I frequently get asked about the many free blog software options that are out there.

First, let me explain something.  Free blog software is not the same as free blog hosting.  I have never used blog software that I have had to pay for.  WordPress is free to download and install on your server.

Where people get confused is whether to pay to host their blog someplace or to use a free blog platform like wordpress.com or blogger.com.

Both places will host your blog for free.  The issue is ownership, customization and security.  When you set up a blog, you want to be able to truely build an audience that keeps coming back for your valuable information.

The issue with the free blog hosting options is that they can take down your blog any time they want.  If they believe you are spamming or abusing their system, they can simply remove your blog.  Also, while wordpress.com is free, it is not free if you want to customize things more.

To avoid the risk of losing all your hard work, you should host your blog on a web host.  This gives you full control and you cannot be shut down as long as you are not breaking any laws.

Does that mean you should not set up free blogs too?  Absolutely not.  Go ahead and set up blogs on those free sites.  Write summaries of your posts on your main blog and use those free blog sites to send traffic and links your way.

Remember, free blog software is not the issue.  Owning the space and developing an audience is how your blog will succeed.

The trick with viral marketing is to not only create something that goes viral, but to have a goal and outcome for it as well.

A good example of this was when I signed up for a simple piece of software that would monitor the blogs I like so that I could comment faster on the good posts.  I do not remember how I first found out about it, but it got me on the guys list.  Later I joined a broader system that was a monthly fee.

No, this is not a huge viral marketing example like Hotmail was.  Instead, it is interesting because it was fairly viral and it was targeted to his audience.  He knew exactly what his audience would be interested in and he wanted to grow his list of people that were likely to buy his other products.

Not a trick – it was good marketing.  A good give-away that generated a list of people willing to pay for more down the road.

Too often, something goes viral and people refer to it as viral marketing.  Unless it has a marketing goal it is just a popular thing.

Here are some examples of Viral Marketing goals.

1. Email List Development – This is probably the big one.  It is easy to integrate and you can get a lot of value in the future from your list.
2. Up sell – of course, if you up sell too hard you are probably not going to go viral.  Unless you are Frank Kerns and very obvious about it.
3. Branding – If your video just went viral, you are probably not getting emails or anything.  Hopefully it is strengthening your brand and getting people to go do a search on you.
4. Traffic – Your viral marketing item may have all kinds of links back to your site for case studies, instructions, a forum for users, etc.  It depends on your product.
5. RSS Subscribers or Twitter Followers – If your viral item is interesting, you can encourage other people to follow your twitter or rss to find out about updates and new items.

Viral Marketing Ideas

So what things can go viral?  Here is a list of the common ones.  Before you assume you know exactly what everyone wants, go look at sites that list these kinds of things and see what is popular.  Youtube for video and download.com for software.

1. Free Software
2. FireFox Toolbar
3. Funny or (highly) informative video
4. PDF Download – Report or Case Study
5. Blog Theme or Widget
6. Friend option in web service (Like LinkedIn, Plaxo)
7. Audio Recording
8. Deal too good to be true (For real, not just telling them that)

OK, I am sure there are more but this give you a good idea.  Remember, Viral Marketing is not about getting the most video views.  It is about having a goal and a target and giving those people something they have to spread to their friends.

Usually I make these lists, I must have fallen 101.

Top 100 Marketing Blogs

Grrrrrr

I was once at a great workshop where they discussed the business formula.  It basically broke down your business into some simple elements and said – If you increase your prices by 10% + Increase your number of customers by 10% + Decrease your costs by 10% you are going to have a very sizable jump in your income.

This same kind of formula works with Internet Marketing.

If you increase your traffic by 10% + increase your pricing by 10% + increase your conversion by 10% + create products with low or no delivery cost – you are going to be very successful.

This internet marketing formula breaks down for people for a variety of reasons.

• Zero Sales – 110% of zero is still zero.  Work on conversion or hire someone that knows internet sales.
• Too Busy – You get a couple of clients and are then too busy to keep taking new work – create easier products, outsource or hire people.  Keep growing the base.
•  Fear – Are you afraid to increase prices?  It depends on your market, but this is often overlooked as a source of additional income.  Test new prices and if it slows sales, use a coupon code or special offer to bring it back down.
• Delivery – You have to have a good way to deliver what you promised.  Your Internet marketing formula will break down if you are losing customers.
• Strategy – Internet marketing is a long term process.  Very seldom can you set something up and forget about it.  It takes continuous effort or eventually other people will take your traffic and visibility.  Need help?  Hire a virtual buzz assistant.
• Too tricky – don’t get too tricky.  Custom development of applications is expensive and should not be done without good reason.  A low cost WordPress blog with a little customization can yield huge internet marketing results with good writing.

Measure everything you do in terms of your custom Internet Marketing Formula.  Strengthen every area and watch your profitability soar.

- Watch a free video on why to blog -

I do presentations all the time about social media and blogging.

In fact, next week I will be talking to a bunch of CEO’s about why they need blogs for their organizations.

Since I only have 30 minutes, I am breaking it down into answering the 7 questions I get most frequently, and inviting them to follow up with me after (hopefully in the paid, consulting kinda way.)

Since I have been trying to improve my video skills of late, I did a shorter version of the presentation.  If you are on the fence about blogging, watch this presentation.  It should answer your questions and be realistic.

I have been publishing this blog for years, trying to write good content at least a few times per week.

