OK, so you decided to start your blog as part of your internet marketing campaign. You’ve installed WordPress, chosen a theme and started blogging away. You are marketing online and ready to increase your profits. Good for you!

How, you want your best prospects to visit your blog on your website, look around, comment on your blog, sign up for your website newsletter and, eventually, become a customer – RIGHT? That’s alot to ask, but not unreasonable. What’s unreasonable is expecting it all to happen right away. And, it requires a systematic approach. First things first.

The BEST thing you can do to your website blog is to PING! Pinging is basically sending a signal to blog directories and other websites to let them know you’ve posted new content on your blog. Sending pings is a great way to get your website blog indexed in search engines and spread the word so that your potential customers can find your content. It’s really the fastest and easiest place to start promoting your blog, your products and services and your small business. Best part about it is that it doesn’t COST you anything to do.

However, you must do this the right way or you can end up hurting your website and blog presence in the ever-growing-and-becoming-much-more-important blogosphere.

WordPress comes with built-in ping features. However, they don’t really work that well as the default and you really need to optimize your blog ping system. The best tool you can get (and one of the few plug-ins I use here) is MaxBlogPress Ping Optimizer. It’s easy to install and use and really makes a BIG difference in getting the results you want from your blog. (If you need help with this, just ask me by email or call me direct at (863) 668-1086)

Your pings can get you:

Indexed right away in search engines

Traffic coming immediately to your website

Listed in blog directories so SEEKERS can find your website

Get other blogs to find your blog and mention your posts

Get good links that add to your Google Page Rank and bump you up in the search results

How, once you’ve got it installed and activated, you’ll want to add some ping sites to your list. Here’s the first twenty I have on my list:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://api.moreover.com/ping

Getting your BEST customers to visit your website and Buy your products and services is the goal of an internet marketing campaign. Your Lakeland business can use more customers, right? So what are you waiting for? This is your invitation to maximize your blog by using ping optimizer. It’s easy, fast and no cost other than a few minutes of your precious time. It’s definitely worth your investment!

This is a great start. You can discover more by searching the web or you can just email me and ASK for a list of more ping sites I use. I add new ones all the time and am glad to share them with you!

On Friday, I returned to the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce to turn in my membership form and fee. I only had to pay half the yearly fee upfront, which helps cash-flow and makes it easy to do. Since my account exec, Amy Wiggins email her, wasn’t there, Terry Ottinger, Vice President of Membership Development, took my application and we chatted for awhile. Apparently, Amy had already briefed him on my business, which was a nice surprise.

Anyway, I told him one of the reasons I am joining is because I learned about chamber membership results from Milburn Drysdale . He was a member of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce and landed the multi-million-dollar Clampett account. That’s my earliest memory of chamber identity and it’s stuck with me.

Seriously, membership has its advantages. Through my involvement in several chambers during my more than twenty years as a businessman, I’ve learned firsthand how it can help build your business. Here are a few reasons I join and participate:

1. Chamber membership brings creditability. Studies show that consumers place more trust in chamber partners and are more likely to buy if they know a company is in the local chamber of commerce.
2. The Chamber offers networking opportunities to gain clients. Radiance Road Marketing serves Lakeland businesses. There are regular and special events designed specifically for b2b contacts.  As a local company providing internet marketing for local companies, it only makes sense to look for clients in the chamber because that’s where most of the successful business will be involved..
3. The Chamber offers unique advertising and promotion opportunities. I get my business listed on their online and print directories I can place ads in them, as well. I can also sponsor and leverage their local events.
4. The Chamber is an advocate for local businesses. Politically, the more small businesses that band together, the more power we have. It’s important to protect the interests of entrepreneurs like myself!
5. The Chamber provides opportunities for professional development. We learn from the experience of our fellow small and medium businesspersons as we interact and at specially-designed events. It’s important for me to learn to grow my business.
6. I have always advised my clients to join and participate in the local chamber of commerce. That’s hard to do if I am not a member myself. I advise them to do it because it works. My clients’ success is my success.
7. It strengthens our community. Since chambers build businesses and business hire workers and everybody pays taxes (ok – everybody with an income is supposed to pay taxes) – we all win. Lakeland businesses success is in my personal and professional best interest.

Joining is the first step. It’s an investment. I add my willingness to participate, eagerness to help the chamber and my fellow chamber members, and devotion to building our community. I know from my experience that my business will grow and profit. I will probably build some personal relationships, as well. And, I know that I will continue to grow as a person from doing the right thing for the right reason at the right time.

If you have a chamber success story, let me know by leaving a comment here or call me at 863 669-1086 to share. Thanks

Many small business owners in Lakeland (or Anytown, USA) ask: Why blog? As an internet marketing expert that lives and works in Polk County, FL, I ask: Why NOT blog? There are certainly many more reasons for me to create and maintain a blog than there are NOT to be an active blogger for my own company.

Here are my thoughts, as I am starting to write this blog for Radiance Road Marketing today…

Why NOT create a blog?

The first reason to avoid the whole web-log thing is that I am lazy. Some days, it’s all I can do to get up and put on pants. That’s part of the reason that I started to work in marketing, advertising and public relations.  We marketing guys have days that we don’t have to get dressed. Or go anywhere. We can work from home. With the growth of the internet, more and more business owners are not getting up, putting on pants (or panty-hose) and traveling the morning rush-hour to earn a living.

OK, I am not actually lazy – I like to work. I just like make working as easy as possible. For me, internet marketing consulting is the easiest way for me to earn money doing something I enjoy. I get to stay at my home here in South Lakeland (actually between Highlands City and Bartow), get on the internet (which I do anyway) and have an opportunity to apply my knowledge, skills and abilities marketing online.

Second, the whole thing seems complicated. I mean, do I really want to learn more tech-stuff? No. Back in the late ‘80s, I saw a fellow student in college creating a newspaper column on an Apple MacIntosh. I was amazed. I remember learning to use that funny mouse-thing by watching him and then trying it myself. Not hard at all. I learned basic electronic publishing that year as managing editor of The Springhillian. I was hooked. The next year, in graduate school, I took Electronic Publishing as one of my first courses. I was amazed at how far we had come from Gutenburg and the printing press and how we were transforming the power of the people to communicate. I even bought my first Mac, toted it around in a backpack and started my first marketing consulting firm.

Later, the internet came along and I worked for Matrix Information Systems where I learned more than I ever dreamed possible about the world wide web, computers and software. I published a website and maintained it for the first time. When I went back to consulting, I had my first internet connection at home and used it to communicate with clients and my internet mentors. Finally, two years after moving to Lakeland, I learned how to create a blog. After all, I am an internet marketing consultant now. It was simple. I read for a few days abut blogging (cause I have to know A LOT about something – the whys and hows – before I try to do it myself.

Really too easy.

In about fifteen minutes, I had downloaded and installed WordPress on my website. Another half-hour to install some plug-ins. Another ten minutes to edit a blog post and make sure the thing worked. Today, I’m a blogger! For me, it took twenty years and an hour and a half to get here. Only the hour and a half were really billable hours. If you haven’t tried creating a blog yet, WHY NOT? Lemme know….

NEXT TIME: Blogging for profit!