My latest post as the Little Rock area’s Blogging for Business Examiner shares 12 benefits of including video in your online content strategy, so I thought today I’d share with you a list of 40 places you can submit that content — and most of them are free.

Video-sharing sites are typically community-based, which means each one has a different personality and supports different video genres — from “crazy” to corporate. It’s best to visit them before submitting content to see which ones your videos will fit in.

Here’s the list: Continue reading →

Over the coming weeks, we’ll be discussing some of the free ways to market your blog online — blog exchanges, wikis, video-sharing, photo-sharing, podcasting, social networking, social bookmarking, microblogging, and business networking.

LinkedIn is a business networking platform that can help you get noticed in your niche market. What does a business networking platform have to do with blogging? When I read that the second-most connected person on LinkedIn is a high-profile blogger, I decided I’d better investigate what exactly LinkedIn was about and how I can incorporate it into my online media strategy.

Here are 18 ways LinkedIn can help you connect with others and therefore get the word out about you and your blog:

1. Continue reading →

Today’s Marketing Monday tip offers a list of 41 free (online and offline) tactics to drive traffic to your blog. This post is an introduction to a series of follow-up posts that will provide in-depth information about each item, one at a time.

Here’s the list:

1. Word of Mouth
2. Business Cards
3. Free Report or White Paper
4. Social Bookmarking**
5. Blog Directory Submissions
6. Produce an Ezine
7. Develop Relevant Inbound Links
8. Optimize Your Blog for Search Engines*
9. Submit Articles to Content Distribution Services
10. Network within Your Niche
11. Interact on Forums
12. Create an Email Newsletter
13. Start an Online Community for Your Niche
14. RSS Feeds
15. Product Marketing
16. Barter/Swap Advertising
17. Ebay & Craig’s List
18. Wikipedia & Other Wiki Sites
19. Social Media**
20. Joint Ventures/Affiliates
21. News Releases
22. Video
23. Industry Trade Publications
24. Local Media — TV/Radio/Newspaper Interviews
25. Regional Magazine Articles
26. Podcasting
27. Bizstreaming/Lifestreaming
28. Multi-media Sharing/Slidecasting
29. Relationships with Fellow Bloggers
30. Email Signatures
31. Creating Valuable Content
32. Contests
33. Polls/Surveys
34. Car Banner
35. Offer Freebies (Products or Services)
36. Become an Expert (write for Examiner and/or other reporter-type sites)
37. Develop a Referral System
38. Create an Online Directory for Your Niche
39. Create a Resource Page for Your Niche
40. Amazon.com
41. Images (SEO* and Social Photo-sharing**)

* This topic is already being covered through SEO Saturday tips.
**Beginning on January 27, we’ll start a series on Social Media/Social Bookmarking. This series will be held on Wednesdays, since Wednesday is “Friends Day.”

My fifth-grade year was a memorable one. It was the year we moved from Los Angeles to a small town (population 364) in Arkansas. My mother escorted me to my classroom. I stood in the doorway and glanced around, the proverbial fish out of water. The room itself wasn’t much different than other classrooms I’d been in — an alphabet bordered the wall above the chalkboard; a row of windows offered a view of the swings, slide, and merry-go-round; and neat files of student-filled desks faced the teacher, a stern-looking woman who had obviously opted out of early retirement.

The teacher removed her thick-framed glasses, letting them dangle from a cord around her neck and walked over to greet me. I tightened my grip on my mother’s hand. She gently patted my shoulder.

“Class,” the teacher addressed the group with a kinder voice than the one my imagination had ascribed to her. “This is the new girl. The one from California.” More than twenty pairs of eyes focused on me. Needless to say, I learned a lot that year.

And so do most fifth-graders, as we’ve learned from the popular television game show hosted by Jeff Foxworthy. In fact, most fifth-graders know how to apply distilling-down principles used to determine the least common denominator of a set of fractions and dissecting a sentence into its most fundamental parts of speech. Today, we’re going to learn how to apply those same principles to marketing. After all, we are smarter than fifth-graders, right?

A popular type of blogging is called niche blogging — a highly specialized, thin slice of big blogging pie. In other words, once you’ve determined your blog’s topic and purpose, you distill it down as far as possible, just like you did with fractions and sentences in the fifth-grade.

The top characteristics of a successful niche blog are:

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If so, is anyone really listening?

What I’m getting at is that many bloggers market their blogs to the wrong audience, and I’m speaking from personal experience here. The three blogs I’m going to use as examples are all now inactive, and as you read further, you’ll understand why.

When I blogged about fiction-writing tips, I marketed the blog to fiction writers. When I blogged about travel-writing tips, I promoted the blog to other travel-bloggers. When I wrote a humor blog (title overweight & underorganized), instead of sharing it with those trying to lose weight and/or get organized, you guessed it, I invited my fellow humor columnist friends to stop by and say “hey!”

Notice a pattern here? Successful fiction writers probably don’ t need fiction writing tips. Travel bloggers don’t need travel tips. And the humor writers? Well, they probably only stopped by my blog because they were procrastinating writing their next columns.

Continue reading →