Nowadays such a journal of thoughts, observations and muses is considered as a way to boost your business when posted on the internet.

Blogs, previously know as web logs, have now established themselves as the ‘must have’ means to promoted yourself and project your business to friends and customers online. A blog is essentially a journal, daily entries or ‘posts’ as they are called, updated on a regular basis. These may consist of news, personal views and opinions, ideas and promotional material.

Blogs also have links to other sites or blogs, sources of information and marketing promotions. These online journals are not meant to be on-way sites, that is, readers are invited, or indeed expected to submit their comment on the material posted within the blog.

This can apply to everything from home keeping to travel, but it can also serve as a source of income to your online business. Yet, not everyone can make headway with blogs.

I invite you to see how the following 4 basic business objectives can be reached.

1. find a new or little-known product or idea For Ryan Brown, having a blog makes a lot of sense for several reasons. Brown runs a business that provides alternative energy systems.

Since most of his prospective clients know little about alternative energy systems and what is available, he says that he finds a natural way to provide this information through his blog. “I began blogging as a means of cheap advertising and to keep in touch with existing and prospective clients,” says Brown “It does have a positive impact for my enterprise.

People are always craving for more information on companies, products and availability.” Eventually this leads to a better informed customer who is usually more ready to part with his cash and make a well-informed purchase. Thus product information is available to whoever needs it. No useless sales pitching to uninterested customers, but the same sales pitch is available to whoever seeks it. If a reader contacts you via the blog, bingo – you get results.

If not, no time has been wasted. You have lost no time explaining something to someone who eventually doesn’t buy.

2. Search Engine rankings are improved. Blogging also reaches out to other prospective clients in other ways. As any online business knows, site visitors coming via Google, or any other search engine provide a multitude of leads.

Search Engines love blogs because a blog sites has continuously changing content and comments posted by readers create further interest to spider bots. When set up properly, blogs have an enormous benefit as regards search engines, according to to search engine marketing firms.

Blogs that allow comments, every new post or comment converts into an additional web page in itself, full of additional keywords that are greedily picked up by the search engine spider bots.

3. Identify yourself as an expert in the field.

Apart from generating leads, a positive message about your credentials is dispersed throughout the online marketplace, giving your enterprise a personality and brand of its own.

4. Leave your mark on public opinion.

Traditional journalistic venues are bypassed through blogging, enabling the user to become his own publisher when airing his views and opinions.

Public relations firms have stated that blogs are now becoming the most powerful influence on public opinion Blogs have become a legal alternative source of news and information on nearly all subjects and topics. Anyone can use blogs, especially those with a passion and flair for some particular aspect or trade.

Several blogs serve to sway public opinion as much as established profession public relations firms. Talk openly with your customers in a forum Blogs that invite comments from their readers provide a sense of immediacy and personal contact with your customers.

In a way, this provides much needed feedback on what the customer likes or dislikes and what needs to be improved A business related blog provides a means for customers to submit their views after purchasing. The result?

Such blog-assisted online businesses benefit by getting glowing testimonials from over 15% of their customers as opposed to the less than 1% of customers that submit unsolicited testimonials in the normal market.

Guest Author: Mario R. Schembri is a freelance writing on Internet Marketing Strategies and related tools.

Visit my blog at www.homebusinessaire.com/blog
and leave your comments.

What really grasped my attention was the Online Certification Program that this web site offers. It says “The perfect solution for professionals who need to balance work, family, and career building”, which I think properly describes its function.

The web site itself is easy to navigate, pleasing to the eye and makes the most relevant information available with single clicks.

Okay, the website is http://www.w3schools.com/ for those of you too impatient to continue reading… go check out their amazing resources.

I have found everything on this site from simple HTML to advanced SQL and Database development information. There are step by step tutorials, references, examples and of course the certification program in the following: HTML and XHTML, Styling with CSS, All XML Languages, Browser Scripting, Server Scripting, SQL and Database and it all remains free!

You can learn browser scripting, server scripting, multimedia and web building.

Overall, I think that this is an exciting web site that allows all new and advanced web designers and web-scripting developers should use either to learn new skills or to further your skills.

The web site aims to make the learning process efficient thereby saving you time on the entire process.

I know that I am definitely going to try my hand at some of their certification programs.

Just a quick shout out to the people that developed and sustain that web site – thank you very much for the great information! Two thumbs up!

Download

‘Ping’ is a computer network tool used to test whether a particular host is reachable across an IP network; it is also used to self test the network interface card of the computer, or as a speed test. It works by sending ICMP “echo request” packets to the target host and listening for ICMP “echo response” replies. Ping measures the round-trip time[1] and records any packet loss, and prints when finished a statistical summary of the echo response packets received, the minimum, mean, max and in some versions the standard deviation of the round trip time.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ping

Well, that’s according to Wikipedia. As far as I know, when using blogging software you can automatically inform social networks like Technorati of your updates using a Ping. As soon as you hit the publish button the network (site) is pinged and notified of the updates and made available for others to see.

