is doing it in a more subtle manner.

However, such an attempt made through a sales letter is becoming more and more obsolete nowadays. Consumers are becoming smarter than ever and that also means that they are more difficult to please. Many readers who are bombarded with an article that exposes a dire need to sell become skeptic about the legitimacy of the product. The initial impression is that this seller is just doing all these talk to get me into buying but he/she was not able to explain to me how exactly the product works. The conclusion? Most probably, it doesn’t.

A sales letter is full of claims that are too good to be true. A blog, on the other hand, is a space where you can talk directly to potential customers about what they can get from the product. This is because as a seller, you give your customer a leeway and a time to think things over before buying. This strategy is more credible compared to the abrupt moves that are common in sales letter.

It is not easy to get the trust of consumers and that’s exactly what you’re trying to build up in a blog. People listen more to ordinary people. If you project yourself as an entrepreneur selling a dishwasher, your target niche might think that you are telling them about all those features because you wanted to sell. It’s a totally different reaction if you have an actual work-at-home mom to tell them how the dishwasher helped her juggle between household chores and career. It’s true that most blog readers are aware that a blogger who blogs about a product might have been earning something from it. But still, when you have a housewife narrating real life experience, readers become more interested.

Feedback

Sales letter do have user testimonials written all over it but isn’t it too easy to fake them? With blogs you get to receive comments instantly. Users and potential customers can interact and discuss on the product right then and there. As an entrepreneur, you immediately get feedbacks and testimonials to help new customers decide on buying.

In the end, the sales strategy to use still depends on your desired outcome. If you want to risk with a sales letter that can possibly provide immediate sales, then do so. Opt for a blog if what you need is to develop trust between your company and the consumers so that every product that you sell will create a good reputation for you.

I am very happy to release Obitor WordPress theme which was my old custom WordPress theme used here at blogriffic before this current design. Since I won’t be using it anymore I have decided to release it for the public

Obitor WordPress Theme is 2 column layout with these great features;

• Widgetized Sidebars,
• Navigation Dropdown Menu
• Search Engine Optimized,
• Built-in Gravatars,
• Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict,
• Valid CSS Level 2.1
• Perfect Cross Browser Compatibility In IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, and Opera 9,
• Clean, Organized & Tagged Code For Easy Modification and Script Integration (If Desired),
• Fully Compatible with WordPress 2.7

As a researcher, I have experienced being bombarded with the same dilemma. To resolve this, what I usually do is choose the titles that seem to be well thought out and completely ignore the ones that fail to get my attention. God knows I made the right decision! The better titles are indeed the ones that lead me to the contents that I wanted. When I tried to check the dull ones, I did found the articles lacking in substance.

You’ll know if an author has put an effort on the article by just reading the titles. Just think about it-if you are to choose between two articles, which one will you read: “Guitar Ear Training” or “Playing by the Ear: Guide to Become the Next Guitar Legend”? Tell us that the first one was able to grab your attention more than the latter and I’ll immediately go for an early retirement.

The internet is a very competitive arena. Chances are, dozens of writers have already written on the same topic as yours. The quality of their works is probably at par with yours as well. If that is the case, you have to do everything to keep yourself ahead of the game with titles that are sure to get the readers curiousity. However, it doesn’t mean that you should lure the readers into something that you can’t really provide. Never ever try to deceive them with a title that does not encompass what you have written. Do that and you’ll lose their trust as quick as how you were able to get them reading you.

Getting Started with a Working Title

Authors often begin writing with a working title to keep them from going astray from the topic. Nonetheless, you should not be restricted by working titles. If you are able to construct additional ideas while writing, you may add so and simply change the title into something that will encompass the brand new subject.

Other than that, considerations have to be given to tone, style and target niche. If it so happened that the working title does not seem to fit the general ambiance of the article, it is always best to modify. If possible, incubate the article for a few hours before giving it the final title. Authors do this to detach themselves from the article and to give it a fresher, more objective perspective. By doing so, they get to determine the main idea and key phrases. That’s exactly what you should use in the title.

