http://www.ursasrl.com Wed, 08 Sep 2010 20:02:29 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 http://www.ursasrl.com/what-you-should-know-about-blog-host.cfm http://www.ursasrl.com/what-you-should-know-about-blog-host.cfm#comments Wed, 18 Aug 2010 21:18:39 +0000 admin http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=2256 Apart from the chat rooms, instant messengers and electronic mails created for communication and dialogue beyond turf are the emerging innovations that help man build opportunities for interaction. The need for a personalized and human face aspect of building online communities is slowly changing the technological landscape of the Internet.

Blogs / “weblogs” or blogging are the newest gift of Internet technology to people all over the world. These are updated posts, crop up entries or personalized life snippets, of mundane or bizarre in nature. For most, a “blog” is a personal, unedited, and authentic journal meant to be shared in an online community. Blog site is a place where bloggers can publish anything; his thoughts, feelings, photos, special events, experiences, comments on issues and so on. It is more of an online diary with videos, links, documents, newsletters and opinions on just about any topics you are interested.

Blogs are made to welcome the insights and opinions of all and therefore, should not be written to sound intimidating and too formal. This kind of blog is a sure way to put off the readers. In the basics of blogging, conversational tone would be more appropriate to reach the desired audience.

Blogging is all about individuals reaching out to other individuals. Having a blog has its own set of advantages:

1.Freedom of Expression. If you want people to hear you out and give their own opinion, this is the best way to create a line of communication;

2.Networking is at its best. Having a blog is a good platform for exchanging genuine ideas from consumers to you as marketer of a certain product. Sound opinion and point of view is better than just showing the price quote;

3.Excellent advertising platform. Blogging is a new way to advertise products, a refreshing change from the traditional advertising outlets and it is cost-effective.

4. Gauging public opinion on products and services. The key is nice and catchy titles with new ideas presented in your content. This is an assurance of quick and repeated responses from your readers. Blogs is an excellent spot for the exchange of ideas between the seller and the consumer. Good for measuring public opinion regarding services and products, even political and business matters alike.

5.Useful tool for internal communication. This will help your company to build a knowledge-based community of employees. Also good for harnessing employee relations and identifying human resource issues in advance.

6.Other benefits like search engine optimization (SEO) will help your blogs to be seen often by as many people as you wish. This is very good exposure for your products and services.

Many blog hosting services are available on the Internet. But the basic question is which one of the services will be the best to start off your business blog program? Business people are usually clueless to recent technological innovations which would help them maximize their marketing potentials. For these beginners, it is best to study first the services offered by blog hosts. An ineffective business blogging program may damage marketing opportunities instead of enriching them.

A company may decide to do the following depending on its capacity and needs: 1) Host their own blog service, 2) Pay someone else to host the service, or 3) Setup a “blog aggregator page” and ask the employees to select their blog hosting services individually. There are paid and free services available for individuals.

For business blogs, they are required to have the latest blogging features; if not, this will prevent them from maximizing their marketing, public relations and SEO potentials.

Keep in mind that blogs should have the following basic essentials:

COMMENTS. Welcoming comments provide opportunity for dialogue. In business blogs, they are a good customer feedback mechanism. This helps develop better customer relations based from loyalty and trust. Blogging is an innovative way to converse with your customers.

TRACKBACK. This helps in maximizing company and product exposure. Through this service, consumers can get back to you for more posts and updates without the difficulty of locating you. If your blog is popular in a specific online community chances are links going back to your blog site are everywhere online, other blog sites or even websites.

CATEGORIES AND TAGS. These both help in classifying blog searches for ease of navigation and on site search. Categories act as libraries because it classifies posts by subject matter such as business, distance learning, e-commerce, online auctions, etc. Tags, help in the classification, especially in the blog search engine Technorati. Possible customers and new clients locate blogs about certain topics of interest by just clicking the tags.

