Here is another article written by a home stager on a topic that most anyone of you could write about.

In addition to encouraging you to write articles on your own, you too can borrow articles like this to share with people on your mailing list. What, you don’t have an email list to mail to? If that’s the case, you really need to sign up for Market Maker. Actually, you eventually should develop two lists. One of prospective clients who could use you home staging services and a second of area Realtors who could be using you to help build their careers. At any rate, as long as you include the resource box at the bottom, you can use these articles, which means you don’t have to write each and everyone yourself.

This article is by Katie Mudd of Fredericksburg, Virginia Discusses Curb Appeal.

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Did you know that a buyer has developed an opinion of your property within 15 seconds? I have pulled up to many homes with clients who did not want to consider a property simply because the exterior needed some attention. The following ideas will help your homes exterior make a great first impression:

* Make sure the street and, sidewalk, walkway and porch are free from litter and debris
* Reseal a worn or stained driveway and repair cracks in the walkway
* Re-Paint the Shudders and front door
* Apply new door hardware and a brass kick plate
* Replace the house numbers
* Put a flower box with seasonal flowers alongside the door
* Install a new front light fixture and check that all exterior lights are in working order
* Have a cleaning service wash the siding
* Clean windows and replace any cracked or broken glass
* Replace any missing or broken shingles on the roof/If the roof is very old consider having it replaced prior to showing the property
* Make sure the gutters and downspouts are in good repair
* Mow the grass weekly and keep weeds under control
* De-clutter the deck or patio

Creating a cheerful, clean, neat entrance is one of the best investments of time, money and effort you will ever make. Don’t let a potential buyer slip through the giant crack in your walkway! Fix the crack and keep the buyer! I hope these tips for preparing the exterior of your home are helpful and I will post some interior home tips in a future article.

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Katie Mudd, Realtor/CSP Visit http://www.katiemudd.com to find out your home’s value, obtain a free list of foreclosure or affordable luxury homes or conduct a property search
Katie Mudd is a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Elite located at 5444 Jefferson Davis Hwy in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Licensed in the commonwealth of Virginia. Each office is independently owned and operated Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Katie_Mudd

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Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, blogging, eZine Articles, Homestaging Tips

Would you like to earn auto-pilot commissions every time you post to your blog? And at the same time use the Power of Twitter to drive traffic to your blog.

I know it sounds like a fairy tale, but it just became reality, with the launch of John Merrick and Soren Jordansen’s new “Tweet My Blog”.

Just by using the powerful free plugin, you will be promoting your affiliate link on auto-pilot. In other words, you can earn commissions just for posting to your blog.

But that’s just one of the many benefits of using TweetMyBlog, visit the page to learn more – and grab your free copy today.

And… Even though they are giving this plugin away for free, you should take a close look at the special offer they have in store for you when join. I instantly grabbed my own copy, and I know it will skyrocket my marketing power when using Twitter and Wordpress.

Just click on the image below to access this powerful new tool. -etn

Technorati Tags: blogging, Twitter

The internet is no longer a new idea for business. Many businesses once enjoyed a first mover advantage by entering the online arena earlier than their competitors. Today, there are few fields left where just being online is providing a significant competitive advantage.

The internet has opened the market place to customers from around the world. And it has opened the marketplace to competitors from around the world. It is no longer enough to be online, a business to succeed must be able to drive traffic to their websites. In order to dominate a field it is increasingly important that businesses establish a blogging presence online.

While anyone can set up a blog easily and inexpensively, so can your competitors. But there is a lot more to blogging than first meets the eye.

Here are some useful tips that you can incorporate in your internet business:

• You must research and then use keywords effectively – your blog’s contents should reflect appropriate keywords. Effective keyword research can also place your blog and thus your business toward the top of the search engines.

• You want to stimulate Back Links to your blog. These are valuable – you have to give importance to back links. Your blog posts should be able to incorporate appropriate back links.

• More important than the frequency of your blog posts is their regularity. You must be able to post regularly if you want to be effective. If you forget to make posts, you will loose regular readers and possibly leave viewers with an impression that you are not truly up to speed in today’s internet world.

• While regularity is the key, your blogging efforts will be rewarded most if you post frequently and if the contents are interesting. With effective blogging, you can establish your online business reputation and, you can demonstrate to the world your business expertise. To gain a positive reputation, make sure that you post interesting and relevant blog posts.

These are the basic tips you must follow to be effective blogging. As you can see, blogging requires more than a slap dash approach. Most advisors online will tell you that blogs are not that hard to compose. They are right. However, according to expert bloggers, you need to consider the interests of the readers and online researchers.
Try to understand why they are coming to your blog in the first place.
Think more in terms of what they want to discover, and less about what you want to tell them. But be sure you do get your licks in. It’s all about how you frame your blogs attitude and conversational style.

