With the explosion of social networking sites such as Facebook and the millions of people actively participating, small businesses and marketing firms are catching wind that they can provoke activity and viral marketing through giving away highly desirable gadgets such as I-pads, for simply… spreading the word through contests.  According to Contest Burner owner Bill McIntosh, contests have been around since the Roman Olympic years and even fortune 500 companies such as Pepsi or McDonalds use contests to provoke engagement in their products.  Bill explains how contests have exploded recently through social networking and it’s only going to get bigger.

Bill McIntosh went on to express, “Everyone remembers looking under the bottle cap of their soda to see what they won… or the Monopoly game at McDonalds.  It’s been around for generations… but now it’s a viable way to spread a marketing message virally through social marketing contests that give away valuable prizes everyone wants!”

“In today’s day and age, where advertising messages hit us from every angle conceivable, running social contests is quite the change of pace to the knock-them-over-the-head sales attempts we’ve grown used to” says Mr. McIntosh.

Furthermore, because of the user-friendly applications available online, it makes it more accessible than ever to manage and run a contest.  Applications such as Contest Burner or others, allow any small business or marketing firm the ability to set up and run contests quickly.

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The easy part when it comes to blogging is finding information about the product or service that you are advertising or suggesting to your readers. You may have the greatest website on the planet and you are selling an item that makes the light bulb look like the stone wheel. The problem begins to arise when you begin writing your blog posts about these items. You can find information on the internet about what it is you are selling but you cannot take it word for word and place it in your blog. That is called plagiarism and it can land you in serious hot water.

The problem facing today’s article writers and bloggers is content. Many people do not even take the time to rewrite product descriptions or change articles to where the content is unique. They then submit these blurbs or blog posts to article directories so they can get back links to their webpage. The huge problem is that most of the popular directories have a plagiarism checker and very, very strict rules about having 100% unique content. If your article is a mish mash of stolen wording many of these directories will reject you due to duplicate content or plagiarism. That looks incredibly bad on you. It is even worse if the original authors find out.

The key is writing, or having someone else write, 100% unique content. You need to write your blog or blurb to where it is free from plagiarism. That means not lifting content from different places and just changing one word. You need to look at the material, summarize it in your mind and then write something new from the information you have gleamed. Yes, the other page helped inspire you and gave you information but the blog you write is all your own. You can then you a customized service that puts your blogs out there and gives you back links to your own webpage. You usually have to write a 100 word blurb to go with it but that is child’s play for you once you have writing the actual blogs down to a science.

It just cannot be stressed enough that unique content is the true seller on the Internet. You want your website and blog to stand out from the crowd. You do not want to be repeating the same information that you find on article directories. If you can convey the information in a new way you will engage readers and get their attention. And that is how you make money in this day and age. You having 100% unique content is the actual backbone of your entire infrastructure. The only problem is, creating unique content is time consuming and hard work. Not to mention, promoting your blog, getting backlinks and traffic also required a lot of heavy lifting. Well, not necessarily.

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Sometimes the easiest way to blog is not always the best place to find a home for your blog. Take for example blogging on a social network site such as Facebook. While it is a great place to place a link to a blog on another site, it is not great for blogging itself. And this is something you absolutely must take into account. There is a way to blog and a way not to blog. There is a time to blog and a time not to blog. There is a place to blog and places where blogging is not going to be as beneficial to you as another place may be. So how do you know how, when and where?

So why is Facebook not a great place to blog? For starters the website is not set up per se for blogging. You can add “notes” but you have to tag each of your friends and followers if they are going to be notified. And then it shows up on their page which may not go over so well if being inundated with “notes” is not their preference. You could wind up losing followers. That means you are not going to be making any money. And you will not make money from your blog alone on Facebook. You will have to put links to your website or to another blogging webpage if you want to utilize ads and banner ads for affiliate programs.

Establishing the fact that social networking sites such as Facebook are out, leaves you with places such as WordPress or even Blogspot.com. There are some ups and downs for each site but they do, at least, allow the use of ads and promoting affiliate programs. You just have to get traffic to the site. That leaves you with the proper time to blog once you figure out where. Try not to post late night blogs because many people will miss out on new blogs if you are consistently posting at odd hours. Try posting at the same time each day or every couple of days. You may not want to even blog every single day for fear of inundating your followers with too much information or repeated information. Have a set number of blogs for the week and stick with that schedule.

All that being said, there is a specific formula (or blueprint) for when to blog, how frequently, and how to get links to your original page and traffic to your individual blog posts. However, all this usually takes a lot of work. Not many people want to devote that kind of time to maintaining their blog on a daily basis. But there is a solution. A quick visit to Blog Blueprint System may be the perfect solution to your needs. You can cut down on your work load significantly by using something like Blog Blueprint. Blog Blueprint will help you boost your blog rankings (and traffic) immensely. Best of all, the entire Blog Blueprint tools and system is heavily based on ‘smart’ automation. What is ‘smart’ automation you ask? Get all the details right here: Blog Blueprint System

photo credit: Don Fulano

The mere fact of finding a making money opportunity online is not sufficient enough to earn money fast or have a profitable marketing business from home. We have to find out how to make this idea work out for us, how it can make us money.

The magic power of internet can bring you financial freedom and I suppose if you are fed up of your 9-5 job then turning toward internet can be the best choice you would ever make to finally free yourself and do the things that you always dreamt of doing.

But let’s stop dreaming as there are some fundamental things that are required even before you think of becoming rich. There is no such thing as get rich quick. No matter what background you are coming from you need to know something about internet. You need to follow courses to master the various techniques required to launch a profitable online business.

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