Nigel McFarlane

Article Feedback Extends the life of Your Articles

Written by admin on June 30, 2009

Calling all editors, publishers, journalists and freelance writers. It is time to breathe more life into your copy. Turn your articles into living pieces that spark measurable debate, get closer to your readers and engage their mind and soul – we’re talking revolution.

As it was in the beginning

Publishers have for many years relied on letters to get feedback from their readers and although email has opened up this method of communication it is still time consuming and difficult to process with only a fraction of the received correspondence ever being used.

As well as being an overhead for the publisher, it can also be an unrewarding medium in terms of the amount of effort required and response that is received, just consider the number of letters that go unread and unpublished.

As it is now

The Internet has brought new channels of communication and has opened up opportunities that allow us to challenge traditional methods. The Internet is now a mature technology, no longer the preserve of the new fad brigade but a technology that has been embraced by a global population, young and old alike and it allows us now to re-evaluate the way things are done. Newspapers, trade journals, magazines and ezines now have the opportunity to change the mental process.

When people read an article that provokes thought they now expect the opportunity to comment either by writing a comment, sending an email or writing a letter. Emails make communication easier but it still takes time to craft an email and time for the majority, is what they haven’t got.

Although interesting a letters page or a list of comments are at best a snapshot of views or an endless unmanaged list of comments; a well crafted and well written letter on any given subject may hold the view of the minority, or the majority but due to the free text form it is difficult, or near impossible, to measure.

As it should be

Now consider the advantages of linking articles to online surveys where as a publisher you will have the ability to obtain valuable feedback from your readers and in a form that can be easily measured. Communicating with your readers is one thing but having a channel that allows your readers to effectively communicate with you is just as important.

Want a snapshot of opinion? Did they like that article? Did the sentiments expressed in the article have the support of the audience or do the readers have a different view?

Now it is easy

In the past surveys would have taken considerable effort to design and publish and altogether was a process too long winded and therefore reserved for the niche and bigger topics.

However, using a hosted survey site surveys and questionnaires can be created and published via the Internet by anyone who has a pulse. Professional looking questionnaires and surveys created in minutes make the perfect complement to articles that prompt opinion and debate.

The advantage over letters, e-mails and comments are that all the feedback is properly managed and measured and sites like Survey Galaxy will provide you with a real time poll that you can either keep to yourself or share with your readers.

It can even be complementary to sending an email

Linking articles to online surveys will extend the life of the article and involve your readers in the discussion in a way where they are confident that their opinion will be counted.

If you think they would rather send an email? – not a problem – just include the facility within the survey and get the best of both worlds.

It’s low cost, fast and easy to do; it will not only empower and engage the reader but will establish a valuable communication channel that will provide you with measurable feedback and give you the opportunity to promote other related articles.

See it in action and record your own opinion about this article here:- Readership Feedback Survey

How a Blog Can Help Your Business

Written by admin on June 29, 2009

Businesses are beginning to realize that a website isn’t enough to make a powerful online presence. Marketers have started to include blogging as a vital part of their online search engine optimisation and marketing mix. There are still some businesses out there that aren’t clear on how blogs can help them.

They simply came up with a blog, not knowing how to make it work to their favor. Blogs are highly versatile tools that are capable of executing the different aspects of marketing—from the basic market researches down to creative guerrilla marketing, blogs offer businesses a lot of breakthrough opportunities.

Below are 5 of the most practical ways in which a blog can help your online business.

1. Writing blogs can create stronger links with your target market
Publishing a blog makes it easier to give your brand a personality. Your blog allows people to directly interact with your brand, and they expect some sort of reply or acknowledgement that someone in your company has received and read their messages.

Maintaining this feedback loop allows you to keep an eye on your market and gives you a better conversion rate of prospects to loyal clients.

2. Blogs attract fresh insights and inform you of new category trends
Keeping communication lines open for your blog visitors, you will undoubtably gain fresh insights and new suggestions. The beauty of this is that you don’t need to pay anyone to talk to the consumers for you, but you still get the information straight from the primary source.

It’s now up to you how you organize the information that you’ve gathered; make them work towards your advantage. You can take things one step further by cross checking your data. Visit your comptitors blogs and see what their visitors have to say about them. Doing so would definitely give you a better view of your marketplace.

3. Before launching a product or service, a blog is a great way to test the market
Before fully launching an ad or any creative promo and campaign, you can execute a mini version of your plan through your blog and see how your audience responds. Suggestions and comments will pour in, giving you ideas on how you can improve and tweak it to better suit your market.

Companies spend a lot of money conducting FGDs and researches. Sometimes these can cost more than a full blown campaign. While blogs cannot replicate the accuracy of professional research groups, they can work well for a lot of market-driven studies.

4. Blogs allow you increased exposure online
Blogging networks survive on an amazing network of links. Bloggers are usually fine with linking fellow bloggers that they find interesting. Its a good idea to befriend top ranking blogs in your own category or at least related categories.

