This report gives your readers 31 ideas how to populate their blog and learn to look out for blog topics.

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<h1>Article Site vs Blogs vs Podcasts</h1><br /> <p>Just when you think you understand the content publishing trend of the day, here comes another one to mess up your plans. If you’re frustrated, confused and don’t know how to fit everything or if you even should. </p><br /> <p>It’s not easy coming up with a web content publishing management strategy. It’s something I struggle with from time to time as well.</p><br /> <p>I believe it’s a personal choice. All these are just different methods of publishing your content. There are some key questions you might want to consider.</p><br /> <p><b>What is your audience most predisposed to?</b></p><br /> <p>The reason we publish web content is so people will find, it, read it, use it and hopefully generate a sale for your products. It doesn’t matter which is the best format but what is best for your audience. Which content format do they respond most to? Are they highly mobile people, always on the road? Do they prefer reading to listening? Are they technically savvy enough to understand how to use an RSS reader? If you don’t know, ask them.</p><br /> <p>You’ll naturally have a hodge podge of answers and sometimes even after asking, the result is not always clear. Overall, written content still triumphs over multimedia for several reasons. People cannot scan an audio or video file so if they want just one piece of information from that hour long recording, they are forced to find an hour of their time that they may not be willing to give.</p><br /> <p><b>Why are you’re building that site?</b></p><br /> <p>How do you envision this site to be, what’s it for? Some sites like product review, launch updates, deal of the day, news and event reporting and FAQ’s are just made for blogs. If you start a site answering “Questions about coaching”. This type of approach is ideal for a blog because there is some kind of interactivity going on and also it’s easy for you to publish your questions and answers. When you have the occasional long form articles, you can always add them to a page on your blog. Your articles and blog need not stand alone, they can be complimentary.</p><br /> <p>Other sites especially those built for educating and dispensing information would be better off with a regular article based site. While you can use a blog as a content management tool for your articles, a regular website offers much more control when you’re trying to optimize each web page individually. True, you can optimize a blog however, overall I find it’s easier to optimize a website.</p><br /> <p><b>Relevance</b></p><br /> <p>This is where a good long look at your overall business helps. Some people build sites in all kinds of niches, from gadgets to babies. Others, find their niche and build upon it by creating different sites related to that niche. Example, the main business is coaching. They have one site on coaching FAQ’s, one for coaches, one for life and balance articles for a working mother and so on. If your business is structured like the latter, it’s going to be a lot easier for you to figure out which approach you should go for.</p><br /> <p>This is because all of these sites are working in tandem to support your main business. It doesn’t matter which you use, in the end, the focus is on your business, you are promoting your services no matter where people go and you’ll reap the rewards. Each of these sites also become a network of content. Doing so also means you could keep only one blog and use it to direct people people to new articles, highlight special articles or alert people about a teleseminar call, kind of like a news hub just for your business. Another nice plus to this is you don’t have to build so many blogs you can’t keep up with.</p><br /> <p>An example is this page you’re on. Some of you are directed here because I mentioned the article on my blog. Some of you come here from my newsletter. Some from reading the blog’s RSS feed.</p><br /> <p><b>When to podcast</b></p><br /> <p>Although there are many benefits to podcasting, it can take up an awful lot of time. It’s hard work publishing a show every week or every other week for that matter. So, make sure you can commit that kind of time before doing so. That doesn’t mean you can’t publish audio your blog when you have an audio to publish.</p><br /> <p>Many people misunderstand podcasts, they look at it like they see radio and magazine which are totally different things. Fact is, many podcasts are blogs and vice versa.</p><br /> <p>If you think podcasts are just a little too much to handle right now, here’s one way you can leverage them without committing yourself to it. Become a guest on someone else’s podcast who reaches the same niche as you. Podcast publishers are always looking for great content and people to interview so, fill their need. Why create your own when you can piggy back.</p><br /> <p>Lot’s of things to consider. Given my time slot I’m going to make it quick and point out a few key areas.</p><br /> <p>Some sites are just made for blogs – reviews, FAQs, deals, news and updates.</p><br /> <p>Look for synergy. I’ll usually start off with a regular articles based website. I think you cannot go wrong with it. It’s the basis of the Internet and will be for a long time just like books are still in publication today, it’s not going anywhere. However try to also see if an existing blog can help drive traffic to this site simply by highlighting articles or mentioning certain things about the content. Lastly, if you cannot afford the time to do a podcast, be a guest or contribute recorded segments – it could be an audio version of an article you already wrote so it doesn’t take you that much time or effort to produce and you’re reaching as many people as possible. Goes the same for blogs. You don’t have to do it all yourself. If find you can’t find time or resources to squeeze in another blog, ask around and see if other bloggers in a relevant niche are interested in allowing you to be a contributor to their blog.</p><br /> <p>Bio:<br><br /> Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping small business owners with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at <<INSERT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE>></p>

