Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
Blogging is fun and also pretty easy. It can be equally easy to make mistakes. No worries, though. Here is a list of common blogging mistakes so you can easily avoid them.
- Not being original. Many bloggers are hesitant to be themselves online. However, your personality is what will attract readers and attention. Don’t hesitate to be yourself…whether it’s funky, serious, controversial, etc.
- Not giving credit where credit is due. If you borrow ideas from another blogger, writer or anyone else, make sure you give them the credit. It will not weaken your own credibility. On the contrary…your credibility will be enhanced. If you do not give the proper credit, you can also get in trouble legally.
- Not responding to comments. If you set up your blog so your readers can leave comments, you should be social and respond to them. It helps to create a sense of community on your blog and your readers get to interact with you. Not only is it the right and friendly thing to do, it motivates more comments.
- Giving up too early. Blogs do not achieve success overnight. By blogging about a subject you are passionate about, you will stay motivated to write and post and stick with it. Blogs require a commitment if they are to be successful. With consistent care and attention to your blog, your readers will grow.
- Not posting enough. Many bloggers think you have to post daily. In the very early stages of building your blog this is a good idea. Once you have established a consistent readership, you can post less often. At least weekly, or two to three times per week, is a good idea. If you do not post for a week or two, you are very likely to lose readers.
- Not having a well defined topic. Make sure your topic is obvious. The more specific your niche, the easier it will be to attract a following. For example, instead of blogging about exotic pets, narrow it to blogging about sugar gliders.
- Not choosing a topic you can sustain. By choosing a topic you are passionate about, you can write consistently and maintain your motivation. If you choose a topic that you are not very interested in, you will be fortunate if you can come up with a post per month.
- Having too many ads. Make sure your blog is content heavy. If your blog is more focused on ads than content, you will not be able to attract a loyal following.
- Forgetting value. Make sure your posts offer something of value to your readers. Readers are looking to be entertained, gain information or be educated. Your posts should accomplish that. If they do, you will attract readers.
- Not promoting your blog. You must promote your blog! How else are readers going to find you? Comment on other blogs and leave the url to your blog when you do. Participate in social networking. Become a guest blogger. When you write as a guest blogger, be sure to include your bio along with links to your blog, facebook page and twitter.
Blogging is fun, a great way to connect with people online, a great way to grow a business and even a way to earn money. Avoid these ten common blogging mistakes and you can achieve blogging success quicker and easier!
To your success!
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
Have you ever wondered WHY so many people blog? It seems like there is a blog per person! What’s the big deal? Here are six benefits of blogging:
- Blogging is easy. One of the reasons so many people blog is because it’s really easy to get online. With all of the tools available, you can have a really professional looking blog in just a few hours. There are thousands of blog templates that are well designed and many can be modified with just a few clicks. You can also add plug-ins to help create a blog that will do just about anything you’d like it to.
- Blogging is inexpensive. You can easily spend several hundred dollars on a website that is very basic. A really professional looking blog can cost you less than twenty-five dollars and that includes the domain name and the hosting.
- Blogging is profitalbe. You can make good money with a blog. Many people who began blogging about their passions for personal reasons soon found themselves in the limelight. They also found themselves making some good money from their blogs. For example, the movie Julie & Julia was about a real blogger who cooked her way through Julia Child’s cookbook. The blog ‘*&^@ my Dad Says turned into a television program starring William Shatner. Your blog may not get you in a movie, but you can still make good money from it. You can promote products you love and earn affiliate income…you can promote your own products or services…you can earn money from advertising revenue. Blogs with a lot of subscribers can demand high rates for ad space.
- Blogging connects. Blogging is a way to connect to other like minded people. You can get online and share your passions and by doing so attract and connect with people who are interested in the same topic. Blogging is a great way to ‘meet’ people all over the world. You can share, learn and grow.
- Blogging can build your career. You can use your blog to promote yourself. For example, if you are a sales person you might create a blog about sales strategies. You can then use your blog to establish yourself as a subject matter expert. It can help you move up in the company, land your dream job or gain further exposure for your own business.
- Blogging builds business. Many businesses use blogging as a means to market, grow and profit. If y
- ou have thought about starting a business online, you could launch it with a blog.
