Focus on your Industry

1. Write 10 ways your industry will change this year
2. Break down the new laws that will affect your niche in 2010
3. Create a list of the best industry resources
4. Talk about why things are better today (or not) than they were 10 years ago
5. Attend industry events and blog about them
6. Your best marketing tips
7. How your industry is like Your Favorite TV Show [I suggest using Glee. Because that's my favorite show.]
8. The ugly truth about your industry
9. The 8 people in your industry you want to meet
10. What someone needs to consider before getting involved in your industry
11. Comment on an industry-related conversation going on in LinkedIn or Google Groups
12. Talk about the “thing” that would rock your industry if invented or put together
13. Create a chart that breaks down a complicated industry issue or problem
14. Interview someone well-known in your world and profile them
15. Rewrite an old post with fresh eyes and new ideas
16. Publish a presentation you gave somewhere else (with permission)
17. Have a chat with a competitor and blog about it (again, with permission)
18. Search Google News for relevant press releases and news about your industry. Write your own take.
19. Debunk a long-standing myth
20. Host a seminar or meetup and blog about
21. Create a list of the 10 books that someone in your industry should read.
22. Post about what you’d like to see fixed in your industry
23. Conferences people in your industry should attend/speak at
24. Your favorite untapped traffic sources in your industry
25. Issues in your space that deserve more attention

Go Social

1. How you’re using Twitter to increase earnings
2. Post a video that has nothing to do with your industry but that you think people would enjoy.
3. Post a picture. [Browse StumleUpon for inspiration]
4. Participate in a blog meme like last month’s Best of 09
5. Share the best social media campaigns you’ve seen, big and small
6. Hold a contest and pit people against each other
7. Create a poll. Blog the result.
8. Invite a guest blogger to post on your blog
9. How social media increased your ROI this year
10. How social media did nothing but confuse you this year
11. Search Delicious for popular posts on your topics and take a new stance
12. Go to your industry’s Wikipedia page and see what people are talking about in the Discussions area.

Comment on it on your blog.

13. Post photos from your company party/team building workshop
14. Find a question on Yahoo Answers or OnStartups and respond on your blog
15. Create a list of the Must Follow Twitter people in your industry

About your Business

1. Why you’re different (and better) than your competition
2. A video tutorial showing how to use your most popular product
3. The problems your sales people hear about most
4. The answer to the most common email you get
5. Share the tools do you use to do your job
6. The secret ways to use your site/product
7. The top 10 WordPress plugins you use on your site
8. How you use your favorite social media site
9. How you built your email list
10. How you’re using Facebook
11. Look at your site logs & answer customer questions
12. How you delegate tasks (or what you mucked up by not delegating)
13. Use Wordtracker’s Keyword Question Tool and answer popular questions
14. Write about why you’re not using social media at all
15. Answer questions left in your comment section
16. Write about the personal branding tactics you use
17. Give 5 reasons to sign up to your email newsletter
18. How you learned to do what you do
19. Create a list of your favorite X
20. What you’re doing to beat the summer slump or winter blues
21. Share a case study
22. Provide an end of the week link roundup
23. Review something
24. Reveal the best niche blogs to guestblog for
25. What keeps you up at night
26. Share a time when you got it wrong in 2010
27. Your strategies for coming up with blog topics.
28. Branding tips that have worked for your business
29. 50 reasons why someone should hire you
30. 5 things people should be focusing on but aren’t
31. What can other industries learn from yours

Highlight Your Customers

1. Put the spotlight on your most active commenters
2. Praise your best customers
3. Post a question and let the community to answer it
4. How customers can woo your customer service department for free stuff
5. Give something away to one of your blog readers.
6. Feature a video detailing a customer’s success with your product
7. Share your biggest screw up with a customerand how you made it right
8. Publish a customer testimonial
9. Explain the benefits of being a customer
10. Share local organizations you support and ask customers to share their favorites
11. How customers can connect with you on social media
12. Hold an event for Twitter followers to meet and blog it
Get Personal