Style

Aside from letting the readers know what the article is all about, the role of the title is to set up the mood or the tone of the article. When you see a text entitled “Creative Writing Tips”, you expect to read practical and straightforward application of creative writing in real life situations. An article that discuss on the same topic can assume the title, “Write to Impress!” but reads differently. With the title alone, readers get to anticipate if they need to absorb the information seriously or if they should just have fun reading the article.

If you are writing a how-to article, try a title that sounds more straightforward. The readers expect information from you so you really don’t need to embellish the title (and the whole article, for that matter) with fancy words. Say what the target readers need to know and they will be more than glad with that. Most do-it-yourself websites and magazines have simple and straight to the point titles that usually begin with “How to…” That’s should be more than enough.

Otherwise, if you are writing a personal essay or a blog entry, you have the poetic license to play around your title. Be as creative as you can but still, the readers have to know what to expect from the article. You don’t need to write a formal title if what you have written sounds conversational and fun to read. Use your imagination. You can write short or long titles, provoke your readers with a strong statement or a mind-boggling question, use a rhyme, quotation or a pun-you have endless possibilities.

Again and again, the only thing you have to focus on is the needs of your readers. You must not deceive them into reading your articles. Instead, try to help them decide if the information you offer is what they are looking for.

The internet is a big place, and by that I mean REALLY big. As a webmaster or blogger, one of the most important things you can do is get recognised by other internet users and hopefully get really popular. This article will discuss different tips and methods you can use to help get yourself recognised.

Probably the most important part of getting yourself recognised is making yourself identifiable from the other thousands of bloggers out there. To do this, you not only need to make yourself different, but also your blog, and you should build on connecting yourself to your blog.

Changes you should make to your blog

There are a few changes you should make to your blog (and your blogging lifestyle) to make you stand out more and get recognised quicker:

Go guest posting – If you’re looking to get yourself known, you should consider guest posting. This is where you go and do a post on someone else’s blog (like this one) in exchange for recognition that you wrote the article. You should do this as it means your articles are being read by more people, and if they enjoyed it they might go on your blog and become a loyal reader.

Have a unique selling point – This will usually be in the form of a slogan, but is basically a short line that sums up your blog and says what’s unique about it. By marketing this, people know what makes your blog special before they’ve even clicked on it.

Changes to make to yourself

Yes, that’s right. If you want to see a serious difference in how much you’re recognised, you will need to change your ways (if you haven’t already) to make it easier to market yourself:

Use a gravatar – When you go and comment on other people’s blogs (which you’ll need to do to get recognised), you should use a custom gravatar to make yourself distinguishable from the other commentators.

Your name – Staying on the commentating theme, you need to change your name. No, I’m not on about calling yourself Ronald McDonald, infact, it’s a lot simpler than that. When you comment, you need to make yourself associated with your website. The format I recommend is ‘Your Name | Your Website Name’. This works really well for me (Simon | Teenius), and people know I own Teenius.

Be kind – OK, sorry, I know you’re already all very nice people, but you need to be even nicer. Help fellow bloggers out, and do it publically. By doing this, you not only get a reputation as a cool person, you also show that you know what you’re talking about.

There are plenty more things I could go on about, but I think these are the essential points that should be followed by every blogger.

Although it may be true that the ulterior motive of article marketing is to sell by means of providing contents, the main goal of an author is still to provide reliable information. The body of the article will do just that while the resource box (the author’s section) is the space allotted for a call to action. Nonetheless, you still have to write it in a very subtle way that it may seem as if it flows naturally from the contents. Also, the resource box should not dominate the whole article. You should limit the word count to 15% of its total size.

