CoolAdz.com : Blog Advertising and Feed Marketing
Since 2000, the blogging community has exploded! This online community has its own language, rituals, symbols and values. Crack that code, and you may develop new brands, products and services that more effectively serve this unique tribe of Internet users.
Blog Advertising and Marketing
A blog displays periodic posts (items or articles) in reverse chronological order. The term blog is a shortened form of weblog or web log. Blogs came to the forefront of perception during the late 1990s, when they were used for political effect with great success.
Blogs that cater to specific interests like gadgets, exercise, diet, health, or politics, for example, attract like-minded subscribers. Now the problem has changed from finding members of the target market to how best to serve them advertising.
Blog Advertising
Many of the same ways you monetize a website hold true for blogs. You may choose Yahoo! ads, Google ads, Amazon ads, affiliate links, product banners, Kontera links, you name it. Just be sure your blog is clutter free and that your advertising is tastefully done
TextLinkAds: TextLinkAds offer a simple text link for advertising via a feed placed on your website. If you would like to try TextLinkAds, they are currently offering .
Entrecard: Turn your blog sidebar into valuable advertising space; Launch free, targeted graphic advertising campaigns. Entrecard is an Internet business card, 125x125 pixels, with or without or picture, website or tag line. You add the widget to your sidebar and .rent the space to other members for Entrecard Credits (ECs). These credits allow you to rent space on the widget of other bloggers. It is all free, but you must drop your Entrecard at other sites to earn credits, unless you purchase them. The fun is in dropping cards and then clicking through to their tenant and then their tenant and so on. You discover wonderful and not so wonderful blogs, but I guarantee you will find some very useful information.ScratchBack: ScratchBack is an online "tipping" system. It allows you, the blogger, to accept tips and "give back" links or images in return on your blog or website.
Blog Marketing
There are many social networking sites for bloggers. You will see badges on blogs that say, Join My NAME Community. I will name some of them, but you should explore for yourself.
Blog Village-Blog Village has a large community of bloggers. You join and add your banner to the Blog Village site. Then you add a Blog Village banner to your site so that people can click on it to rank your blog. There are blog carnivals, a forum, a chat room and many great bloggers in all fields.
These are blogging communities that work basically the same way. You join and add your sites. Then you design and add a widget to your site that will show the name and picture of visitors from that community. From within these communities, you can add contacts, which are people who may contact you on the site; join neighborhoods of specific blogs; or join specialty groups, formed by members.
MyBlogLog | MyBlogCatalog | MyBumpzee
These next two are social bookmarking sites, where people can fave your blog and increase your ranking.
Technorati tracks more than 50 million blogs in real time. You can search for any keyword or URL and see who is writing about your company and what they are saying, post by post. This is not a search engine to find blogs; rather, it is a search engine to find individual posts that mention your chosen keyword.
del.icio.us stores your bookmarks online do you may access them from any computer on the web> You may share them with friends and family, discover the bookmarks of other bloggers, and tag your bookmarks so that you can easily find them.
Note: If you visit CoolAdzine for Marketers or Advertising For Success blog, you can see these widgets and tools in action.
Blog Feeds
Syndicate your blog content or feed to gain visibility and exposure, traffic, readers and subscribers, and authority and credibility in your field. Blog and website feeds provide web content or summaries of web content with links to the full version of that content on your site. Feeds allow Internet users to subscribe to a blog or to view syndicated news headlines, data feed, or other websites that periodically update content. Using a browser or feed reader, the subscriber is able to view updated content almost instantly.
Add
CoolAdzine for Marketers Blog or Advertising
For Success Blog to your feed reader. You may also visit CoolAdzine
for Marketers
or Advertising For
Success blogs and subscribe directly by email.
If you need a feed reader, visit the Library.
Blog Formats
RSS is an acronym for several web feed formats. Atom is another feed format used by Blogger. Like Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) used to format a web page, markup languages are used to identify the components of a document. The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) defines feed content (text and graphics) and the placement and format of that content. For example, XML helps differentiate a heading from a footnote, text from graphics, columns from headers and footers.
Example Blog Formats and Feeds
- Visit CoolAdzine for Marketers - actual Blog
- Visit CoolAdzine for Marketers - browser-friendly XML feed from Feedburner
Notes on Blog and Feed Examples
- The actual blog is more aesthetically pleasing, allows email subscription,
and commenting. The reader may explore and follow links to more information.
- The browser-friendly feed from Feedburner includes instructions for and the mechanism to syndicate (add) this feed with various feed readers. The links work back to the actual blog for email subscription or commenting. This is a syndicated feed that is easily indexed by search engines and downloaded to handheld devices.
RSS Publishing Diary is a great resource. You will find RSS marketing and RSS publishing news and advice, such as the article available at the time of writing on how to use RSS to increase traffic to your website.
Feed Marketing
Delivering targeted advertising through feeds is not a new concept. You may add Google adwords for feeds to your feed or join an advertising network like Feedburner or Blogging Chicks and serve up text or image advertisements. Usually people read feeds for information and advertising should be unobtrusive..
Unlike email, feeds allow subscribers to control their information streams from the start. If they like a site, they subscribe. With feed readers and browser-based aggregators, the subscriber may easily scan the list of headlines (which may be limited to those updated within the past day or hour), and either read or ignore them.
Feed Syndication
Feed syndication is the new email, but better. It is opt-in and SPAM free. Many publishers are seeing a 40 percent month-over-month growth rate in their feed traffic. Many are seeing 50 percent of their traffic come from their feeds, with a corresponding decline in email subscriptions. By syndicating feeds, publishers are simplifying the process for readers to subscribe.
Marketers have watched feeds develop as an advertising tool over the past few years. As the technology for publishing feeds becomes easier to use, more marketers are publishing feeds. Likewise, advertisers are easily reaching new markets segments. Feedburner offers a free service for syndication.
Tools for Blog and Feed Marketing
Blog Traffic Exchanges
Blog Advance is a free manual blog surf exchange community offering 1:1 ratio and free forum.
Blog Explosion is a blog community. You may add multiple blogs, podcasts, text links and banners. List your blog or podcast with BlogExplosion blog and/or podcast directory, and even rent space to other bloggers, There is a chat room with prizes, blog rocket to get your blog read, blog lottery! Battle of the Blogs is where you go head to head with other bloggers for a big percentage of the credits waged.
BlogMad is a blog trafficking site that offers 1:1 traffic ratio, blog and member directories, forum, chat, blog ranking, view a random blog (VARB) promotion.Blog Soldiers offers 2:1 surf ratio, blog directory, text links, banner exchange as well as blog traffic exchange. Blog soldiers has a wonderful education section that provides video instruction on adding your blog, links and banners; assigning and converting credits. Upgraded memberships available.
Blog Readers
What can I say about blog readers? Below are just some of the choices available today. Some are search engine specific, some, like Bloglines, are aggregators that keep all your feeds neat and tidy. There are feed readers for iPods, mobile phones and handheld devices. When I started blogging there were three services: Technorati, del.ic.i.ous, and Bloglines.
The Universal Subscription Mechanism (USM) is a great idea, but you will not see it in many places. Bloggers like chicklets and badges with which we decorate our blogs.