A corporate website needs to be professional, meetings need to be professional, and branding a business needs to be done in a professional manner, for the most part at least. The blog is an opportunity for businesses to connect with their customers on a more personal level. When a clean cut corporate blog is littered with a bunch of wordiness along with a few charts or graphs, although it might offer great information, nobody ends up reading it. Successful blogs are the ones that connect with their audience on a personal level.

One of the best ways of connecting with an audience is through taking the mask off of the blog and revealing the real people behind the slogans and logos.

One of the easiest and most neglected ways of giving a blog a personal touch is by posting pictures of the people who work in the company. Presenting a picture in front of the reader inspires trust because it shows that the company is not hiding behind a curtain, and seeing a picture of a person naturally makes the blog more personal.

The online shoe store sensation “Zappos” intersperses their blog posts between shoes and fashion focused posts with fun posts featuring their employees. In honor of the new year and the resolutions that come with it, Zappos produced a post about how four of their employees lost a total of 50 pounds, and how they did it. Through posts like these customers are able to connect with the company on a personal level.

Another thing that corporate blogs often sadly neglect is their audience, while the great bloggers show a great appreciation and consideration for their audiences. Obviously, a corporate blog is expected to present products, but the way to present products in a blog is not the same as in an advertisement. Since successful blogging is a more personal art form the presentation needs not be “salesy,” but rather it should be more like show-and-tell.

Although being obvious in other forms of marketing, corporate blogs also often neglect to give their audience what they want. If, for instance, a certain business’s main market is teenagers it would behoove them to have a cool blog with a youthful twist, whereas if another business’s main market is other businesses they should consider a more clean and professional look.

There is one advantage that corporate blogs have over the average blogger. When a reader comes to a corporate blog to find out a little more about the company, the corporate blog can give them something extra special by presenting lesser-known information about the interworking of the company.

Additionally, the blog can be the place for posting promotions. By making the reader feel like he or she is “in on things” that the rest of the world aren’t, the corporate blog can show appreciation to their readers by giving them something a little extra special. And that is also a great way to produce blog posts that go viral.

Author Bio:
Scott Hersh is a business blogger for BCAblog.com the official blog of BusinessCashAdvance.com, leaders in merchant financing.

Now before you take that too literally, let me qualify that title.

There are many factors that play into the ultimate success or failure of a television show, and many of these same elements can be crucial to the success of your blog.

If your blog is currently on life support, I encourage you to check out this prescription for improving its health. See if you can’t put some of these ideas into practice. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how quickly you can improve your blog’s pulse rate.

Time Slot: You aren’t likely to see a season cliffhanger air on a major holiday or a weekend. Why? Because there won’t be an audience to watch it. The same holds true for your blog. If you want to attract readers, you should schedule your updates at times that are most likely to be noticed by readers. Wednesdays are statistically better than Mondays. Folks are still working, of course, but the hectic pace of Monday has lessened a bit, and you’ll get a much better response.

Eye Candy: You could just as easily call this the “Baywatch Effect.” Do you think if they’d had the original cast from “Revenge of the Nerds” sporting Speedos® that folks would have tuned in?

Um…not so much.

But, shoot a couple moments of Pamela Anderson running in super slow-mo on the beach, and you’ve got yourself a ratings winner…at least on the Spike Network.

How does this transfer to your blog? Glad you asked.

I’m not saying you need to invest a fortune into a blog theme. These days, there is a wealth of free themes available – and they are yours for the cost of a well-deserved link back to the designer. In addition to this, you should consider the use of colorful photos or graphics to compliment your posts. You can do this by using free photos that are available through Creative Commons, or check out some of the affordable stock photo sites such as iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, or BigStock Photo.

A Healthy Dose of Drama: If you’ve heard me say it once, you’ve heard me say it a thousand times – any press is good press – and blogs are certainly no exception. That drama can take many shapes and forms – it can be stoking the fires of a hot topic in the news; outrageous publicity stunts; contests or giveaways – the list is limited only by your own imagination. The takeaway here is that you should have a healthy dose of drama if you want to hold readers’ attention.