Blogging is popular for many reasons. It’s easy. It’s inexpensive. It can be profitable and it’s quite fun! Start your own blog today!
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
The goal of any business is to make money. To that end, many businesses should be focusing on a multi-billion dollar market: moms. Marketing to moms is the wave of the future…and the wave of now!
Why are moms so important?
Moms are enterprising. According to BSM Media, Inc., the amount of money spent by moms is already over the trillion dollar mark. That’s more than the budget of some third world countries!
Also according to BSM Media, Inc., almost ninety percent of moms consider themselves the financial head of the home. The husband may be the one in many cases that brings home most or all of the money, but moms are usually the ones that make the ‘how-to-spend-the-money’ decisions. Moms shop for everything that is related to the household: clothes for the kids, appliances, electronics, outdoor furniture, accessories and home improvement items.
The majority of husbands who shop for these items will consult their wives before buying them. Why do they do this? It is because the wives tend to do most of the research into the products to find the best one on the market for them. Moms influence as much as eighty-five percent of the purchases for their homes. That’s a huge number of moms! Over seventy million!
Take a moment and think about all of the tasks that moms handle in a day. The tasks can include housework, driving kids to and from school and activities, cooking meals and managing finances. They need to keep all of these things straight…and to that they usually employ a wide variety of technology. It is quite common these days to see a mom sitting at a park, watching her kids playing while browsing/working on an iPad, iPhone, or other such mobile device.
Moms are typically quite savvy on the internet. For many years, the trend has been for moms, and women about to become moms, to come out of the ‘9-5’ workplace and come home to start their own business so they can be home with their children. To that end, moms have developed a network of blogs, websites and forums designed to teach moms everthing from designing websites, starting businesses online, marketing to other moms, all while managing their homes. With all of this additional knowledge, moms’ buying power has increased exponentially.
Marketing Mistake?
Traditionally, the only products marketed towards women were household and cooking products. This goes back to the old thought that a woman’s place was in the home. Many companies are now seeing what a huge detriment that approach has been to them.
Women and moms have made a huge imprint in what was traditionally a man’s world. Women are not limited to office jobs. They are CEOs and CFOs. Women don’t just ‘surf the internet’, they are becoming entrepreneurs with increasing influence over internet marketing. These days, having moms shun your product because you are not marketing to them means that they are spreading the word via the internet and in their own communities.
The Future
Moms are influenced by other moms. Several generations of moms are coming together to influence spending habits of major corporations. In the future, you can expect this trend to continue. As moms become more ‘connected’ in the world, their influence over spending will increase [as their circles of influce do].
Gain the support of savvy moms with your products/services and your business will reap the benefits.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
Online, one of the most significant keys to success is getting website traffic. The more visitors you have, the better your sales and profits. Presumably, you have a niche and know your keywords. You should also do keyword research regularly to stay on top of what’s popular. Based on these assumptions…here are five tips to get website traffic.
Tip #1 Make sure you are actually tagging your keywords.
Do you spend a lot of time optimizing your content and then neglect to tag them on your webpage? Tags are where search engines look and if there are no tages they will pass right by your web pages. Here’s a quick brief on tags:
- Title tags. Title tags are quite possibly the most important place to situate your keywords. Here is what they look like: <title>primary keyword phrase</title> Your title tag is where you place your primary keyword or keyword phrase. The sentence will describe your business in less than 90 characters.
- Header tags. Header tags are next in order of importance to search engines. They are ranked in order of importance and look like this: <h1>primary and/or secondary keywords</h1> The ‘1’ means it is the most important header on the page.
- Meta tags. Meta tags provide the small descriptive text found underneath the title tag on the search engine results page. Meta tags, like title tags, should be kept brief, be informative, and be kept up to date.
- Alt tags. Alt tags are used to provide a text description of a graphic. Each graphic on your site should have a description and an alt tag.
Tip #2 Add content to your site daily.
Content is essential for traffic and a top search engine ranking. Content is what search engine spiders and look for and index…without it there is nothing to rank or index. You need to give visitors and search engines a reason to visit and index your site. Make a commitment to provide daily content that is optimized and you will see your traffic increase.
Tip #3 Get valuable and incoming links.
