If you’re a blogger, you know that a brand name is going to grow your business and draw you closer to your end-goals.

There are several aspects of striking a good brand name, but the most important aspect is what happens outside the business.

These days, it’s better for your prospects to spell your domain name correctly, than spelling your own personal name. I’m sure a lot of people don’t know how to spell “Mark Zuckerberg,” but even a toddler can spell “facebook.”

This is why a good domain name is a requirement for branding. You can’t afford to register uncommon words, or include hyphens as such. As much as possible, make it simple to memorize and spell.

But we’re not talking about domain name registration here; our focus is on striking a great brand name that stays alive in your prospects mind.

What Is A Brand Name?

The simple definition you need to attain success with brand building is this: a brand is an identity, which has a name attributed to it. How your prospects see you, what they see you with and how you remain fresh in their minds.
So, what is your brand?

Except your business blog is hosted on your name domain like (dankennedy.com), you should promote your domain instead of your personal name. But in the case of Dan, he’s definitely mindful of his unique name, and that’s an edge.
You need an edge in this competitive world of internet marketing before you can succeed. To climb the ladder of success; where few are leading in the market share, a powerful brand name can help you.

How To Build Your Brand

The most powerful way to build a unique identity and become popular, create an expert status and make some cool cash, is to “read prospect’s mind.” What better way can you do this except by conducting an incisive keyword research. Every consumer or prospect out there has a unique way of looking for something. And much to my surprise, I discovered that one particular thing can be searched for using several channels and key terms.

For instance, people interested in asbestos compensation and other industrial law issues may search for lawyers. Others may use the word attorneys or legal consultants. It all boils down to their motive of searching with such keywords.

So, building your brand as a blogger becomes easier, simpler and rewarding when you wrap your name around the most cherished words used in searches.

How To Strengthen Your Brand

Building a brand name isn’t enough. You’ve got to make it strong by building strong structures that is focused on the people. The common structure that people rely on is “what’s in it for me!” It should solve a particular problem for them.

When trying to make your brand strong, find a particular problem and fix it. It’s about obeying the law of nature – “you receive when you give.” In the light of solving problems, ensure it has to do with your niche. You can only do well when you are passionate about a subject or topic.

As an avid shopper, I know the joy of saving money while I shop. On my blog that shares 6pm discount and sittercity coupon codes, I built a unique brand that concentrates on helping people and that has given me an edge.

No matter where you’re, or what you do, find a particular problem in your niche and fix it. Your brand name would grow faster.

Bring Your Brand Home

The sole objective of your brand is to reposition you in the marketplace, where you can speak your own words, have your own marketing style and win irrespective of the fierce competition around you.

There are other benefits of striking a good brand name, but the most obvious is that your credibility is enhanced, which leads to higher conversion rate and trust from your prospects. Make it worthwhile, build your brand today and I hope to see you ahead.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

As a passionate blogger, Mike Chi enjoys writing on topics that include coupon deals and online discounts such as sittercity free trial and 6pm promotion. One of his current projects involves the development of a coupon blog that makes available all kinds of discounts coupons, from sittercity and 6pm codes to saving deals for Health and Wellness.

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Have you finally decided that it’s time to establish a presence on Facebook? If the answer is yes, then you have made a great decision because with more than 750 million active members, this is arguably the best social network of the bunch from a marketing perspective. Facebook provides its loyal users with convenient access to an arsenal of great tools, but when it comes to communicating with your audience, it doesn’t get any better than the simplicity and effectiveness of the newsfeed. Through the newsfeed, you can keep your audience up to date with everything you have going on and more importantly, strike up meaningful two-way dialogue.

The newsfeed is undoubtedly the heart and soul of Facebook communications, but is there an ideal time to post your marketing content to the network? Definitely. According to statistics, 2 pm to 5 am, which ironically, is when the average marketer or page administrator is likely to have the least free time to post content on Facebook, is also the time when posts receive the most action. This is a huge range, obviously meaning that there is no one right time for every social marketer. Luckily, there are some relatively easy things you can do to determine what is the best time for you specifically to post content on Facebook.