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<h1>Surefire Ways To Get Your Blog Comments Deleted</h1><br /> <p>Blogs are a strangely social thing. When you take time to responsibly comment on other people’s blog, you’ll find people visit your blog and leave comments in return. Commenting can be a rewarding experience because you get involved in an exchange of ideas, build relationships which in turn bring you traffic. Unfortunately, with all the comment spam going on, many bloggers become wary. If you commonly leave legitimate comments on other people’s blog, these pointers will help you stay on the good side of the blogs you visit.</p><br /> <p>Don’t slap your affiliate links in the comments. No matter how relevant the product is, other people’s blog is not your sales venue. This one single action will get you in the black books of many a blogger when you could build bridges instead.</p><br /> <p>Stick to the topic. Don’t try to slip in some spam. If it’s a business blog and your recommendation is not business oriented, recommending it makes you look like you’re trying to spam. If you have something to raise that’s relevant but not exactly on the same topic, a better way may be for you to blog about it and posting a trackback instead.</p><br /> <p>If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it. This doesn’t mean you must be a yes-man (or woman) to every blog owner. There are peaceful ways to express your opinion and most bloggers welcome a difference of opinion. But turning things into an attack when you’re in someone else’s back yard really reflects on yourself. Remember the saying, when you point at someone, you’ve got three fingers pointing back at you.</p><br /> <p>Use the website link and don’t be greedy. Many blogs have a field for you to type in your URL. The blog system will usually use this URL to hyperlink your name to your site. Most people use it but some, don’t and choose to post their links in the comments instead. Others load their URL in every place they can find making it look like – you guessed it, spam and into the trash it’ll go.</p><br /> <p>Your comment sounds too much like spam. See points above. Say something intelligent that contributes to the conversation. If you agree or disagree, tell them why. If you’ve had experience with the topic, share it.</p><br /> <p>Other people’s blog is not your complaint center. Rant if you must, but don’t turn it into a 10 page hate mail to the company you purchased the product from. Do it on your blog and send the blogger a trackback if available.</p><br /> <p>Ok, all this sounds so very negative but in all honesty, it’s just common sense. When you’re on someone’s blog you’re really in their home. Don’t do something you won’t do when you visit someone else’s house and you’ll be good to go. Comments are a great way to extend your experience to other people, further cementing your expert status. They also help you connect with other bloggers, allowing you to keep the door open for future collaboration. Keep the focus on others and they’ll soon focus on you.</p><br /> <p>Bio:<br><br /> Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping others with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at <<INSERT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE>></p>

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<h1>Blogging & Your Privacy</h1><br /> <p>Let’s face it. The Internet can be a dangerous place. With so many easy avenues for just about anyone to publicly flaunt or display their personal voices like blogs, it’s also easy for people to be callous about what information is posted.</p><br /> <p>As entrepreneurs, this can be a problem. People say to make your blog personal, share information, build relationship with your readers but what kind of relationship? Where do you draw the line? On one hand, you want to be approachable and open to your customers. On the other hand, you value your privacy. Ah, the dilemma.</p><br /> <p>There is no right or wrong answer but there are a lot of things you can to protect your privacy. While much of it is common sense, sometimes they are easy to overlook during our every day course of business. So let’s review what you can do.</p><br /> <p></b>Who’s Blog Is This?</b></p><br /> <p>For many entrepreneurs, our business is our life. We are so passionate and immersed in our business that we sometimes forget the business is or should be a separate entity. This is not saying you should be cold and talk business all the time; you should more or less bring some personality into the blog. The point here is, if you take time to step outside of “The business is me” mind set, you’re more likely not to let slip personal details.</p><br /> <p><b>Business Information Only</b</p><br /> <p>Set limits for yourself what information to share besides the obvious like mailing address and telephone numbers which should be different from your personal one. Consider things like:</p><br /> <p>What pictures are you willing to put up?<br /> If you’re comfortable with putting out your own picture, it can help build your credibility but what about pictures of you and your family?</p><br /> <p>Would you share your children’s names and ages?</p><br /> <p>What information about your spouse or other family members are you willing to put out?</p><br /> <p>What about your past?</p><br /> <p>When going on vacation should you post it on your blog? Telling people your offices will be closed should suffice.</p><br /> <p>Set a sort of agreement with yourself. Generally, it’s a good idea not to discuss your personal life in your business blog. For example, a post about an idea that came to you during Father’s Day barbecue is OK, but if you tell people the barbecue was at Mary’s house who lives out in ABC town and accompany it with a picture. That *may* be a bit too much information. Write just enough to give people a brief background to set your story. Everything else is overkill.