1. What have you read lately that inspired/angered you?
2. Introduce your staff
3. Share the best decision you made as a SMB
4. Your biggest challenge as a SMB owner
5. What you love best about being a SMB owner. What you don’t like.
6. The danger of doing everything by yourself
7. Write about the achievement you’re most proud of
8. A time when you got it right in 2009
9. Create a video introducing your team to your community
10. Get your rant on
11. How to remain productive working at home
12. Introduce a new employee and what they bring to the table
13. Share the local vendors you trust
14. Give people a video tour of your building
15. Describe your company culture
16. Your new baby (whether that’s a real baby, a pet, a new project for 2010, the car you’ve been restoring for the past two years, etc)
17. Share your company’s history or story
18. Tell a story not about your company
19. Share 10 things you’re thankful for
20. What’s next for your company
21. A list of your most trafficked posts

The point is, there are TONS of things for a small business owner to blog about and share with their audience. Now that I’ve helped get the ball rolling, get to it. (find more at smallbiztrends,com)

Anyone who spends any amount of time reading blogs on the internet probably comes across a lot of poorly edited blog posts. I was going to say poorly written, but that usually isn’t the case. What I see most are posts that are written quickly and obviously not proofread (shoot, I’ve done it myself) and blog posts that are written by people who obviously don’t speak English as a first language. If you are going to start a blog and publish your posts so that they are out there for the world to read I think the most important thing to do is to proofread BEFORE you hit the publish button. It isn’t quite as bad when I find errors on a personal blog but when I come across a “business” type blog where someone is trying to sell, teach or act as an expert and I find any errors at all it I usually can’t take the blog seriously.

Marketing with articles is one of the most user-friendly, cost-effective and reliable ways to increase targeted traffic to a website. Every day thousands of small business owners write and submit articles and have them published all over the internet, effectively building links to their site, bringing attention to their business, and dramatically increasing their search engine ranking over the long term.

Marketing with articles is very doable, but that is not to say that it doesn’t require work. Each article that you submit should be high quality and free of spelling and grammar issues.

The reason for this is that publishers have guidelines and, if you violate their guidelines, then your article that you worked so hard on can be declined. For this reason, you must learn to proofread your articles to be sure that you are submitting high quality content that publishers will love and that you will be proud of.

Proofreading is simply searching your article for grammar, spelling and punctuation errors and making corrections.

Need some help proofreading your articles? Follow these professional proofreading techniques to create high quality content that publishers will welcome:

1 – Give your article a cool off period.

After you’ve finished writing your article, step away from it for a day or so before reading back over it. When you have been looking at your article for an extended period of time, reading it over and over, it becomes more difficult to see glaring errors. Your mind starts to automatically fill in what it expects to see, not what is actually on the page.

By giving your eyes and your mind a rest period of at least 24 hours, you can look at your article objectively. Your mind will be less likely to gloss over errors, and you will be able to correctly perceive your mistakes and fix them.

2 – Read your article backwards.

Have you ever read your article so many times that you could almost recite it without looking at the screen? The more familiar you are with your writing, the harder it is to proofread. Here’s a way to get around this:

Read the last sentence of your article, then the second to last sentence, then the third to last sentence, and so on. Reading your article out of sequence takes away that familiarity and helps you see any grammar or spelling errors.

3 – Print your article, stand up, and read your article out loud.

Hearing your article spoken can be extremely effective at highlighting grammar errors and awkward phrasing. Your ears are sometimes more perceptive than your eyes!

Here’s something to try: Combine tips 2 and 3. Stand up and read your article aloud backwards!

4 – For a writer, a friend with excellent editing skills is a lifesaver!

If you happen to have someone in your life who is great with grammar and spelling, then see if you can enlist his or her help in looking over your article.

5 – Try using the grammar and spell checker on your word processing program.