Learn From Your Competitors

If you are a relative newcomer to Facebook, it may be wise to use your competitors as a means to base your post timing strategy. Competitive analysis is a very effective business tactic so don’t hesitate to pull this one out of your deck and use it. Either use the site’s internal search feature to find businesses in your industry with pages that are similar to your own, or conduct a more organized search by accessing the categorized Pages listing at the “facebook.com/pages” URL.

Monitor Post Activity

Another simple but effective way to determine the best time to post your marketing content to Facebook involves monitoring the activity associated with your posts. For example, if you regularly post your content on weekday mornings and typically have a lot of responses by noon, this means that you are already on an ideal schedule. On the other hand, if the content you post around 2 am is often ignored, this is a sign that you may need to find a better time to make updates.

Let Your Audience Decide

Perhaps the best way to figure out what is the best time to post on Facebook is to simply let your fans decide. If your audience is primarily comprised of everyday workers stuck in the 9 to 5 grind, you may want to try to catch them around their lunch break or near the end of the work day, times when they may have a bit of leeway that allows them to relax and do some Facebook browsing. When taking this approach, remember that Facebook is a global phenomenon, so you may need to add some flexibility to your posting schedule to accommodate fans in different locations.

These are just a few examples of how you can figure out when is the best time to post your marketing content on Facebook. Feel free to give them a try and see if they help boost your response rates.

Guest Post By: Francis Santos is based in the LA area and an up and coming writer for Benchmark Email, a service with a free email marketing option. In addition, Francis is an editor for other popular news blogs.

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The mobile platform is quickly becoming one of the most popular and powerful marketing tools in existence. It is extremely personal, easily measurable, high interactive, and very cost effective. On top of all that, it goes great with email. If you need more proof of its potential, this article will provide it while explaining the importance of having mobile tools included in your email marketing solutions.

Mobile is Direct Unlike advertising via newspaper, radio, TV and other traditional media, mobile enables you to reach your target audience directly. It is much like email in the sense that it allows you to bring your message right to the consumer, only this time, you are reaching them on a smartphone or similar device rather than a computer. The direct approach equals one-to-one, two-way interactions that allow you to have conversions and get to know your subscribers beyond the basic demographic information you have in your database.

Needless to say, having convenient access to mobile tools can be quite beneficial for building relationships with your audience. Mobile Content is ‘Likeable’ Many of today’s mobile devices are very comparable to the high performance computers you typically find in the home or office setting. The very basic of these devices provide the user with rich sharing capabilities that allow them to easily pass along interesting content to their friends. This is great for the marketer who has decided to adopt a mobile mindset. Whether it is an email message, photo, or video, a great piece of content can go far and have a viral impact using mobile as a launchpad. With the right strategy and the right tools, it could be your content that travels beyond its original destination and reaches the masses.

Mobile is Effective Although it took a while to get off the ground, we have witnessed enough to say that mobile is indeed an effective marketing medium. Just like email, this is a permission-based method, meaning that people have to opt-in to start receiving your messages. This factor alone makes the subscribers you are able to obtain highly qualified simply because they took the initiative to sign up for your mailing list. And since they subscribed willingly, they are more likely to respond to your marketing message. According to research, the typical cell phone user views a text message within 15 minutes of receiving it and respond within an hour. Now these type of results are hard to ignore no matter how good business is at the current moment. Conclusion Mobile is here, and those who want to take advantage would be wise to start prepping their strategy right now.

There is still plenty of time to make your entrance, but it never hurts to get a jump on your competitors, who by the way, are probably just as savvy as you. Find an email marketing solution equipped with a good set of mobile tools, and you will be a step closer to making an impact in one of the hottest channels going today.

Guest Post By: Francis Santos is based in the LA area and an up and coming writer for Benchmark Email. He graduated from Cal State Long Beach and holds a degree in Journalism. In addition, he is also the executive editor for separate popular news blogs.

