If you’ve ever struggled to publish a page on the Web, for example, a sales or landing page, here’s how you can use your easy WordPress blogging platform to avoid the hassles. I’ve interviewed Suzanne Bird-Harris.

Here’s how you can find out more about how to Create Great Sales Pages Using WordPress. Free audio, PDF transcript and slides available.

I hosted a teleseminar this past month and the recording is now available:

The Ultimate Traffic Formula with Michael Martine of Remarkablogger

Access to handouts, worksheets, action steps and MP3 audio file.

Information and registration here: Get More Blog Traffic $49.00

If you’re not getting good results from your online marketing, don’t miss this workshop.

There are three bonus ebooks included. You get access, for free, to Time-Saving Tips for Smart Blogging, a $39 value audio program + 23 pages of worksheets on best blogging practices.

Plus, How to Start a Business Blog and Get Them in the Door: Using Blogs, Email and Social Media for Retailers. All in all, this is a comprehensive program for any professional who wants to use the Internet to get found, get known, and get clients.

There’s nothing worse than spending time and energy writing on your blog and not reaching the very people who need your help, the ones who have the problems you solve.

I take that back, there is one thing worse, and that’s NOT to write your message at all. At least when you publish on a blog, you put it out there on the world-wide bulletin board. Eventually someone will see it, and if you do a few things right, many will see it.

In my ongoing traffic survey, www.surveymonkey.com/s/getmoreblogtraffic, more than 80% respond that they don’t have enough readers to their blog, and more than half report they’re not sure how to attract their ideal clients.

If you haven’t taken the survey yet, please do so now. I’d like to find out what your challenges are with driving traffic to your blog.

If you’re going to use a business blog to drive sales and grow business, you’ve got to tackle the traffic problem. But don’t worry, you don’t have to hire an SEO expert and spend a lot of money. You don’t have to be a techie-geek type either.

A business blog is the best darn marketing tool on the planet, but only if you use it right. I found out the long, slow hard way. I fell into blogging backwards. I randomly wrote about my favorite topics without any training about keywords, search engines, tags, etc.

I was lucky because almost immediately people began to find me, even though I’d been working online for five years already. Within a year, my list had tripled and revenues had doubled, and it has continued to grow steadily ever since. I attribute all my business growth to blogging.

When I started blogging in 2004, Facebook had barely started, Twitter didn’t exist and nobody was using LinkedIn. All that’s changed and now social media has a major impact on the way visitors find you on the Web.

Writing optimized, compelling, keyword-rich content on a blog is the quickest, least expensive, easiest way to grow sales and build your business.

Don’t do like I did. Don’t rely on random luck. If you’re going to spend time and energy blogging, do it right, do it smart. It’s not rocket science, and you’re probably not simplifying your traffic-driving tasks the way you could.

Here’s a suggestion: Take the survey and let me know what your questions and challenges are. If you don’t want to do that, leave me a comment here on this blog.

The other thing you could do (just saying) is sign up for the Get More Blog Traffic workshop I’m doing with Michael Martine May 12, 2010. There’s a fee, but what you learn could make the difference between blog success and blog oblivion. Find out more here: Get More Blog Traffic.

I know many successful consultants who don’t have much time to take care of their online marketing presence. I understand. Even if you’re publishing short blog posts, it takes time to read up, write, and hit the ‘publish now’ button.

Surfing to find information that’s relevant in your niche can lead to getting drowned in a tsunami.

Websites and blogs: You can’t live with ‘em, or without ‘em. No matter how well you’re doing in terms of keeping your pipeline of clients full, you’ve got to look good on the Web. By looking good, I mean, you’ve got to have a full body of content that reflects your intelligence and your professional credibility.

To make things more complicated, along comes Social Media, places like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. What do you need to know about using these sites, and what can you afford to ignore?

Then there’s video, YouTube, and other places to publish content on the Web (article directories, ebooks, podcasts…). Ay, caramba…

To help you sort through the essentials of using the Web to get clients, I’ve created an online learning program called Content Marketing for Online Profits. You can gain access by registering here. I suggest you read it, because it will cut short the learning curve and give you the essentials of what your online content marketing strategy should be, especially if you’re a coach or other service consultant working to provide services to organizations or individuals.

Here’s my video clip I put together in about 30 minutes using a Logitech Web cam and uploading it to YouTube. Okay, it’s a very amateur clip, but it gets the job done. I wanted to do a better job of polishing it up, but you know how that goes, ran out of time, etc…

You may have heard that Content Marketing is the “way to go” when it comes to marketing your professional services on the Web. But what does that really mean?