The spell checker on my computer has pointed out many errors that I would have missed otherwise. The grammar checker is perhaps less useful, but it never hurts to try it. Automated grammar and spelling checkers can help pick up a few errors, but they do not take the place of proofreading the article yourself or asking a friend to proofread for you. You might turn the grammar/spell checker on as a first line of proofreading, but then also employ the other proofreading techniques in this article.

Proofreading is important! It pays to take the extra time on the front end before submitting your article to ensure that your article is accepted by publishers.

And remember, your name will be attached to each one of your articles, so you want your articles to appear professional!

Thanks to, Steve Shaw – an article marketing expert and founder of the popular article submitter SubmitYOURArticle.com used by thousands of business owners.

Photo by Deviant Art

I read A LOT of articles online and lately I have come across quite a few that are either poorly researched, written or proofread.  I make it through about 2 sentences on pages like this.  Maybe people are just too busy.  Maybe there is a language barrier.  Maybe people just don’t give a darn.  Every article I write is written to provide information or entertainment for my readers.  I always hope they take something away with them.  Hopefully they will enjoy it so much they will pass it on.  I Love when an article goes viral.

One of the best ways to drive massive traffic to your site in a short period of time is through the creation of viral content or linkbait. Linkbait is created with the sole purpose of driving more traffic to your website through links and bookmarks.

Content that is successful in this regard typically does not have any indication of being linkbait. You need to make sure that your content is very useful to readers and that it is not an obvious attempt at creating linkbait. The moment that a visitor comes to your site, they must be able to see the value that your content provides for them.

Keep it Simple

If you want to make a particular piece of content viral, keep it simple. The key is to attract a general audience. Many visitors write off articles that are overly complex. Keep it easy to swallow and understand to increase your chances of creating linkbait.

Encourage People to Share and Distribute the Content

If you have a killer piece of content, encourage people to submit it to social media sites. You can also go ahead and add buttons for social media sites to make it easier for them to submit it. For images and videos, you can provide an HTML code that will allow them to embed the item into their own sites. You can also provide an email form that allows users to email the content to their friends and family.

Keep with what’s New in Pop Culture

Make sure the content is timely and trendy for a greater chance of success at making it linkbait. Topical content is the most popular and works the best as linkbait. Try to stick with topics that are new and relevant to current pop culture so that more people are likely to find your content interesting and fresh.

Ask for the Visitor’s Email

It’s a good idea to offer an email opt-in newsletter or some other subscription service anytime you have viral content. This will help to get those new visitors to become regular visitors to your site because you can stay in touch with them long after the hype is gone. By getting new subscribers, you can make the most of all of the new traffic that is coming to your website.

Use Images

Images are very effective as linkbait because they cross language barriers and can be digested by everyone. Some people don’t like to read long articles and are attracted to content simply for its visual appeal.
Some things you can do to make the most out of the traffic you receive with viral content are to display the products or services you offer on a sidebar to make all visitors aware of them and to link to another one of your compelling pieces of content at the end so visitors are directed to yet another one of your articles, images or videos.

In conclusion, there are a number of factors that will determine how successful your content can be as linkbait. It’s important to try a hand at every one of these tactics until you figure out a formula that works for you in the creation of viral linkbait.

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There is a wide variety of strategies you can adapt, from paid advertising to affiliate marketing. However, most of these techniques require payment. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your web traffic without spending anything. Writing articles is one of the best web site promotion strategies you can use, and they can be very effective. How, you may ask, can writing articles help improve your web traffic? Here are the top seven ways in which it can help explode your business.

1. Reach more people – When you write good articles, it would be a shame not to share them with other people. You can post your articles in your website or you can submit them to other sites such as e-zines and online publishers. By submitting your articles to these sites, you give exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website. Simply include a link back to your site or include your information in the resource box. With this, you get exposure and free advertising as well. Submit your articles to popular e-zines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you. Thus, you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world. Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your quality article; you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic.

2. Free Advertising – Submitting your articles to other websites presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees. Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site’s link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are making a good impression for your website, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase. Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space. You have a very special opportunity to presell your product or service to your prospective customer.