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With the right foundations in place, starting new business ventures can be exciting, fun, and profitable. Also, avoiding early mistakes can make the difference between success and failure. To get a business started on the right track, begin with a solid business plan. This will include all the information necessary for executing business decisions from an educated viewpoint.

Prior to opening a business, create a written plan for success that includes the following information:

1. Goals for this business – this will include a mission statement, and what achievements will constitute success for this plan. Be aware that executing business plans requires flexibility, and that plans will need to be adjusted over time. Review this plan periodically.

2. Personnel – who will be running this business, who will be involved in helping make this business succeed at the basic operational level?

3. Logistics – where will this business be located physically? Will it be an online business operation or in a traditional land location? Present details about space, cost, and number of employees.

4. Finances – executing business plans requires cash flow. Where will cash be obtained, and how will this business be financed? What will expenses be each month?

5. Marketing – Starting new business operations always requires advertising and marketing the business products or services. Who will do this and what marketing events will be planned? When opening a business, many land based stores feature a big grand opening event or sale, with promotional items to give away.

These five points should help get any new business off to a good start. Follow the business plan in detail; it is your map for success!

Guest Post By:

www.200.co | Online Web Directory | Free and Paid Directory Submission.

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I’m a strong supporter of email marketing and integration of the process with your bogging. In my mind the two go hand in hand better than any other form of Site/Autorespoder integration and helps you turn your hobby into profitable venture a LOT FASTER than without it!

But I’m also a believer into ‘Double Opt-in” process for subscribers to be absolutely sure that a person who subscribed to receive my emails actually had to take second step:

• Verify Request For Receiving Information from me!

I hate spam just as much as anyone else and what pisses me off is when I get OVERLOADED with spam as result of me trying to be accessible to my customers, subscribers, blog readers…

Earlier this week I shared my gratitude to the people who helped me learn the ropes, be it by design or by example and without them even knowing about it, but non less – I learned what I believe to be the Bases of Ethical Email Marketing!

Rule Number One in Ethical Email Marketing:

You have to have a permission to send Bulk Email to a person!

Above is my own loose definition of the Double Opt-in process I use and recommend and even though many marketers lately are switching back to single option, I stick to my guns and agree with what aweber describes in their blog post “Confirmed Opt-in Myths Exposed” – I prefer quality over quantity!

I have made it a point to be also accessible to my subscribers and both my partner and I are trying to always respond to emails we get, if one requires respond. Granted sometimes our answers are not too detailed but as the numbers of current subscribers continue to grow – email begins to take up a lot of our time.

But even that wouldn’t be issue if not the Email Spam We Get as result of being accessible!

Why I’ll Change “Reply-To” email address to “No Reply”

This is the classic case where one or two people make it bad for everybody, unfortunately what might seem as one or two is increasingly becoming very large number.

And although I can’t confirm it – ever-increasing number of the people who do what I’m about to describe tells me that there is SOMEONE out there who teaches this crap!

I believe that as more people join the attempt to earn money online – they access this “teaching” and implement it exactly as advised. I even believe that most of these people are not even aware that what they do is nothing but SPAM!

And here is scenario I’m talking about:

• My email list is configured with a “reply to” email that actually leads to me, as I want to be accessible to my subscribers
• I present a Subscribe form, in one form or another somewhere on the web. I have many different variations
• I follow the guidelines and REQUIRE that person confirms their subscription and request to get information from me!

Are we good so far? I think process is pretty simple and from my side I took all the precautions to make sure that NOBODY can subscribe by accident!

Next steps is what the problem clear…

• I begin to deliver on my promise and send information in 3 forms:
  1. One of the gifts promised as download for subscription
  2. Autoresponder follow-up sequence
  3. Broadcast emails
• Each time I email – I get hundreds and ever-growing number of automated replies!

And here I’m not talking about “out of office” or “vacation” replies. Those are bit annoying but a normal part of email correspondence and I can live with that.

What I’m talking about here are ever-growing number of emails that contain nothing but promotion! Somebody have taught those people to setup autoresponder associated with email account and include some promotional message in there and then go out, subscribe to any email list they can get their hands on and anytime email comes to their inbox – they reply with SPAM message.