The Crossover Episode: Lots of popular television shows spin off new series by capitalizing on the popularity they have built. You can use the spinoff principle in your blog promotion, in a couple of ways. First, you can leverage traffic on an existing blog to help bring readers to a new web property. Offering free reports, contests, guest posts, and the like will help attract attention to your new venture, and give you a much-needed boost. Second, you can use the power of social media sites like Twitter to promote your blog posts. Using plug-ins, or third-party services such as Tweet Later, you can keep your Twitter followers up-to-date on your blog posts, without any additional effort.

The Cliffhanger: Who will live, who just bought the farm? These details are always left hanging in the balance. If you give everything away at once, there is no incentive for folks to tune in later. Similarly, if you bombard your readers with too much information, you risk information overload. You also have given them no reason to want to learn more.

Some bloggers post daily, while others may post only once or twice a week. Some bloggers are very active, and post multiple updates daily. If you fall into this last category, be sure and disclose that information near your opt-in box. Better to alert subscribers of this ahead of time, than run the risk of losing them because you are just putting out more content than they are able to digest. Of course, using services like Feedburner will present your updates in a single email, and that makes them much easier for readers to manage.

Give it Time: Patience is a virtue that most networks don’t seem to have – as evidenced by all of the shows that they have seemingly arbitrarily canceled. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and your blog following won’t be, either.

There is no shortcut or magic pill. Your best course of action is to create quality content, post regularly, and promote your blog. Repeat after me: patience, posting, and promotion – that is the blog success trifecta.

Whether you are blogging about modern medicine or miniature dogs – you’ll find an audience if you position yourself properly. The toughest part is getting them to tune in to that pilot episode.

About the Author:

Target Market
Some markets may respond well to frequent postings while some others might prefer articles on a less frequent basis, provided that they are well-written. For instance, if you are dealing with celebrity news, then you should be prepared to write articles as soon as something newsworthy happens. On the other hand, if you operate a financial blog, your visitors might be ready to accept less frequent posts if they are well-researched.

In this case it will be your responsibility to find out what your visitors are looking for.

Interactions on your site
Normally there is a trade-off that you will need to make between the frequency of your posting and also the amount of interactions on your site. The more frequently you post on your site the less time people will have to read each and every post thoroughly – in most cases they will only skim through your articles.

On the other hand, if you choose to post less frequently, this can encourage your readers to come back to your site and respond with their own comments.

Writing Ability
Your posting frequency will also depend on your own capacity to write articles. This will depend on the amount of time that you have to research and to write a quality post. Alternatively, you might also think about outsourcing this activity in case you have the necessary resources.

SEO purposes
Blogging is often cited as being a great way to improve the search engine ranking of a site. Search engine bots love fresh content, and blogging will allow you to provide them with what they are looking for. If you are using blogging as a mean to boost your site ranking then it is definitely advised to post as often as possible on your blog.

Consistency
Irrespective of the amount of time that you post on your site you should make sure that you remain consistent. If your readers are used to seeing a post every week, then make sure that you stick to this habit as much as possible. However, there are cases where you might need to increase the amount of posts in order to promote special events and promotions.

Conclusion
Blogging frequency will depend on various factors, such as the niche that you are in, your types of visitors and your own ability and motives. In fairness, you will not be able to devise a clear blogging frequency right from the start; it is only after a short time that you will be able to determine the most effective blogging frequency.

About the Author:
Charles Borromeo is the writer behind Justice-Explained.com, a site devoted to explain legal questions in layman’s terms. He is also a passionate blogger during his free time.

As the most viewed personality on YouTube, Kevin Nalty continues to wow viewers with his lowbrow humor and comedic-like style. You name it; Kevin’s done it. Anything from heartfelt family moments to sophomoric candid-camera style pranks. He has actively participated in the growth of YouTube since its conception in 2005.

