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 When I saw my first blog, I
wasn't impressed.
The first blogs I ever read were embarrassing tales
of teenage angst better left private, political
diatribes from both the rabid right and the rabid
left, and jargon-filled tech rags that made my eyes
glaze over
And yet everyone was talking about blogs and that I
would soon be left behind if I didn't have one. But
they never gave me a simple explanation of how it
would benefit me. They talked about RSS - you know,
the obligatory "real simple syndication" -
followed by a long, boring, techie article filled
with jargon that wasn't simple at all. They talked
about syndicating my site, but not how that would
benefit my business.
No one ever told me, "Hey, fool, listen up! How
would you like a 3 or 4 line text link to your site
on thousands of other sites getting you tons of
traffic and backlinks up the ying-yang on all the
SE's?"
If they had, trust me. I'd have been blogging my
heart out!
Eventually I did start a blog simply because it was
getting harder and harder to get my ezine delivered.
This particular ezine delivers tips to network
marketers. Now if you've had any experience with
spam filters, you know that any email with the
"M" word (MLM) or the "N" word
(network marketing) practically lights up the
scoreboard! I even tried using "M*L*M" or
"net*work mark@eting." But that got old
real fast. Trying to sound like a halfway
intelligent professional while writing like a first
grader on their first day of school just didn't cut
it. I was starting to confuse even myself!
So I decided to start a blog, and then just email my
list with the link to the article every week. Not
only has that greatly increased the day to day
traffic to my site, but I discovered a couple of
interesting benefits along the way.
One big bonus was how easy it was to publish to my
site. Doing things the old way, I wrote and
delivered my ezine. Then I converted the article to
html and FTP'd it up to my site. Then I had to
download and update my article archive page. Then I
had to download and update my sitemap. Then I would
download my index page and add a little blurb about
the new article to get it indexed faster. All told,
several hours of mind-numbingly boring work.
Not so with a blog. I just write my articles in
NoteTab, then copy and paste them into my Blogger
control panel. It adds all the HTML and places it
into my chosen template, FTP's it to my site, and
updates my archives - all in the blink of an eye!
Talk about an easy-to-use content management system.
Even a 10-year-old could have done it.
After I posted my first article on my new blog, I
realized I could get some new backlinks to my site
by submitting the blog to some of the many blog
directories. So I spent a few hours sumbitting my
blog.
But my eyes didn't really open until a couple of
weeks later. I started realizing I was making more
sales than usual and popped in to check my web
stats. To my astonishment, I realized I was getting
50-100 more visitors per day. I checked my referrer
logs and then my backlinks on Yahoo and found over
100 new traffic sources and links!
I clicked through on some of those links and then a
big lightbulb lit up in my head. Those new referrers
were from the many people using RSS feeds on their
sites. And their site visitors were actually
clicking on those links and finding my site.
Now I was hooked!
Think about that - 50-100 more visitors per day, and
100 new backlinks. All from one article that I
posted to a brand new blog that took 5 minutes to
set up on Blogger.com for free! How many free
marketing techniques get those kind of results right
out the door? And how much better would my results
be from regular posts to my blog and submitting it
to even more blog directories? Or from
simultaneously posting those blog posts to article
directories?
That was 2 months ago, and I'm discovering that the
answer is every bit as exciting as I had hoped! Not
only that, but I'm discovering more and more ways to
improve my results. And ways to use blogs in new and
exciting ways that I don't hear other people talking
about.
I know that many marketers are under the impression
that blogs are just for geeks, or that blogs are
just some new toy everyone is getting but no one
knows what to do with. If that has been your belief,
I hope you'll take a second look!
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