And Yes! It Is SPAM!

If you were taught this strategy as valid “email marketing” – stop now! There are several major problems with this approach:

1. You NEVER received a request from me to send me emails
2. You NEVER got permission from me to send me emails
3. You ARE NOT COMPLIANT with CAN-SPAM and can become a subject to legal action!

Just because you subscribed to my email list doesn’t mean you have received permissions to send me emails!

But what is even much worse – what you are doing is Illegal and Unethical! CAN-SPAM legislation is designed to protect people from email abuse and requires that if you are running promotions – you have to provide receiver with simple means to be removed from it!

I have yet to see a single person who uses this method to do that!

But let’s just assume you are doing this on purpose and actually acting with full understanding of the implications – you can’t possibly get enough response to justify your name being associate with SPAM and destroying something for everyone else in process!

I pride myself on doing my best to be accessible to people to the extend permitted by time but when I waste over an hour a day clearing my inbox from these unsolicited promotions disguised as email reply and separating them from actual customers requests, feedback, etc – I just can’t afford it anymore…

I will have to as result of ever-increasing SPAM switch to email address I will not be monitoring but simply explaining people how they can still get access to me and ask for the help they need.

I don’t know about your opinion but to me it sucks when a few bad apples spoil it for everyone!

Let me know what you think? Comment below!

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Content is an absolute must element when you consider integrating email marketing and blogging and luck you – you already have ALL you need to deliver the content people are expecting from you!

Your Blog Content Should Be The Core Of Autoresponder Sequence

Since integrating of the opt-in process with your blog, you subscribers list should be growing quite nicely. And you absolutely must continue delivering people content they expect from you. It is NOT about you making money by blasting your subscribers with never ending flow of promotions – it is about you SERVING your Niche, your small corner of the market.

And yes, money will come as result but first you have to deliver the goods. As my friend David Preston teaches in his Cash Cow Workshop – people have to KNOW YOU, LIKE YOU, TRUST YOU. Only after that chain of events takes place – they will buy from you or based on your recommendation!

Lets Build That Chain Of Trust!

People have chosen to subscribe to your newsletter based on content they have already seen on your blog so it only makes sense to continue providing more of the same! Blogs are great in many things but they are horrible in organizing content and allowing you give easy access to that content.

Problem of having your older but still valid information presented to new visitors is a huge one and been tackled by many pro bloggers. My goal here is not to teach you how to guide people to your older blog posts but how to RECYCLE those posts and give people what they need.

You Know Your Blog Better then Anyone Else!

And you know exactly what content is “evergreen” and should be interesting to new visitors. There are couple ways I like to do it…

1. Individual Blog Posts As Email Content

This method is one of the simplest and consists of simply taking about half of the post you already have on your blog and making it it an aweber email sequence. Just add it to your autoresponder sequence and at the end provide a link so people can go and read full post on your blog.

Not only do you provide valuable information this way but also send some traffic back to your blog and give some exposure to your older content! Just be sure it is relevant and still accurate info. I’m guilty of having some old emails in autoresponder that really should be gone due to being no longer accurate.

2. On Topic Posts Collection

I personally like to call these “Special Edition eZine” and idea behind them extremely simple and goes back to you knowing your content better then anyone else.

Create a special edition eZine that provides a list of your older posts on same topic. Better yet provide them in sequential order if possible at all!

These Special Editions set to go out every 30 days in my autoresponder sequence and have absolutely highest Open and Click Through rate. See example of one of my Special Edition eZines below (click to see full image in new window):

As you can see in image above this is HTML formatted email and still has HUGE open rate and people love it. It is designed to be a Resource for the specific topic and delivers Content to Subscribers and Traffic To My blog.

I also made sure to remind that people can share it with friend (some viral traffic) and always request for feedback! These special eZines are also great place to put On Subject product advertising, as long as it is of great quality and you actually KNOW it will not tarnish your reputation as these eZines designed to deliver content – first and foremost!

And if you wonder about HTML – I simply used one of the templates provided by aweber. They work quite nicely!

