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Blogging Essentials For Tribal Syndication

David Merrill 101 — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 01:35:30 +0000

Tribal Syndication requires a personal blog from which syndication activity radiates throughout the internet world. In this brief discussion of the essentials for blogging, we will touch on obtaining a domain name, hosting your blog, creating a theme for and designing your blog. These are the essentials to getting up and running, ready to maximize your Tribal Syndication efforts.

Obtaining A Domain Name

This is a pretty simple step. Simply go to a major domain site like GoDaddy.com or HostGator.com and see if the name you have in mind is available.

Test out a few names. Pick your favorite and purchase it. It’s really that simple.

Just a few things to think about here. You will want a dot com name in all likelihood. They get far better recognition than dot net or any other options. Since you are looking to create a personal branding site… the type best suited for Tribal Syndication… you are best off giving it your own personal name. If your name is not available in dot com, I suggest you use a variation of your name rather than settle for a dot net. For instance, if JohnSmith is taken, try AskJohnSmith, or JohnSmithCoaching, etc.

Hosting Your Blog Site

Most of the people I’ve worked with in Tribal Syndication use Word Press to host their blogs. I recommend you do the same.

Word Press is so flexible and universal that you can shape and design it to fit just about any purpose you have in mind, and because of its compatibility with so many plugin features, you can really make it powerfully useable for the specific purpose of Tribal Syndication.

Word Press has a free, unhosted version known as its dot com version. This is NOT recommended for Tribal Syndication because it is not easily syndicated. Instead, be sure to purchase a domain name and then have that hosted as a Word Press dot org site. This can be accomplished through the hosting service itself if you use GoDaddy or Hostgator. Otherwise, you can do it yourself or have your blog design service handle it.

Creating a Theme and Design for Your Blog

This is the most visible aspect of your blog, and perhaps the most important thing you’ll do to both attract and keep prospects on your site. The importance of keeping people on your site is pretty evident. If people aren’t visiting or spending much time on your blog, you won’t be very successful in creating any blog “buzz” for yourself. That will translate into very little business coming through your opt-in offers and, therefore, an empty sales funnel.

I would certainly recommend at this point that you use a blog design service to get you up and running, unless you are one of the minority of bloggers that is truly capable of all the coding and technical maneuvering required to do it yourself. It’s certainly penny wise and pound foolish to try to be a master of all trades. This is a job for the pros, as long as you have the budget for it.

When you get a Word Press blog site, it will be a basic shell. You need to design it before you start adding content to it.

Think about your theme first.

Is your blog about health and nutrition? Internet marketing?

How do you want to be perceived? As a success coach? A personal development guru? A leader in you business? An affiliate marketer?

Once you’ve decided “WHO” you will be on your blog, the header, optin features,photos, background color and overall design features will need to comply with the image you wish to present to the world. If you are capable of doing this kind of design work, that’s fine. If not, use a professional design service. But remember, be SURE to know exactly what you want on your blog… the photo, the headline, the opt-in box… because ANY changes you want to make after your blog has been designed will cost you extra money for the designer service.

Finally, for the purpose of Tribal Syndication, you need to modify your blog with the many available Social Media plugins available. Most important for Tribal Syndication, you need to have bookmark sharing plugins like Onlywire, Facebook share, Twitter retweet, Google Friends and many others. These are CRITICAL to making your blog interactive and to do the Tribal Syndication required to make you a serious player on the internet.

If you are able and willing to spend the time required to learn how to get these plugins installed and activated on your blogs, then do. Many of them require some pretty significant time to set up, but once done, they are pretty much set. I know from first-hand knowledge, that they don’t always operate the way they are supposed to, so you might want to have your blog designer set them up and maintain them for you, although this is a fairly costly service. Only you can decided what your budge is for this, but whether you do it, or a design service, it is essential that your blog be equipped and maintained with cutting edge social media plugins. This is essential to maximizing your Tribal Syndication efforts.