Remember that once you start posting blogs on your business’ website, you have to post frequently (ideally at least once or twice a week) so that your customers and readers will not forget you or your business.

Blogging for business is one of the most effective means of making your business a success. Set up your blog now, you will profit in the future.

If you learn to become an effective blogger, your business will benefit. If you want to learn more about effective business blogging, you can easily conduct researches online because you can find a wealth of information there.

Technorati Tags: blogging

You’re a blogger and are constantly hearing about pinging. The
thing is, you don’t know what it is and what it can do for your
blog. Well that’s fine because a lot of bloggers don’t quite
understand pinging. In this newsletter, we will explain what
pinging is, how it helps your blog, and what the best pinging
services are. After you’ve read this newsletter, you’ll know
exactly how to use pinging to make your blog popular.

What is pinging?

When a blog is pinged, it essentially tells a web blog tracking
system that the blog has been updated. Thus, pinging is the
process of telling tracking services that a site has been
updated.

So how does pinging work? Well, a ping service scans regularly
blogs for updates. Whenever there is a new update for a
particular blog, that is reported back to the pinging service’s
site. You can almost think of ping services being just like
search engine spiders–both scan sites looking for information,
and both report that information back to their specific site.
The difference is, a ping service only reports back new blog
posts.

Why is pinging useful for my blog?

Pinging, in effect, tells people that there is a new blog
posting available. Those who are loyal followers of your blog
will see the ping and want to visit your blog. Those who haven’t
read your blog before will see the ping and perhaps think “hey,
there’s a new blog I haven’t been to before, I think I’ll check
it out”. Pinging helps to increase your traffic because it tells
people when your blog is updated. Those who visit sites with
pinging services will see this information in the form of a
scroll on the left or right side, or top of the page. The scroll
is usually in XML format and typically includes the title and
URL of your blog, as well as the date and time of the update.

OK, so now I know what pinging is. Who offers pinging?

The answer is, there are several pinging services available
which you can use to have your blog pinged. We’ll go over some
of them right now.

Weblogs.com
Weblogs.com is probably the most well-known pinging service.
Weblogs.com monitors sites for updates and then pings whenever
there is an update to report. Virtually every blog software is
available to use Weblogs.

Yahoo’s Blo.gs
Another popular pinging service. This one is offered by Yahoo
and has a built-in integration with movable type and other
tools. One cool thing about this service is that it offers the
ability to give out updates via Instant Messenging services like
AOL and ICQ. It is a direct pinging service, so those who sign
up for subscriptions to your blog will be sent an email anytime
your blog is updated.

Blogrolling.com
Blogrolling allows its bloggers to manage their
blogrolls(updates) through a web-based interface. Recently
updated blogs are also highlighted on Blogrolling’s web site.
Data is automatically retrieved from other sites like
blogger.com and weblogs.com every 5 minutes. Often times your
blog is already being pinged by Blogrolling, so you might not
have to sign up for it. Search on the site first for your URL
before signing it up.

Technorati

Available at http://technorati.com/ping, Technorati is
another service that pings blogs. It gets its data from a
variety of places and is definitely a site you should go to for
blog pinging.

These are just 4 of the many different blog pinging services
available. A quick search on Yahoo or Google will reveal many
other possible blog pinging services to use for your blog. It is
best to sign up for as many as you possibly can to ensure that
your blog is well-pinged. A well-pinged blog will definitely
help your blog attract more visitors. So sign up for as many as
possible and watch your blog traffic increase.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

Technorati Tags: blogging

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Blogs are now an extremely popular and important part of the internet. Millions of people blog every day. As blogs have evolved over the years, so has the commenting system. Now anyone can make comments on a particular blog posting. As blog commenting has grown more popular, so has spam commenting. In
this newsletter, we’ll go over why comments are a great form of feedback for your blog, how they help the credibility of your content, what spam comments are and how to prevent them from happening.

Comments - A great form of feedback

When blogs first came around, they were simply online journals. No one could post comments on a blog posting. That all changed in 1998 with OpenDiary, a site which allowed people to comment on blog postings. Now every blog, whether it is remotely or self-hosted, includes this option to comment.

Commenting is great because it allows real people to tell you what they think about your form. It gives you feedback on what you are doing right and what you may need to improve. Comments can be encouraging to you and motivate you to post more quality blog messages. Or they can be constructive criticism to make you work harder to get better at writing content.

