Who do you think your main readers are? If you answer is your customers, you just might be right. After all, that is your target, is it not? You want to reach out to your customers – both potential and existing – in order for them to know more about your company, your services or your products.

Yet have you thought about reaching out to a specific group – not in terms of whether or not they are customers or not? I am talking about the countless other bloggers – business, corporate, or otherwise.

The fact is that bloggers are one of the biggest groups that patronize other blogs. They know how it is like to maintain and promote a blog. They know what blogs contain and what their general goals are. As such, you should not isolate yourself from other bloggers.

In fact, it would be to the benefit of your blog – and thus your company – to establish relationships with other bloggers out there. This is what is called networking. You may call it what you like but the fact remains that your aim is to connect with other people who have other connections and so on.

This is what blogging is all about – getting the word out on your blog and getting the juice on other people’s blogs as well. If you do not communicate with them, then the chances are that your blog will die out – either slowly or quickly, but the end result is the same.

How do you make – and keep - other bloggers interested? Let’s look at these things in the next post.

People are inevitably drawn to free stuff. One surefire way to get more traffic to your blog as well as promote your product is by hosting a contest on your blog. What makes a good contest though?

From what I have seen there are several mistakes that bloggers make when hosting contests. First is that some make it too easy to join the contest so that contestants become one time visitors that wait for results via email. Second is the opposite. It is so hard to join the contest and there are too many exclusions (buying a product, writing long essays, etc.) that you automatically turn off the majority of those who might have wanted to join. And last, is offering something “worthless” as a price (like a backlink when your blog obviously has only two readers - no value).

From these observations I came to realize that for a blog contest to be successful you need to do the following:

• Have cool prizes. What is cool will depend on your target audience. While being added to the blogroll or having a post written about them is great note that this won’t be seen as valuable unlesss your blog has lots of traffic. Online gift certificates are great because winners get to choose their prize.
• Have 3 or more winners. Having just one winner is discouraging. Always give away prizes to 2nd and 3rd place winners or to category winners.
• Give varied ways to join and win prizes. For example while some may win a small prize by simply leaving a comment and thus be included in the random draw (easy way of joining) others can hope for bigger prizes by linking back to your blog (Yay for links!), posting a related story there or posting a picture. Buying a product from your online store can also earn them points for the raffle draw. This way you will get more people to join the contest as well as get something out of it automatically.

Image Source: MK Rules - Keeping it Positive; Keeping it Real

Merchandising, or as I like to call it - good old sales, is another way you can earn a few extra dollars. The funny thing is that while many blogs arise to promote their businesses having a really popular blog can lead to a new business. Yes, here’s where the fun begins now we talk about not just business blogs but blogging businesses.

If you are thinking of selling items on your blog though be warned that this money making method will only work if your blog is: 1) already popular and 2) you can come up with a product worth buying.

If you do already have a business and came up with your business blog but it seems that your blog is more popular than your website then you can open up a “store branch” on your blog and sell the best or latest items there. The two sites (your business site and your business blog) need not always have two entirely separate functions but hand in hand could really help boost your sales.

Quick Update on Filling Up the Donation Jar

A great example of a blog that does rake in money through donation is I Can Has Cheezburger(ICHC). If you haven’t heard of it then go visit to see why. Starting from April, if I counted all those frylets and nuggetlets right (and I doubt I did), ICHC should have made at least $1900 in donations. Not bad considering they also have lots of sponsors. See? If you really do have a fun blog people will shell out money to help make sure your creative juices keep on flowing!

Here’s the link to their donation page.

Donations & Pixlet Support from Our Awsum Lolfrenz

Oh. And of course they’re also a perfect example for this day’s post on merchandising. As you can see above they sell shirts that show people love for ICHC. The ICHC store sell shirts and collectible buttons.

Hmmm. I wonder if I can get a frylet for this post? Nah. It’s $5 and not link love that will get you a frylet!

John Jantsch over at Duct Tape Marketing has an interesting post on the real competition that small businesses face - perception:

One of the most critical marketing chores your small business has is to find something that makes you unique, something that a market values, something that no one else offers and make it your defining marketing element.

He has a great point. Making your business stand out from all of the rest is the most important thing you can do. That’s why a business with a wonderful product can fail, while a business with an inferior product and a great marketing angle can do well.

