How To Drive Traffic With A Blog
Blogs are different than regular static sites. Although a blog is really just a fancy word for a content management system, therefore it is just a regular site with enhanced and easy editing, a blog has a sense of urgency and "newness." People read blogs because there is a general feeling that the information posted is more current compared to static sites. This is true when the blogger is very regular with new material and gives people a reason to tune in frequently. Promoting a blog, I have found, is far easier than promoting a regular website for many reasons. Because you can create "news" on your blog at the drop of a hat, you can create buzz. Buzz is infectious, produces links from "buzzed" website owners looking to present their visitors with a buzz, and gets you attention that is harder to acquire for regular sites. You can promote a blog through RSS and get subscribers who would rather use a "podcatcher" (a newer phrase that simply means they subscribe to your RSS feed rather than your email list with a tool like FireAnt http://fireant.com). People like being anonymous in this over-emailed world of ours. Getting subscribers to a blog via your RSS feed means you are offering a way for the justifiably paranoid to access your material without committing their personal information in the exchange. So you have another way to promote here as well. Rather than sending people to your opt-in page only, you can grab RSS subscribers on every page of your blog, no matter which page they come through. Now you can trade links, or trackbacks, with other bloggers in your niche which is a much more highly respected and valuable form of reciprocal linking that Google actually loves. Having a blog means you can "podcast." Podcasting is making audio and video files available in your posts that can be picked up in your RSS feed by people using places like iTunes.com to find multi-media content. This is a MASSIVE new open market of people really getting into iPods, especially the new video iPods, and seeing what their new gadgets can really do. By creating an informative how-to video and podcasting it from your blog, you can get listed in iTunes and other podcast directories that are practically empty on many niche topics right now! These are things you can do with a blog that you cannot do very easily or at all with a static site. Don't forget that there are other directories only bloggers can promote in. Directories like Syndic8.com and Daypop.org are only open to bloggers with RSS feeds. While everyone else is working down in the trenches on their one-dimensional static html site, bloggers can enjoy promoting their sites in far less competitive areas with extreme amounts of traffic flowing through them. In short, a good blog with the right plug-ins will give you marketing power I wish I had when I was starting out. My blog would be 7 years old this year and would have an archive section a mile long with content syndicated all over the web established over those 7 years! This time next year you are definitely going to wish you had started your blog today! Especially when you consider the vast potential of audio and video podcasting and syndicating your content easily through your feed to places that only accept bloggers. Static sites need not apply! Copyright 2006 Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc. Jack Humphrey blogs at http://www.jackhumphrey.com. His long running newsletter, now blog, The Friday Traffic Report, has been responsible for untold millions of visitors for his readers. Grab a free chapter of his book "Power Linking" just for stopping by!
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