3. Blog Broadcast

This one is my favorite but it is designed to provide more of the current content, not so much going back to old posts. I personally think that Blog Broadcast is one of the best options you have as blogger to get and retain regular readers and failure to use it – killing your chances for success!

Small investment you have to make into purchasing aweber will pay for itself! Don’t skip this one. I’m not going to go into too much details on how to get your Blog Broadcast properly setup as I have already covered it quite nicely (I think) in my previous post:

Want To Make More Money Blogging? Broadcast Your Blog!

3 strategies I have listed above are some of the simplest ways you can RECYCLE your existing and future blog content to provide quality information to people who chose to read it! It works beautifully through

• Giving quality content to your subscribers
• Getting traffic back to your blog and extending life of your blog content

Your blog should be the Core Content in your email marketing compaign in order for your subscribers, KNOW YOU, LIKE YOU, TRUST YOU!

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Disclaimer: some of the links mentioned within this post or posts they lead to are my affiliate links and I get compensated for recommending those products. However I never recommend something I didn’t believe in and welcome your questions and feedback.

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Now that you have placed your opt-in forms in all the strategic locations we need to discuss the flow that each and every person who chose to subscribe to your eZine will follow.

It is very important that you provide a simple and consistent experience to the people in order to avoid confusion on what need to be done and as such increase your confirmation percentage. And since I don’t even discuss single opt-in, throughout the entire process we will be discussing on using only Double-Opt-in subscription, in which each person will be required to confirm their intention to receive information from you!

Here is a simple representation of what your subscription process should be:

Step 1:  eMail Opt-in

I have discussed this in details in first post of the series “Email Marketing For Bloggers, The Basics” I still want to stress the importance of understanding that Opt-In means willingly and with full understanding giving you permission to send additional information. Don’t abuse that permission and you will have an opportunity to build your own audience and earn in process!

I don’t want to spend too much time in this post on step 1, as I have covered the most important aspects in post mentioned above but I did skip on purpose several things worth mentioning when considering setting up subscription form or page:

1. Using a theme that provides you with all the options to implement a dedicated Lead Generation (Squeeze) page. I have reviewed a FlexSqueeze theme before and can highly recommend, if you can spend few bucks. It is truly great theme that will help you save on time and create a very professional appearance.
2. Setting Up Dedicated Squeeze Page and separate from your blog structure. This one is most commonly used and very effective. If you have a bit of HTML knowledge it is very easy to do. Just create a new folder under your blog structure and create all the pages in it. In this case I recommend have some form of Navigational Menu item to get to your squeeze page in addition to all the opt-in forms you already have.

Step 2: Subscription Confirmation Page

If you are completely new to the process and just looking for simplicity you can leave default aweber confirmation page. They have recently added a nice feature – audio to their page and I venture to guess it helps with subscription confirmation rate:

I always like to customize and create my own page for this step. It can serve couple different purposes:

1. It can be used to explain a person who just opted-in What They Should Do Next to receive their promised download
2. Same as above but also Added a Product Offer. This one is not required but it does help you get some additional sales.

I use both and in second case I simply added one of the products I have purchased with Master Resale Rights and it provides a tremendous value for the small price. If you subscribed to my eZine – you have seen the page, but here is quick pick:

Also works really well if you make that thank you page a *.php page and add some “php magic” and call person by name, using information they provided during opt-in process. Here is how you can implement it:

1. Save the Thank You page as thankyou.php or whatever you want to call it, as long as it is saved as *.php and not *.html.
2. Add all your normal text using your HTML editor
3. Anywhere you want to use a person’s name place this code:

   <?php echo $_GET['name']; ?>

4. As you create a web form in aweber specify link to your thankyou.php page and choose to forward variables, as shown in image below:

This will forward “name” variable that person provided in subscription form to the Thank You page and the code you implemented on the page will read it and place it in location where you put code.

One additional trick here is to use Correct Case for “Name” on your subscription form. Works wonders for people providing their name in correct case as result. I’m not psychologist but it was explained to me that this something has to do with power of suggestion on subconscious level Just don’t overuse it!

