Blog Link Advertising

“The Customer Rules.” These three words speak volumes in business. Customer communication, service and loyalty are the goals of every marketing campaign.

And nothing delights a business owner more than a satisfied customer. In fact, they are so satisfied with the product or service they purchased that they want to tell the world about it.

Customer testimonials are extracted from letters, e-mails. They are impressive; displayed on websites as text, audio or video. But can your visitors be certain that the testimonials are true?

Now they can, when you use Authenticated Testimonials it adds more power to the message. How? Because they are evaluated by an established firm who is an unbiased third party.

The “Authenticated Testimonials” seal assures your visitors that what they are reading about your company, product or service has been verified and is truthful. Now, the Customer REALLY Rules.

Imagine this: you are looking for a product, service or a piece of information you need for your million dollar project.

You’re searching online and come across what might be the answer, but you don’t know the company. Hmmm, what to do? Aha-you think, let me ask Joe, he might know them.

You: Ring, ring: Hello? - Hey Joe, have you heard about the TQV company that sells blog widgets?
Joe: Nope, never heard of them, I use HLM Widgets Unlimited and they’re great! Fast service and reasonable price.
You: Wow–are they online? What’s the URL?
Joe: Oh yeah, very cool site too-www.HLMWidgets.com
You: Awesome! Thanks Joe, you’re the best!

That my friends, is the essence of what Bzz Agent is all about: it helps you harness the power of word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing in an organized way. It brings the right brands together with the right consumers to enhance traditional media buys.

Advertising can build awareness about your brand, but when one person recommends it to another person, your brand gains credibility. The results are powerful when traditional and new media work together: trial, purchase, adoption and commitment.

Plus 40% of WOM conversations include a reference to another form of media which means a lot more exposure for everyone. If you are ready to promote your brand, better get some WOM-BA going.

The power of instantaneous access to information is one reason why RSS has become one of the most widely used Internet tools. FeedBurner which was one of the first in the game, was purchased by Google in 2007.

Athough the rumor had been floating around cyberland about the contextual ads inclusion, it was only formally announced in May 2008.

According to the FeedBurner Blog:

“During the beta phase the publishers already in the FeedBurner Ad Network will continue to see premium CPM ads directly sold onto their content, but with the added bonus of contextually targeted ads that will fill up the remainder of their inventory.”

For new publishers, to take advantage of this new feature, you first have to have an AdSense account and follow the instructions to have these contextual ads included in your feed.

Driving visitors to your blog is a challenge within itself, but you need to know WHO is visiting to make the event work for you.

Enter “Crazy Egg” that offers you a myriad of ways to get information about your visitors without getting into a techno funk to do it. You create tests to see what your visitors like most about your blog.

The “Heatmap,” “Overlay” and “Confetti” analytics are very cool and let you probe deeper into your visitor stats and fine tune your content. All of which helps you to provide the type of blog experience that has your visitors clicking over to your blog like clockwork.

In the world of blogging there are lots of suggestions on marketing, monetizing and measuring the response to your content. Now there is a tool that helps you do all of that in less time–Zemanta.

Time is such a precious commodity: once it’s gone there is no way to recapture it (yet). So any tool that helps you to be more productive in less time is a welcome addition to your blogger repertoire. Zemanta works with all of the popular blogging platforms, it’s a breeze to use and drives traffic to your blog.

Take some of the stress out of your work, try Zemanta and enjoy the automatic tagging to Amazon and Wikipedia along with related article links.

Direct from one of the most widely read blogs for it’s down-to-earth and top-notch insight for creating profits from your writing comes
ProBlogger: The Book, released by Wiley Publishers. Now you can find all of the good stuff in one place.

ProBlogger Darren Rowse and Blog Herald contributor Chris Garrett put their heads together for the writing of this book and the results are impressive.

Yikes! The Blogosphere has become a tangible reality! But with the title: “ProBlogger Book - Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income,” a little hard copy may be just what your digital world needs.

It’s important to know the options you have in promoting your blog. But watch out! Too much advertising can land your blog in “SPLOG” country. According to statistics gathered by WordPress 33% of the blogs online are residents of this no-man’s-land.

There are 3 very good reasons to be selective:

1. You could violate an advertisers “terms of use.”
2. Too much advertising turns off visitors.
3. You risk being banned from the search engines.

Remember: The more blog advertising you display, the more time you have to spend tracking performance. Select the advertising program that is most in tune with your content and keep it to a minimum for best results.

If you are a resident of the “blogosphere,” here is some good news.

THE conference and exhibit devoted to blogging and new media is scheduled for September 20-21 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This is the most comprehensive blogging convention: the 2008 “BlogWorld and New Media Expo” is focused on bringing together some of the most experienced people and practical applications for the fast-rising trend toward a Web 2.0 environment.

There will be an exclusive “Executive and Entrepreneur” conference on September 19th, plus panel discussions, 50 seminars and keynotes from the people in the know. This promises to be a great event for bloggers, vloggers, podcasters and producers of new media content, who are established or just entering the new media industry.

Hurry up and regster if you want to save a bundle. Get your duckets in BEFORE June 20th and save 50% on your ticket to ride, check out the details on the Blog World Registration Page.

If you are tired of contextual advertising that has little or nothing to do with the content of your blog, here is some good news: Crisp Ads puts you in the driver’s seat and you don’t have to be a Mega-Blog to enjoy this level of control either.

Are you a blog publisher who uses Google AdSense? Not to worry: Crisp Ads doesn’t violate their terms of use. The difference you will find with Crisp Ads is the selectivity that you are given as the blog publisher; from text, display, CPC, CPM and CPA ads, to naming your price and how your ads are targeted.

What defines a “hot blog?” Serious visitor interaction for starters! Social media applications on demand from KickApps can turn up the heat and get your blog sizzling in the minds of your visitors.

With the bunch of social media goodies that KickApps provides, you can take your message to a whole new level. Use their hosted platform to easily create your own branded social and rich media community on your website.

KickApps must be doing something right: more than 22,500 sites including web publishers, small businesses, TV and radio stations are using their technology to engage audiences. Looks like a winner to me.