It was great when one of the participants in my recent speaking engagement in Rhode Island, came to me after my presentation and reminded me that I did not mention a concept that resonated with him when he heard me speak last year. So here is the concept and thanks for the reminder:

Imagine visiting a web site or a blog for the first time, finding it interesting and book marking it for future visits. Then, on your future and subsequent visits, nothing has changed, no new content, nada. How many times would you keep on visiting this site before giving up? I say probably no more than three times.

To further illustrate my point, here is one final story that happened to me just recently: I am quite busy helping my clients leverage software, technology and the Internet to grow their business. Busy enough that I somewhat neglected to frequently update my own blog. When talking recently with one of my colleagues and discussing a point I wrote about on my blog, he went to my blog to check out my point and then said: “oh wow, I see that you are now posting much more than ever before, I will now then subscribe to your blog.”

And by the way, the same logic applies when subscribing to receive the content of other Blogs posts via RSS feed. How long before you remove the feed from your reader if no new posts have been entered?

I suggest you get into the discipline of posting interesting new content, at least once a month on your site and at least three times a week on your blog.

(Note: My definition of RSS technology – It enables people on the web to subscribe and automatically receive content from all the sites they are interested in. They may read, listen or view text, audio or video content immediately when it is published on the various sites. This eliminates the need to manually and separately visit all these sites to see if new content has been published.)

I am here at Rhode Island where I will be presenting today “How to Leverage The Internet for Improved Success in Your Business” to the attendees of the Million Dollar Consulting College, held by Dr. Alan Weiss of the Summit Consulting Group.

While chatting last night with several of the college participants, I came to realize that most entrepreneurs do not recognize the awesome power of progress and evolution, especially when it comes to their own web site. By that I mean, the commitment to the continuous addition of valuable content, products and services to your site and your business. I am referring to content such as:

Articles

White papers

Checklists

Surveys

Special Reports

Case Studies

Products

Services

Workshops

Collaboration and research papers or digital recordings

Audio and video recordings of your own wisdom, interviews with your clients or other experts in your field

As well as the possible implementation of:

Successful Newsletter Strategy and user registration

Blog

Online Community

So think about fast-forwarding 24 months from now. Your evolved web site now has at least 24 more articles, 4 checklists, 6 booklets, 4 Teleconferences, 2 workshops, 2 e-Books, 800 new registrations to your newsletter, and 20 new clients’ testimonials. Get the point?

What would possibly then be the impact on your business if you did that?

For evolution to take its place and be most effective, the best time to start is right now.

It has been 29 years since I moved to the U.S. and made it my home and the journey has been simply unbelievable. I’ve been fortunate to create and live a great life and as this Thanksgiving holiday weekend comes to a close, I wish to thank you all:
My dear wife Laurel, daughter Sharon, son Yoni, son-in-law Hillel and my entire family. My dear mentors, friends, colleagues, clients and of course YOU, the reader of this blog.

I would not be the person I am without all your great support.

Click here for a special holiday message from us (may take a couple of minutes to load)

Thank You!

I just spent an awesome weekend with my son traveling the Bryce Canyon area. Great bonding experience, terrific conversations, learned some new rap music and beautiful surrounding nature. Life is good!

Below are some pictures I took (click on images to enlarge):

At Snow Canyon St. George

Snow Canyon – St. George

Sunset – St. George

Bryce Canyon

Bryce Canyon

Sunset – Bryce Canyon

I’ve attended the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas and got to meet some terrific people including Marc Cuban and Matt Mullenweg. Here are some best practices ideas I would like to share with you:

1. It’s a great professional development tool for you and your company. It is a rapid publishing platform focusing on delivering wisdom and knowledge while building a community.


2. To be a successful blogger, you have to be unique, passionate about your topics and love what you do.


3. Post often and at least 3 times per week, or not at all.


4. Talk about compelling topics people are interested in.


5. Solve people problems and be the expert in your niche. Introduce a problem and solve it. Use video and audio. Take a look at this great example from Tim Carter of Ask The Builder.


6. Blogs that start with www.AskTheNAME.com where NAME represents your line of expertise, are a great idea.


7. Ask yourself, what problems is my blog solving?


8. Do not start a blog that you don’t care about or that you are not going to post on and often.


9. Comment on other blogs, which also creates a link back to you blog and drives traffic to you.


10. Refer to other blogs and topics on your own blog and writing.


11. When visitors comment on your blog, welcome them by responding with your own comment, email them and the ones that comment often consider featuring them on your blog.


12. Do not “force” people to register to enter a comment on your blog. But consider moderating and approving each comment.


13. The reason people don’t care about radio is because it is not niche focused. Podcasts on the other hand allow you to listen to content you care about and listen to it wherever and whenever you want. You can also fast-forward a Podcast, pause it anytime or simply delete which is not possible with a radio station.


14. Google loves blogs and solving problems sites.

Ideas to make money with your blog (monetize):

1. Create credibility so people contact you


2. Sell your products and services


3. Affiliate marketing


4. Direct Ad Sales


5. Find a Sponsor


6. Google AdSense

One of the successful concepts of Internet marketing is called Viral Marketing. This concept helps spread an idea very quickly among its recipients.

One example of the success of this concept is with singer Marie Digby. She video recorded several famous songs and uploaded them onto YouTube. When visitors searched for the song by the original artist they also found her videos, which quickly brought her fame and the signing to produce a new album.

Seth Godin also talks about this concept in a couple of his blog entries:

“What makes an idea viral?”

and

“Is viral marketing the same as word of mouth?”