Spreading the word about your blog shouldn’t be exclusive to your closest friends or industry peers. Self-promotion can also be sought on numerous review sites that connect users with the products and services they are curious about. Proving readers of those sites with concise reviews or recommendations is not only good writing practice, but will also help you establish your authority on various subjects.

Sites like Amazon.com allow you to set up your own user profile where you can provide a link to your own blog. As visitors come to the site and read your well thought out and useful reviews, they may be curious enough to follow you in hopes of getting more information.

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As I write this, voters are going to the polls in Indiana and North Carolina to vote for the Democratic nominee for The American Presidency. The frontrunner going into the poll is Barrack Obama, one of the fastest rising politicians in the history of the country. His appeal among young and first-time voters has been unparalleled and much of his success within that demographic has been aided by extensive use of social media, including viral videos and a Facebook campaign that has truly defined the service’s seismic potential.

With the help of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Obama has coordinated a massive following from the wired community.

Here are some facts about Obama’s Facebook Empire:
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A sure fire way to generate more discussion, sharing and page views on your blog is to celebrate your readers. While we have touched on responding to comments and questions in a timely fashion, there are other key areas that will show your appreciation and keep those readers coming back, retaining their valuable loyalty.

Here are some ideas of how to reward your dear readers:

Link to their blogs, even if they don’t ask you. If a reader happens to post their URL when they comment, or you see it on a forum or an email, its in your best interest to add it to your blogroll. Linking back shows the readers that their participation is rewarded and will also keep them coming back to your blog. They will also be more likely to return the favour.

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Having trouble with your blog? Not getting the visitors you want or getting them to stay on your site for a decent amount of time? Perhaps you are missing a crucial element to your blog, like an essential page, widget or design feature that would make the experience of your site more accessible and user-friendly.

The following is a checklist you can take when evaluating your own blog to see if you have the right tools needed to communicate with your audience and vice versa. Don’t let your content go unnoticed just because there are some flaws in your presentation. Use this list as your guide! Now some of these features may be more vital than others, but including all of them is a sure way of meeting the needs and expectations of wide readership.

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At Apollo’s Blog, we are contemplating some changes and revisions to our content, design and general focus, as we try to draw in a more specific target market that is familiar to or at least interested in social media. One of the things we are debating is the issue of post frequency: are we going to be posting on a daily basis? What are the benefits and pitfalls of such an approach?

For both our own blog, and yours, we thought we would go over some of the pros and cons of frequent posting as a way to come to some sort of conclusion, giving our blog a new sense of direction.

Pros:

• Posting daily or several times a week means your site will get more notice from search engine spiders looking for updates, so your ranking for keywords will go up.
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Having an effective blog or website is much more than having a fancy design and clear navigation. It’s not just about building links and advertising. To really make your efforts online successful, you have to place content as a top priority. Because of content’s paramount importance in the World Wide Web, we thought we at Apollo would review the importance of good copywriting, discussing its elements and purpose. To get straight to the core of effective copywriting and why it matters, we sat down with Apollo’s own copywriter, viral marketer and blogger Stephanie Miller.

Damien: Thanks for taking the time to have this discussion, Stephanie. It’s always a pleasure to sit down with someone who has so much experience writing for the web.

Stephanie: It’s great to be here. It’s always fun to have these conversations.

Damien: How about we start with an overview. For those not familiar with PR or marketing, could you give us your definition of copywriting and why it’s important?

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The BBC has an interesting story recording motions by human rights organization Amnesty International to pressure Google to do more in the fight against censorship and abuses online, particularly in its relationship with China.

In the wake of the Tibetan protests and the current controversy and anxiety surrounding the Summer Olympics in Beijing, there has been tremendous pressure on Western nations to voice their commendation of China’s crackdowns on dissent. It appears that the outcry is also being directed at Western Companies who have expansive business in China, including Google who launched Google.cn in 2006.

“Google - whose shares currently trade at almost $600 (£300), more than $100 above its level a year ago - is facing two shareholder motions at its annual general meeting on Thursday.

Both insist the company needs to do more to fight censorship and support human rights.

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Writing blog tips on a regular basis can often be frustrating. Looking at the best and most popular blogs within this niche, including the likes of Problogger, Dosh Dosh etc, there’s a lot of similar content, the same core tips and ideas being repeated over and over again, in different phrasings and angles.

On Problogger for example, there’s only the slightest variation between articles like “How Bloggers Make Money From Blogs” and “How I Make Money Blogging”. Despite all these articles containing the same information, they still manage to attract literally hundreds of comments. I find this phenomenon to be rather strange and have a feeling that our own blog is guilty of rehashing the same tidbits again and again.

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Earlier on this blog, we discussed strategies for encouraging comments on your blog. By asking open-ended questions and leaving room for discussion in your posts, you will open your blog to greater feedback. While these strategies are simple in concept, integrating them in your blog often takes time and practice as certain tactics might work better and generating discussion than others.

It really is trial and error in some cases. With all the work that goes into optimizing your blog posts for comments, one might wonder what all the fuss is about. Your blog is about you and your content/products/services, so why should you worry about getting others to write on it? Here are 5 simple reasons why comments are important to get you into a more conversational mood.

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There has been a lot of talk here lately at Apollo Media about focus. Streamlining your writing and discussions on your blog seems paramount when establishing a distinctive voice in your work and targeting a core readership that is going to stick around.

The problems with veering off your blog’s direction are clear and also apply to various forms of marketing. If a company strays too far from their tested image, or they try cultivating too many images at once, they can end up confusing potential customers. Is your company targeting young people or old? Do you want to appear authoritative and trustworthy or fresh and cutting-edge? Trying to do or say too many things at once leads to glaring contradictions and a perplexed audience.

Notice how McDonald’s doesn’t blatantly offer pizza or breadsticks on their regular menu? Sure, they could easily introduce them to some success, I think they even had pizza available a decade or so ago, but they are known for the Big Mac and their fries, so being eclectic with their menu just distracts people from what really made them so popular.

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