In addition to his antics in front of the camera, Kevin is a dad, consultant, video entrepreneur and marketer.

And five years after his YouTube debut, Kevin has created more than 1,000 videos with millions of views — and 100,000+ subscribers to his YouTube channel.

In his new book, BEYOND VIRAL: How to Attract Customers, Promote Your Brand, and Make Money with Online Video, Kevin Nalty shows us how to create cost-effective videos, engage customers, compel them to measurable behaviors (awareness, intent, and purchase), and how to sustain our brands online. Beyond Viral gives you the tools and tricks to successfully use online video to reach your business goals. Kevin joins well known authors including Brian Halligan, Jim Sterne and Steve Garfield in the successful New Rules of Social Media Series created by the sought-after speaker/author/expert, David Meerman Scott.

Viral video is dead and according to Kevin Nalty — this is a golden opportunity for businesses. But BEYOND VIRAL is not about how to become the next “Nalts” but how to make and promote video that will build customer loyalty, increase brand awareness and boost sales.

And believe me, Nalty knows video. Formerly a marketing director at Merck and Johnson & Johnson, Nalty currently consults leading brands–including YouTube, Intercontinental Hotel Group, Cox Communications, and Coke–on how to market via online video.

He has been blogging about this topic at willvideoforfood.com for the past three years, and several hundred thousand people downloaded his free e-book, How to Become Popular on YouTube without Any Talent.

Nalty has written for marketing trade publications, including Advertising Age and iMediaConnection, and he speaks globally at industry conferences. His unique style combines humor, passion, and practical advice.

With lots of insider prospectives, examples and first-hand case studies of leading brands including Microsoft, Starbucks, GE, MTV, Mentos, Holiday Inn, and Fox Broadcasting you’ll quickly discover why Kevin Nalty is the “go-to-guy” for brands like Coca-Cola Company and Microsoft.

For more information, visit http://willvideoforfood.com.

When it comes to making money on the Internet, one of the best ways to create an income is to monetize your blog.

Pay Per Click

There are different programs out there where you get paid when someone clicks on a link.  One such program is Google Adsense, which can easily be added to any blog out there.  You can have it display text ads, banner ads or a combination of these methods.  You can also change the size of the ads, where they display on the blog, and you can change the color scheme so that the ads match your blog.  You can also have your Adsense post to your RSS feed to increase your exposure on it.

Adsense is not the only program like this; you can sign up with several others.   It is best if you already have an established blog before trying to sign up, as these companies do have to approve you.  It can also take a while before you reach payout levels with these programs.  Make sure you check out AdBrite, Chikita, BidVertiser and Yahoo Publisher.

Direct Ads

There are many websites out there that allow people to buy advertising space on their websites or blogs.  This is a service that you could provide on your blog.  How you work this depends on you, you could charge for an ad of a certain size, timeframe or anything else that may work for you.  Check out similar sites to see what types of amounts they charge.  In order to get traffic, you will have to provide value on your site, or else why would people come view your site and then click on a link?

Affiliate Marketing

Many people choose to get into affiliate marketing as a way to get income from their blog.  You can either provide just a link for people to buy the product, and you get a cut, or you may want to write a review, or focus your whole blog on the product, depending on what it is.

Promote Your Own Product

Quite often people create a blog because it allows them to promote your own product, and a blog tends to be more casual and flowing than a website.  You can use your blog to post about all the benefits of your blog, and then include a link directly to being able to purchase the item, and increase your sales.

Paid to Write

Another method of getting paid to blog, is to write content for others.  One of the biggest reasons that a blog fails is that the owner does not have time to provide content.  Offer your services to assist with this aspect, and you will be paid to blog.

While some people have a hard time understanding how a blog can be profitable and help you earn money, with these steps you can start your career of making money with a blog.  At first it may take a while, but as you get established and experienced, you should see your income increase.

