Webmaster Blog

2014 is going to be another big year for eCommerce. Most recent statistics show that 2014 will continue a 13.8% growth trend expected to last until 2017, when American eCommerce is set to eclipse $440 billion in sales. Content marketing, the method of offering useful, engaging articles, videos, infographics and more, can help small businesses harness increased revenue potential in the new year. In fact, 82% of marketers plan to increase their content marketing budgets in 2014. The most important small business content marketing tool? Blogging.  Look at the Numbers  Producing well-written, engaging, and useful content is shown to increase lead generation by 126%. As you well know, leads don’t mean much if you can’t close them. However, content marketing shows a remarkable capacity for transitioning those leads from potential clients to actual clients. 61% of consumers say they are more likely to purchase a product or service from a company that produces high-quality, custom content that teaches them something interesting about the product or answers any questions they might have. In a nutshell, quality blogging leads to higher lead conversion and sales.  Don’t Write Content for the Sake of Content The key terms in the discussion about content marketing and...

In the modern world, there is no excuse for a company to be out of touch with their customers. This is why you should start and maintain a company blog. Reaching out to the public through social media is easy, free and makes good marketing sense, as it brings your clients closer to your business. Starting a Dialogue One purpose of your company's blog should be to start an exchange with your customers. This is an opportunity for you to find out what they are thinking, what they believe your business is doing well and where you might be able to improve.  It is a casual way to glean information from your customers as opposed to clunky surveys. You will want to set a friendly tone while still maintaining professionalism, and closely moderate the comments to keep your blog free from inappropriate language and spam.  Invite constructive comments and discussion of ideas. Make your blog visually appealing. A long, text-heavy blog is not engaging to most readers. Use pictures, graphs and other items to break up the paragraphs (always being mindful of copyright, of course). Including pictures of your employees might be an option as well, though you will want to...

If you’re swamped with too many things to do, maintaining a regular blogging schedule might become next to impossible. Take from this set of top tips on how to create a blog schedule and stick to it, straight from the mouths of top bloggers to you. Creating A Blog Schedule Plan 1. Create A Plan If you want to achieve your blogging goals, whether they are monetization or popularity, you have to plan your steps strategically. Having a plan in place puts you in control of the way you want to shape your blog. It also helps you work out your short and long term goals and create a strategic framework to achieve them. 2. Create A Monthly Blog Schedule Around Your Plan For example, if your goal is to earn X amount of money in one year, figure out how much traffic you need to achieve. Figure out how many posts you have to upload and the marketing strategies you have to incorporate including social media. Make a list of your tasks for the month and create a blog schedule. 3. Define Strategies For Accomplishing Your Set Objectives Define each strategy in detail – exactly how you are going to...

This is a true story as told to DiversityJobs, where you can find career interviews for the job you’ve been looking at and available positions in your desired field. I am a full-time blogger with my own website on Tumblr. My Tumblr blog is a collection of my amateur landscape photography and integrates FotoMoto technology to sell my artwork. I have been a blogger full time for the past year and a half. As a blogger, my work involves more than just the computer. I spend about 15 hours a week hiking and taking pictures for my blog. Then, I use editing software to fix any composition issues and to watermark my photos. I then go to my Tumblr page and post them. Finally, it is promotion time. I like my photography blog to have very little text and words and have the art speak for itself. So, I have to “speak for it” in other ways: through e-mails, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+. These lead my followers back to my Tumblr site. The biggest misunderstanding about what I do is that it is an isolating job. I am out in the field taking pictures and often have friends with me when...

Running a blog is a great way to share your thoughts and opinions with millions of people. It doesn’t matter if you’re a stay-at-home mum, a small business owner, the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation or a budding musician or photographer - a blog is your open window to the world. It’s a place to speak freely about the things that matter most to you - your dreams, passions, hopes, ambitions and projects. Starting a blog is easy and doesn’t have to cost a cent. There are many excellent free blogging sites available, such as WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr. Choose a host, select a theme and you can be up and posting in next to no time at all. The hard part about blogging is making your voice heard and your presence felt among the millions of other blogs crowding the internet at any given moment. Those first few posts to your fledgling blog nearly always come freely. Your brain is bursting with ideas and for a while it seems as if the well of inspiration will never run dry. People are visiting your blog, reading what you have to say and perhaps even sharing their own comments, and this...

Perhaps your blog traffic has been down lately and you’re not sure why. It could be for a number of reasons but it’s still frustrating when you want your blog traffic to increase. Perhaps you’re building up your blog more for a current business or you just started your own business and you want it to be up and running on your blog. Your readers may be confused with the change of implementing a business with your blog, so don’t forget to be open with them about what you are doing. Understanding that traffic for a blog takes time is important, but in the mean time you can implement tips that should increase your traffic quickly and efficiently. Blog Hop and Make New Friends If you aren’t making time to visit the many blogs out there that blog about your similar interests, chances are they don’t even know you exist. Once you start visiting and making multiple comments about their posts, they will come back to your blog. Not everyone is receptive but most bloggers are. Add them on your reader and continue going back to their blog when time allows. As time goes on you’ll build friendships with bloggers who...