I’d be more than happy to help any bloggers trying to set up and design their blogs, or to find the best and most affordable design services out here. I’ve been where you are. It has not always been pretty, but I’ve picked up some real world solutions and know-how in my trips around the block. Whether you’re one of my existing clients, or just a casual visitor, I’d be happy to help you work your way through this rather daunting challenge. Once you’ve got the technical stuff under control, the real fun begins… creating your content!

From The Ground Up: The Foundation of Your Online Marketing Business – Part ONE

David Merrill 101 — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:39:31 +0000

GET A QUICK CHECK-UP TO DETERMINE THE HEALTH OF YOUR ONLINE MARKETING, BLOG AND SYNDICATION EFFORTS.

Could your business suffer from malnutrition?
In the developed world, it is common for people to be overfed and undernourished.
Are you “feeding” into your business a whole lot of calories with very low nutritional value? Are you giving it the “nutrients” it needs to grow and regenerate on a daily basis?

Are the nutrients you are feeding your business of the right quality? It’s great to have lots of widgets and plugins and bells and whistles… but do they complement your most immediate, high impact goals. Are they nourishing the most essential organs of your enterprise? Remember, the quality of the nutrients your business ingests is far more significant than the quantity.

Is your business properly “digesting” and “assimilating” the nutrients you are feeding it?
Making the nutrients your business requires available is only the beginning. Then they must undergo enzymatic activity sufficient for their assimilation into the bloodstream of your undertaking.

Are you continually energizing the nucleus of your online marketing efforts?
Through proper assimilation, key nutrients are transported through the bloodstream of your business, to the cell sites where they are utilized as the energy blocks that are transformed into energy. It is this energy that manifests as the ACTION required to make all your efforts meaningful.

In Part TWO…
We Will Explore The State of Your STRATEGIES…
strategies for coordinating your daily actions with laser sharp precision.
You will learn how to employ strategies for reaching your BIG goals with lightning speed and efficiency.

See You There!

Learn How To Blog Effectively

David Merrill 101 — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 04:44:46 +0000

Many of my students, lately, are asking me how to start a blog. A lot of them want to know how to start a blog for a life success coaching business. Maybe because it’s the new year… resolutions to finally create a blog are catching fire. To create a blog is one thing. To build a blog is quite another. Learning how to get your blog noticed, how to make money from your blog, how to get your blog noticed and then increasing blog traffic… all of these elements are essential to the whole purpose of writing a blog to begin with.

When students or clients ask me how to start a blog, my first question is WHY do you want to create a blog in the first place. The most common answer I get is that they want to drive traffic to a place where they can capture people’s interest in what they are doing. Then, not surprisingly, they want to know how to increase blog traffic fast. So, for instance, if you want to start a blog for a life success coaching business, you clearly need to attract people that are interested in self-development, in creating “success” in their lives, perhaps in their career, financially, maybe with relationships or in terms of a specific skill like public speaking or being more assertive.

To attract these specific kinds of people–self-identified “prospects”–to your blog, I teach my clients to meet them where they are, enter their lives and learn who they are. Many such prospects can be found in the social media, seeking out life success coaches. They appear on search engines, typing in questions about self-development, or maybe even asking how they can connect with a reputable life success coach. There are specific online techniques I teach clients for capturing the attention of these people who are specifically seeking what they have to offer.

One such technique is to direct friends and visitors of your social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Digg and others… to YOUR BLOG. If they are out there seeking expertise that you have, and if you can show them in your blog how you apply your expertise to solving their problems or making their lives more valuable… then YOUR BLOG is a great place for them to improve their lives. Your job is to send them there. Post links to your site in the social media, let people know you have valuable information and methods they can apply. Let them know that YOUR BLOG is the place to go to find this.

Some of my clients have voiced concern that such a technique is self promotional. Of course it is. If you are in business, and especially if the business is focused on the professional help YOU have to offer, then you better promote yourself. YOU are your entire offer.

