Top Ten Reason to Publish an Ezine AND a BlogWritten by Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman
Blogs are hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your messages and article to clients. They are a like personal web sites, easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites. Just when you thought you were mastering tasks of ezines and newsletters, along comes blogging, and you have to ask yourself: Do I really need a blog? Isn’t an email ezine or newsletter doing same thing? Should I do both? Are these two marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money? What’s best way to spend my resources here so that I can get clients and results out of my marketing efforts? Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention to this new blogging revolution and do both and ezine and a blog. 1. Because a blog is web based, it is published instantaneously every time you post. This allows you to be spontaneous and current with issues that affect your readers/clients. Blog posts are short, ezines can be longer. One can complement other. 2. Because blog posts are spontaneous, they tend to be more informal, friendly, and conversational. Blog posts show your personality. Ezines show your knowledge. Your readers/clients need to know who you are before they will invest in your services. Providing both an ezine and a blog allows your readers to get to know you. 3. You can set up a subscription form on your blog and your subscribers will get a short notice in their inboxes each time you post something new. This is a great way around spam filter problem which blocks so many ezines and legitimate messages from professionals. 4. Blogs link to other blogs and web sites, which helps you create a viral marketing system, increasing your exposure to search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are text based and key word rich. Your rankings go up when you publish a blog and use linking and posting on a frequent basis. You can also link to your own web site(s). 5. You have instant access to all your published articles on your blog. A blog automatically creates archives of previous posts. You see them in a side-bar for easy access. You put them into categories for easy finding. One clever person we know spent a day posting all her ezine articles to her blog, so that it would appear she has been blogging for a much longer time. Also, readers of her blog may not have had opportunity to read all of her other ezine articles. 6. You can use your blog to become a trusted expert in your field by filtering content on web for your subscribers. Readers don’t have time to surf and to collect information, but you can do it for them, thereby establishing yourself as a good resource. 7. You can set up links for ads, products, and for your affiliate programs in blog side columns so you don’t have to include them in body of your article. In an ezine, you have to be careful about promotional stuff in article because it annoys people and causes them to unsubscribe. A blog is a non-intrusive way to do this, and an ezine can link to blog where more information can be found.
| | How to Create a Favicon for Your Web SiteWritten by Kalena Jordan
Ever see those little custom icons next to a web site listing in your favorites folder or on your browser address bar? Have you ever wondered how to create one for your own site? Well I'm going to teach you in this article.The icons are called "Favicons", a contraction of phrase "favorite icons". To see an example, go to www.searchenginecollege.com and bookmark site (or add to your "favorites" list). Now close your browser window and open a new one. Click on your bookmarked sites or favorites list and find site you just bookmarked. See tiny mortarboard graphic next to listing? That's a Favicon. It makes site stand out from all others in your favorites list. If you click on that site, Favicon will even load next to URL in your browser address bar from now on. Cool huh? Like to create a Favicon for your own site? It's easier than you think. Here's what you do: 1) Choose an image or symbol that you would like to use to represent your web site. This could be a tiny version of your logo, a graphic or perhaps a stylized version of your company initials. A famous example of this is "Y!" Favicon used by Yahoo! A Favicon is meant to reflect look and feel of a web site or a company logo. Remember it needs to be simple and clear enough to have visual impact when converted to 16 x 16 pixels. 2) Take a high quality version of your chosen image in .JPG or .GIF format and if it isn't already, convert your image to 256 color Web Safe Palette or Windows 16 color format (the fewer colors better). 3) Using your favorite graphics package or image manipulation software, reduce image down to 16 pixels wide by 16 pixels high, being careful to preserve image resolution. This is tricky bit, because you might find your chosen image looks fantastic at original size and downright silly at 16 x 16 pixels! Keep experimenting until you are happy with finished icon.
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