By Matthew Meyer

 Choosing the right blogging platform is a very important first step. You can liken it to needing to find the perfect car. Sure, they will all get you from point A to point B, but some do it better than others. There are some that are faster, more effective, and more reliable.

The first kinds of blogging platforms are the free versions of popular software. Blogger.com is the one that is owned by Google and it’s very easy to use and completely free. The only issue is that you don’t really own your blog as it is hosted by Blogger. While the software is great, you’re pretty much out of luck if they decide to pull the plug on you.

The other major, free blogging software is Wordpress.com (not to be confused with Wordpress.org, which is self-hosted). This is also very easy to use, and it is hosted by Wordpress. Be extremely careful if you’re going to do a lot of affiliate marketing on your blog. Wordpress.com has been known to shut sites down without warning!

As you can probably tell, it is generally a better idea to self-host your blog so you have total control over it. As you start getting good traffic you’ll definitely want to ensure that there is nothing anyone can do to take your blog away. Setting up a free hosted blog is like putting all your eggs in one basket, and that’s never a smart idea. Of course that doesn’t mean you can’t set one up that is secondary and meant to help you get backlinks.

Hosted blogs are much better for most people. One of the oldies but goodies is the Moveable Type software. You do have to pay for this, but many people think it’s worth it. It’s a very powerful way to blog.

Most bloggers, however, seem to prefer Wordpress.org blogs. You host these on your own server, so you have total control! It’s similar to Moveable Type in that it’s easy to use, but the differences in the support and plugins available is incredible.

There is a huge community set up based around Wordpress. You can find plugins to help you with SEO, to run a membership site, to backup for you, to sell eBay items, and a lot more! There are also an incredible number of themes you can choose from to make the blog completely your own.

So, which one should you choose? Again, most Internet marketers tend to choose Wordpress. You might want to as well since it is phenomenal software and offers everything you need. Better yet, it’s so easy to use that you can have a blog up and running in no time.

It is also important to note that most tutorials written in the IM arena are focused on Wordpress. It seems to be the gold standard for bloggers, and you might want to select it if only to avoid the hassle of trying to learn another system that not many people use.

Matthew Meyer is an internet marketer who runs his own successful blog, Quickregister.net Website Promotion Tips Blog. He also has a reviews site which review various blogging related products at http://topinternetmarketingreviews.com/blogreviews/ .

Blogging

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By Bob Sommers

 What is a blog?

A blog is nothing more than a website on steroids. As a matter of fact, there are millions of blogs that look just like websites. Many of them are virtually impossible to know the difference.

A blog allows you and your visitors to communicate in ways that are not available on a standard website. For example …

With a blog you can

* Easily add new content to your site without the help of a technician.

* Allow people to make comments and give you feedback from any computer in the world.

* Build your web presence for free and maintain it yourself.

* Easily create links to other websites, including your own.

* Add thousands of cool widgets and gadgets to your blog to enhance the experience of your viewers.

* Add new content to your blog from any computer in the world that has access to the Internet.

The best reason of all to have a blog however, is because the search engines love blogs. Let me explain.

Google, Yahoo!, MSN and the other search engines know that the better the results they provide for a searcher, the more likely that searcher is to use their search engine in the future. They also understand that people are more interested in reading fresh content than they are in reading content that is weeks or months or even years old.

When you add new content to your blog every day or every other day, the search engines are much more likely to show your blog in the search results page than they are to show your competitors’ website that hasn’t changed in years. Now, there is certainly more involved in getting high placement on the search engines than fresh content, but fresh content gives you an edge that you can’t easily get on a static website.

Here is what I suggest you do.

Create your own blog today. Yes, it’s OK to have a blog and a website. You can use your blog to get high search engine rankings and use it to send traffic to your website or use it in place of your website.

If you aren’t familiar with blogging, you can learn to build your own blog using the free blogging platform from Google known as Blogger. You can access over 120 videos and have your own Blogger blog up on the Internet in less than four minutes. Just do a Google search for Blogger Videos or Blogger Training and you will quickly find the training videos.

Write interesting content to your blog on a frequent basis. It doesn’t have to be more than a few sentences long. Make sure you write about something that your target market is interested in reading. It’s also important to use the keywords and keyword phrases that your customers would typically use in your title and text if they were searching for your article on the Internet.

Create links from your blog to different pages on your website. It’s easy to do and the search engines love it. Best of all, now that you have your own blog, you can create links back to your website whenever you want.

Take the time to write about your customers and link to their website from your blog. Make sure you say something nice and send them an email with the link to your blog post. Not only is this a great PR move, but your customers are very likely to send an email to all of their customers with a link leading back to your blog. This is a very effective method to generate instant traffic to your website or blog.

Blogging is easy, it’s fun and it’s a fantastic way to generate targeted traffic to your website. Get blogging today.

Article Source : Article King Pro - Free Reprints and Distribution

Bob Sommers spends his time speaking and teaching Internet Marketing in Hawaii. Learn how to drive traffic to your website at http://www.IMAHawaii.com

Blogging

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By Sameep Shah

 Blog marketing is the new thing in online marketing and it is catching on like crazy. Almost as fast as the internet is moving so is blog marketing. Blogs have become the need medium to pass information on that informs as well as entertains. It’s addicting both to the blogger and the blog reader. It also has a lot of reach and provides tons of opportunities for online marketers to increase traffic to their sites that hopefully turns into sales. And, there are so many ways to take advantage of the power of blog marketing.

Blog marketing is when your website link is embedded in the content of some one’s blog. It can be anyone’s blog really. There are no limits to the types of blogs you can add your link to. If you are creative in your blog marketing campaign you can really reap some great benefits. One thing a lot of blog marketers do is to start a blog outside of their own business as a standalone informational outlet on whatever products or services their business websites are based on. They provide informational content that is designed to grab the reader’s interest and then add their link into the content as a reference source. Curiosity will bring the reader to your site which will hopefully translate into sales.

Of course blog marketing with other blogger not related to your site is a great option as well. It can even be free. You can negotiate with other bloggers to provide your link at no cost if you add their blog to your website’s link list. Lots of bloggers do this so they can increase their readership with your customers. Or, maybe you can offer to be a guest writer on their blog in exchange for adding your link into the content. There is no end to what you can do with blog marketing.

You can also pay for blog marketing with pay per click campaign. In this scenario you pay the blogger an agreed upon amount to add your link onto their site. When their readers click on your link and buy something you pay the blogger a commission or flat agreed upon rate. Some blogger may want to be paid for every time a reader clicks on your site. That can also be an economical way to get people to your website and get them buying stuff.

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Blogging

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