Do you Blog? If you don’t, you are making a costly marketing mistake and literally blocking people from reaching you.

Blogging started as a single-sentence commentary in the 1990s. It was a way for visitors and readers to voice their opinions. Then it slowly evolved into pages of personal take on almost anything under the sun.

Soon, blogs became the ‘in’ thing. A web persona - any web persona- had to have a blog where they talked, argued and ’sold’ gently. Moreover - and this where its power was really unleashed - the blog became the source of ever-increasing traffic between related sites. So, any web marketer with a niche made it a point to host his own blog, all the while visiting blogs of related products and leaving comments, which again earned him or her multiple streams of focused traffic.

Here are 5 reasons why you simply should participate in communities:

1. It is simple: Think of it as a virtual notepad, where you jot down your thoughts, ideas and comments. A PC and Internet connection are all that you need to become a big player in communities that relate to your niche.
2. It is authentic: Blogs, your own and others’, allow you to voice your philosophies. They are also a platform where users can voice their true opinions, fears and needs. In short, this is the place where you get to meet real people with real-life experience, unscathed by paid adverts.
3. It is free: You can set up your blogs for free, if you want, though this is not the recommended route for those looking for huge profits. To build proper traffic using Web 2.0, you will need a blogging system that is far more extensive and ‘accommodative’. Using a blogging service like Wordpress allows you to plug into the latest in building traffic to your website. But we’re not talking about Wordpress.com here. That is just another hosted website. You can get the correct version of Wordpress from Web 2.0 Submitter.
4. It builds your credibility: As you offer more and more intelligent opinions, people begin to realize that they can depend on you for the truth. You become an expert and the rest, as they say, is history!
5. Blogging helps you sell: There is a simple formula for making money over the internet: expertise=attention=making money. Before you become THE expert in your field, chances are that your mom and older sister were the only ones to read your posts. But post recognition, you can build traffic through emails, subscriptions, joining a blog network and using an RSS.

Thus, you can see how easy it is to drive traffic to your service and boost your business by participating in communities. You can also see why not participating in communities is the #1 mistake you could make if you are trying to sell a product.

Before you get too excited and start downloading Wordpress with single-minded determination, let me tell you that there are other, equally powerful Web 2.0 marketing resources that can skyrocket your sales figures. We’ll be looking at them tomorrow.

Of course, if you’d rather grab all the information in one go, all you need to do is follow this link: Web 2.0 Submitter.

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In my last article, “Discover The #1 Secret To Leverage Forums For Traffic“, I talked about forums and how you can leverage them for traffic through the content you post. Blogs can also be monetized through content. Blog marketing is a hot topic with internet marketers, so lets see how you too can get the best out of them.

Blogs are easy to start. Blogs are cheap Internet advertising strategies. You can start one for free on blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc. They are often a great alternative to building and maintaining a website. In fact, most Newbies in online business get started with a blog to get a feel of the whole thing and then plan bigger projects.

The success of blogs is mainly due to that thirst for information, which leads visitors to browse the Internet. Happily, the search engines also demand good quality content and since you need to rank high with the search engines so that they bring you focussed traffic, you can use blogs to achieve this.

Blogs are must-haves for Internet business success. Bloggers wield a lot of powerful influence because when someone is considering buying something, they prefer to turn to their favorite blogs for more information and product reviews and to express their concerns. People trust blogs and visit them regularly, especially when it is refreshed on a daily basis. See what we mean? Now lets move on to ways in which you can pull traffic using your blog.

• Your blog title and description must be keyword specific. When you sign up to start a blog, say at blogger.com, you are asked to give a title and a brief description. Here’s where you think hard. Based on who is your target audience and what topic you are passionate about writing on, you can do some quick keyword research with the help of a keyword research tool and name your blog.
• Generate keyword rich content for your blog. You want to be found by your niche market don’t you? Update your blog on a daily basis so that your visitors bookmark you and keep visiting to see what is new. While original posts are best, you can also use an automatically updating feed getting content from other blog posts and articles. With each post treated as its own page, to the search engines your blog will appear like a multi page website with regular fresh content that is rich in keywords and links.
• Your blog profile must be complete with information about yourself as a person. Visitors love to see that you are for real, what you like and dislike, your favorite things etc. Sprinkle in a few relevant keywords, too.
• While at it, you can also post on other blogs and link back to your blog. Make contact and start the process of relationship building. The more links you have to your blog, naturally the more traffic you will see.
• Allow people to subscribe to your blog through RSS feeds. The advantage is, your content will be delivered to your readers by their consent. Each time you post new content they are notified about it.
• Submit your blogs to RSS directories as a one time activity.
• Each time you update your blog, ping it to let the directories know.
• Preferably create an RSS reader of your own - it’s a good branding exercise for increased visibility.
• Consider pod casting. Technology changes by the day and you might like to keep up with it. There are pod casting services that can upload, store, host and set up the RSS and submit to directories as well as ping.
• Try video-blogging.

Blogs are probably the easiest way to be indexed by the search engines for your specific keywords, and are a great platform to launch your products, pre sell your products and keep in touch with your niche market.

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In this article I am going to describe and give you practical tips about different ways to bring focused traffic and build your lists. Do you have a list? If not, start building one right now. In affiliate marketing, no such traffic, no list. No list, no money. The equation is obvious.

Here’s part 1 to get you started immediately - How to bring in that traffic with blogs. It’s easy and you can do it now.

By the way, do you have a website? Then you must be constantly trying to find new ways to get focused traffic. Among different effective ways, blogs are amazing. Apart from the fact that search engines are partial to them, blogs can generate heavy traffic. Search engines index them frequently and it’s not hard to see why webmasters like blogs. For the affiliate marketer, blogs are cheap to start and maintain unlike websites.

You can add a blog to your website or start a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com. These free resources can get you started right away. I personally like wordpress the best because there are so many plugins and features that the wordpress community has developed. It far outweighs any other CMS (content management system) out there.

Your blog must be relevant to your website topic or business to serve its purpose of attracting traffic. So if your website sells pet food, then your blog should be related to pets. The best way to bring traffic to your blog is by adding new content a minimum of four times a week. The most successful blogs are updated on a daily basis.

You need not necessarily write the content you add to your blog; you can also post free content or outsource the writing to a professional. Each blog post can be as short as 200 words or longer depending on what you are writing about. Your posts can be information, product reviews, tips, etc.

Since you want your blog to generate traffic, make sure you have a link to your website on the blog. It is also possible to link to your site through your blog posts. In addition to this, you must also link to content on your website so that people find it easy to go there.

Once you post content, you must get your blog indexed by the major search engines. The easiest way to do this is to post content daily. You can also submit to blog directories so that you can come up in specific searches. Here are specific action tips:

• You must post at least four posts a day with your keywords incorporated into it. You can use RSS 2 Blog to create multiple posts and post them at periodic intervals.
• To index your RSS feed, submit it to Google’s Reader and My Yahoo. Also submit your blog to directories like DMOZ. You can also get your feed listed.
• Link your blog to your website, and other relevant websites
• Pinging services can be used to show that your blog has a new post. On WordPress this happens automatically.
• Become a member through a free sign up with websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Ryze etc. and display a link to your blog. Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are websites that have the largest traffic statistics on the Internet and the search engines can find you easily. It is also advantageous in getting you a backlink ranked high.

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