Updated and regualr content ensures a high credibility rating.

5. With blogs there is more room for creativity
Your blog can be the fun alter-ego of your corporate website. While this doesn’t mean a complete dissent from your brand’s identity, blogs allow you to close the gap between how you define your brand and how your market perceives your brand.

Why Your Blog is Not Making Money

Written by admin on June 28, 2009

One of the biggest misconceptions about blogging today is that anyone with half a brain can earn big bucks from it, just by posting every so often and tacking up a few boxes of Google Adsense on your site.  Only when one actually starts a blog does reality sink in:  it’s not easy to make money blogging, and just because someone managed to make thousands of dollars within his first six months doesn’t mean that you will, too.

If you’re part of the latter group and would like to know what you might be doing wrong, then this article is for you.  Below is a list of the most common reasons why your blog isn’t performing, despite your best efforts:

1.  You’re jumping the gun:

Blogs take a long time before they can get recognition and be established as a credible source of information for a particular niche.  Because of this, it’s probably going to take a while before you see any rewards from your efforts.  Competition is stiff in the blogosphere, and much of the first months (or the first year!) of your blog will be spent in establishing why you’re different from the rest.  Until you’ve actually made a name for yourself (and your blog), revenue will be hard to come by. 

For some people, it takes only three months before the cash starts rolling in.  For others, however, it can take longer than a year before any rewards seem apparent.  Be patient, work hard at your blog, and your efforts will pay off sooner or later – exactly when that will happen is still a mystery.

2.  You’ve come to rely too much on advertising:

A common mistake among newbie bloggers is to become overeager with advertising in the hopes of earning as much as money in as little amount of time as possible.  The problem here is that excessive advertising is often enough to drive people away from your blog.  Remember that your visitors aren’t dropping by your site to appreciate your current advertising strategy – instead, they’re there under the assumption that you can offer them something new and interesting to read about.

3.  You don’t update enough:

Regular and frequent updating is crucial in making your blog retain a high place in search engine rankings.  If you think you’re doing a good job by updating around three or four times a week, you’re in for quite a surprise.  If you’re just new to the blogging game, you’re expected to update your blog as frequently as possible.  If you can make at least one blog post for each day of the working week, great!  If you can blog even on weekends, even better!  Constant updating pushes search engines to index your site just as frequently, eventually bumping your site up to a higher spot in search engine rankings.

4.  Money is your only purpose:
Bloggers who blog only for the money it promises often don’t meet with a lot of success.  This is usually because bloggers like these won’t think twice about resorting to shortcuts that won’t help their blogging strategy, such as putting up too many AdSense boxes or talking about a popular topic of which they have no substantial knowledge or insights.  It’s okay to want to make money blogging, but you should be passionate about your chosen niche and about maintaining and keeping your blog.

If your blog hasn’t yielded any rewards yet, don’t take it as a sign that your blog won’t go places.  Just stick to the job at hand, fine-tune your strategy, create high quality blog posts, and cultivate both the patience and passion necessary for maintaining your blog.

Do You Want To Create Blog

Written by admin on June 27, 2009

What is blogging to you and can you really make money from home using blogging?  The answer is yes and you can indeed earn money now with the proper blogging technique.

There are so many new-age terms floating around these days. This typically applies to the online world. Many older individuals and even some younger people have trouble keeping up with all the changes and nuances our high-tech world has to offer. If you had said you were going to check your email account on a cell phone 20 years ago, obviously everyone would have thought you were mad. Gadgets and medium rule the world today. Take voicing your personal opinion as example. While folks used to do this on the radio or television, they now do it on the Internet. So if you’ve ever asked yourself; what is blogging? It is a good way to vent your thoughts, emotions and opinions via the web. Do you have something to say?

In actual facts, many took to the internet for blogging about their viewpoints. As anyone guess, what is blogging merely five years ago, today it’s all the rage and in full effect. Now, think why you might want to start a blog. Now, hang on! We should establish a few formats first. Online websites such as Blogger.com and Wordpress such as.com allow you to sign up for free blogging accounts and start blogging about whatever you please. It is really that straighforward. You can published it very quickly. Anyway, what would you prefer to blog about? Maybe you want to begin a blog on politics, car mechanics, kitchen cutlery, inflation, racial discrimination, money making or movies. The endless possibilities are there and they are all yours.

Now, if you’re still not clear on what is blogging or what your motive would be to do it, you should consider the monetary gain. That’s right you guess it! Do you know that you can earn from blogging on the web. Essentially webites platform such as Blogger.com, which is affiliated with Google, allows you to place relevant ads on your blogs. This allows you to make money from ad revenue when anyone click on the ads. This is the main reason why many want to create blogs in the first place. You can earn money with your knowledge and advice. At this point you no longer have to ask anyone; what is blogging? Now you know!

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