RSS FEED. Really Simple Syndication is the feed from your blog that is sent out over the internet, and collected through the various newsreaders and aggregators.

If your company is to establish a business blogging program, considerable options should be made available by the hosting companies shortlisted for the services. Free blog hosting services are popular but they are much appropriate for individual online journals. Paid blog hosting services offer unlimited packages best for your company’s needs. You may want to suggest checking out some blogs that use the host first, read and examine their layout and design. Another important thing to consider is a reliable technical support the host has.

After, choosing the blog host, a team should be ready to plan the design and structure of the blog: The team should:

1. create a style that meets the needs of the audience;

2. establish an open, credible tone;

3. schedule weekly updating of blog – ideally, a few times a week;

4. include weblinks of other website and blogs;

5. blog post should be in the “first person;”

6. focus on the business blog objective; and,

7. maintain an honest, engaging conversational quality.

Remember, whatever the look, style and content found on your blog is a reflection of you and your company.

http://evytaar.com

http://blogs-tutorial.com ]]> http://www.ursasrl.com/what-you-should-know-about-blog-host.cfm/feed 0 http://www.ursasrl.com/how-to-boost-your-business-with-blogging.cfm http://www.ursasrl.com/how-to-boost-your-business-with-blogging.cfm#comments Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:40:24 +0000 admin http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=2264

A business blog is an incredible online marketing tool that saves you thousands of dollars but provides great business opportunities in just one click. Blogs are user-friendly, customized and flexible medium for disseminating useful information for effective positioning of your products in the market.

Companies engaging in business blogging have a definite edge over its competitors. Here are some advantages:

Word-of-Mouth. In a survey, there are currently 14 million blogs with 80,000 more being added each day and about 30 percent of the 50 million users are blog readers. Imagine how much gain your company will have, if your products are advertised through blogs. With Internet, information spreads so quickly especially if an impressive write-up goes with your product. Soon your blogs will be passed on to hundreds of possible customers.

Awareness and loyalty. Open communication with your customers creates trust and loyalty among them. Being there to respond to their questions and comments make them all the more willing to try your products and services.

Feedback. Blogs is good for product research and reviews. It would be easier to improve on your products if you observe your customers’ thinking and behavioral patterns. You can also take immediate action to your customers’ concerns.

Community halo-effect. Bloggers are reasonable, friendly and helpful. They are more than willing to create blogosphere of comments regarding your product. The only thing you have to do is embrace and take active part in the culture and your product will surely be considered in their next stop to the supermarket.

For better marketing results, actively promote your business blogs by submitting your blogs to blog search sites and directories. Do not forget to paste in with your blogs, your URL. Be sure that your blogs contain exclusive information with value and are always updated to keep readers popping in, read up your blog, move on to the next and click on again for updates.

Blog is like a setup booth in the biggest trade show on earth everyday. Marketing possibilities are just around the corner waiting to strike your sale scales up.

The Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds are important too in conjunction with your blogs to get the best benefits. Use effective keyword phrases to generate high ranking status in the search engine traffic. In this way you have better chances of people finding your website leading to your blogs. More traffic means more potential sales.

For this to be successful, you can use RSS for news update feeds which can be read through RSS reader application. This is a very useful tool for business and internet marketers as well.

If you are already convinced with the potentials of business blogs for marketing and targeting sales increase, your company is now ready to start blogging. But first, you have to be in tune with your company’s business objectives and determine if blogging will really help you achieve your goal.

1. Several blogs are dedicated to teaching people the do’s and don’ts of blogging, READ them! Include in your reading materials blogs that are consumer-based too to give you an idea.

2. Setup several test blogs right away.

If your initial try out with blogs worked well, you can now start setting up your blogs.

1.Study blog design. Blog hosting services provide pre-designed templates. But if you opt for paid blog service, you can ask your artist to design and layout your blog site to match the company’s identity and needs.