Step 3: Delivering the Goodies!

This is the most important step in entire process as this is where you have to make good on your promise! Once people click that confirmation link I recommend you send them directly to the download page. You can specify that directly in Confirmed Opt-In settings for the list you are working with.

Simply provide a URL to download page on Confirmation Success Page.  I also recommend you include a link to download in your very first - Welcome Email. Don’t take any chances – attempt to deliver on your promise from as many places as possible! Nothing will kill the trust factor as fast as you failing to provide what you have promised!

I always prefer to use dedicated page for delivering promised download and store it in sub-folder as I have described but what if you just want to be able to use your blog for everything?

Bonus Step: Using Blog For Every Step Of The Process

We are going to be working with several limitations and take advantages of what we have available. And here is how I would do it IF I used a blog for every step of the process:

• Use opt-in forms as I have described in first post of this series: Email Marketing For Bloggers, The Basics
• Use default thank you page provided by aweber. I really think that new default page they have should do a job quite nicely, even though I prefer my own pages.
• Create a page on my blog dedicated to delivering the promised download but exclude it from Menu so it is not visible using one of the Page Management plugins. Simply use editor provided by WordPress to create all the text, upload your file using options available in your editor and link to it from the content of page. Just be sure it is EASILY accessible to avoid confusion!

That is All Folks! Entire process is extremely easy to implement but if you need even more help – here are resources mentioned in this post as well as additional recommendations:

1. Aweber – must have list management. While I know that others exists – for bloggers it is my #1 recommendation.
2. FlexSqueeze Theme - simplest way to use your blog for lead generation and provides you with everything you need to create a dedicated Squeeze page
3. Aweber Unleashed – product my partner and I have recently purchased Master Resale Rights to and now offer to you at discount. It is a series of video tutorials that will teach you all you need to know abut managing your aweber account.
4. Instant Bonus Page – free membership but I recommend upgrade to access all the features. It is designed to help you create as Many Product Download pages as you like and also add bonuses to it via your affiliate link. Highly recommended if you are looking into a way to maximize your return and you can use it to deliver your free download.

[audio:email-marketing-subscription-process.mp3]

Disclaimer: some of the links mentioned within this post or posts they lead to are my affiliate links and I get compensated for recommending those products. However I never recommend something I didn’t believe in and welcome your questions and feedback.

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As I was looking through the Survey Questions submitted by some of my readers I noticed one trend – several people asked, using different words, same basic question:

How Does A Blogger Get Started With Email Marketing?

Quick search on the web didn’t bring the results for what I was looking for:  step-by-step instructions to setting up the entire process and putting your autoresponder into action. In this post I assume following:

1. You have something you willing to give away in exchange for subscription: an eBook, report, video, eCourse – something of Value
2. You already have or willing to get aweber autoresponder. To my best knowledge it is the only one that will provide your with all the proper blog broadcast options and one I personally use.
3. You have a WordPress self-hosted blog and know how to do some basic things.

And now lets look in details how you can get started with email marketing on your blog.

Autoresponder Setup

While I stated that this post will cover the basics – I still have no intentions to cover what is already quite nicely done by the aweber themselves. They provide you with wealth of the info on how to get started using their services but I recommend you have a look at their video guides – awesome resource for a quick learning of the entire process.

And if you need more detailed information their PDF guide will walk you through:

2 Videos You Should Pay Attention to to get Started:

• How to get started
• Add a Web Form Opt-in to Your Website

I highly recommend to integrate a pop-up, hover subscription form and based on my personal testing – set it to appear in about 15 seconds after visitor arrives to your site, much like you see on my blog. This way all accidental visitors already clicked away and form is presented ONLY to people interested in your information and you subscription rate will jump!

To integrate a pop-up form on your blog simply navigate to Appearance -> Editor and open footer.php file for editing.

Add javascript code provided by a right before the closing the body closing tag “</body>” as you see in picture below:

You can ignore the second javascript in the image, it is a peel ad script integration and specific to my blog.

