“THERE are two kinds of knowledge. One is general, the other is specialized. General knowledge, no matter how great in quantity or variety it may be, is of but little use in the accumulation of money.”

Web Blogs are online diaries made up of short frequently updated posts. In addition, they are inexplicably popular.

Steve Pavlina’s Blog, dedicated to helping you make conscious decisions in your personal development and courageously follow through on them is a good example of a very popular Blog. In February 2005, this site received about 86,000 visitors, in January 2006 about 715,000, and today Steve’s Blog receives over 1 million page views each month and is ranked by Technorati as one of the Top 500 Blogs in the world. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the challenges of blogging is to come up with good posts that interest readers and keep them coming back. Sometimes I do not feel like I have good original wisdom. It is presumptuous to think I can have top quality original material all the time.

A second challenge is the time to blog. I run a $1 Billion dollar company so when I decided to blog I knew I needed to figure out how to do it efficiently. My blog is mostly about efficiency and time management; these are topics I study.

These two challenges can be solved with a simple concept. Copy.

Ideas to use when copying are:

1 – attribution. Give the credit together with the link to the original author.

2 – look for something you can add to. Blogs can be synergistic. Take a concept or part of a blog post and expend on it and give your opinions, insights or views. In many cases, this can start a flow of ideas that are enriched from the original post.

3 – You can use either the whole post or most usually just part of it and point people to the original.

4 – I usually ask for permission which has never been denied. After all copying helps the original author and garners them some readership. And of course never copy copy written material without permission (and most blogs are not copy written).

5 – The simplest place to find material to use to copy is by blog surfing although this can mean a lot of irrelevant material to filter. One source of free articles sorted by topic is www.isnare.com.

6 – In many cases the person you copy from will point a link back to you since it is flattering to them. Charles Caleb Colton said “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” (one trick on quotes is to look them up on www.brainyquote.com). These links to you can increase your traffic.

In summary, copying saves time and increases the quality of material on your site. It can even lead to traffic since in many cases you will get link backs from the original site.

In blog creation, the goal is to provide another avenue of marketing for your business. However, do you really know what it takes to make the ideal blog? Do you know what ingredients must go into making your blog creation a success? You might not have thought about it, but there are some things that you must consider when creating a blog and in this article, we are going to discuss some things every blog has to have in order to become successful.

In blog creation, you want to build credibility with your readers. You have to let your readers know that you have the necessary qualifications to make the judgments and statements you do on the topic. You have to give them a reason to believe in what you are writing. This does not mean you have to go on and on about what gives you the qualifications, you just need to state somewhere why you feel you are the expert in your field.
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One question that commonly pops up is “Do you really need a picture for a blog?” The answer is no. Imagery is there to enhance your content. Above all the purpose of including an image with your blog should not be to make up for weak content.

Pictures are also more appropriate for certain types of blogs rather than others. For instance a blog about modern art or architecture might require pictures more than a blog about the latest computer chip would. Read the rest of this entry »

Blogs and ping are the most frequently used words in the IT sector today. These two words are on everyone’s lips today. So why are blogs and pinging getting so much importance today? Blogs and pinging can get you very good profits in the wrong run. So what exactly are blogs and pinging?

A blog is a website where members can discuss online their views on a particular topic. There are some blogs that are general in nature where people can discuss anything and there are blogs on which you can discuss only on a particular topic. Read the rest of this entry »