What do you know, if anything, about blogging?

Blogging could be one of the most valuable marketing tools ever invented. So why aren't more business owners doing it?

Dear Martial Arts School Owner,

Blogging could be the most valuable business marketing tool ever invented (check out what Seth Godin and Tom Peters say about it in this 1 minute 38 second video)

But, if it's so darn valuable, why aren't more business people doing it and why is it generally considered such a huge waste of time?

The answer to these questions is simple:

Most business people find the technology
side of blogging much too complicated.

I know, I was one of them. I tried to blog -- I really did -- but the complications of blogging technology kept getting in my way.

Sure, I could have used Blogger, Squarespace, Typepad, or one of the other commercial services but I knew that anyone who was serious about blogging for business used WordPress, installed on their own Internet servers.

There are a bunch of reasons for this but the most significant can be summed up in one word -- plugins, the technology add-ons that make blogging so powerful.

See, the commercial blogging services are closed systems -- designed for the masses -- so their flexibility is limited.

In contrast, WordPress has thousands of plugins (with more being developed every day) that can extend its functionality and performance dramatically.

In fact, at the WordPress Plugin Directory it says that the availabile plugins "can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine."

So, that was my dilemma.

If I was going to spend time blogging for the rest of my career (which has become almost a requirement for local business owners), I wanted things set up correctly from the get-go so I would get the maximum marketing value from my efforts.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find anyone to tell me how to do this.

Sure, there are Internet gurus who charge thousands of dollars to share what they know about blogging but they don't get into the nitty gritty details of blog technology. They leave that up to their technology guys -- who only work for the big players to whom they charge a small fortune.

In trying to find someone to help me, one thing became extremely clear -- using WordPress -- with the right set of plugins -- was the ONLY choice.

In fact, I had one Internet guru tell me that commercial systems (e.g., Blogger) had such compromises that he couldn't recommend spending time blogging if that's what was going to be used. The marketing results just wouldn't be worth it.

Multimedia Issues

I did finally get a WordPress blog set up (however, I know now that it wasn't done well) but then I ran into another problem.

Multimedia (rather than just text) is the future of the Internet and I couldn't figure out how to do all of the stuff necessary to embed video and audio into my blog (e.g., record it, convert it, upload it, etc.).

But, I knew that my blog entries absolutely needed to use all forms of media -- otherwise, they'd just consist of dry text, and how interesting is that?

The other -- potentially more significant -- challenge with multimedia is the storage and bandwidth it requires and I knew it wouldn't be long before I swamped the servers on which my blog resided.

These multimedia issues were so significant I just assumed someone had figured out a solution -- but it didn't take me long to realize I was dead wrong.

So, as much as I knew that blogging was extremely important to any local business owner, I concluded that ...

...the technology side of blogging
was just too complicated.

So, I decided to do something about it and, after about a year of research and development, I created a new blogging service to solve all of the problems I had identified -- plus do a lot more.

When you become a subscriber, here is what you get:

• A WordPress blog installed on our servers

• Installation of the smartest and most powerful plugins (including some proprietary ones of our own) to ensure you get the maximum marketing value from your blogging efforts (e.g., maximum Internet distribution of your posts, optimal search engine optimization, cool social networking features).

• Customized design so your blog has all of the correct functionality for optimal blogging and looks great.

• Synchronization of your WordPress blog with whatever social networking accounts you may have (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn).

• A single web page where submitting blog posts of any media type (video, audio, text/image) is an absolute no-brainer. You can even post a blog entry from your telephone!

In other words, you get a "souped-up blog" that is a monster marketing tool and dead simple use.

To find out about our low pricing, our unconditional guarantee, and the simple steps to get our Souped-Up Blog working for you, just click on the link below.

Committed to your school's growth,

Al Oelschlaeger