Business Logs

Helping companies communicate better

How Has Blogging Affected Your Business?

Some folks run blogs as a business in itself, usually by monetizing their blogs through various advertising setups. However, many entrepreneurs and corporate folk use blogs as part of their business, usually as a marketing tool, and as a means of connecting to customers around the world.

I know a few folks who market their products solely through social networks and blogs. One good way to market small retail items like fancy jewelry, trinkets and gift items, for instance, is by taking snapshots of these, posting a few sentences as a short description, and offering the items for sale online. Sure, you can try selling on eBay and you will probably get more inquiries (not to mention an easy way to close deals). But running blog features on your products for sale would definitely add to the personality of your business.

How has blogging affected your business? If you don’t run blogs as your business in itself, you probably run a blog for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s a personal blog, and the discussions about your work or business are an offshoot of your sharing professional experiences along with personal reflections. Or maybe you have the habit of searching for online reviews about your products, and responding on the comment threads when you feel you need to clear up a few things.

Then there’s also the negative aspect of blogging and new media. Have you ever caught employees slacking off during office hours, and writing on their blogs, tweeting, watching videos or connecting to social network friends? Time spent otherwise being productive are being channeled to personal online activities, and this results in decreased efficiency.

Maybe you yourself have experienced focusing on social media too much that you forget your other duties in the workplace or the business. Do you find yourself increasingly enamored with your blog, Twitter, or just about any social media application that you are fond of using? Are you focusing too much on online clients? How about clients and customers whom you are supposed to service face-to-face?

Being involved in blogs and other social media can be a great way to establish your identity online, and perhaps build up your authority in your field. Sometimes, it does have negative effects, too. How has blogging affected your business? Are your experiences all positive? If not, then do you have a plan for better harnessing the benefits of social media to your business?

Turn Your Freelancing Activities Into a Small Business

There’s a fine line between freelancing and running a small business. For one, a freelance professional almost always works on projects by himself, relying on his own resources, skills and marketing abilities to keep the business running forward and servicing clients’ needs. During times when orders pile up, though, you might find it difficult to keep on servicing clients yourself. You sometimes pass on projects to friends and fellow professionals. Before you know it, you’ve hired extra hands to keep things running smoothly. You’ve effectively expanded your freelancing profession into a small business.

Most freelancers’ work habits lean toward a preference for less work rather than more work. This might make sense to a professional who values his time and creativity. Therefore, freelancers could be focusing on a few select clients, in order for quality to be kept at par with his and the clients’ expectations. But for a small business, more clients means more money. If you feel you are ready to expand, then you would have to either make some changes in your working habits, or your work setup.

Outsource some of the work. An increasing trend in online work these days is outsourcing. If you are in the business of designing websites, then perhaps you can partner with programmers and coders who can convert your raw PSD layouts into CSS-based themes for popular content management systems like WordPress. If your main line of work involves writing, then perhaps you can subcontract some work to able writers, and then just edit and proofread their work. Or maybe you hate to do administrative tasks like client support, scheduling and other such things that can be tedious to the creative professional. You can outsource these activities to a virtual assistant.

Partner with fellow professionals. There are a handful of freelance professionals out there who might not be as good with marketing their service as you. One mutually beneficial thing you can do is share the load–and the monetary benefits–with them. For instance, I’m not a designer myself. My forte is in developing and marketing blogs and web applications. Knowing this limitation, I have partnered with several colleagues whom I pass on design work to. We split the load. Clients are happy. My designer friends are happy. I’m happy, with the thought that I don’t have to force myself to do work I’m not an expert at.

Some freelancers are perhaps allergic to the idea of turning their profession into a small business. For some, the concept of having to invest time, money and effort into a startup might be disheartening. To some, it’s the idea of sharing the benefits with other people that might lead to reservations. But before you turn down the idea altogether, try to think of the benefits. Try to think of how you can reap the rewards. Sure, a startup might be more difficult to manage than a simple freelancing gig. But it’s potentially more rewarding.

Review: Logical Media

Logical Media is one of the innovative services that pay for ad placement within blogs. Do you have a blog and are you seeking a way to make additional money from the blog? Are you seeking a way to offset other programs with the use of ads? Through the registration with Logical Media, the blogger can have access to well-designed and functional ads, which are placed within the blog, earning the blogger money each time that a visitor to the blog decides to click on one of these ads.

As one of the top fifty affiliate networks in Website Magazine, Logical Media has reached a standard of customer service that many affiliate sites are simply unable to attain. Through the use of excellent placed ads, customer service and daily updates throughout the ads which are placed on the website, there are many reasons that you should consider Logical Media for marketing that can begin to earn you money from the moment you begin using the program.

With the added incentive that bloggers are equipped with, to earn twenty five dollars for signing up for the service, the blogger can begin to make money right away. With many other services, it seems that you are waiting weeks and even months for money to accrue within the account. However, with the instant twenty five dollars, just for signing up – you can begin to see an immediate profit!

With an easy to set-up and user-friendly interface, you can be up and running within a matter of minutes. Through the information which is provided and targeted keywords, ads will be developed that will be suited to your blog, your readers and your genre.

There are many other services which are offered to bloggers, in addition to the paid ad placement that can be taken advantage of throughout the blog. Through the use of valuable referral programs, in which the referrer can earn up to five percent through each referral and the real-time reports which the blogger will have access to, there are many ways that the blogger can learn to better the site – All while getting paid!

There are very few other paid ad placement companies that offer a high sign-up bonus. With the twenty five dollars that is offered to new customers you can begin to see your account move upward, through each click which is made on the ads placed within the blog. Are you seeking a program that enables you to track these movements in real time, while making real money? If this is the kind of program that you think would work for you, consider Logical Media, as the services offered are one of the many reasons more bloggers are choosing the company.