The only concern you should have about being self-promoting is if you are pushing your promotion on people who have not asked for it and may very well have no interest in it. That is simply spamming people. It’s analogous to the door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman of old, who would knock on the door (not too many doorbells in those days) and throw a handful of dirt on the floor as soon as someone opened it. Then he’d “sell” you on how great his vacuum is, if you’d just let him in to clean up the mess he just created. This is spam. Don’t do it if you want your blog to be taken seriously, and moreover, if you want your professionalism to be undisputed.

There ought to be plenty of people out there who want your services. (If not, you better reconsider the value of your business at the outset.) People who are interested in your services (1) need to be attracted to explore your invitation to visit your blog, (2) need to have sufficient trust in you as a person that they are willing to give you the information you request to follow up with them, and (3) need to be able to clearly and quickly see how you can help them and at what cost.

Attracting people to your blog at the outset is a matter of meeting them in social circles (the social media) and letting them get to trust you from a personal standpoint. This is accomplished by offering information, insights, perspective, tips… anything you think will be of value to your target prospects. These things can be shared in the social media, with links back to your blog. Once on your blog, the prospect will be able to get the immediate information, insight or tip he was looking for, plus will be afforded the opportunity to spend some time on your blog and get to know you better.

Once the prospect knows you sufficiently to trust you, he or she will most likely proceed to exploring your blog to determine your offer and pricing. At that point, they will be likely to give you their contact information so you can contact them and give them more detailed information about how you can give them the products and services they are looking for.

So this gives you an idea of the power of having and why you should have a blog, one method of getting your blog noticed and, finally, how to make money from your blog. This information is pertinent to those my clients who want to know how to start a blog for a life success coaching business as well as for those who want to promote an MLM opportunity or teach people to play the guitar.

There are MANY other techniques to explore in order to create a blog that is effective and valuable to people, and in order to market your blog to prospects that are looking for what you have to offer. Perhaps the most powerful way, in fact, to promote your blog, is to syndicate it through the efforts of other bloggers who have the same goals in mind… creating and maintaining a blog that will drive prospects to them. This is called “content syndication” and the people who come together to help each other out in this way are often referred to as a “tribe”

If you’d like to learn more about My Tribe, I’ve got GREAT NEWS. We’re doing a FREE… Absolutely FREE WEBINAR in which we will give you all the basics of getting started with Social Media techniques to Drive Your Internet Marketing campaign and to Drive leads to YOUR BLOG. No buying leads, no paid advertising… all free techniques to market online. You do not want to miss out on this. Space is limited. Please, leave a comment below, or call me, or email me… do whatever works best for you, but PLEASE get yourself registered for this FREE WEBINAR before it fills up. Worm to the early bird, guys!

PS: THE BEST place to REGISTER FOR THE FREE WEBINAR and join in the action is here: MY TRIBE

Talkin’ Tribes: Social Media Syndication For YOUR Blog!

David Merrill 101 — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 00:22:16 +0000

If you’re serious about personal branding for yourself… about utilizing the Social Media craze that is JUST BEGINNING to emerge to generate FREE buzz for your MLM, business opportunity, products and services; about content syndication for your blog, website, You Tube, Facebook or Twitter pages… about tribes and tribal syndication: YOU MUST WATCH THIS VIDEO… NOW.

This is SERIOUSLY… The most important thing I can teach you about Becoming An Internet Sensation in just months, and, honestly, some people have done it in WEEKS!

I have learned some of the most amazing internet marketing techniques from MASTER ENTREPRENEURS in the internet marketing industry. I will be creating posts on my blog to teach you as much as I can. In the meanwhile… ACTION IS REQUIRED.

If you are interested in joining me and my tribe associates, let me know… ASAP. We’ll be doing some pretty intensive trainings in the upcoming weeks and I’m inviting a few commited entrepreneurs… at this time… to join in. Contact me to learn more about this developing opportunity that could catapult you into Internet Marketing ORBIT!

PS: THE BEST place to REGISTER FOR THE FREE WEBINAR and join in the action is here: MY TRIBE