If it was not for the speaking and newsletter sign ups, I might have given up at some point.  Sometimes it seems like you are talking and no one is listening (probably because you are actually babbling, like I am doing now.)

So I felt a great deal of satisfaction today when I saw we are now the #2 expert site for the keyword “Buzz Marketing.”

The fact is, I optimize the site for the keyword but I do not try to go out and solicit links and things.  I hope people link to the site because of the great content, and I put my effort into that.

This blog holds a very steady 2nd page ranking for Buzz Marketing, but getting to that first page has not happened in a while.  And I do not know how long it will be before we are knocked back down, but for today, we are the #2 highest authority for Buzz Marketing.  (I am taking out that #2 site that is just a definition of buzz marketing)

The take away, if you want to go after a term that is fairly broad and competitive, is that you have to create an expert site and keep writing.  And in the future, that is going to be even more true.  It is well known that Google has started factoring in content freshness and expert status of sites.

That is why we formed the Virtual Buzz Assistant Network – you have to be passionate about writing in your industry, or outsource content creators to help you develop your expert site.  Tomorrow my ranking might slip – but my goal is not any given day, but the long term strategy of creating content that matters.

Are there really careers in social media and networking?

Thanks to Womma for pointing this one out – The 7 Best Jobs forFacebook Addicts.

The fact is, online social networks are places of vast influence.  Any company that wants to tap into these groups needs to either hire a full time person to just focus on these audiences, or  hire a Virtual Buzz Assistant to do it for them.

I find that the biggest problem to running a successful business on the web is that marketing takes up so much time that I sometimes forget about the product and the business.  Social Media sucks you in.  Hiring someone dedicated to only growing influence online is a smart move.

Over the weekend I sent out an experiment.  I have always kept my main email list very professional – with lots of useful free Internet Marketing lessons.

But when I look at the people I read, they really do make you feel like you know them in the emails.  I get a lot of emails, and I open very few.  I get emails from companies that do marketing research, but the only emails I consistantly open are those by people I feel like I know.

So I realize a personal goal (weight loss) that I’d worked on for almost a year.  I still tied it into a marketing message but I was not selling anything and was just sharing my story.  I wanted to see the reaction.

Keep in mind that less than 1% of the people I sent the message to actually emailed me back (I did not ask them too) but still it was the largest response I’d ever gotten.

• 1 Person said that I was sharing too much personal information
• 1 Person asked if they could quote it in their upcoming book
• 3 People shared their stories about weight loss, one asked some questions.
• Many people congratulated me and expressed appreciation
• One person so far wrote that it was inspiring on their blog. They talked about how it changes their approach to writing for their blog.
• One person not on my list responded, saying it was being forwarded around.

I sent it out Saturday night (About the worst  time possible) and I am writing this Monday morning, so emails may still roll in.

Here are some important observations

• People that feel like they know me really responded well to the message.
• People that are in bigger companies that signed up for the free Buzz Marketing course may not like it as well.
• If my target audience is small business, the personal approach is very effective.  If my target is large organizations and busy professionals, it may be less effective and even alienate them – unless they have worked with me or seen me speak.

I wish I could get a thumbs up/down from everyone to give you more detail.  It is a perplexing issue as I would like to do more personal emails but I do not want to alienate some people.  If you read the email and did not reply to me, go ahead and comment on this post and let me know what you thought.

I had the chance to meet with a prospective client for our VA Network last week.   Nice person, but very unrealistic expectations.  They did not even have a website but they wanted to generate a bunch of registrations for an event in one month.  I had to tell her we could not help her with that, but we could help with a long term internet marketing strategy.

Virtual Marketing Assistants are the best option for many small businesses. They are a perfect solution that is not as expensive as hiring a marketing agency, but not as difficult as a business owner doing all the internet marketing activities.

The top reason that a Virtual Marketing Assistant fails is that small business owners just want them to do too many things – and have unrealistic expectations for the outcome.

A Virtual Marketing Assistant can help execute your marketing plan. But your marketing plan better be better than “go out and create buzz for me”. If you do not have a clue of where you want to start, you need to hire a Internet & Buzz Marketing Agency to help you craft your marketing strategy. Then you can hire Virtual Marketing Assistants to help you keep your strategy going month after month.

And you can do it all yourself. Anyone can do Internet Marketing themselves, but it takes a lot of time and willingness to continually learn, test and create great information.  Often a good VA will be your best option to truly stick to your plan.

Image by Josh Bancroft via FlickrThere are standard ways to make money from your blog.  Basically, there are three monetization strategies.

1) Advertising

2) Affiliate Links

3) Sell products

If you are just starting a blog, you do not want to implement monetizing it because you cannot get advertisers or sell anything until you have an audience.

But you do owe it to your readers to make money from it if you become passionate and good at it.

I have seen several very popular authors do a great job of blogging, only to post less and less frequently (although still occasionally.)  There are exceptions to this, such as Seth Godin, but many people become victums of their own success.   They become popular, sought after speakers and they focus on that and leave the blogs for slow days.

I do not think you have to post every day.  I prefer quality over quantity. However, it is really good to know how your blog effects your income.  Is it creating buzz for you?  Is it generating income?

I wish that a few of these bloggers would generate income directly from the blog and hire a virtual assistant to help them write more frequently.  I do not mean creating the content from scratch, but instead taking their ideas, doing additional research and writing up the article for them.  I know it is a point of pride that the authors can say they write every word, but as long as they are steering the ship, I don’t mind them getting some help and monetizing the blog.  Just don’t turn off the great information spigot.