2.Choose a topic. Its good to have a line-up of topics you want for your blogs but be sure they are in consonance with your business objectives. This would be a test of your flexibility and open-mindedness since results may be going against the set objectives.

3.Remember the following safety measures in blogging: legal issues are sometimes involved in blogging. It is safer to include disclaimers and limitations of liabilities; corporate communication and legal department are responsible in educating the senior management on how blogs might affect business.

4. Create blogging policies; set limits on who gets to blog and what information are allowed to be made public. Avoid outright marketing blog or you will shy away your readers.

5. Make content updated, relevant and fresh. Reinforce the company’s core values. Encourage employees to use it.

6. Start blogging and complete 20 posts before going to marketing.

7. Begin marketing.

8. Regularly monitor the coming ins and outs of readers and get updates. Then, measure your results. Adjust if needed. You can always play with your designs in the blog site as long as it remains to match the company’s identity.

9. Strive to be consistent with your topic all the time. Try to have unrelated topics with general and broad appeal.

10. Schedule updates regularly. Monday, Wednesday and Thursday would be best to update blogs.

Once you have done all these things, you can now ultimately enjoy the benefits of business blogging. Happy blogging!

]]> http://www.ursasrl.com/how-to-boost-your-business-with-blogging.cfm/feed 0 http://www.ursasrl.com/a-very-effective-strategy-for-any-blogger.cfm http://www.ursasrl.com/a-very-effective-strategy-for-any-blogger.cfm#comments Fri, 02 Jul 2010 14:40:07 +0000 admin http://www.crawbot.co.cc/?p=2255

A very effective strategy for any blogger on the internet would be to own your domain and pay for your hosting. By owning your domain name you establish stability you would not necessarily have by using a free blog site and the name they assigned you. Don’t get me wrong these free sites are great and can be very effective for several purposes. Many folks today however are blogging to make money and these free sites often impose certain restraints on the sites they are hosting. The blogging business is big money now a days and constrictions of any kind could mean a significant loss of income.

The general assumption is that any domain you use that you do not own is the property of a site that also provides you with free hosting.

Let’s look at 3 major advantages you have as a blogger when you own your domain name and pay for hosting compared to using the domain a free blog site assigns you that limits your individuality.



No Censorship

Free blogs can place restraints upon any of the blogs on their server. Any comments or opinions left on your blog by a reader could result in your site being suspended or shut down by the host if it is viewed as a violation.

Obviously the sharing of candid and sometimes inflammatory opinions could ‘ignite’ this reaction at any time.

In effect you inherit a type of censorship when using a free site.



More Professional Image

The name itself if it is a ‘sub-domain’ usually does not have a clean looking appearance. It shouts TEMPORARY to any visitors to your site.

Your own domain however can be whatever you choose and will not contain the additional characters that clearly denote it as a sub-domain.  

If your blog site is used for business there are likely certain formats or layouts you may need or want to use to reflect the ‘message’ of the business itself.

By using a ‘free’ site’ you are automatically limited to what they offer you.



Greater Flexibility

Look and content are totally under your direction when you own your domain and pay for hosting. This is important since a large part of a blogs influence and popularity is dependent upon it individuality. Readers ‘want’ to hear your opinion and not a modified version toned down to placate the host.

It is the difference between ‘owning’ your home or ‘renting’ it!

If you become unhappy with your hosting company you can take your domain name elsewhere. You do not risk losing all your current ‘followers’ do to a complete name change.

As you can understand especially if you are blogging to make money a very effective strategy would be to own your domain and pay for your hosting. By doing so you spare yourself the inconvenient restrictions you would face at a free site where you are renting space. This type of unpredictability and limitations is not something anyone involved in the blogging business needs. Blogging is based upon consistency, individuality, and longevity and this necessary combination would be jeopardized at any of the free sites.

]]> http://www.ursasrl.com/a-very-effective-strategy-for-any-blogger.cfm/feed 0