Whatever the style of comment is, it is still very useful to your blog. High numbers of comments have the ability to make a blog look credible because they show that the blog is being read by a lot of people. That’s something that every blog owner wants, and comments help to let them know just how many people enjoy their content.

Bad comments

Unfortunately, spammers have now started to use comments as a way to spam. How do you know what a spam comment is? Well, a spam comment is a comment that only advertises another site or product. If the comment seems bland/generic with a cheap link thrown in, then it’s definitely a spam comment.

Here is an example of a typical spam comment:  “Hey, this site is really cool. Check out my really cool site at spamsite.com.”

Of course not all spam comments will be this blatant, but you get the point.

Fortunately for bloggers, as spam comments have grown, so has the ways to prevent it. Here are a couple ways that you can prevent spam comments from even being posted on your blog.
#1: Close off commenting on older blog posts There are options for you to stop comments from being posted on any particular blog post. Lots of times, spammers will post comments in weeks or months old posts. So take away this opportunity from them to keep it from happening. Most blog hosters now offer this as a standard option in the tool panel. If one of your posts has been up for a couple weeks, close it
up.

#2: Take advantage of software offered to prevent comment spam If you host your own blog using WordPress, you can use an option in that software to prevent spam. Even if you aren’t using
WordPress, you can still use other Spam comment blocking software like Spam Karma, Akismet, and Bad Behavior. While these aren’t 100% effective, they have proven to be quite effective in preventing spam from happening.

#3: Take a look at your settings and see what can be tweaked to toughen your protection.  Lots of blogs now have settings to help prevent spam. If you already have a spam blocker on in your blog and are still
experiencing spam, take a closer look at the settings to see if there’s anything that can be tweaked to make your protection stronger. However, if you do this, you should closely monitor your posts to make sure legit comments aren’t being blocked out. If they are, you might have to lighten up a bit.

#4: Regularly read your blog comments Be sure to keep an eye on your comments. Even the best software
or setting can’t prevent everything, so you will have to occasionally manually remove comments on your own.

By applying the above principles, you can ensure that your blog is full of only good, quality comments, which will help your credibility tremendously.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Keeping people interested in your blog, whether it is a business or personal blog, is key to attracting a lot of regular visitors. Many blogs have died because people have just lost interest. The main reason for the lack of interest is simply a lack of posts by the blogger. Regular, frequent posting, which will boost your blog’s ranking in search engines, is essential to the survival of any blog.

You might be asking yourself, what is frequent posting? How many blog entries should I make on a given week? How do I make frequent consistently good posts? What are the reasons for me to post frequently? In this newsletter, we will go over all of the above.

What is frequent posting?

Frequent blog posting is posting enough to keep your readers interested. Obviously, people will not want to come back to a blog that hasn’t been updated in months. They want to see consistent posting so that they know coming back to check the blog next week to see if there are more posts won’t be a waste of time.

How many blog entries should I make each week?

This is one of the tougher questions to answer. It really depends on the purpose of your blog. If it’s a personal blog, a weekly or twice weekly update is an excellent idea. A political/sports/music/religion blog should have 3-4 posts per week. Some believe internet business blogs should have at least 2 posts, but preferably 4 each week. I feel the actual number is less important than a consistent regularity of posts.

For most brick and mortar businesses once or twice a week is more than enough. If you are building a web only business, more frequent postings are probably more important.

The thing to remember is that quality counts. Posting frequently just for the sake of posting frequently tends to result in subpar posts which people won’t care about. It is important to find a balance–frequent, quality posts that won’t result in burnout on your part. Why create 4 poor quality posts each week when you could post 2 quality posts per week?

How do I create quality postings on a consistent basis?

It’s all about following a consistent pattern of writing. Maybe you’re not a natural writer and this is difficult. That’s why we’ll give you an outline to help you.

1. Pick a topic that is interesting to you and to your readers. Maybe if your blog is a personal blog, you could write about the latest happenings in Hollywood.

2. Carefully think about what you’ll write about the topic. It makes it easy to make quality blog postings if you know exactly what you’ll write. Plot out everything about the post before even beginning to write it.

3. Before writing your content, pick out some keywords that are relevant to your blog. If you naturally use keywords throughout your post, you will please search engine spiders which will get your blog ranked higher on search engines. Your visitors won’t mind the use of keywords if they are used in a tasteful way.

4. Begin writing your post. Don’t limit yourself to a particular amount of words. Just do what’s natural. And if any blog post is hard for you, just take a timeout and relax. You should be able to finish the post a bit later on, after you’ve had some time to think things through, you should be able to finish the post with
no problems.

I like to write four or five posts at a time, if I can, on a related topic and have the task done for a while. It also has the advantage of allowing a more in depth discussion of a topic.