About the Authors:

Lena Morrish and Dima Nikolayenko are webmasters and spend most of their time helping people in building a home Internet business. Find clear guidelines on how to make a profitable website in their FREE e-mail course “7 Vital Facts You Must Know Before Starting an Internet Business.”

Having a blog is an awesome thing.

Consistency
Nobody wants to spend the time to check back on your blog, and notice that it hasn’t changed, and then leave. If your readers do this often, eventually, they will fizzle out. Be the blog that you would want to read. Be consistent.

1. Release content regularly
Write as often as you can release quality content. If you can release one post per day, do it! There are tools that will let you schedule your blog posts to make sure that they release at exactly the same time every day (or however often you publish). With consistent content release schedules, more people will come to your blog more often.

2. Release consistent content
If sometimes you hit home runs, and other times your article are a bore, consider only writing when you know it will hit home runs. Also, make sure that your posts are consistent with good grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. Small errors can hurt your credibility.

3. Don’t stop writing!
There is no shortage of abandoned blogs out there. Don’t let yours become one of them. Writing a blog is an investment, and it’s hard work. When you start, make the commitment to keep with it. Your power as a blogger increases proportionately to the number of active readers you have.

Linkbuilding
The more pages that link to your blog across the Internet, the more popularity you will have in the eyes of search engines. The more popularity you have, the higher up that you will show on Google for when searches, and the more searches you show up for, the more traffic you will get to your site.

Sorry, that was an earful. The advice is solid, though. In order to build your links,
1. Ask your friends and associates to link to your blog from their sites.
2. Guest post on other blogs, and link back to your own blog
3. Consider hiring a local online marketing firm to do your linkbuilding for you.

Social media to publicize
Leverage free platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Digg to get your content out there. Build a following on Twitter and Facebook, and those people will be open to hearing from you. Let them know when you’ve just published a new blog post, and these people will keep coming back.

Be someone worth following
Be awesome. Seriously, your blog has to be worth linking to, reading, or following on social networks. If you put out garbage, no one will read you or take you seriously. If you hit home runs repeatedly, you will get linked to naturally, and people will want to hear what you have to say. Put the effort into your blog to make it the powerhouse in your niche. You can be the best in the world at something online.

About the Author:
AJ Wilcox has been in love with Internet marketing for over 3 years. He graduated from BYU with a Bachelor’s in Business Marketing back in ’08 and specializes in SEO. He currently resides at OrangeSoda.com, a local online marketing firm, where he is the SEO team lead.

Well, I am one of those. I’ve been a successful freelance writer, speaker and consultant for nearly 30 years, and I do not have a blog. I have a good reason for not blogging, and maybe you do, also.

Five Good Reasons Not to Blog

You have high standards, appreciated by your audience. Anyone who blogs should do so on average two or three times a week. Although I write for a living, I do not have the energy for that pace. While I understand that blog posts don’t have to be works of art, I don’t believe it benefits me to create a body of work with a lesser standard of quality.

Blogging is more like talking than like writing, and as an introvert, I don’t have a lot of talk in me. I’d rather write articles, press releases and books – well-developed, finished pieces of structured information. These perform more than adequate outreach for me. In fact, day after day, more than 2,500 people visit my web site, which shouldn’t be happening according to the everyone-must-blog experts. Have enough marketing irons in the fire of other types, and you do not need to blog, either.

You’re too busy, exhausted or undisciplined to blog regularly. A dead blog – one that hasn’t been touched in a month or more – makes visitors to your site wonder whether or not you’re still kicking. It conveys a message of unreliability, flightiness and possible inability to deliver the goods on schedule, which are all antithetical to the qualities clients want consultants, professionals and business service providers to have.

You have poor impulse control. If you’re prone to saying mean, hurtful things or getting highly emotional over daily situations, your blog may send potential clients scurrying away – without you realizing it. A search engine once brought me to a blog whose owner insulted people who had written comments he disagreed with. Probably he thought this was snarky and cool. Another blog featured the kind of keyed-up venting most of us indulge in only among close friends. These tendencies make a lousy impression on strangers who show up at a blog with business issues on their minds.

