Top 10 Mistakes You MUST Avoid in Blogging!

What are the top Mistakes to avoid while setting up your blog? Internet gurus can debate all day about what makes a blog so successful. Indeed, many strategies are subjective. There are, however, certain mistakes that we all agree MUST BE AVOIDED!

Instead of banging on all the time about the keys to success! I’m going to tell you how NOT to fail!

Here are the top 10 mistakes that you must avoid at all costs:

1. Having a slow-loading website

A web page shouldn’t take anymore than a few seconds to load. If people have to wait for our content to load, they will get aggravated. You definitely don’t want anyone’s first impression of your site to be agitation. Avoid this by ensuring all your images are below 100KB. (Ideally all images totalled should be under 100kb).

Sign up to Amazon S3 and get your videos hosted under cloudfront, after you’ve converted them from large file sizes down to the smallest you can manage without affecting the quality. DO NOT have a website full of flash! It’s not flashy if all your audience sees is a buffering circle – 3 seconds and they’re gone……

2. Having a sloppy, haphazard website

Everything should be organized neatly. Your layout should have easy navigation. All of your pages should be interlinked. If somebody wants to find something on your site, they should be able to do so.

Consider creating a sitemap, not only will it help your ranking in the search engines, it will guide people around your website. Ensure you have a search function and make sure there are clear calls to action, where you want people to go, how they contact you, how they get more information etc.

Sometimes when it comes to design – less is more!

3. Don’t forget to submit your site to search engines

This one seems like a no-brainer, yet a surprisingly large number of webmasters neglect doing this. Take the time to manually submit your website to Google, Yahoo, Bing, MSN, Lycos, etc. (I didn’t do this for months – simply because I didn’t know I had to!)

Get your site out there! It’s no good happily filling it with content if no-one’s going to read it!

4. Failing to update your site or blog every single day

At the very least, you should update three or four times a week. The more original content your website has, the better its chances of ranking high in search engines. Plus, consistent updates show dedication, which will give visitors a reason to return in the future.

Look, people want some real bang for their buck these days. The key word here is VALUE! You need to constantly be giving new, up to date, fresh content to your readers. Remember the web is incredibly competitive these days and if you’ve been really canny they’ve subscribed to your RSS and have a reader of up to date content hitting their screens daily.

Now if Mr Jones is posting new interesting stuff daily and you only come up with something new once a month, it won’t be long before your feed is canned, at the very least completely ignored! This takes work!

5. Not giving Social Networking a try

For so long I tried to ignore Facebook. I didn’t understand it and I thought it was a waste of time! Did you know that facebook has over 500 million customers and over 50% of them are active on a daily basis – that’s 250,000,000 people you could be getting your message in front of! That’s phenomenal! You Tube has 2 BILLION views a day – 24 hrs worth of video is uploaded every minute.

I mean you’d be crazy not to include these in your marketing strategies! Be as creative as possible when making videos, images, content, software, etc. Create great relationships with people and have friends and fans link your content through their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and other social bookmarking sites.

Put your videos up on YouTube and have friends give them two thumbs up! Also create a facebook fan page, it’s essential 

6. Spamming

There is no need to spam your site all over the internet. If it’s good, and you promote it properly, people will visit. Traffic will come inevitably if you know what you’re doing. Spamming your site and adding your URL in linkfarms could cause your site to be reported to your ISP and banned by all search engines!

If you think that popping onto high ranking blogs and adding a vague comment about nothing and including your link is good marketing, think again. The internet as I said in point 4, is all about value and content. You need to build trust and relationships to be truly successful.

7. Not building a list

Ok, so I’m back again to value and content, building relationships. Are you getting a common theme here? Your list is your business. It’s as simple as that. Without customers there is no business, so you MUST collect email addresses and build a list!

Having a list of customers is the key to success on the internet! You will be able to send out regular updates, newsletters, links to your blog, new videos you do, new information and….once they trust you and know that your main intention is to provide value and things that will help them, you can start to send promotional emails with your products or products you believe in, or create a membership site or run events, there are so many ways you can then go on to make money. But the key is the quality of your relationships with a customer database, in other words your list.

8. Choosing the wrong products to promote

This is very simple – DO NOT SELL RUBBISH PRODUCTS! Just because commission rates are high, or the graphics are fancy, if you start farming out complete tosh to your trusted list, you will soon lose all credibility and no-one will buy from you anymore.

Be selective and become known to only ever recommend products that you have used and proven their worth.

9. Not targeting your ads to the right demographics

I think maybe the title of this one should read, not knowing anything about your customers, because it’s not just about targetting your ads, it’s about targetting all of your marketing efforts, free or paid. Clearly not everybody is going to need what you’re promoting.

So make sure you’ve drilled down exactly who your customers are, sex, age, location, interests, desires, buying patterns, keywords etc. Then you can focus on ensuring you get your message directly under the right noses.