What to Include in the Resource Box

Name. Isn’t it a wonder that many authors still forget to give their names in the resource box? If there is a space for you to promote yourself, here it is. When you write an article, you only get to see your name on the byline and on the resource box. Some authors would say that they are not selling themselves anyway and that what they need to focus on is the product. That is so wrong. When you sell a product, you should also sell yourself to the readers simply because you have to gain their trust before you can get them to buy from you. If you frequently provide exceptional articles under the same byline, eventually, readers will remember who you are and how helpful you were. That reputation cannot be bought by money but you can earn a lot out of it.

Contact Information. This is especially important if you consider yourself an expert on the field you are writing on. Readers would often want to get in touch with you for interviews and additional information. Again, this is a way to build rapport and trust with your readers. In the long run, they would follow whatever it is that you write and that can only mean more income for your articles. Give out your e-mail address to say the least.

Elevator Pitch. This has to consist of 1 to 3 sentences that sum up the article and how additional information can be found. No, this is not a sale pitch at least to the reader’s eyes so don’t try to sound like promoting a product even if that’s what you wanted to do all along. Avoid over-hyped claims just to get the readers clicking through on the link. Focus on giving them what they need, if and only if you can deliver.

Call to Action. Now here is your make or break deal. You already gave them what they wanted. This is how you can get what you need from them while still sounding as if you are still offering more. Does that sound confusing? I hope not because this is your one chance to get new visitors and to keep the old ones coming back for more. Your call to action should either ask the readers to buy a product, visit a website, and subscribe to a bonus report, email list or newsletter. Make sure to put the valid URL of the website you want to promote so that the readers could simply click on the link.

How to Get Click-Throughs

So how exactly can you get click-throughs without sounding like you are asking them a favor? Again, the key is subtlety. The resource box should flow naturally from the article. If the resource box is related to the subject of the article, you don’t need to put a lot of effort on trying to make it fit. All you have to do is to guide the readers into clicking the link.

Tell the readers exactly what they can get by clicking. Don’t lure them into something that they don’t really need just to receive a click-through. It will immediately backfire on your reputation as a trustworthy article writer.

People would surely want to find out more information on a popular topic. The more people visit the link, the more unique visitors you will receive. If that is already the case, there’s no harm with a little self-adulation. Brag about the popularity of the website on your resource box. New visitors will be interested on clicking your link if you tell them that a lot of people already had.

Remember that the readers need to know what to expect when they get redirected to another website. People who go to the internet for information need instant access. Wasting their time will make them feel frustrated and that is not a good thing for your business.

This week round up post’s in the blogosphere.

• Article Marketing Made Easy – DirectSaledWebMarketing
• 21 Reasons Why You Should Have A Personal Blog, And 8 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t – Asnio
• Optimizing For Keywords That Get Clicked On – NicolasPrudhon
• Build A Successful Homepage – Atmmultimedia
• 27 Must Read Posts for Bloggers – BloggerTalkz
• Twitter & Blogging – StandOutBlogger

That’s all from me now, I hope you enjoy these great posts. I’ll return with some more great posts next week.

Do you like to get the latest updates and news? Do you use services like Digg and StumbleUpon for submitting your information? Well, if you like to read breaking stories on major news to viral videos on personal blogs, Yahoo! Buzz is a great place to start. Instead of editors, people like you submit the stories and buzz up the best ones.

Like many of the other social networking and content sites (e.g. Delicious, Digg, Propeller, Reddit, and StumbleUpon) Yahoo! Buzz allows you to vote up or down an article based on if you like it or not, but they take this concept one step further. Their rankings take three things into account.

1. Trends in search queries on Yahoo! Search.
2. The number of comments left on Yahoo! Buzz.
3. The number of times that content is shared with friends over email from Buzz.

To start promoting your blog using Yahoo! Buzz, it’s a good idea to create a profile, create a network of friends, give back to the community by participating in Buzz activity, and leaving comments on your favorite articles. When you have a good blog post that you want to share, this network of friends will be more likely to help you Buzz your blog post if you’ve been Buzzing theirs.

So, are your blog posts buzzing? Make sure to add Yahoo! Buzz to your list of places to promote your blog.

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