Why is frequent posting important?

Blogs are meant to be outlets for individuals or businesses. They are used to get an opinion out on something and to engage readers. Readers need to have something that makes them want to keep coming back to a blog. That something is usually quality, frequent posts.

Gaining and maintaining visitors isn’t the only reason to post often in your blog. Catching the eye of a search engine–and achieving a high ranking–is another valid reason for posting frequently. Most likely, each posting in your blog features some keywords or keyword phrases scattered throughout it. Logic says
that the more natural keywords you have on a blog, the better.

Thus, the more posts you make on your blog, the more keywords you have on there. And the more keywords you have, the more likely a search engine bot is to crawl your site. The more your site is crawled by bots, the more likely it is that you will have a high ranking on a search engine.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Over the past few years, blogs have become incredibly popular.
Just about everyone who uses the internet also has a blog. You

want to get in on the action, but you’re not sure how to get

your own blog.

Luckily for you, sites like Blogger.com have made it easy to

set-up and make posts on a blog. In this newsletter, we will go

over everything from signing up for a blog on Blogger.com to

choosing a template (look) to finally making a first post.

What is Blogger.com?
Simply put, Blogger.com is a site that hosts blogs for free.

This makes it even easier for you to have a blog because there

is no need to set up a web site and host the blog yourself. All

you have to do on Blogger.com, once you’ve signed up, is login

to your blog, write a blog post and click submit. It’s that

simple.

What will my web address be on Blogger.com?
Your web address will be http://yourname.blogspot.com. One thing

that people dislike about Blogger and other free blog sites is

that they don’t have as great of a freedom in choosing a name.

You are limited to choosing only what is available. So if you’re

looking for http://yankeesfan.blogspot.com, you probably won’t

be able to find that.

Signing up for a blog on Blogger
The first thing you’ll do is go to blogger.com. Next, you’ll

scroll down the page and click on the button labeled “Create

Your Blog Now”.

You will then be taken to a page where you will enter an email

address(used to log into your blog), a password, and a word

verification. You’ll also have to check “I Accept Terms of

Service”. Click continue.

Next, you will be taken to a page where you will choose the blog

title, blog address, and another word verification(which is done

to prevent auto-signups). When you type in your blog address,

you can click a link that says “check availability”. This will

tell you whether or not the desired name is available. If the

first name you wish to have is not available, keep typing in

different variations of the name until you find one that is

available.

After you have put in all the information, click “Continue”.

Choosing a Template
After you click “Continue”, you’ll be asked to choose a

template. The template can be changed at any time after you

sign-up for the blog, so you don’t have to choose an “official”

template now.

If you scroll down, you’ll see a variety of different templates.

Click on the one that you like best and then click “Continue”.

Your First Blog Post
After you’ve chosen a template, you’ll see that your blog has

been created and that there is a button to “Start Posting”.

Click that button.

You’ll be taken to a page that is similar to the posting page at

a message board. There is a “Title” field, where you can put in

the title of this particular blog posting. Then there is a

bigger field, which is the body of your post. Type all you want

in this “Body” field, as there is no limit.

Note that there are options above the field to bold, italicize,

underline or spell check the text. There is also the option of

changing the size and color of the text, plus the ability to add

bullet points, numbered lists and even pictures. For now, you’ll

just do a simple “Welcome” post.

In the “Title” field, type “Welcome!” In the “Body” field, type

your message. You could start with a simple introduction,

talking about yourself and the purpose of the blog. When you’re

done typing the message, click the “Publish” button. It is worth

noting that you can choose to save the post as a draft, if you

want to go back and later finish the post.

After you’ve clicked “Publish”, you’ll see that your blog has

been published successfully. Click the “View Blog” link to view

the results of your work. You’ll now see your post.

Logging into Blogger after the first post
You’ll go to Blogger.com and click on the “Old Blogger” link at

the top right of the page. Type in the email address and

password that you signed up with.  You’ll be taken to the

“Dashboard” of your blog. If you want to enter a new post on

your blog, click “New Post”. Then follow the instructions

mentioned in the previous section. Or if you want to edit the

template, add/edit elements to your page, you’ll click

“Settings” and then “Template”.

That’s all there is to it. Blogs, whether they are hosted at

blogger.com or another free blog site, are incredibly useful and

fun.

To your success,

Earl Netwal

Micro Business Specialist

P.S. Blogger makes setting up and running a blog very easy for

those who have never done it before. Frankly my first blog attempts

were on Blogger. However, I don’t recommend Blogger for those who

are trying to build a business online.

