Let’s start with some of the basics. A blog is really nothing more than an online journal, and is a short for web log. The best part is that you can start blogging for no cost. Even better is that there are some online blog services that make it really easy to get up and running, regardless of how computer savvy you may or may not be. It typically takes anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or two to get your blog started.

Your first task is to decide what the main topic of your blog will be. Your goal is to blog for money, but if you can choose a subject that you’re interested in, it will be much easier to keep on blogging. On the other hand, if you just want to make as much money as possible, then you should take some time to learn about the various methods of choosing hot niche markets. This will give you more return on your efforts if you go about it the ri

When people are looking for products or services to avail they usually go for ones that they are familiar with or have long used. This way they can be sure that they are getting the most of their money. So for a business owner like you who is just starting up in the business industry, it is important to make a good first impression. Sure, you can do this by offering discounts and other special offers. You can even put a large banner in front of your store announcing your special opening sale. But when are not able to offer the right image you may as well consider hiding in your den and reflect on what you need to improve in your marketing strategy.

But then again you may be doing the right strategy and using the right advertising trick. But have you looked at your logo? That’s exactly what I’m thinking. You could have overlooked the most important part of your product – your logo design. Logos often tantamount to a company’s image, hence, whether it is hip, chic, interesting or boring it is essential to create a logo that gives the right impact to the customers. It doesn’t really matter if you, your friends or employees like or does not like the logo. What is important is the impression that it gives to your customers.

A good logo must represent the business image appealingly and effectively. It must likewise be practical and functional as complicated logos often leave customers confused and wondering what is actually being sold or presented. Keep in mind that less is always more. Hence, a simple logo design will most likely seal the deal and help you grab more customers. Certainly a colorful and over-designed logo will catch more attention but no company achieves success based solely on their logo. So a simple flexible logo is more likely to entice prospects to actually buy your products and avail of your services.

A combination of art, science and psychology often creates a good logo. A designer should know this, so if you do not know how to design your logo you can ask their help. Remember that a poor logo can ruin your image but a good one can instantly create name recognition and can boost company sales and services.

many people seem to think that you can either write for humans or you can write for the search engines. They don’t seem to understand that you can actually do it both ways with one article.

To get the most out of all your seo article marketing efforts the first thing you have to do is find a good list of quality keywords associated with your niche website (fairly high searches with little competition).

Once you have your keyword list all you have to do is write quality articles around that keyword. As long as the articles you write are quality and provide good information that’s going to be half the battle.

Do not get stuck in the idea that you have to include your keyword in every sentence of your article. That is considered keyword stuffing and won’t do you any good.

Strive for no more than 3% keyword density. Put the keyword in your title, the first and last paragraph and a few other times throughout your article. That’s all you need.

The simplicity, yet effectiveness, of this methods is why it is so popular. By writing articles you will set yourself up as an expert in your niche. you can use your articles to provide a lot of helpful information to all you readers.

Online, it’s always best to give something of value before you expect to get anything. By giving your readers some good and helpful information and advice, you are building trust with them.

The other huge benefit of doing this, with the proper keywords, is that the search engines will reward you for your content with a high search engine ranking. This will give you a lot of organic traffic.

For example, if your niche is bird houses all you need to do is write some keyword optimized articles around the keyword “bird houses”. Then when someone does a search and types in the phrase “bird houses” your article may well be one of the first that shows up on the page! How is that for free traffic!

The same basic principle holds true for making blog posts. When you are adding content to your blog you simply follow these same basic steps. That way when someone does a search for your keywords they will see your blog post and subsequently land on your blog.

This provides you with a great opportunity to add an autoresponder to your blog and capture the visitors email address so you can contact them again.

Using this seo article marketing method can really help you ramp up your website traffic and the best part? It’s all for free! Just be careful to not fall into the mind set that if one keyword in an article is good, ten must be better. Don’t try to stuff your article with keywords, a few well placed keywords is all you need.

1. Know your customer. The more you know about your customer, the better. What are their problems? What are their current solutions? How can you help them? What do you know about their business? All of these questions need to be answered before you send a company an email message. First, you need to make sure they are a good customer for your offer. Second, it shows respect and they will appreciate that you know something about who they are.

2. Get to the point. Imagine you are meeting with your prospective customer at their place of business. You may start with a bit of small talk, but you wouldn’t linger on it. In other words, you can start your business to business email marketing with a friendly tone, but you also have to stick with a no-nonsense approach at the same time.

3. Remember who the message is for. Yes, you are sending out the email to generate profits for your own business, but the message it contains is for the person receiving it. In other words, you have to be very clear about how your offer benefits them.

4. Ask for their business. One of the biggest mistakes people make when it comes to business to business email marketing is not being bold enough in closing the deal. You don’t have the benefit of making your presentation in a face-to-face setting, so you need to be clear and direct in what you want the reader of your message to do.

5. Don’t use trickery to get them to open your email. Sure, you may get them to open your message, but you will have done so through dishonesty. That will kill the sale before you ever get a chance to present your offer. You also need to bear in mind that there is a fine line between being clever and being deceitful; make sure you don’t cross it.

6. Track results. When doing business to business email marketing you should keep track of and measure everything you can. When you sent out each message, to whom, what the subject line was, the body of the email, open rates, click-through rates, how many previous messages you have sent, and so on. You can use any and all of this data to refine your sales message and improve your results over time.

