What is it that determines whether a blog design is good or bad, friendly or unfriendly? We all have our own opinions and no one will ever completely agree on every factor. When it comes to the basics, the following seven factors effect everyones views on a blog's design. Appearance The first thing that any visitors sees is the overall appearance of a blog. The design of the blog should complement the blog's content, not overpower it.

If your business 'professional' then you will know all about plans: business plans, marketing plans, cash flow plans )also called budgets but still plans(, so do you also have a social marketing plan? Most website owners do not! They do not see the purpose of planning their social marketing campaigns, after all, it's social and that is ad-hoc. Well it is isn't it? The answer is no, it is not ad-hoc. Quite the opposite.

If you have trouble developing internal links on your blog then you can use of many different blog plugins to do the job for you. One of the better plugins is the WordPress Related Posts plugin . This plugin adds a short list of older posts to the end of your current post. This is achieved by matching tags. Each post in the list is linked to the posts individual URL. A second plugin that is a little difficult to follow at first is the Cross-Link Plugin for WordPress .

Creating a buzz with press releases is great for your business, however, one of the things that you are going to discover quickly is that it's a lot easier to create a buzz when you are sure that you've done everything you can to get the word out. Simply put, when you want to be sure that you are creating a buzz, you need to make an effort to make it easy for members of the media, online writers and even your customers to find your press release. In part, therefore,

If you're a MSN adCenter user then you'll need to know that there is scheduled maintenance on June 23 and June 28. The June 23 update will consist of the Sandbox and maintenance is scheduled for 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. It looks like MSN will be upgrading the system and the adCenter blog warns that it could affect some API customers so be aware. On June 28, MSN will be upgrading its production service from 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. Both update times are Pacific Standard.

Over time, you will come across new social sites that appeal to you and you will start to use them more than some of the others, particularly if you feel you have gained as much as you are ever going to gain from them. This can be particularly true of bloggers who hit the 9-12 month period in their blogging life. Website owners can also find themselves in this position. Most people, when they first start using social sites, abuse them more than use them.

If you are a lazy blogger, or simply don't have time each day to write a full post, this handy little tip may help to at least keep your blog looking fresh with new content every day. You need a del.icio.us account first. Once you have your account, as you visit other blogs bookmark their posts that you find interesting each day. Once you have set up your auto post below, del.icio.us will create a post on blog from each days saved bookmarks.

When it comes to press release writing, while there are a number of different "general" guidelines that will help you to get the word out to a wide audience, there's going to come a time when you discover that press releases are definitely not one size fits all. There may come a time when you realize that it's better to write multiple press releases than to stick with just one.

If you see a sudden spike in clicks or impressions on your pay per click ads, it could mean that your latest campaign is working or it could mean that you are are experiencing click fraud. What should you do? Well, first, try to find out why you are seeing a spike in click. The Yahoo!

YouTube is now experimenting with videos longer than 10 minutes )current limit( and extending the storage capacity to 1GB - this equates to around 80 minutes of standard definition video. It's limited to YouTube's "content partners" at present but has the potential big to explode into far greater things.

In the blogging world there are millions of bloggers, yet the majority of them never bother to stop and leave a comment on any of the blogs they visit.  If most bloggers new the true power of comments I am sure they would leave more. There is a real art to leaving to comments which, when mastered, provide readers with an insight to your views and your writing style. The best approach is to treat your comments like mini posts. Follow the same 'rules' for writing a post.

When you are going to be writing press releases to market your business - both online and off - you are going to need to be sure that you're writing press releases that get noticed. Here are some tips for making your press release writing successful: Limit your press releases to newsworthy events. Simply put, if it's not something the media would want to cover, the media isn't going to pay attention to your press release. Use the right format for your press release.

If you use Google AdWords for your PPC campaign you'll want to make sure that your landing page load time is fast. Ever since the days of old, Google has valued fast load times for web pages. But only recently have they started analyzing load times for PPC landing pages. In March, they announced that landing page load time would be used to compute PPC Quality Scores. In May, the information was made available on the Keyword Analysis page. But starting yesterday,

Once upon a time, press release distribution was simply a matter of getting your press release to the local media. You'd print off a few copies of your press release and either get them in the mail to your local newspaper or you'd drop them by the offices to get the word out. These days, however, press release distribution is something that needs to take place on the web. For the most part,

One of the interesting aspects of social marketing and social bookmarking is that each of the different social bookmarking sites has a particular angle. If you take Digg and Fark as two completely different sites, one, Fark, is more likely to deliver traffic if your headline is catchy and somewhat humorous. Digg on the other hand is more likely to deliver traffic if the headline is more technical.

Google AdWords has a scheduled update planned for Saturday, June 21, 2008 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. That means you )and we( won't be able to log into accounts during that time. While we'd love to be able to take care of any account management issues you want taken care of we simply won't be able to take care of them on Saturday so if you do have something you'd like to get done between now and then, I suggest you let us know. Saturday will be out of the question.

Blog marketing starts right from day one when you decide on your blogs name. There are many blogs that have a 'name' that is different to their domain name. It is an interesting concept, but one that can lead to many problems. If your blogs domain name is xyz.com and you name your blog ABC, there is the danger that first, someone will come along and register ABC or a derivation, or that ABC is already taken and you are blogging under someone else's domain name.

When you are looking into using press release writing as a tool for attracting visitors to your website, customers to your products, attendees to your events or clients to your services, you're going to find that there are some ways in which press release writing is extremely beneficial to you and some ways in which it can be a little bit frustrating. Most of the time, however,

The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog recently told its readers not to shoot for the No. 1 ad spot in every instance. I can't think of any better advice for a search engine pay per click blog to give. In other words, the could just have well said, "We love your money, but not so much as to see you throw it down the PPC drain and never get it back." The search engines have an incentive for seeing you be successful.

Curiosity and suspense have long been a tool of choice by advertising and marketing gurus in the bricks and mortar world and that philosophy is many now be creeping into the online marketing and social marketing fields. It is not a bad ploy when it works and can lead to a strong viral marketing campaign. An article on Small Business Newz titled Curiosity Got the Customer describes an offline - online curiosity campaign that went viral in a big way.