PPS. Blog sites like Active Rain which serves the Real Estate

industry and other industry centered Blog sites are great, easy ways

to begin blogging. They lack the individual control of your own blog,

and don’t build your Google Ranking as well. They can however be

an interesting industry exchange as long as you don’t get carried

away.  You need to focus more on your customers with your own blog.

PPS: A third option is to blog for bucks with a blog dedicated to

promoting products as a separate business activity. Many are making

significant incomes in this regard. One fellow from Singapore has put

together a program thats inexpensive to get started with if that’s

your interest. It’s called Atomic Blogging and you can find it at:

Atomic Blogging

Technorati Tags: Blogger, blogging

When you setup a business website and are looking to get it listed
quickly on search engines, there really is no easier and quicker way
than to also put a blog on the site.

It is a known fact that search engine spiders from sites like Google
and Altavista list new blogs much faster than they list new sites.
However, it’s not as simple as just creating a blog and letting it
sit there. You have to also use tactics like pinging, linking and
the use of keywords. We’ll go over each so that you are able to
effectively use your blog for a quick site listing. We’ll also
briefly go over how to host your own blog on your site.

So how do I host my own blog, anyway?

The easiest way to do this is to install and run a blogging
software from another company on your web site’s server. One
such software that is popular is WordPress. It’s fairly easy to
install and works pretty good on your site. It’s particularly easy if your
webhost offers a C-Panel interface.

Other blogging software options include:

Apache Roller
Blosxom
Geeklog
Textpattern
LifeType

Whatever one you choose, be sure to follow the instructions
provided by the company so that the installation goes smoothly.

Where should I put my blog on my site?

Most people who host their blog to help their site get listed
quickly don’t put the blog on the main page of the site, because
the site isn’t all about the blog. Instead they put it in its
own folder at mysite.com/blog/. But you can really put your blog
anywhere on your site, so it’s your call.
What is pinging?

It’s a question that many ask, so don’t feel silly if you don’t
know what pinging is. Pinging is essentially a tracking program
installed on your blog that will notify the site which it is
from whenever your blog is updated. Search engine spiders
usually visit newly pinged sites most often, which is why
pinging is such a crucial part of the equation to get your site
listed quickly. Sites that are newly “pinged” will be visited by
search engine spiders. A visit from the spider equals a listing
on the search engine.
How do I get pinging on my blog?

You’ll have to register with a site that offers weblog pinging.
The most popular pinging program around is weblogs.com. Other
programs offered include Yahoo’s Blo.gs, BlogRolling, and
Technorati. Once you’ve decided on a pinging service, you’ll
have to follow the instructions to install it on your blog. When
you’ve done that, your blog will start getting pinged and
visited by search engine spiders. We will touch on these again in a
future lesson.
What is linking?

Linking is basically having another blog or site link to your
blog. When search engine spiders visit that site and see a link
to your site, they’ll visit your site. Linking is effective both
for sites with blogs and those without it.
How do I get linking?

You get it by visiting sites/blogs that are relevant to what
your site is about. Then you contact the owners of those
sites/blogs, asking them to post a link to your site on their
site. In return, you will probably have to link to their site on
your site. That way, both of you are able to benefit from the
linking.
Why is the use of keywords important to my blog?

Keywords are search terms people might type into Google to find you.
A person in the home staging industry would probably use the keywords
Home Staging and their city as key words. A Optician might use
eyeglasses, or contact lens in theirs. Keywords are usually pretty
straightforward.

Spiders love to visit sites with a good amount of keywords.
People who read your site won’t mind the use of keywords if they
are lightly spread throughout the content of your pages. The key
to this is to make a list of keywords relevant to your blog
posting and then to try to use those keywords throughout your
content. It is important to make sure, however, not to overuse
keywords. Spiders have been trained to ignore sites with
excessive amounts of keywords, so if you use a whole lot of
keywords in the hopes of getting spiders to visit your site,
it’s not going to do you any good. Generally speaking, using
between 2-6 keywords per 200 word piece of content is a good
ratio. It’s pleasing to both readers and search engine spiders.

That’s really all there is to it. Apply the above techniques to
your blog and you will net your site a quick search engine
listing.

To your success,

Earl Netwal
Micro Business Specialist

P.S. There is no quicker way to get your site listed than to use
a blog.

P.P.S. For business purposes, I recommend using Wordpress rather
than a free blog site. Wordpress is free but you do have to pay for
web hosting. I use host gator as my web host because I am able to
host multiple websites and it uses the C-Panel interface thus it doesn’t cost anything
extra to use the better tool.

I recommend a free report if you don’t know everything you should
about web hosting. Get it Here:

Technorati Tags: blogging, C Panel, SEO