The more websites that link to your web pages the more valuable search engines think your website is…although not all links are created equal. Search engines give more value to links from sites that are popular and credible and from sites that are relevant to your website topic.
Here are some different kinds of links:
- Direct link. This looks like a basic website address. For example www.buybymom.com.
- Text link. A text link is when the webpage is embedded in the text. Readers simply click on the link and they are directed to a different webiste. For example: Buy By Mom.
- Deep link. This is a link that is to an internal webpage instead of the home page of a website. For example: Buy By Mom rates.
You can encourage others to link to your website by:
- Adding content to your site
- Submitting articles to directories
- Publishing press releases
- Blogging and participating in social networking forums and social networking sites
Tip #4 Be social.
Now more than ever before, internet marketing is about building a community. Whether you offer a forum on your website or you participate in social networking sites, social networking is a valuable traffic generating tactic. Sites like Facebook and Twitter can be powerful tools for generating links and traffic to your site. Create a profile, post comments and links to your site that will generate conversation.
Get involved. Many forums are industry specific. You should find those that fit your industry and begin participating. You can connect with a highly targeted audience.
Tip #5 Advertise for more exposure and traffic.
Advertising should be approached strategically. When it is, it can be used to promote your content and products or services. Pay per click (PPC) advertising is a highly used option because you can control the advertising budget on a daily basis. You will also have the tools to test and track your advertising efforts. Once you have honed your PPC advertising skills, the return on investment can be very good in terms of traffic and business.
For the best results, you should create an advertising and SEO strategy. Outline your plan and goals and then take action and follow through. Take advantage of these five tips to help boost your business.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
Julianne Wish, Member Contributions
How you think about money is the single most important factor that determines whether you are wealthy or not. So, if you want more money in your life it is essential that you develop a positive money mindset.
However, many of us are taught to think negatively about money. We are told things like, “money is the root of all evil” and “money doesn’t grow on trees.” It is no wonder that we have such a difficult time thinking positively about money! You may have even been taught that rich people are greedy and as a result are subconsciously avoiding wealth and missing out on the great opportunities having money can provide.
As long as you hold on to negative and incorrect beliefts about money, you will never create the wealth you desire or deserve.
To change your money mindset, you must first recognize that money in and of itself is not good or bad. Money is just a tool. In fact, more often than not, money is used to good rather than bad. Think about all of the wonderful charities that have been able to help people all over the world. Appreciate all the good that money can do and is used for. It is an important part of life and is used to make positive changes in the world. Money should be sought after…not avoided.
Recognize that money is abundant. When you were young, you were probably told by your parents that money doesn’t grow on trees. If you are holding on to that belief now, you’re own mindset could be stopping you from attracting money. Of course money does not literally grow on trees, but there is an abundant amount of it for everyone, including you…even in this challenge economy. However, if you believe that money is scarce, that belief will help keep it far away from you.
Giving money away is another way you can help develop a positive money mindset. Wanting to hang on to every cent you have is a stingy mindset and can reinforce that there is not enough of it. Giving reinforces the concept of abundace. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount…just a little something is ok.
Finally, be happy for those who are successful and have money. Many of us were often told, and are still often told today by the media, that those who have money are greedy. As a result, we are very tempted to thing negatively about them. In fact, the opposite is usually true. Rich people often accumulate their wealth by sharing what they have with others and believing in the idea of abundance.
When someone else has money…don’t resent their success! If you have feelings of jealousy, that will only hold you back from achieving your own wealth and success. You should be happy for them and remember that there is enough wealth for you too and you can work towards making your turn come!
By making these changes in how you think about money, you will be well on your way to developing a positive money mindset. Once you begin thinking about money in a positive way, you will have taken the first step on the path of achieving your own wealth.
Julianne Alvarez-Wish is a military wife, mother, business owner, professional writer, blogger and legislative advocate. She is the Director of Communications for Our Milk Money, the Colorado State Leader for the National Association for Moms in Business and the owner of Buy By Mom and Buy By Mom Blog. She is the Colorado Springs Stay-at-Home Mom Examiner for Examiner.com. She also blogs at A Wishful Thought. Her passion, purpose and goal is to help parents work from home so they can be home with their children.
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