You’re unfocused or careless. Can’t stay on topic? Take an hour to get to the point? Can’t write a sentence that doesn’t contain at least two misspellings and a grammatical blooper? If you have those challenges, you could use an editor to tidy up your blog posts before you go live, but for most of us, that’s not a reasonable investment.

You’re simply not into it. Go into blogging because someone said you must, and you will bore anyone stumbling across your blog out of their skull. Or you’ll soon end up with a blog that trails off into nothingness. Instead, find marketing vehicles you enjoy, and you’ll see the results more easily and happily.

If you have enthusiasm for blogging and can sustain the effort credibly, great. Do it. But not by a long shot is it a prerequisite for business success.

About the Author:
Marcia Yudkin is the author of 6 Steps to Free Publicity and 10 other books. You can sign up for her free Marketing Minute newsletter at http://www.yudkin.com/markmin.htm or download her free Marketing for Introverts manifesto from http://www.yudkin.com/introverts.htm.

If you have big dreams for your blog but have been putting improving it in the “one day” basket – you’re not alone.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable e-book designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will all help to turn it into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of.

Each day in the project contains:

1. A Task – something to DO that day.
2. Teaching – each day you’ll be given great instruction on both the WHY and HOW of the task of the day.

This two-pronged approach is designed so that you come away from the challenge having not only learned how to build a dynamic a blog but you’ll have actually DONE something with the knowledge.

How to Use the Workbook
While originally designed for bloggers to work through over a month – the feedback that we’ve been hearing from bloggers indicates that 31DBBB is being used in a variety of ways including:

• Intense Training – bloggers setting aside weekends or weeks to go through multiple tasks at once
• 1 Task a Day – the way we designed it – one day at a time
• 1 Task a Week – bloggers taking their time with the challenge and making the tasks week long tasks
• Monthly Cycle – bloggers using the tasks again and again each month as a monthly routine for their blogging.
• Occasional Inspirational Resource – bloggers dipping into 31DBBB on a more occasional basis – using it on days when they have time or lack inspiration.

The great thing about this workbook is that you can do it at your own pace and in your own way.

Who is this Workbook for?
31 Days to Build a Better Blog is for bloggers at different stages of their blogging including:

• those who have just started a blog but who don’t know what to do next
• those who have had a blog for a while but it’s stalled in its growth
• bloggers with bloggers block and lacking inspiration

This workbook is NOT designed for bloggers yet to start a blog (PreBloggers). It doesn’t cover setting up a blog. If that’s you check out the ProBlogger book which covers this aspect of blogging.

By the end of the 31 Days you’ll have:

• written a variety of different types and styles of posts
• learned techniques for coming up with new post ideas
• promoted your blog in a variety of ways
• built relationships with readers
• reached out to and developed working relationships with other bloggers
• developed an editorial calendar for your blog going forward
• discovered ways to be more connected to your niche/topic
• designed a plan for the next month of your blogging

All in all the daily tasks are 31 steps to transform you blog into a valuable online asset.

Money-Back Guarantee
If you’re not satisfied with the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog work book after 31 Days, Darren will refund your money – that’s how confident he is that this is a resource that will help you build a dramatically better blog.

Free Bonus Podcast
As an extra bonus for buying the workbook Darren has recorded a 1 -Hour Question and Answer session where he tackles some of the most frequently asked questions by bloggers wanting to take their blog to the next level. You’ll get a link to down load this once you’ve bought the workbook (look out for an email from Darren shortly after purchasing with details of this).

About the Author
Darren Rowse has been blogging since 2002 on over 30 blogs. He’s been earning a full time living from his blogs since 2005. Darren is the author of ProBlogger the book, co-founder of the b5media blog network and speaks regularly on blogging and social media.