Here is the list that I have of updated ping services:

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2

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

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

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

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

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

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt

https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast

http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

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

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

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

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

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

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

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

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx

http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz

http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates

http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

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

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

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

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/

http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php

http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

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

http://www.rssfwd.com/xmlrpc/api

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

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

Hope you find it useful. (“,)

With the number of websites being designed and implemented by wordpress.org blogging software on daily basis is on the increase because of its ease of use and functionality, has web design gone to the blogs?

It is  easy to search for templates and themes on the thousands of websites that provide them online and use them on your WordPress blogs while configuring your blog to be used as a complete CMS solution that’s simple, but does this replace good, old fashioned web design. Tell us what you think in the comments form on this page.

This is my opinion – A blog should be a blog. Period. People should consider designing websites from the ground up as this ensures that your idea is completely unique and not used on elsewhere on the net. Sometimes this can prove difficult especially if your site involves a lot of high end dynamic content, forms, sales, etc but it is still not an excuse.

The best thing to do in the case of being oringinal would be to learn how to theme your wordpress installation to match that of your entire site. I found this tutorial to be of a lot of help. There are countless others out there that would help you further your knowledge of how to theme a wordpress blog – and it’s a great way to get more back link, just give themes away for free!

1. Choose a topic that you know, like, and are passionate about. This way you will never get bored and will keep your audience always interested and asking for more.

2. Pick a topic where there is not a lot of competition. If your topic is too common, try addressing it from a particular angle or focus on a specific niche. For example, there are many sites that talk about cars, but few that specialize in only one brand, and even fewer that focus on only one model. The key to be successful is to find a specific enough topic with a large enough audience.

3. Open a Blogger account. It is free and easy to use. That way, you won’t have to invest in costlier platforms like MovableType or TypePad before you have the chance of finding out if blogging is for you.

4. Use a minimalist template, preferably one with a white background. This format is easier to read and pleasant to the eye when you combine it with color pictures.

5. Use pictures to dress up your blog entries and give your blog a more professional appearance. You can find excellent pictures at a very low cost in istockphoto.com, or even free in Flickr (don’t forget to ask the owner of the picture for permission before you use it).

6. In one of your blog’s side columns, list six or seven links to authoritative sites related to your topic. When the search engine robots visit your blog, they will find these links and your blog will benefit by association.

7. Write in simple language, short paragraphs and using bullet points. These are essential guidelines for writing on the web, and will make your posts easier to read and understand.

8. Always link out to the sources you use to document your posts. This is not only good etiquette but also a way to promote your blog and get links: when the people you link to find out that they’ve been linked to, they will most likely link to your post from their site or blog.

9. Check your posts for spelling and grammatical errors. This will make your blog look more professional and will increase the probability of other people linking to it.

10. Use labels to categorize your posts and keep your blog neatly organized. Blogger recently modified its software to allow the use of labels.

11. Participate actively in forums and discussion groups related to your topic. Find what are the most common questions and provide the answers in your blog. Then, direct forum readers to your blog. Try to also direct forum readers to other resources, or answer without necessarily linking to your blog, sometimes. If not, you may be perceived as self serving and only interested in promoting your blog.

12. Use HitTail to research topics to write about. HitTail gives you a list of the search terms used by those who came to your blog through a search engine. This search term list will give you ideas for future blog posts.

13. Allow your blog readers to email your posts to other people. Also, give them the option to bookmark your posts using del.icio.us, furl, or any other social bookmarking service. You can go to AddThis to download a smart button that makes it easy to bookmark your posts. You can find instructions on how to add the button to Blogger here. The easier you make it to share your blog posts, the more relevant traffic your blog will get.

14. Use Technorati tags at the end of your blog posts. Technorati tags are a way of classifying your blog posts by topic and have them added to Technorati’s index (Technorati is the most important search engine for blogs). Use this automatic Technorati tag generator to avoid having to create the HTML code manually.

15. Syndicate your blog allowing your visitors to subscribe to your feeds through their favorite aggregator. This way, they will be automatically notified every time you update your blog. You can use this tool to generate attractive syndication buttons, which you can then place in a side column of your blog.

16. Post frequently. It is the only way to keep your audience interested and coming back. Two or three times a week is ideal. Once a week is the borderline minimum that I recommend to keep your audience engaged and maintain adequate visibility in the search engines.

17. Keep a large number of posts in the main page of your blog. Search engine robots usually won’t crawl and index all your blog pages, however they will visit your main page frequently. The more content you keep in your main page, the bigger the chance of it popping up in the search engine results pages.

18. Use Google Adsense to monetize your blog. Blogger lets you add Google Adsense easily and seamlessly in several locations within a page. The best locations are within the content, and on top of the page simulating a navigation bar.

19. Don’t use Google Adsense excessively, at least at the beginning. Your initial focus should be not to monetize your blog, but to build your audience and establishing your blog’s reputation as an authority within your topical community. A blog that is deep on content and lean on ads is more likely to attract the kind of links needed to become relevant to users and search engines.

20. Once your blog is established and generates abundant, relevant traffic, you can monetize more aggressively, not only with Adsense but also with affiliate links and, why not, maybe even by selling your own products.

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a growing collection of Internet marketing articles, tips and resources, and Shoestring Branding ( http://www.shoestringbranding.com ), an online resource for entrepreneurs who want to build strong small business brands.