When it is time to get paid, bloggers always get paid on time, and the right amount. Through the use of intricate bookkeeping, bloggers are kept happy with accurate payments, regular payments and a variety of methods which are used to complete payments to bloggers that have signed up for the program. A reliable way to monetize your blog, more and more bloggers are choosing Logical Media.

Using Twitter to Connect and Engage

Businesses have been learning about how to use social media to promote their brand, spread goodwill, and market their products and services. However, some entrepreneurs and marketers are still getting it wrong, in that they view it as mostly a numbers game, and with their use of bait-and-switch tactics to get a lot of people following them, and then subsequently bombarding everyone with promotional material.

Social media is not about bombardment with information. Rather, marketing through social media involves connecting and engaging with your audience. Whether you are marketing a well known brand, or just starting out a business, it pays to know your niche, and to truly connect to the people who have genuine interest.

Take Twitter, for instance. Twitter is an excellent platform for connecting to friends, but it’s also a great way to research current trends and discussions. It’s also a great way to bring out a message to people whom you might not necessarily know.

The problem here, as with any platform or application, is the tendency for misuse. For instance, there’s the presence of bots and spammers. Because of an open API, some have developed software for following people automatically based on keywords. And there are software that automatically push posts on schedule. And as for spammers, Twitter is abuzz with unscrupulous marketers who do bait-and-switch tactics. First they follow you, seemingly like genuine users. And then when they have a good number of followers already they start regularly posting inspirational and business quotes, but what you won’t notice is that these usually include links to affiliate schemes.

Not that there’s anything wrong with affiliate schemes, but what I take issue with here is how the marketers seem to lure users into following, and then switching to what is practically spam.

For any marketing to succeed on Twitter, I think the best way to go about with it is by genuinely connecting with individuals. Join the discussions. Or better yet, start it. Once there is a connection, people start trusting you. They trust your recommendations. There’s nothing wrong with using social media as a platform for marketing. The important thing here is to remain human, and to remain genuine in your enthusiasm toward your brand, company or product.

Try growing your Twitter network today. Join in on the discussions. Be relevant, and be real.

Four Simple Ways to Increase Your Email List

An email list is essentially a list of subscribers that have provided their contact information to the blog site, in hopes of receiving valuable information, offers and updates to posts which are made through the business blog. It can be an essential marketing tool, when built correctly and visitors are constantly being added to the repertoire of subscribers.

There are many ways that you can add to the subscribers list, or the email list. Here are four of the most effective ways to convert readers into subscribers, by adding these subscribers to the email list:

1. Give viewers a reason to sign up for the list. Incentive is essential when building the blog list. Use incentive through the use of valuable information, subscriber only offers and specialized information which can provide the reader with something positive. Using incentive, you can substantially increase the blog subscriber list.

2. Make the list easily accessible to readers to join. Use bars that contain simple forms like name and email address in order to subscribe. Making the subscription process long can be a deterrent for members that spend only mere seconds viewing and judging a blog.

3. Narrow the list by using a confirmation link within an email that must be clicked upon in order to complete the registration to the list. This does not inhibit the list, but will ensure that those signing up for the list are genuinely interested in the services and information which is being offered, which will convert better into sales.

4. Keep the number of emails which are sent to the subscribers low. This can help to maintain the list, and reduce the amount of subscribers that make the decision to unsubscribe as there are too many emails being sent from the blog. Send only emails that contain updates at various intervals, key information and special offers available to subscribers.

Make Your Posts More Memorable With the Inverted Pyramid Technique

I’ve been listening to Made to Stick on audiobook and it’s inspiring me in the way I blog. This book is already being called one of the best business books ever written because it shows clearly how to make you ideas memorable, or sticky (as the authors call it).

One of the things the authors state is that simplicity is very important if you want to create memorable ideas. When they simplicity, they mean finding your core message and cutting out the extraneous elements. By doing this, it makes it much easier for people to remember your idea.

This principle is definitely a great idea when working online, because – let’s face it – most people going online are very busy and have tons of distractions. If you communicate more than one core message, your messages will probably get lost in the noise of online information.

Let’s apply this principle to blogging. If you want your posts to be memorable, to be remembered even months later, you need to be able to just say one thing. Have a central theme for each of your posts.

Remember from English college class when the professor gave you the first step for creating a good term paper: come up with a great thesis statement – not two or more. And then as you write your paper, make sure the rest of your paper supports that statement.

Sadly, too often my posts don’t have a clear thesis statement but go into many different tangents and are hard to follow. Also, I find myself covering too many topics in a single post.

The Inverted Pyramid Journalism Technique

One of the tools that’s helped me write more focused posts comes from the world of journalism. I found out about it in Made to Stick. It’s called the inverted pyramid and it helps journalists craft their stories.

It’s called the inverted pyramid because at the top of an inverted pyramid is the widest part, which represents the most important part of the story. This is like a thesis statement and should go at the beginning of the story. You want the most crucial information at the beginning of the post to “hook” your reader and get them to read more of your post. For the rest of the story, savvy journalists will share details supporting the core message. Each succeeding paragraph is less and less important than the opening paragraph that contains the core message.

Sometimes the most crucial information is not the apparent right away so don’t be afraid to take some time to think of the most important info and then craft a relevant title and opening paragraph based on that info.

Also, this technique also works for non-writers. If your preferred medium is something like audio or video, you can get a lot of value from the technique. In your audio podcast or video, start it off with the most important info to grab the attention of your audience. Then craft the rest of your audio or video content with material that supports that info.