Download Your Copy of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog for an Investment of $19.95 This 94-page resource (actually it’s 188 pages as there are two pages on each page really) is ready for your download right now.

Join with 16,000 other bloggers and kick-start your blog with this 31-day challenge.

At 64 cents per daily task this is a resource that is designed to bring life and revitalization to your blog again and again as you continue to use it over coming months and years.

Claim Your Copy Now – Just $19.95

Lunatic Studios has launched a new version of its popular autoblogging plugin for WordPress, WP Robot.

WP Robot can help bloggers safe time and earn more advertising revenue off their weblog by aggregating content from several sources and posting it to the blog on autopilot in intervals specified by the user.

WP Robot is a powerful and easy to use autoblog plugin for WordPress weblogs allowing you to turn your blog on complete auto-pilot and drip-feed it with fresh content in intervals you specify.

New in version 2.0 of WP Robot is the ability to post content from Yahoo News as well as any RSS feed, pushing the total number of sources the plugin can gather content from to 9. Other sources for automatic content include popular e-commerce websites Amazon, Clickbank and eBay, from which users of WP Robot can also earn affiliate commission through their weblog.

Other notable additions in version 2.0 include the possibility to cloak all outgoing affiliate links, the option to backdate posts to the past or schedule them for a future date as well as a powerful randomization engine. In addition the admin panel of WP Robot has been redesigned in order to improve usability and performance of the plugin.

“We created WP Robot because we were not satisfied with the choices that were out there for WordPress autoblogging at that time.”, said Thomas Hoefter, owner of WP Robot. “There was no All-in-One solution and so this is exactly what WP Robot has become: The only plugin you will ever need if you want to automate your blog.”

Through its autoposting features WP Robot can save bloggers much time for more important things while at the same time help them earn more from their weblog by utilizing several affiliate programs as additional revenue streams. A free demo version is available for review.

Social networking is about the social side of things; most social networking sites focus on the network aspects.

Wooxie understands that the reason why social networking sites succeed is because they allow their members to filter for things they’re interested in from the tidal wave of data on the Internet.

Twitter, Facebook, MySpace…and before them, Grokster, Friendster and more, have all tried to leverage the wisdom of crowds. The problem with this is that the field itself has gotten, well, crowded. While it’s possible to run publicity stunts (like the Ashton Kutchner/CNN.com race to a million followers), the reality of how social networking is actually used differs considerably from how their developers expect them to behave.

Social networking allows people you’ve vetted to recommend things to you. In theory, this increases their value; in practice, it means that they allow fad explosions that run quickly through the entire network. While most social networking sites allow users to specify which topics or themes they’re tracking, Wooxie requires subscribers to specify which channels they’re posting to, and allows the users to sort by channels for reception.

This forces the microbloggers on Wooxie to tailor their message, and helps keep the social network driven by the internal societal metrics rather than being hammered flat by marketers trying to treat it as a ‘broadcast network’. By way of comparison, twitter-spamming is already consuming 15% of that services’ message bandwidth.

While Wooxie’s Social Networking Website is geared towards the social networking side of things, it’s not entirely hostile to marketers, provided marketing is done sensibly and sanely; it has Google Adsense integration, and a strong subscriber ethos for ‘sustainable marketing’ – again, that requirement to categorize what topics a content provider will post on makes it closer to categorizations of opt-in messages.

Beyond this, Wooxie offers a number of recipient services, such as 155-character microblogging messages (which are a bit less cramped than Twitter’s 140 character limit) with options for 240 characters – 1440 character macroblogging posts. It offers a photo sharing service, a custom URL compresser, and the ability to differentiate your photo streams as personal or business related. Wooxie allows direct integration with Facebook and Twitter accounts, and many users are treating it as a ‘first pass’ filter to both services, and aims to integrate the best features of both as it grows.

You can learn more about the service by registering for a free account and exploring it. See http://www.Wooxie.com/register for more information.