10. Failing to interact and network with others

This is HUGE! No man is an island. The power of collaboration is without doubt one of the most effective marketing strategies you can have. So, you must ACTIVELY promote your company. You need to post on forums, join social media communities, comment on blogs, send out press releases, and so forth.

Get to know consumers and other entrepreneurs. Treat consumers as individuals rather than just potential customers. Join in conversations and share tips with others. Join hands and do some marketing projects with other entrepreneurs in the same niche – 2 heads are always better than 1!

Avoid making these ten mistakes and I’m sure you will ultimately succeed at creating a fantastic blogs online!

Fake 'Dislike' button spreads across Facebook

Social networking website Facebook, which offers its subscribers a "like" button for anyone's updates, is now faced with a fake "dislike" button, which is spreading like a virus across the site.

The fake dislike button is followed with a link that takes people to a fake application. Instead of installing a dislike button, the application uses the person's network to continue spreading the fake program.

Graham Cluley of the British security firm Sophos wrote in a blog that the fake dislike buttons "are going viral" on Facebook.

"Watch out for posts that look like this: I just got the Dislike button, so now I can dislike all of your dumb posts!" CNN quoted Cluley as writing in the blog.

"If you do give the application permission to run, it silently updates your Facebook status to promote the link that tricked you in the first place, thus spreading the message virally to your Facebook friends and online contacts," he wrote.

A message on technology blog Mashable said: "As usual, we advise you not to click on suspicious links on Facebook, especially if they promise something that sounds impossible or unlikely. Do not give away your personal information, unless you're absolutely sure why and who you're giving it to."

Cluley said the fake dislike button is part of a recent trend of Facebook scams. "It's the latest survey scam spreading virally across Facebook, using the tried-and-tested formula used in the past by other viral scams."

Such schemes are designed to steal information from internet users. That information then can be sold to other parties. The scams are also used to affect an internet user's social network contacts.

The experts give the following advice to avoid the fake button: "If you accidentally installed the fake application, click on the 'account' button at the top right of the Facebook home screen. Navigate to the option that says 'application settings' and disable the fake 'dislike' application."

"If the application is posted to your Facebook wall, go to your profile page and delete those posts to stop the scam from spreading further."

Facebook has said it is trying to block the "dislike" button.

"We're working hard to block and remove malicious applications that claim to provide dislike functionality and inadvertently update people's statuses," a Facebook spokesman said.

"There is no official dislike button. Also, don't click on strange links, even if they are from friends, and notify the person and report the link if you see something suspicious," the statement said.

Google threatens to leave China

Google has threatened to close its operations and offices in China after hacking of email accounts of many human rights activists.

In a statement on its blog on Tuesday, the world's second biggest corporate said it has detected in December "a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.''

The main goal of the attackers was access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists, the statement said. But they didn't succeed as "only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves,'' Google said.

But independent of this attack, Google said it has "discovered that the accounts of dozens of US, China and Europe based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties.

"These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users' computers.''

The Mountain View-based company said it has made "infrastructure and architectural improvements that enhance security for Google'' and urged users to deploy anti-virus and anti-spy ware programmes. These attacks, Google said, have forced it to "review the feasibility of our business operations in China.''

The company, which had agreed to censor of Google.cn at its launch in 2006, said it was "no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn.''

Google said it will soon hold discussions the Chinese soon whether it can operate an unfiltered search engine. "We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China,'' the blog warned.

Setting Up A Blog??? Here Is The Help!!!

A blog is a term that is short for weblog. A weblog is kind of like an online journal in which you frequently update with valuable content that you believe will benefit your readers. A blog usually takes on the personality of its author, which can prove to be a valuable aspect for developing relationships with your readers. If they like your content, they probably like you and at some point may become very interested in your business and/or product.

A blogger is the individual who runs and operates a blog and blogging is then defined as the action of consistently writing posts for a blog.

Setting up your own blog adds a great deal of credibility to you and your business. If you are going to run your network marketing business online, you must have an online presence.

Here are some common characteristics of a blog:

1. A post (the written piece of information) usually has a heading, much like you would find in a newspaper article. When writing your heading, you will want to take great advantage of the keywords you are going for to get good search engine optimization.

2. A post contains a body or subject of information. This is where you express your thoughts and ideas. My blog contains the articles I submit to various submission sites. Your blog could also contain videos or even photos or artwork. The sky is the limit.

3. Most blogs will provide the capability of having someone comment on your post. This is where you can really begin a relationship with someone based on your like ability and trust.

Finally, I'd like to leave you with 3 benefits of blogging:

1. A blog helps you gain recognition. Blogging will give you a broader base for finding people and put your thoughts across the world.

2. A blog could eventually lead to sales. If you are a business man/women, you can blog about your products or services. The Internet gives the online network marketer the world. That's a pretty good list!

3. Search engines like blogs because they are regularly updated. As a result, the more you pay attention to your blog, the more business you can create.

This was just a little appetizer on blogging. But hopefully it was enough for you to want to find out more.

All the Best! To Your Success!