Covenant Media

Archive for April, 2010

You’ve finally created a blog and you’ve made your first post. Now how do you get people to actually read what you’re blogging about?

Here are some tips on promoting your blog.

1) Quality Content – Interesting content will keep your readership returning. Update your blog regularly.

Googlebot, which is Google’s web-crawling robot loves content. The more you update your blog, the more frequent the search engine spiders will return to it.

2) Take part in forums that are related to blogging. Ask other bloggers for their opinion on your blog and take their suggestions to heart.

Ask other bloggers for their opinion on your blog and take their suggestions to heart.

3) Publish an RSS/Atom/XML feed. If you’re using Blogger, you can turn on RSS feed by clicking on settings in your dashboard and then clicking on site feed and make sure that your settings are set to yes.

4) Carefully choose your subject titles, taking into consideration what other internet users may be searching for.

Use keywords in your title. I suggest subscribing to Word Tracker. Their report of the most popular searches is published each Tuesday and distributed to over 30,000 subscribers.

Technorati.com , is a blog search engine that also lists the top search words. The more targeted your keywords are, the greater your return in search engines will be.

5) Involve yourself in commenting on other blogs. You can gain a loyal readership just by offering feedback to your fellow bloggers. The comment feature allows you to add a link back to your blog as well.

6) Be sure to include your blog address in forum signatures and in your email signature.

7) Submit your blog to directories.

Submit your blog’s url to Technorati, Daypop, Blogdex and Popdex.

Write articles. Include a resource box in your article and submit it to article directories such as http://iSnare.com

9) If you’re using blogging software such as Blogger, there is an option to notify the central blog update services (such as http://weblogs.com) whenever you’ve made a new entry to your blog. Make sure that this option is turned on! In blogger, click on publish in your dashboard and make sure that your settings are set to yes under notify weblogs. Alternatively, you can go to http://ping-o-matic.com and send out a ping each time you update your blog. This lets everyone know that you’ve just updated your blog.

10) Link to other blogs. Use services like blogrolling, which is similar to linking. Blogrolling allows you to maintain an updated list of your favorite blogs. But, don’t build a long blog roll of sites that you have no intention of returning to. There is nothing more annoying then visiting a blog that has a humongous blogroll.

Be patient, traffic doesn’t happen overnight. The best way that I’ve found to increase traffic is by getting to know people. Spend what free time that you have, reading blogs, leaving feedback and building friendships. Try to leave comments on the blogs that you visit as often as you can. While you are waiting for the traffic to come, just enjoy blogging. You’ll be improving your writing in the process.

Eventually you’ll build a network of not just readers, but friends and loyal supporters. Blogging is not just about marketing; it’s about creating lasting relationships.

Media buying is more complex than a lot of people think at first; which is why a lot of people fail to hit the nail on the head with their media planning efforts. Effective media planning consists of several elements: finding the right media to advertise in, positioning yourself within that advertising media to reach your target market, strong negotiation skills and the ability to monitor and track results and analyze them to fine-tune your campaign.

Does media buying still sound easy? Honestly, it’s not – which is why most businesses don’t try to go it alone with their media planning efforts and go to the professionals. There are advertising agencies and consultants who provide media buying services; people who know advertising media inside and out and can get your company the placements it needs to reach the right audience at the best possible rates.

You could do ahead and try to do this all yourself, but it’s going to take up quite a bit of your time – time which could be much better spent elsewhere. It’s usually a much better idea to leave the media buying to an advertising agency that has a track record of getting results for their clientele. Choose your advertising agency wisely. An agency which does a great job with media buying and other services is a valuable partner to have. Meet with agencies and look through their portfolios until you find an agency that offers the expertise and the services your company needs.

Whether you’re trying to plan a campaign of newspaper advertising, radio advertising, online advertising or all of the above, assess the reach of each type of advertising media has in your target market. The next step in your media planning is to tailor your advertisements to the media used in the campaign. Remember, we warned you it wasn’t necessarily easy!

