One of the first questions many of our coaching clients have been is “what are the different ways to host my business blog?” It’s a good question, and can be a critical one depending on the purpose and planned application of your business blog. And it’s a critical choice when you consider the search engine optimization goals of your business blog.
To help you identify and understand the differences in hosting options, here’s a business blog audio and video to help explain the difference between

• Third-party hosted blogs
• Self hosted blogs in the root directory of a domain you own (the blog shows up as the main site/URL)
• Self hosted blogs in a sub-directory of a domain you own (the blog showing as a longer URL and your core web site remains as the main URL)

Please note: these audio and video clips are directed toward business owners, entrepreneurs, and others who are looking to maximize the impact of their business blog with both human visitors and search engine spiders. The topics discussed in these clips are not as relevant to personal bloggers or others who are not concerned with SEO.

VIDEO Clip: Business Blog hosting differences explained

Tech Note: You will need Windows Media Player to watch this video. That’s already loaded on Windows-based computers from the factory. If you experience issues with the videos try upgrading Windows Media Player version 9 or higher. You can download version 10 for free at: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/mp10/

Copyright © RPM Success Group Inc. 2002-2006. Other bloggers and journalists are allowed to excerpt and link to posts (as is common with bloggers,) as full credit/attribution is given to AdvancedBusinessBlogging.com and RPM Success Group Inc.

Learn how to unleash the maximum marketing power of business blogs, podcasts, and RSS (in any industry, profession, or niche) with Marketing With Business Blogs™.

John-Paul Micek is a published author and weekly columnist for the Honolulu Star Bulletin. As a Click-and-Mortar Business Coach he helps small business owners integrate offline and online marketing strategies for rapid, reliable business growth. You can reach J.P. directly via [communicationcommando@gmail.com].

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Karate Kid” you remember early in the movie where Mr. Miyagi had Daniel (played by Ralph Macchio) paint fences, wax his car, and complete a bunch of tasks seemingly unrelated to his main goal.

Daniel didn’t recognize at the time how those repetitive tasks and basic training would serve him later on in competition. It wasn’t until he reached the advanced levels of international competition where everything came together and “clicked.”

Our intent is to do some of those same things here. Now, while I’d love to have you come wax our cars and trucks here in Hawaii (and I’m sure you wouldn’t mind either ) — that’s not going to be necessary.

Establishing a foundation for successful business blogging is nowhere near that difficult. If you’ve already set up your my.yahoo.com reader and FeedDemon Aggregator you’ve got a good start.

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OK, a couple of days ago we showed you how to load RSS feeds into and use the free RSS reader integrated into my.yahoo.com. Now it’s time to kick it up a notch and show you how to setup RSS feeds in a much more robust feed reader – FeedDemon.

So why Feed Demon for this advanced RSS reader tutorial video? Well … you could start with the fact it’s my favorite.

Seriously though — FeedDemon saves time and allows you to keep up to date with your industry, competitors, and news in a fraction of the time it would normally take using traditional online and off-line methods. The fact is most of us busy business owners don’t stay as up to date as we should, and that puts us at a competitive disadvantage. By relying on RSS feeds and using FeedDemon I can scan news sources, industry updates, and check up on competitors in 15-minutes when that used to take an hour or more before!

On the technical side, FeedDemon is a surprisingly compact program that loads fast and uses hardly any system resources. Other than the name (which took a little getting used to :)) it’s awesome! And with it’s special functions, it’s the closest thing to a totally custom “dead tree” newspaper that you can get.

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You know … with new technology it’s almost impossible to grasp the full implications of it’s power, benefits, and application in your small business without experiencing it yourself.

Nowhere is that more true than with Blog and RSS technology.

In previous articles we’ve looked at what RSS is and how it works, but now we’re going to set you up to become a true consumer so you can experience the impact and convenience for yourself. I promise once you do, you’ll be hooked on the time savings.

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