Adding Subscribe Form To Your Sidebar

Simplest way to get it done is by using Text Widget.

It doesn’t matter how technologically challenged you might be – if you can copy and paste – you can add aweber subscription form to your sidebar using Text Widget.

Step 1: Get The Form Code

Simply navigate to Web Forms menu for the list you are working with and click the get code, as shown in image below:

Step 2: Add Text Widget To Sidebar With Subscription Form

Navigate to Appearance -> Widgets and place a new Text Widget into one of the areas on your sidebar.  I recommend placing it as high as possible so it is always visible on your blog.

Paste the aweber form code into new Text Widget and save changes. That is it!

Process is extremely simple but if you want to have it even simpler then that – here is a WordPress plugin that can make it even easier for you:

• Faster IM Optin plugin for WordPress – you are required to subscribe in order to download the plugin and you also have a chance to upgrade to paid version. Quite frankly – free is all you really need but you might want to evaluate what they have to offer.

I don’t use plugin above because I don’t see the need in it but it can be a huge time saver for great many people as it will give you access to pop-up creation as well as sidebar subscription form. I’m not associated with the author in any way, shape or form and since I don’t use plugin – please don’t ask me how to use it – all I can say it is extremely simple based on one time I tested it.

Now that you have implemented a Lead Capture options onto your blog – I will discuss how to setup the entire process of moving your new lead from..

• subscription to…
• confirmation to…
• delivery of promised content

Stay tuned for next part of this series to get the complete details.

[audio:email-marketing-basics.mp3]

Disclaimer: some of the links mentioned within this post or posts they lead to are my affiliate links and I get compensated for recommending those products. However I never recommend something I didn’t believe in and welcome your questions and feedback.

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• How to Build Your Blog Using Good Old-Fashioned E-mail (copyblogger.com)

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Alex posted a great article the other day on the impact of blog neglect on traffic. I can certainly verify his statement because whenever I post less, my traffic goes down. Surprisingly though, My feed subscriber number keeps growing. I can only attribute this to the fact that most people don’t have time to read their feeds every day and it would take a bit to unsubscribe anyway.

Another aspect of marketing is often forgotten and I wanted to touch on this. Link building.

For those of you who are confused by this term, link building is the act of acquiring links to your website in order to climb the search engines ranks. The more links that point to your site, the higher your site will climb, especially if they are hyper linked with the appropriate keyword.

What most people forget is to market their site with this in mind. They setup a blog and hope that this is enough to drive traffic to it. Unfortunately it isn’t.

Here is what you can and should do if you want search engine rankings and with that a flood or traffic.

6 Methods to help you build links to your site

1.) Blog comments: dofollow WordPress Plugins like Alex uses here on his blog are ideal to make the most of your link building exercise. They are designed with you in mind, meaning you can use your keyword to link back to your own site when you comment.

But remember one thing though, do it properly, immerse yourself into the blog conversations and don’t spam, otherwise you comments will be trushed and your efforts were wasted.

2.) Build free websites to point to your domain: You can build Squidoo lenses, HubPage hubs and Blogger blogs to generate more incoming links to your own site. All these help to give you more authority. Especially if they are within your niche topic.

3.) Bookmarking: For every bookmark you make on one of the social networking sites like Technorati a new incoming link to your site is generated. Over time this will generate a compound effect.

4.) Tags: The same goes for tags. Every tag you insert into your blog post generates a separate page with a new link to your site. Be careful though. Don’t spam this, you will want no more than 10-12 tags per each post.

5.) Blogroll exchanges: As boring as they might sound, blogroll exchanges are a great way to build links to your site. Preferably you want exchanges from blogs within the same niche (topic).

6.) Article marketing: A powerful way to build more links is through article marketing. If you submit them to a popular article directory like Ezine Articles, you will garner a new incoming link for every time somebody uses your article on their site. This is made possible through the footer in your article that needs to give credit to you.

If you make it a habit to consistently build links to your site, your site will keep growing in authority and before you know it, you have a powerful blog or website that ranks well on Google.

