Interestingly enough BusinessWeek  recently ran an article:

“Social Media Will Change Your Business… Look past the yakkers, hobbyists, and political mobs. Your customers and rivals are figuring blogs out. Our advice: Catch up…or catch you later.”

Of course, blogs were only one of six different social marketing methods we went over on the Webinar.  Each of the Social Marketing methods we talked about, blogs and the rest of it, are going to revolutionize business, whether that’s a networking business or a traditional business.

How a Blog helps you grow your business:

- Gets people to your website

- Gets people to your lead capture pages

- Positions you  as the expert

- Pre Sells your prospects

- Builds Prospects list continously

- Increases Monetization (cash-flow)

- Brings People into your business

We’ll start with the basics.

What is a blog? I’ll give you a few definitions from Google.

• Blog is short for weblog. A weblog is a journal (or newsletter) that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Blogs generally represent the personality of the author or the website.
• A blog is a website in which items are posted on a regular basis.
• A frequent, chronological publication of personal thoughts and web links.
• An online journal.

Obviously a blogger is someone who owns or operates a blog and blogging is considered updating or writing posts on your blog.

When you set up a blog for yourself you’re instantly adding to the professionalism of you and your business. Establishing yourself as an expert and authoritative figure is crucial to success in any industry. Having your own online presence with your own customized website that you have control over will help accomplish this.

Just ask yourself: What professional business doesn’t have their own website or blog? It’s hard to imagine any without one. Even supermarkets and gas stations have websites these days.

A major benefit of having your own blog that you cannot get with just an affiliate url is the free “organic” or “natural” search engine traffic that you’ll receive.

Just so you don’t get the wrong impression though, this isn’t something that happens overnight after your blog is built. You have to put some work into optimizing it so the search engines can easily find you. And also know that the search engine optimization process is never really over – there are things that can be done on a daily basis to improve your position or rankings in the search engines. But for now, just realize that if you have a blog you open yourself up to another (free) traffic opportunity that normally wouldn’t be available to you.

Step-by-step ‘Build Your Blog’ class  

If you were able to attend Renegade University’s Webinar last night about how “Blogs Bring Prospects” you already know about our first step-by-step ‘Build Your Blog’ class on Friday February 29/08 (live).

It is recorded and available at the Renegade Professional back-office.

If you are not yet at the Renegade Professional level, now is a very good time to put our training course to the test…

Since the Blog Service is free the first two weeks, and it’s only $1 to Upgrade to the Professional level for 7 days, it’s a perfect chance for you to check out everything Renegade Professional offers, while learning what this Blogging Gig is all about.

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For those looking for a more aggressive approach to blogging Click Here!

I am a baby boomer.  I can remember black and white TV, no computers or even calculators (fingers worked good).  I remember stories trying to explain to children what it would be like to go to the moon “it would take xxx months or years on a train” just to get there never mind coming back.

Speaking of trains.  We were living near Edmonton Alberta when we moved to Ft. McMurray.  The only way in was by train over the swamp.  It was a steam engine and because of the swamps had to go very slow.  It took us 6 days to make that trip which can be made now with cars over the road in 3 to 4 hours.  And Ft. McMurray?  Now that was another story.  At that time it wasn’t much more than a trading post on the river (okay a bit more but not much!).  Today it is a busy little city, the home of the Alberta tar sands having world wide impact.  Who would have thought back then that it would become what it did.

 We moved to Ft. McMurray just when Network Marketing or MLM was getting its start, the beginnings.  Since then Networking has gone through its metamorphasis, going through tremendous changes since its early days and now entering into what Dr. Charles King refers to as “The New Professionals”. I will not take the time to go through those stages but the advent of the personal computer and FedEx have had a huge impact on how business is done.  Those that have changed with the times are reaping the benefits, Network Marketing and Direct Sales have gone on to become something of a major impact on the world.

The style of marketing is changing.  Moving from trying to beg or coerce family, friends, neighbors and any one within 3 feet to attracting new friends and building relationships. The methods of attracting customers or partners is changing.  WEB 2.0, the next wave or phase of the internet is here.  This has tremendous potential for what we can do to grow our businesses.

The sudden and fast rise of Social Networking is one of the key drivers (at least relative to what we are doing) in this change.  In a recent webinar at The Renegade University  we learned that 33% of internet users visit MySpace or have a page there, 29% either are on or go to FaceBook, 35% use YouTube. There are lots of Social Networking sites in cyber land with the number of users doubling every month. The top keyword searches bring up a social site.  Social buyers make 20% more and also spend 25% more of their income.  Some feel that over the next 2 years this is where the action is going to be and if we are going to take advantage of these trends now is the time to do it. 

Social Networking is comprised of a lot of methods:

- Social Networking sites like Facebook, MySpace

- Social Bookmarking sites likeSocialMarker.com

- Content sharing like Squidoo and HubPages

-Video, Photo and Music Sharing Sites like YouTube, MetaCalfe, Flickr

- Blogging sites like SquareSpace,Wordpress or Blogger

- Adapters like Ezine Articles

If we are going to succeed in our business we are going to need to grow and develope in the relatively new art of attracting our customers not attacking.  Not really new, I recommend reading “How to Win Friends and Influence People” originally written in 1937.  (Okay – I guess some things never change). We need to be adapting to new methods using the tools of Social Networking to develope friendships and relationships so that people get to know, like and trust us.