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Top 10 Reasons to Publish an eZine and a Blog
by
Goddie
Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it
comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your
messages and article to clients. They are a like personal web sites,
easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites.
Just when you thought you were mastering the tasks of
ezines and newsletters, along comes blogging, and you have to ask
yourself:
Do I really need a blog? Isn't an email ezine or
newsletter doing the same thing? Should I do both? Are these two
marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money? What's
the best way to spend my resources here so that I can get clients and
results out of my marketing efforts?
Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention
to this new blogging revolution and do both and ezine and a blog.
1. Because a blog is web based, it is published
instantaneously every time you post. This allows you to be spontaneous
and current with issues that affect your readers/clients. Blog posts are
short, ezines can be longer. One can complement the other.
2. Because blog posts are spontaneous, they tend to be
more informal, friendly, and conversational. Blog posts show your
personality. Ezines show your knowledge. Your readers/clients need to
know who you are before they will invest in your services. Providing
both an ezine and a blog allows your readers to get to know you.
3. You can set up a subscription form on your blog and
your subscribers will get a short notice in their inboxes each time you
post something new. This is a great way around the spam filter problem
which blocks so many ezines and legitimate messages from professionals.
4. Blogs link to other blogs and web sites, which
helps you create a viral marketing system, increasing your exposure to
search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are text based
and key word rich. Your rankings go up when you publish a blog and use
linking and posting on a frequent basis. You can also link to your own
web site(s).
5. You have instant access to all your published
articles on your blog. A blog automatically creates archives of previous
posts. You see them in a side-bar for easy access. You put them into
categories for easy finding. One clever person we know spent a day
posting all her ezine articles to her blog, so that it would appear she
has been blogging for a much longer time. Also, readers of her blog may
not have had the opportunity to read all of her other ezine articles.
6. You can use your blog to become a trusted expert in
your field by filtering content on the web for your subscribers. Readers
don't have time to surf and to collect information, but you can do it
for them, thereby establishing yourself as a good resource.
7. You can set up links for ads, products, and for
your affiliate programs in the blog side columns so you don't have to
include them in the body of your article. In an ezine, you have to be
careful about promotional stuff in the article because it annoys people
and causes them to unsubscribe. A blog is a non-intrusive way to do
this, and an ezine can link to the blog where more information can be
found.
8. Readers can comment on your blog postings, which
creates rapport and with readers. You can ask them questions, stimulate
responses by being controversial, and survey them. It is a great way to
keep your finger on the pulse of what readers want.
9. You don't have to mess with a web site, or pay a
web designer to update your web site every time you have a new article
or teleclass, or program or product. Blogs are user-friendly, and with a
few instructions or tutorials, you can learn to use it yourself. It is
less expensive than setting up your ezine in HTML.
10. Bottom line is this: using a blog and an ezine
will help attract more visitors who become subscribers and who will
eventually become clients.
Think of the World Wide Web as a big fishing pond.
The more fishing lines in the pond, the more fish you
are going to catch!
You have a web site, yet it is static like an online
brochure.
You have an ezine, which you try to grow through
subscription links everywhere.
And now, you should have a blog, where you can attract
more readers to get to know you, where they can interact with you, and
maybe take your bait!
Happy fishing!
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