Worry FREE Niche Content Each and Every Month! For Less Than A Price Of Pizza, You Get Over 300 Brand-New, Top Shelf Blog Posts Each Month… Without Having To Write A Single Word … Get PLR Content Super Cheap here!

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Money is in the list – statement you hear pretty much as soon as you take a dive into Internet Marketing. It is considered to be the most valued asset of any marketer and success is more often then not evaluated by the size and quality of the list. And here by quality I mean response rate to emails. How well emails opened and advice acted on by clicking.

I’m not going to talk in this post about quality of information, moral issues involved with email marketing or the quality of emails that go to subscribers. There is plenty of info on the topic that I don’t feel I need to cover it. What I want to talk about is how people encouraged to subscribe. What has become known as Squeeze Page will be the theme of this article and how we miss the obvious …

Overused Concept Is Failing To Work

Because email marketing been used and abused – many people get more and more cautious when giving email address in exchange for whatever information was promised. People are become more and more accustomed to the standard form of squeeze page where in exchange for your email you are promised a download of product, access to private information etc. It is becoming harder and harder to convince people to give their email address.

But as market changes so do the “Squeeze Pages”. It is becoming more and more common to use video (yep, I use it too), audio, provide access to more and more valuable information that previously was only available as paid content. With many other forms of marketing used to compete for you email address and your permission to send you the info design of the “Squeeze Page” becomes one of the deciding factors and believe me – it is an art in itself!

And Yet, Best Opportunity Missed By Many …

Here is the kicker – one of the most obvious forms of “Squeeze Pages” is completely overlooked by many – Your Blog! Your blog is your number one asset in building credibility and establishing yourself. When people arrive to your pages they see exactly what type of information provided and as long as your subscription directly related to the theme of your blog – people know exactly what they can expect from you.

A person already had a chance to evaluate quality of information you deliver, decide if they like it or not and it is only natural to offer subscription. While you can easily accomplish very same effect using a more traditional Squeeze Page, my personal results show that people subscribing from my blog unsubscribe a lot less. My opinion that this is due to the fact they KNEW exactly what I will be delivering and not just subscribing to download another freebie.

I love to send people who subscribed excerpts from my best blogs posts in addition to some marketing offers that directly relate to my blog theme (providing relevance) and evaluated by me. If it helps personally me – why not to extend same offer to people who already found your information useful? So in this case email list serves double purpose – keeps people updated on latest info and extend offers in many cases not available even on the blog. A win-win situation that leads to a higher open and click through rate in my mailings and benefits my subscribers by providing convenience of getting info they need and offers they might be interested in.

Improving Subscription Rate by Over 50% …

But your offer has to be clearly visible. Just as with regular Squeeze Pages, design of your subscription form has to be visually pleasing, professionally looking and attention grabbing. I have to admit that even with my years of work with Photoshop (although that work can be only considered as a occasional hobby) designing something of that nature requires more knowledge then I could master.

And yet … if you will notice I got a brand new and very nice looking subscription form. And no … I didn’t have to hire any pro to get it done. Graphic designers tend to be expensive or at least designers that can do the job right. Well I managed to score and for just $37 got myself a set of great looking Squeeze Pages as well as subscription forms. One of the examples is in my sidebar.

And here is the deal for you – you can have 2 of the designs absolutely free. Just register and get your 2 great looking Squeeze Pages and if you need more – consider the OTO that will be presented to you. I chose to upgrade to the full paid version but that is my personal decision. I simply thought that value for the dollar was incredible and as such couldn’t afford to miss the deal. Pro designers cost too much now days …

Click below to get your 2 Squeeze Page Templates Free.

Worry FREE Niche Content Each and Every Month! For Less Than A Price Of Pizza, You Get Over 300 Brand-New, Top Shelf Blog Posts Each Month… Without Having To Write A Single Word … Get PLR Content Super Cheap here!

Copyright WordPress Guides Blog. All rights reserved. If reading this content on site other then origination blog – it was stolen and publisher is in direct violation of copyrights. Please report violation

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