3. Gain High Search Engine Ranking – Create a new web page for your article in your website. Optimize your article to make it search-engine friendly. Use top-ranked keywords and Meta tags that can give your website a high search engine ranking. As soon as you upload your new webpage to your server, search engines will spider through it and you can gain an increase in search engine ranking. Remember that search engine optimized content is a very effective strategy to gain a high ranking in search results.

4. Increases Link Popularity – Instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with your site, you can simply submit an article to other sites. Just do not forget to include a link to your site in your resource box. When these websites pick up and publishes your article, you automatically get a link partner. Try to get as many link partners as you can. Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. Make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5. Optimizes your site for improved search engine ranking – By making your site keyword rich, you can greatly improve the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site. However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most web surfers. Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make these articles search-engine optimized.

6. Establishes a Good Impression and Reputation – By writing excellent, original and relevant articles, you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

7. Enhances your credibility through references and testimonies – Certainly, your articles are going to receive feedbacks and testimonies when you publish them in e-zines and free article sites. Record these positive feedbacks and comments and use them as promotional material in your website or in any of your advertising efforts. Your credibility will be greatly enhanced by these feedbacks, as it will create a good impression on your prospects as well as your existing customers. In this highly competitive world, excellent credibility and trust may be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers. Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and explode your business.

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Are you aware of how vitally important and valuable CONTENT is to your online business? In fact, content can do more to build your business and profits than just about any other resource or service available.

Following is a list of 5 key ways that content can help build your traffic, subscribers, and customers starting today!…

1. Boost your search engine ranking and daily visitor count by posting keyword rich articles and content on your web-site. For example, if your business involves offering products and services related to fitness, posting fitness related articles and content will attract unlimited prospective customers on a regular basis!

2. Generate double or even triple the number of newsletter subscribers you do currently, simply by offering content in the form of “special reports” or manuals as bonuses for subscribing to your publication. People love freebies, so give them what they want and watch as your results increase!

3. Create an automated cashflow by using content to formulate multi-part email training courses with related web-site or affiliate links “sprinkled” throughout each course. Use an autoresponder service to automate the delivery of your training course (such as a 5 part training course delivered over a 5 day period).

Training courses can also serve as excellent bonus offers for your prospective newsletter subscribers.

4. One of the most important keys to a successful online business is not JUST having a list of mailing list or newsletter subscribers… It’s about building a trusting relationship with your subscribers (ie, “cultivating” your list)…

By sending informative articles (content) to your list on a regular basis you will establish yourself as an expert on your topic of business, as well as gain the trust of your subscribers over time. As a result, your subscribers will be EAGER to take advantage of your “paid” product and service offers. (Just make sure that you NEVER take advantage of the relationship you develop with your list by offering products or services of poor quality just to make a quick buck!)

If there is one “constant” in Internet marketing, it’s this: A cultivated list of subscribers is as good as money in the bank. Write that down and never forget it!

5. Another excellent way to generate no cost traffic is by submitting ready-made articles to “content hungry” web-site and newsletter publishers with your “resource box” attached. A resource box is nothing more than a little 3-6 line “bio” about you and/or your web-site – including a link to your site (or even instructions on how to subscribe to your newsletter)…

When submitting or offering your article(s) for reprint purposes, just make sure to specify that each article is to be reprinted “as is” with your resource box attached.

…Even one article can go a LONG way towards generating no cost traffic and visitors for you. Just imagine your article being sent out to a newsletter subscriber base of 100,000 individuals – many of whom will be reading YOUR included resource box and clicking on your URL to learn more about what you have to offer!

Well there you have it, 5 sure ways to build your online business exponentially with the help of articles and content…

With the declining effectiveness of many of the online advertising methods that we’ve relied on in past years, content is only strengthening its position as the ultimate KEY to generating unlimited traffic, subscribers, and customers!

To find the

By: steven reh

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