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!

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!