In today’s world, mastering the art and science of business to business email marketing is one of the most important keys to success. It’s relatively inexpensive, especially when compared to traditional forms of advertising, and it can give you a very robust return on your investment.

A lot of forums have specific threads designated for welcoming new members, where those who have just registered are encouraged to introduce themselves. Your introductory post should basically inform the other members who you are and why you’ve joined the forum. The reason you give should not be in any way business-oriented. Making a sales-pitch in your first post will definitely be frowned on and may get you banned.

Do not post immediately. Most forums have at least one, large, close-knit community in it. If you suddenly post on a thread where discussions have been carried on for days, you shall be shunned and ignored. Spend some time going through the archives?figure out which topics are perennial favorites and which users are the unofficial leaders. Also observe the particular etiquette of the forum.

Whenever there are questions asked that fall within your area of expertise, answer them to the best of your ability. Back up your answers by providing links to trusted sources and answer follow-up questions promptly. If you prove to be a helpful, efficient member, you’re more likely to be paid attention to.

Do not get involved in heated arguments, no matter what you think of the question at hand. Keep reminding yourself that you’re there to build up a clientele for your business; stay away from topics like religion, race and politics; don’t immediately respond to criticism; make sure the others know when you’re joking; leave discussions when they become contentious.

Once you’re acknowledged as a respected user, start marketing your products aggressively. Focus on techniques which are likely to prove beneficial to the community as a whole. Offer forum members free samples and/or discounts. However, make sure to obtain the forum moderator’s permission before you start a marketing campaign.

If you are hiring a marketing agency to run your campaign for you, research their methods. A lot of agencies use robots to spam forums. While spamming might ensure temporary traffic, in the long run, it’ll do you more harm than good. Forum users dislike being flooded with spam and can blacken your reputation if they so wish. So accept the services of only those marketing agencies which will abide by the guidelines set out above.

If at all possible, you should handle your own forum marketing.

The first thing you need to do is some research. This is broken down into two steps. Step one is to find as many ezines as you can that are related to whatever it is you are promoting. Remember to include publications that may be ideal for cross promotion, too. For example, if you sell accessories for recreational vehicles, then you would want to look at any RV newsletters, as well as those that are related to domestic travel, retirement, and campgrounds. The bigger your initial list, the better.

The second step in researching is to find out what you can about each of the ezines on your list. At the bare minimum you should know the number of subscribers, typical open and click-through rate, and what all of their advertising options are. If you can’t find any contact information, or you don’t get a response from them, then move on to other ezines that are more willing to work directly with advertisers.

Once you have all of this information, you should be able to start narrowing your list down to the ones that look best for you. However, you are not ready to purchase any ad space quite yet. At this point you should subscribe to any of the ezines you’re interested in. This will give you an idea of how often they send their ezine, and how often they send other promotional messages. If they publish once a month, but send out “special offers” two times a day, then your message will only get lost in the shuffle. Subscribing will also give you a better feel for what the ezine is really about. You can also look over any archived copies of the ezine that are available.

Remember that your reputation will be tied in directly to that of the ezine, and vice-versa. Therefore you need to choose wisely. At the same time, be aware that many publications will take some time before approving your ad. If this happens, you should take it as a positive sign as it shows they care about the content they send to their subscribers.

By now you should have a good idea of where you want to start your ezine advertising campaign. You will have to decide which type of ad is the best for you. Generally speaking, a solo ad will give you the highest return. A solo ad is a special mailing that contains nothing but your ad. After that, the best option is typically an ad spot nearest the top in a regular issue of the newsletter.

Now I’ve read the studies too that state the lack of capital as the main reason most small businesses fail however, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that although I can’t prove it, I believe one of the biggest reasons business fail or underachieve is due to lack of effective marketing.

When I attended a seminar by T. Harv Eker a few years back, he mentioned and I quote “it takes creativity to make money”. In other words it doesn’t take money to make money; it takes creativity to make money. Now that’s a hard concept for most of us to grasp, it certainly was for me until I started reading a few Guerrilla Marketing books by Jay Conrad Levinson which primarily deal with using sweat equity and creativity instead of money to promote your business.

Now why am I telling you this? Basically to lay the foundation for the gem I’m about to share with you here today. That gem is a simple yet effective technique I picked up from two of my mentors Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield.

This technique is called the “Rule of 5” and what it means is simply doing at least 5 things every day towards accomplishing a specific goal.

Now since learning this concept a ways back, I have expanded on it a bit to make it more relevant and effective for me. And my guess here is that there’s a good chance it will suit you as well.

So here’s my adaptation that I call “Rule of 5 Marketing”. Essentially it means doing at least 5 marketing activities every day to effectively promote yourself or your business. You commit to this and you are virtually guaranteed success.

Now that can mean making 5 phone calls to key prospects, giving a teleseminar to 5 or more prospects, sending out a press release to 5 publications that cater to your target audience or, whatever marketing activity is most effective for your business. Just make sure you do 5 things day in and day out, without fail because a big part of marketing is about consistency.

And speaking of consistency, a great way to hold yourself accountable and to stay on track is to keep a daily journal where you log the 5 marketing activities you completed each day.

If you find yourself slipping and not getting it done, I recommend you enlist a coach or a colleague to become an accountability partner for you – then you can phone them or shoot them an email letting them know you honored your commitment. This just adds that little extra something to inspire you to get it done.

So commit to it, journal it and be accountable to apply the Rule of 5 to your marketing every day and watch your business take off.