Advertising costs vary depending on the media you choose. Internet advertising is relatively inexpensive compared to other media, though the total cost depends on whether you’re using banner ads or pay per click (PPC)advertising and how many impressions or clicks your campaign includes and/or how often you want your ads to appear. PPC is easy to monitor, track and fine tune (and you can set the budget to ensure you don’t overspend), making it one of the easier media buying tasks, relatively speaking.

National newspaper advertising and magazine advertisements, among other consumer focused print media are more costly. Magazine and newspaper advertising are great for consumer awareness and as a branding or corporate identity vehicle and as such should be considered in your media planning.

Outdoor advertising, including billboard advertising and mobile billboards can make a big impact, but in terms of media buying is a little more challenging. In depth, longer-term demographic information will be required to get the best results out of your outdoor advertising placements.

The most challenging part of your media buying strategy is broadcast advertising. Radio advertising and television advertising are among the most expensive advertisements to produce and purchase placements for. Radio, however is becoming a more cost effective medium with local stations especially often providing very reasonable rates for packages including the costs of production and planning.

Media buying can be a puzzle; but it doesn’t have to be a conundrum for your business. Media buying is one of the things advertising agencies specialize in. Some things really are best left to the professionals – and placing media buying and planning into the hands of experts ensures more effective campaigns and lets you get back to running your business.

Feldman Law Center – Loan Modification News by Feldman Law Center — Part of Obama’s plan to overhaul regulation of the mortgage industry, unveiled last week, would create a Consumer Financial Protection Agency to monitor consumer financial products and change the entire process of getting a mortgage. With a stated goal of developing a mortgage process that is as simple as signing up for a retirement plan, the President’s proposal centers on an automatic offering of a “plain vanilla loan” to potential homebuyers. These loans would offer fixed interest rates and 30 year maturities, unless the borrower opts for a loan with riskier terms such as interest only or adjustable rates.

The plan has received vehement opposition from the mortgage and banking industries who say that government-approved mortgages would restrict borrowers’ options, make loans harder to get, and make them potentially more expensive. Powerful trade groups like the American Bankers Association, for example, oppose creating a consumer financial protection agency. Even lobbying groups open to the idea of a consumer-products regulator question whether the government should suggest which mortgages are best for consumers. “We don’t want to stifle innovation, and we don’t want to stifle competition,” said John Courson, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

One thing that would definitely be restricted, and one of the main factors behind these groups’ opposition to the plan, will be the potential commissions that mortgage brokers can charge when they sell a mortgage. For example, administration officials want to curb the fees that brokers and lenders receive tied to inflated mortgage rates. Brokers argue the incorporating those fees are a way for borrowers to amortize the costs of a loan without having to come up with thousands of dollars in closing costs. Another aspect of the plan would link compensation to whether the borrower ends up defaulting on the mortgage. “There’s no reason that we should have to assume that risk,” said Marc Savitt, president of the National Association of Mortgage Brokers. The group’s stance is that while a mortgage broker can facilitate a loan, the ultimate approval for the mortgage comes from the lender.

Mortgage brokers’ fees were typically highest on the most creative and dangerous of the mortgage varieties. With those mortgages a thing of the past, volume, commissions, and their share of new business has dwindled. Mortgage brokers’ share of new loans has dropped from a high of 60% to the current 20%, on much lower volume. Fixed rate mortgages have increased from a low of 50% of the total of new loans originated in 2004-05 to 95% today.

As the plan stands now, the newly created agency would approve a set of mortgages including fixed and adjustable rate mortgages. Approval for vanilla mortgages would be similar to the “prime mortgage” approval process. Potential home buyers could still get mortgages outside of the government approved versions but disclosure of risks and dire warnings will accompany them.

Supporters of the new regulatory agency say that it is needed as much to protect borrowers from themselves as from predatory lending practices. Many borrowers went through the process of getting their mortgage without ever taking the time to understand exactly how the loans they were applying for worked and where the risks were. Still, previous Congressional efforts to regulate the mortgage industry have consistently broken down over the years, even on simple issues such paperwork reduction, so the fight could be long, drawn out, and years in the making.