And, once you publish a website or a blog with plenty of content pages, or an e-newsletter, how does that content work to get you and your business found on the Web, get leads, and convert readers to clients?

If you’re a busy executive coach, someone providing  leadership training and development, you’ll need to learn a few things about online marketing, just to keep in the game. And the Internet “game” changes so quickly, how do you know what to do and what to ignore, with all the new social media sites and online tools?

I hope to  cut short the Web marketing learning curve with this online ebook, Content Marketing for Online Profits. All you need to do to get access to this important information is to register here. It’s completely free.

Included in the final chapter is a Content Marketing Survey about content marketing and blogging, that I know you’ll find helpful, since you’ll be given a personalized assessment of your own content marketing needs.

Go ahead and register to access this online ebook, then tell me what you think. I’d love to get your feedback.

Did you know that with a few good tips, you could be getting good blog marketing results in under 20 minutes a day? It’s true.

Joan Stewart, aka The Publicity Hound, is sharing her tips and interviewing me, The Blog Squad, about Time-Saving Tips for Smart Blogging

Be smart. Turn your blog into the best darn marketing tool on the planet.

When: January 20, 2010 at 4 p.m. ET

What: Smart Blogging teleseminar

How: Sign up here: http://snipurl.com/smartblogging

Where: On the phone, audio recording available

Who: Patsi Krakoff, The Blog Squad, and Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound

Small fee involved, big handouts, recording, big value in saved time, money and energy!

Blogs are the hottest thing going these days when it comes to marketing on the Internet. A blog is a way of delivering your messages and articles to clients. A blog is a type of website, more personal, easy to create and far less expensive than traditional web sites.

Just when you thought you were mastering the tasks of websites updating, and creating an email newsletter, along comes blogging, and you have to ask yourself:

•    Do I really need a blog?
•    Isn’t an email ezine or newsletter doing the same thing?
•    Should I do both?
•    Are these two marketing tools going to eat up all my time, energy and money?
•    What’s the best way to spend my resources to get clients and results from my marketing efforts?

Here are ten reasons why you should pay attention to the blogging revolution and do both and ezine and a blog.

1.    Because a blog is web based, it is published instantaneously every time you post. This allows you to be spontaneous with issues that affect your readers/clients.

2.    Because blog posts are spontaneous, they tend to be more informal, friendly, and conversational. Blog posts show your personality. Your readers/clients need to know who you are before they will invest in your services. Providing both an ezine and a blog allows your readers to get to know you better.

3.    You can set up a subscription form on your blog and your subscribers will get a notice in their inboxes each time you post something new. This is a great way around the spam filter problem which blocks so many ezines and legitimate messages.

4.    Blogs link to other blogs and people, which help you create a viral marketing system, increasing your exposure to search engines. Search engines love blogs because they are text based and keyword rich.

5.    You have instant access to all your published articles on your blog. A blog automatically creates archives of previous posts. You see them in a side-bar for easy access. You put them into categories for easy finding. One clever person we know spent a day posting all her ezine articles to her blog, so that it would appear she has been blogging for a much longer time. Also, readers of her blog may not have had the opportunity to read all of her other ezine articles.

6.    You can use your blog to become a trusted expert in your field by filtering content on the web for your subscribers. Readers don’t have time to surf and to collect information, but you can do it for them, thereby establishing yourself as a good resource.

7.    You can set up links for ads, products, and for your affiliate programs in the blog side columns so you don’t have to include them in the body of your article. In an ezine, you have to be careful about promotional stuff in the article because it annoys people and causes them to unsubscribe. A blog is a non-intrusive way to do this, and an ezine can link to the blog where more information can be found.

8.    Readers can comment on your blog postings, which creates rapport and with readers. You can ask questions, stimulate responses by being controversial, and survey readers. It is a great way to keep your finger on the pulse of what readers want.

9.    You don’t have to mess with a web site, or pay a web designer to update your web site every time you have a new article or teleclass, or program or product. Blogs are user-friendly, and with a few instructions or tutorials, you can learn to use it yourself. It is less expensive than setting up your ezine in HTML.

10.     Bottom line is this: using a blog and an ezine will help attract more visitors to your website, who become subscribers and who may eventually become clients.

Think of the World Wide Web as a big fishing pond. The more fishing lines in the pond, the more fish you are going to catch.

You have a web site, it is static like an online brochure.

You have an ezine, which you grow through subscription links everywhere.

And now, you should have a blog, where you can attract more readers to get to know you, where they can interact with you, and maybe take your bait!

Happy fishing!