</p><br /> <p>Consider drawing up an employee blogging policy even if you don’t have employees. Think of how you’d advise an employee and apply it to yourself. And when you do have employees, you’ll already have a blogging policy in place.</p><br /> <p><b>Review, Review, Review</b></p><br /> <p>Because blogging is so easy to do, sometimes we tend to hit the post button too quickly. I’ve been guilty of that. Try to adopt a review-before-publish rule. I sometimes leave my posts overnight so I can see it with a fresh eye the next day.</p><br /> <p>Review each post to make sure you’re not giving away too much information or information that used collectively with other details you’ve already put forth, could be used against you or jeopardizes your privacy. It would be a good idea to keep a short review checklist you can pull up each time you make a blog post.</p><br /> <p>Sometimes in blogging you may find a lot of grey areas. The best way I know to deal with what information you should put out is to check yourself each time you post. After a while, you’ll develop a knack of what you can comfortably share and still come across as personable and frank, yet keeps your private life under wraps.</p><br /> <p>Bio:<br><br /> Blogger, entrepreneur Lynette Chandler enjoys helping small business owners with their blogs. She authored an e-course to help new bloggers start their blog right from the beginning. Grab yours at <<INSERT YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE>></p>

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<h1>Where Should You Host Your Blog?</h1><br /> <p>Should you host your blog yourself or pay someone to host it? It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie or a veteran this question always comes up when creating a new blog. Usually someone new to blogging would gravitate to hosting a blog themselves or get a free blog and as time goes by with experience they begin to ponder maybe paid blog hosting isn’t so bad after all. So what is better? </p><br /> <p>To answer this question, let’s first look at how a blog is created. Just like creating web pages, first, you need a software or script that will take your entries, format it and publish it to the web. The second component of a blog, is the web space, where the software should publish to, a home for the blog pages. </p><br /> <p>Knowing this information, let’s review the different ways to host a blog:</p><br /> <p><b>Full blog host. </b><br /><br /> This is where the blogging system or software is provided for you and your blog is also published to a web space provided by the host. Blogger, SquareSpace and Typepad fall into this category. It’s very much like creating a website with a site builder.</p><br /> <p><b>Hosted blog software but published elsewhere</b><br /><br /> This is where the blog software is provided for you but theblog pages are published to another website or web host altogether. By doing this, the software acts as a publishing system like FrontPage except it creates nicely formatted blogs. Blogger is probably the most well known for this. Yes Blogger can do both. Publish to their host or to yours. As a comparison, this is like using FrontPage to publish your website.</p><br /> <p><b>Blog software and blog are hosted on your web server</b><br /><br /> This is where you would install the blog script (software) on your web server – it can be any web hosting account. And when you publish, the blog itself resides on your web server also. To draw a parallel, this technique is like buying web hosting and then installing a content management system on it to help you build web pages.</p><br /> <p>If you’re new to building web pages or have built sites using site builders then you might want to go with a fully hosted blog. These hosts do all the nitty gritty for you and there’s very little technical stuff you need to know. If you can point and click, you can build a blog with a full blog host.</p><br /> <p>Having said that, just because you’re seasoned at building web pages doesn’t mean full blog hosts won’t work for you. In fact, if you have many blogs this becomes very appealing since you won’t have to worry about upgrading the blog script, people exploiting the script, making plug-ins work or what happens when your web host decides to disable part of your blog functions because there is a security hole. All you do is concentrate on blogging. After a while, blogging becomes more important than maintaining your blog and that’s the way it should be.</p><br /> <p><b>Next up, hosted software but blog is published to your website.</b><br /><br /> This seems to be the best of both worlds. At time of writing, Blogger is one of the best ways to do this but because of its popularity often, you find the system too slow to publish or completely down just when you have a hot idea to share. The idea is good but you’ll also be depending on someone else’s availability to publish your blog. It’s much like using a friend’s computer to build your web pages and you know how that can go.</p><br /> <p><b>Finally, you have the option to use scripts.</b><br /><br /> This is also a very popular method. The flexibility it allows is very liberating because you can mould the blog anyway you want. You can even get a programmer to create custom plug-ins or customize the whole blogging system the way you want it. In short, you can do pretty much anything you want.</p><br /> <p>The down side, you need at the very basic, some knowledge of HTML or publishing web pages. Also the burden of upgrading, troubleshooting and maintaining the script is on you. If you have one or two blogs it’s not so bad but once you start having more, it can be quite tedious. You also have to consider all the other responsibilities of maintaining the script as mentioned earlier.</p><br /> <p>Armed with this information, you should be able to figure out which one is for you. If you’re still undecided, think of how you would do it if you’re creating a regular website. Chances are your choice method for publishing a website is also the best method for you to create a blog.</p><br /> <p>About the author<br /><br /> Lynette Chandler helps entreprenuers start blogging and make the most of their blogs. Get a free video how to set up your blog at <<YOUR AFFILIATE LINK HERE>> </p><br />