The best type of advertising has three characteristics. It is free, impactful and viral. What kind of advertising fulfills all three characteristics? Word of mouth! It is free because it is spontaneous, unsolicited and natural. It is impactful because the persons spreading it were impacted and they spread the news out of their own impacted emotions. And it is extremely viral because it spreads exponentially. Imagine if your blog posts could be passed around this way.

What kind of blog post can achieve such a viral nature? A viral blog can be one of several kinds:

1. A HOW TO blog post

The HOW TO blog post shows the reader how to do something that many people want to know. If you know how to do something that most people do not, you could post a step-by-step guide on how to do it to your blog. Once the right people discover your blog post, they will naturally and spontaneously spread your blog post to others. You could write about how to speak in public, how to write HTML, how to play the piano by ear, how to take great photos etc. There are literally thousands of ‘how to’ things you could post about. 

2. A UNIQUE TWIST blog post

This type of blog post is closely related to the first HOW TO type. This is where you blog about something that is common knowledge but you put your own unique twist to it, something that most people have never thought of. It may well be totally contrary to conventional practice. One example is article marketing. The conventional practice in article marketing is where you write articles and submit them to article directories. But if you have a better and more effective way of article marketing, post about it in your blog. For example, instead of submitting articles to directories, you could offer your articles to blog owners or newsletter owners in your niche. Tell them they can make your article available to their readers for free as long as no changes are made to any of the content. This way you get much more targeted readers reading your article and more powerful link juice back to your blog because it comes from another blog that is related to your own instead of from a general article directory.

3. A HOT REVIEW blog post

This type of post follows the principle of the early bird catching the worm. This is where you blog about the latest hot topic in your niche and give an honest appraisal of what is good and what is bad about whatever is happening. Since the topic is new, virtually no one has much knowledge, much less a view about it. This works tremendously well for political blogs. But the review can also be about the hottest gadget or the latest book or the newest trend in your niche. One great place where you can find out the latest happenings is Google Trends. If you are the first to blog about whatever is happening, you can capture the initial interest of the public and people will start passing your blog post around like wildfire. When that wave dies down, simply find the next sizzling development and review it and the process repeats itself.

These are just three ways you can make your blog viral. Obviously, you will not succeed every time, but if you keep at it, you will hit the jackpot sooner or later. And as a result, the readership of your blog experiences an exponential spurt of growth.

Work At Home Resources

Perhaps you do not understand the various ways you can utilize these many types of social media to brand yourself and expand your business. Here are 7 types of Internet social media you should be doing everyday.

1. Blogging

Your competition has a blog and so should you. Blogs can serve many purposes. A couple of key points are host your own blog and consistently add fresh content. Never let your blog go stale.

2. Social Networking

My Space and Facebook are 2 of the largest. Building relationships online are a big part of having a successful Internet business. Social networking allows you to hang out with people that have similar interests to you.

3. Micro Blogging

Twitter.com is a combination of social networking and blogging. Building a large list of followers is a great way to meet people and increase traffic to your blog and websites. Plus it is fun to Tweet!

4. Social Bookmarking

Directories such as Digg and Technorati serve as search engine bait for your blog posts and for new traffic from people who read your blog articles. Bookmarking a blog post is very easy to do and the rewards can pay off for years to come.

5. Discussion Forums

This really was one of the first forms of social media and still is a great way to learn about the niche of your business and to drive traffic to it. Hanging out in discussion forums can be addictive so be careful to use them the right way and not waste time. There is an art to forum marketing and you must learn to do it correctly, but the benefits are many.

6. Email Marketing

There has always been money in having a list. The trick is to build relationships with your list and then sell to it after you have done that. For that reason we include it in social media. Today you can add video, audio, graphics, and other things to make your email more interactive.

7. Video Marketing

When Google bought YouTube everyone was put on notice that video marketing was going to be important. Today internet marketers can drive traffic and build credibility by adding videos to their blog and website.

This is 7 forms of social media you must be using everyday to build your Internet business. The most successful Internet marketers already are!

Work At Home Resources

So a blog is an ongoing updated series of content about a particular topic. Many people blog just for the fun of it by keeping an online diary of their activities regularly. But if you are intending to make your blog profitable, it takes a lot more skill. What are some of the skills needed for a profitable blog? 

Firstly, there is the skill of finding a profitable niche. A niche is a topic people are interested in and therefore would draw readers to the blog. Many internet marketers advocate choosing a niche based on your likes, interests, hobbies and experience. But that would be too restrictive. If your aim is to make money with your blog, then it follows that you need to blog about what people are interested in and not necessarily what you may be interested in personally. Two sources to find niches people are interested in are Google Hot Trends and Wordtracker. Google Hot Trends gives you an hour-by-hour listing about what topics receive the most searches in Google. Go through this list and find any you may want to blog about. Once you identify one, insert the main keyword of this niche into Wordtracker. Wordtracker gives you a daily search count on a particular keyword and a list of related keywords. A good rule of thumb is that if a keyword gets above 100 searches in Wordtracker, it is a profitable niche. So if you find a niche topic in both Google Hot Trends and Wordtracker to blog about, you’ve got a potential money maker.

Secondly, there’s the skill of getting your blog in front of as many people as possible. This is also called traffic generation. For this, the important thing to do is find people interested in the topic of your niche. Visit forums related to the topic and become a participator. You will be able to add your blog URL to your signature file and when people want to find out more about your topic, they will click on your URL and be brought to your blog. Another important thing to do is introduce your blog to others by bookmarking it in social bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Furl etc. If your blog topic is a popular one according to Google Hot Trends, chances are there would be many other people interested to read whatever is in your blog.

The final thing that is needed is the means to monetize your blog. This can be done through on-topic advertisement services like Adsense and Chitika or in-text advertisement services like Kontera.Once your blog has generated a large enough readership over time, you can further monetize it by selling advertisement space.

Making your blog profitable is a challenging venture. If you like blogging, making money from it would be an added bonus.

Work At Home Resources

Do a top 10 list – “The top 10 mistakes people do when trying _______ for the first time.” “The top 10 tips for ______.” Lists tend to be easier to write and take less time to formulate. If you can’t come up with 10, perhaps you can make it the top 3 or top 5.

Interview an expert – Approach someone who is very knowledgeable in your blog niche and you may find they’ll be happy to do an interview, especially if they have a new product just launched and would like the exposure. Put together some thoughtful questions and ask them to write out their answers. The beauty of this blog post is that aside from asking the questions, the interviewee does all the work! 

Answer a recurring question/problem - Go to the forums you frequent in your niche and look for a recurring question that people have. Doing a little research and coming up with answers makes for an excellent blog post. You also can become the expert.

Blog about other blog posts – Have you read a blog post recently that caused you to stop and think, or offered up a huge glittering gem of priceless information? Blog your opinions, insights, and inspiration you’ve gotten from that person’s post. Be sure to provide a link back so your readers can read the original post.

Use the weather – Look around you at the season and tie it into your niche. Does the hot weather inspire you to share a story on your internet marketing blog about going fishing while your internet marketing business is still making you money? Does the 4 feet of snow outside make you think about reading your favorite books? If so, you can do a niche-related book review with your Amazon or other affiliate links attached.

What’s up in your business world - Blog about what you’re working on now. Using a personal tone, explain what your current project is. Letting a few tidbits escape builds anticipation and helps your readers feel like they’re now on the “inside”.

These are just a few blogging ideas to help get you back on track providing real thoughtful and informative value to your readers.

Work at home ideas, tools and opportunities