The blog for the Online Success Institute is at www.onlinesuccessinstitute.com  It was put up as an extension of my business - I post many items on the blog that aren’t in the newsletter.  (You can subscribe to the blog through Feedburner on the homepage of Online Success Institute.  This will email you whenever new content is put onto the blog.)  But I also wanted to give YOU another place to promote our business.

The reason I wanted to chat with you about the blog today is about marketing…for YOU!  People are now starting to understand the power of having a blog for their business - for many reasons.  But, we will get into that more at a later date.  Today I want to teach you about using OTHER peoples’ blogs to market your business.

Check out: http://onlinesuccessinstitute.com/success-announcements/admin/home-run-stories-with-mr-customer-service/

This blog post is about the Home Runs that our OSI guest Tim Chapman (who is on the show tomorrow - get registered below) shared with us.  A couple of people have left comments.  Jane from eBay Store Janieruth did a fabulous job…you can see if you click on her name at the top of the post her website Janieruth comes up (& from there you can also see her beautiful eBay Store).  She has now done three things:

1.  Many people read the Online Success Institute at www.onlinesuccessinstitute.com - she now has the attention of similar people who may be interested in her products

2.  She has created a link back to her eBay Business so that people can easily ‘give her money’ (you should always make it easy for people to spend money in your business!)

3.  By linking her name to her website’s URL, she has now created a very valuable ‘inbound link’ to her website.  Search engine spiders LOVE ‘inbound links’.

Brilliant job Jane!

For you Store owners…I have no doubt you are also realizing that this could be another opportunity for you to get 75% off your final value fees!

For eBay Education Specialist (& future ESP’s)…this gives you an amazing opportunity to establish yourself as an expert.

Now, let’s get you started on this wonderful marketing opportunity.  Let Google take over the hard work of finding the posts/blogs and you commit to devoting 5 minutes a day to increasing your marketing efforts.  This can also be done by one of your employees (or even those teenage kids of yours who are always needing a few dollars).

1.  Set up Google Alerts (http://www.google.com/alerts) for your niche:

• Photography
• Charity
• Art
• eBay Education Specialist
• Antiques
• Mustang Cars
• Etc…

(I also love setting up Google Alerts for my business name, my name, the titles of my books, etc…great way to keep tabs on your business). 

Use ‘comprehensive’ searches as this will include blogs, web, etc.

Google Alerts will send you an email with links in it having to do with what their ’spiders’ have just returned to Google for your ‘niche’ keyword(s).

2.  Choose 2-3 blog posts daily to respond to.  When choosing the sites to respond to, keep in mind the amount & type of people who will see your post on that particular site - quality vs quantity.  When you respond, make sure you take advantage of the opportunity you have to include your website address in the appropriate ‘website’ box under the ‘leave a comment’ section.

A couple of things to keep in mind when you respond to a blog:

• Don’t post ‘your pitch’ in the body of your comment.  Use the ‘website’ box to leave the link to your site.
• Don’t ‘leave a comment’ to just leave a comment - always make sure your comment contains a valuable response, thought, process, idea, content for the future readers of the blog
• Don’t pay a company to do this for you (there are a ton out there).  This can get your site black-listed on Google - eeks!

With just 3 comments a day, you will have almost 100 inbound links to your site in one month!  Over 1000 in one year!! 

Tags: Success Announcements //