Archive for January, 2009

A Few Need to Know Tips for Blog Posting

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Over the last while I have been asked time and time again for some good advice for posting blogs. The reality is that there are many different views on what you can do when you post a blog that will give you a little more credit. You may have been on to social networks such as www.myspace.com, www.facebook.com, www.blogspot.com, or even the ever popular www.wordpress.com, and seen different people blog posts. Here are a few tips that I have practiced and found from my own personal experience that you should use when posting a blog.

  • Good headlines: Use a headline that reveals the point of the article without much further reading. Keep in mind the headline may be read in an RSS reader, a news portal (which aggregates content), a search result, your blog archive, a bookmark, and so on. It may be surrounded by dozens of other headlines. Make it stand out.
  • Inverted pyramid: First, get to the point and mention the core ideas, then fill in the details in later paragraphs. The first and second sentence should allow people to decide if they want to continue reading this. Get to the point quickly.
  • First link: Is the one most people click on, so it should also be the main link for your article. Also, too many links too close to each other diffuse your point and make you less of a filter, and a (news) blog should always be a filter for others.
  • Global audience: It’s never a good idea to only use sophisticated words not everyone may know. Some of your readers may speak English only as second language. They may want to learn new words, but it shouldn’t come at the price of missing your post’s point.
  • Spell Check: Your posts, and read them for clarity once or twice before posting. An error now and then isn’t bad but the fewer errors, the more quickly people will be able to read, understand, and respect your article.
  • MAKE IT INTERESTING! If your article is just plain facts but nothing important, then no body really cares. Make sure you write articles that people want to read.
  • Write a Personal experience: Blog posts that come from stories are always interesting especially if you can show you learned a point from it. To tell it from a first person perspective always keeps people interested to find out what happens.

A Simple Step to help your website: Research

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

From the dawn of the internet, people have always thought, “I should start an E-commerce website, sell stuff online and make easy money.” What most people find out eventually, just like everything else in life: nothing is simple. It takes time, money, and knowledge to get a website started. Sure you can put up a website with not knowing any HTML languages, or how to market it. But just like anything else if you don’t take the proper steps, do research, get the appropriate tools, etc…You may fail.

That being stated, sure you can make money on the internet but you need to know how. Like the old saying goes take advice and tips from millionaires not hundredaires. There are unfortunately people out on the internet who tell you, “Follow these simple steps that I have set up for you and in X amount of time you will be rich!” While that sounds great, the reality with most of these sites and people is they are scam artists just looking to prey upon the people who have a dream in their head, and are unaware of how to achieve their goal.

On the internet there are many logical factors of a website that help to get a website to the top of a search engine. For example, Marketing, Design, Functionality, Database Management, Product(s) … The list goes on and on. And while some things may not seem that important, when added together for the grand total, it counts for a lot.

I have been in the technical field personally now for about 12 years. I have helped both personal and business people achieve their goals in making money with small mom and pop shops as well as multi-million dollar corporations. I can tell you this: if you want to increase your sales and that bottom line profit, you are going to need some help. You need to figure out what your goals are and start to put together a game plan on how to accomplish those goals.

Some simple steps to help you get started… Make sure you figure out what kind of website you want to have. Is it going to be an information website, or is it going to be an ecommerce website? Make sure that the website is functional and is able to do what it is supposed to do. No matter how your website looks, or how much you spend on it, if it does not accomplish its basic goals, it just doesn’t matter. Take an e-commerce website for example, make sure that a person can actually buy something and that the shopping cart works. Test it. If it is an information site with links to some of the most highly respected professionals in the industry, make sure the links work and are linked to the right pages on their website.

After your website accomplishes the goals you’ve set, then you can move on to step two which should be the design and look. You want to make sure that the customers or prospects feel comfortable on your site. You don’t want it to look like you woke up one day and said, “You know I think I want to put a website up to day. How can I do this as inexpensive as possible?” Sure, you can stand out on the street corner and hold out your hand to make money, apply for a job, get hired, and start getting a paycheck. Both ways work but which works the best for you? You can go to places like geocities or Yahoo Site Builder and put up a free website with no html coding knowledge and throw a simple website up in ten minutes, but does that really accomplish your goals?

After your website has been built and now you want to start drawing people to your site you have to do marketing (This is actually where Netmark Essentials comes in). There are hundreds of ways you can make that money work for your website and generating traffic to your site. This is what our company does best!

The simple fact of the matter is you need to do research before you do anything with a website. Again, like another old saying “Look before you leap”. The simple fact of the matter is that if you don’t, you will make some mistakes, and you may get fed up with the whole idea.