Using Blogs And Articles In Your Internet Marketing Business Plan

In order to maximise web site search engines, it might be tempting to post pieces of writing to as many sites as possible. This may include your own blogs, article marketing sites, social networking sites as well as your own customised web site. All very well and good, you may think.

Or is it?

Quite apart from the fact that many article publishers only like to see original content and not something that is ploughed out here there and everywhere, there is also the question of whether something is actually an article or a blog. Indeed, does anyone actually know enough about this to even notice? Let's look at what the Internet says about both articles and blogs and then I shall expand in a little more depth about my own theory.

Blog.
Let's look at this first of all. Just our of interest, the absolutely correct way of spelling it is 'blog. This is because the word is a derivative of two words i.e., web and log. The apostrophe replaces the word web. Not wishing to sound pedantic, however, it shall be referred to as blog for the purposes of this article. Generally speaking, it would seem that the accepted norm is to describe a blog as a commentary. This implies a certain amount of bias and could be described more of a point of view than a factual description of events.

Article.
This refers to an unbiased description of events. In other words, a news item. Quite whether any event can be said to be described in an unbiased way, of course, is open to argument and clearly a topic for another article as opposed to something that should be included in here.

Perhaps the difference can be made clearer by looking at how the subject of this article was introduced in the opening paragraph. Had it been written for the purposes of a blog, it might have begun as follows - - As one who is always looking for the easiest, most productive way to generate more website traffic, I can be relied upon to maximise any piece of writing by having it posted to many high quality sites as possible. The difference is not just viewpoint being biased or otherwise, rather that the subject and object change. In the case of the blog, the subject is the writer. In the case of the article, the discussion about blog and articles is the subject ( of the piece ).

Compound those facts with the general trend of the blog moderators to lean towards blogs being used to describe the more personal aspects of our lives, it would make sense to assume that the article should be kept for the article marketing sites alone.
This will, of course, be in the interests of the people managing the article writing sites as well for the reason mentioned above ( they prefer original content that has not been shared with any number sites out there ) and so resulting in a win - - win situation. This is something that should be aimed for when making your Internet marketing business plan as you start your Internet business.

Is Teaching The New Selling?

If teaching is, as I suggest, the new selling, then I might be in trouble running my own Internet business - not because I disagree with the concept, but rather because all those teachers out there may want to have a share in what I am doing! Allow me to explain how I have arrived at this theory. To do so, we need to go back almost twenty years when I was at a party talking with a chap who was just that little bit older ( naturally ) and wiser than I was.

If I remember correctly, he was either a social worker or salesman - I forget which but it doesn't matter for now. The bottom line is he had a theory that if you could teach, you could do social work and selling as well. I was actually considering becoming a driving instructor at the time and I assumed he was just padding the conversation to appear interested in my future goal.

In retrospect, I don't think I could have been more wrong - and yes, I know some people will say that they have living proof that what I am suggesting isn't so but there will, of course, always be exceptions to prove the rule. Anyway, allow me to explain in a more practical way why these three professions have such a transferable skill. In order to help somebody, we need to be a good listener. This ins not just to ascertain where the client is "coming from" but also to allow them to try and work out the answer for themselves. In teaching, a popular method is the use of Socratic questioning whereby one would ask the pupil a series of questions until they worked out the answer for themselves. It is not difficult to see how this method can be used in the aforementioned professions.

So, to come back to the original point as to whether teaching is, indeed, the new selling or not, we need to consider just what selling really is in relation to marketing as well because there always seems to be a fine line in distinguishing the two. I, personally, see marketing as the written word or advert that draws a potential customer in and the selling part that whereby you actually speak with said client. The buzz word of the last few years in marketing has been that of Educational Marketing - whereby one would offer a piece of information that worked to educate the potential customer in order to interest them enough to want to learn more.

Does it not make sense, then, to suggest that the selling process which inevitably follows the marketing should be done in a teaching manner? For example, you might follow up with a short question and answer ( Socratic ) session to allow the client to come up with his own solution ( which just happens to be what you are offering him ). OK., so perhaps this has been happening for longer than I have been involved in starting a marketing business on the Internet, and so one might not, perhaps, be able to say that the concept is a new one at all. It does, however, put into perspective the argument that the three jobs I mention above are all one and the same thing anyway so that the teaching is in the selling, new or not!