Consummating deals, providing discounts, pricing packages and to ensure faster product or service movement and endorsement is a tenure that will surely be mind boggling. Most of these may entail proper cost allocation after which the proper marketing strategies formulated to be executed shall be next in line. Most of the time, the dilemma lies on whether to choose product movement over profit gains. Whichever the case may be, it will all depend on the purpose of the company and what it wants to achieve.

There are many factors to consider in such. Assessing the entire asset and labor force, operating overhead, financial position and the stature of the market and the consumers are most of the things that are crucial for any business plan. Varied opinions coming from the various managers of every department and the stakeholders will also play a vital role in undertaking such endeavors. Whoever may be caught in such a situation will truly have their work cut out for them.

Truly, being caught in the middle of all of this seems like a big mess. But then again, this is the challenge given to most people who are placed in such a situation, and finding ways on how to handle them is surely something that people in this spot will embrace for the task at hand. Maturity as far as working environment factors and at the same time molding them into enhancing their decision making prowess is something that makes people distinct from one another and in the course of their career, becomes assets for better managerial roles for the present and future companies that lie ahead for them.

To manage their time, many business professionals try making a to do list. However, if you are like me, the list just keeps on growing and growing until you feel overwhelmed. Recently, I attended a seminar on balancing work and family by Chris Sopa. (By the way, if you get a chance to hear her talk, take advantage of it. She does a terrific job.) Chris suggests a modified version of the to do list that is working out much better for me:

* Make your mile long to do list on the bottom half of a sheet of paper.
* Write the numbers 1-6 on the top half of the paper.
* Transfer the 6 items you must get done today, in order of their importance, to the top of the page.
* If you get those top 6 done, you can always do some of the other chores on your master list.

Your business is having a rough week and so are you. All you want to do is curl up under the bed and hide. If you do have to go out, you tell everyone you meet how terrible things are. You’re just blowing off steam and it doesn’t hurt anything, right? Wrong. One of the most important business principles is to act like your business is doing well no matter what.

After all, if you aren’t doing well and people know it, they’ll be less likely to use your services or buy your products. They’ll wonder if you’ll be around to stand behind your satisfaction guarantee. They’ll ask themselves if you’ll do the best possible work you can do if you are worried about finances.

Instead, put a smile on your face and tell people you are doing great and so is your business. You may just find that after you say this a few dozen times that it’s really true. After all, who wouldn’t want to have such a gung ho, positive person working on their project or selling them the things they need?

President Bush has openly solicited the support of congress in tackling the growing issue of illegal immigrants residing in the United States. It has been evident that the swelling number of illegally residing people in the state has been an issue that has haunted the nation for the past years.

Today, this issue has obviously been out of control and resorting towards deporting the millions of illegally located people in the country today is an impossible task to undertake. Hence, Bush proposed various alternatives such as a worker program to achieve a win-win situation. It is quite obvious that most of the immigrants residing in the United States are after work and greener pastures.

But in fairness to the legitimate residents, the swelling numbers should be controlled soon since at the rate everything is going, it seems that these illegal status of immigrants may soon become legal, getting away with the whole thing after all.

[tags]illegal status, immigrants, aliens, illegal immigrants[/tags]

It isn’t really surprising why they the issue between President Bush and the Democrats has not been going anywhere. The crisis on whether or not to pull out the US troops from Iraq is again in the air and as states in previous entries, this will continue to do so as long as both parties stand firm on their principles on this issue.

Both have valid inputs into the issue. One is banking on security of his country while the other is preserving the increasing loss of lives. Both have their points and shortcomings but to this day, who has the upper hand? It is still a stalemate and unless something or someone suddenly enters the fray, nothing will develop from this drama that people have been following for some time now.

Other personalities that have been identified with these issues have shifted their focus on other areas. This makes a person think when these two protagonists would eventually do the same.

[tags]bush, democrats, iraq, us troops[/tags]

As expected, the issue surrounding the war-funding bill is still up in the air as President Bush has obviously rejected the proposal to withdraw the troops from Iraq. The presidential legislation was sent to the White House with hopes of seeing the president sign the bill for the pull out of the US troops.

But even the thought of such is an extreme wish to come true. And such was the case since up to this moment; the presidential legislation has been left there unsigned.

The issues concerning this negotiation are going nowhere. Each group has been justifying the needs. However, it is neither of them who are suffering from this tug of war for the right decision to be handed down.

Each has its own belief and set of principles. The more that this keeps up, the more that the nation will become divided and President Bush and the democrats do not seem to care.

[tags]bush, white house, democrats, iraq, us troops, presidential legislation[/tags]