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e_Marketing Blog Creating Effective Wordpress Posts Because we've been creating so many blogs for clients lately I've started putting together a site (a blog of course) dedicated to explaining how to create posts, add hyperlinks, include images, etc. The new blog is at We'll also be discussing how to write effective posts: what to write about, how long to make them, how to format them, etc., etc. If you have any opinions, please leave a comment. 8 Reasons Why You Need A Blog Basic list of reasons to have a blog...My recent promotions for AutoBlog have created a fair number of questions about the value of having your own blog for doing things like marketing products and communicating with customers. The answer is "Yes". Creating and maintaining a blog is a good way to increase your online presence, make more people aware of your products and services, express opinions and share information, as well as being a good way to get feedback from customers and prospects. Here are some of the reasons why you should have a blog, perhaps even before you have a regular static website. 1. You can do just about everything with a (Wordpress*) blog that you can do with a static website. 2. Setting up a blog is much easier than creating a website. Yes, it is true there is some basic programming involved. But if you get a professional "blog setter-upper" to do it for you it will cost much less than building a decent looking website. 3. Design is very flexible. There are hundreds of free "themes" that determine how it will look. And as long as you don't modify the theme too much you can switch themes on the fly in about 15 seconds for a completely new look. 4. Blogs are generally more search engine friendly because typical blog structure forces you to create content that is optimized the way the search engines like it. 5. The search engines (usually) crawl blogs more often than static websites, because blogs change more often. As new content is introduced with new product announcements or new information, those changes will get picked up more quickly by the search engines. 6. Blogs are perfect for publishing "news and views". This means you can add new content more often, and you can cover a wider range of topics than might be covered in a normal static website. 7. Blogs are interactive which makes them great for getting reader opinion, comment, and questions. If you want to interact with your customers and prospects a blog is a good way to do it. 8. Blogs can be integrated with social networking sites like Facebook, Myspace, Squidoo, Hub Pages, Twitter, and many others. This is usually done by simply loading in the RSS feed that the blog automatically creates. I'm sure there are many other reasons why you should have a blog if you're involve in online business or communication. Leave a comment with your suggestions... (*Yes, I know, this is not a Wordpress blog. It is powered by b2Evolution. That's because I've had it for a couple of years, it works, gets a bit of traffic, and it would be too much hassle to change it over. There's not much doubt that Wordpress is a more versatile and certainly more popular platform, and the one I recommend to clients.) Watching Widgeteers About a month ago The Widgeteers advertising network went live. The deal sounded so good I became a paying member almost on the spot. It works like this: members load ad blocks on their sites. Ads look similar to Google Adwords. When someone visits a page that has an ad block on it, that visit is recorded as a view. In return for showing other people's ads you get to run your own ads on other peoples' sites. In other words, you can get "free" advertising, just by putting a few ad blocks on your websites. Even though this kind of advertising gets a notoriously bad click thru rate, the paid option seemed like a no-brainer: 5000 views per month for an entire year for something like $150. Obviously quite a few others thought so too, because the network went down after a couple of days, presumably because of an overworked server. The initial problems were overcome by changing to a different server, and since then I've been keeping my eye on the performance of the ad network. Unfortunately I can't say I've seen a lot of traffic from the Wiedgeteers ads, but I'm hoping things change for the better next month as problems continue to get worked out and new advertisers jump on board. If nothing else, the free Widgeteers option is worth checking out... |
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Online Advertising to See Major Growth in 2006
Online Advertising to See Major Growth in 2006 January 1, 2006 - Linknet Business News Online Advertising Estimates up for 2006 Online advertising has been growing steadily for the last decade, and 2006 is expected to show significant growth again. In a recent report from Credit Suisse First Boston online advertising estimates were raised for the fourth quarter of 2005 and all of 2006. This is based on a survey of marketers and major advertisers who say they intend to increase their online ad spend by as much as 30 percent. The 2006 CSFB forecast for the fourth quarter of 2005 was raised by 37% to $3.7 billion, while the 2006 forcast was raised from $ 4.9 billion to $16.6 billion. This 21 percent increase reflects plans by advertisers to shift more ad dollars than previously expected to online media. "We're seeing a shift to a more diverse set of media choices," said Mary Baglivo, chief executive officer of the New York office of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. "Certainly a move away from what had traditionally over the years been the vast majority television and print." The two most popular types of online ads in 2006 will remain sponsored links and display ads. But industry forecasters think display ads will be the slowest growing as rich media advertising gradually replaces banner ads. Promote Your Real Estate Website Major TV networks putting more shows online 2005 was the year that major TV networks started to seriously dabble in online TV programming. In October, ABC began to sell downloads of complete, ad-free episodes of top shows like "Lost" and "Desperate Housewives,". Some think this signals the advent of the long-predicted convergence of TV and online. Since October, several other networks have made shows available through a joint agreement with iTunes. These include Disney, NBC Universal, Sci Fi Channel, and USA Network. Now CBS is using online distribution to promote two popular comedies "Two and a Half Men" and "How I Met Your Mother." The network will make two complete episodes of each of the Monday night sitcoms available for one week in a deal with Yahoo! The promotion is called the "CBS Comedy Bowl." Both half-hour shows, were broadcast earlier in the season, and will be streamed ad-free in Yahoo!'s video player. The video player is available from Yahoo! TV. Yahoo TV features TV listings and show previews and is gradually adding new video content. "We want to be where the viewers are, and this exclusive partnership with Yahoo! gives us the chance to target an expanded online audience for 'Two and a Half Men' and 'How I Met Your Mother' at a time of the year when many potential viewers are home on vacation and surfing the Internet," Nancy Tellem, president of the CBS Paramount Network Television Entertainment Group, said in a statement. Previous CBS initiatives included a September effort with Google to stream its "Everybody Hates Chris" premiere. Then in October, CBS made audio podcasts of select shows available on iTunes. These include "Survivor Live", "60 Minutes," "Guiding Light," and "NFL Hot Topic." Earlier in 2005, AOL launched In2TV, a more aggressive broadband video network that will offer episodes of more than 30 classic TV series. Offerings will be available in January and will carry 15 and 30 second video ads. Promotion of this service was one of the major reasons behind the renewed Google/AOL partnership. Online Video and Marketing Online advertising to grow by 25% per year, report says JMP Securities has issued a revised forecast for global online advertising. B2B Online reports that they are now projecting an annual growth rate of 25 percent in the next five years. Total online advertising speding is predicted to reach $65 billion by 2010. The JMP prediction for the U.S. is $ 13.2 billion in 2006. That would be 4.7% of total advertising revenue for the year. By 2010 it is expected that online advertising will increase to $35.9 billion -- 11.1% of all advertising spending. Those numbers are expected to soar by 2010, when the U.S. online ad market is expected to reach 11.1 percent of all adspend, and an increase of more than 25% per year. "We expect large-budget advertisers to continue shifting an increasing percentage of their traditional ad budgets to the internet," JMP analyst William Morrison said. A growing proportion of new advertising revenue will come from rich media as major advertisers adapt already existing advertising to online media.
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