You see, this is one of the things that is so powerful with blogging: even us "little guys," without big PR or marketing budgets, can get known on the Web.

Congratulations, Denise Wakeman for your great blog marketing over at Next Level Biz Tips blog!

Our own Denise Wakeman, my Blog Squad partner, and her Biz Tips Blog has been ranked #8 in influential authority for "blog marketing." This puts her ahead of Fast Company, Marketing Sherpa, and other big number blogs! The study was done by Onalytica, a UK company, who "identifies, measures and monitors who has influence on issues, markets and brands."

Denise says, "What an honor to be included with the likes of Seth Godin, Micropersuasion and Wired News!  An article in WebProNews covers the story well (they come in at #9, right below Next Level Biz Tips!).  The study, done by Onalytica measures the influence and popularity — I’m not very popular 🙁  — and you can read about it on their blog."

Denise is a blogging wiz: she also writes for Your Project Partner at AllBusiness.com, and they come in #15 in this study.

This study brings out two important facts about blogging:

1. You don’t have to have large numbers of readers to have influence
2. Your influence is increased the more you link to important resources for your readers

Denise and I have always stressed the importance of researching other resources in your field and linking to them in your blog posts. If you are writing 2-3 times a week on your blog (our recommendation for most biz blogs), then you should be doing blog research the other days of the week, and providing resources for your readers.

That’s what makes you an "influential authority." Now go out at do some blog search!

If you want to stay atop what’s good, bad, ugly, useful, etc. with your email marketing and ezines, I highly recommend Christopher Knight’s Ezine-Tips over at EmailUniverse.com. In fact, you can learn a lot about how to do an ezine from their sites.

Here’s Christopher’s predictions for 2006 for Ezine Trends:

Executive Summary: Many email service providers have been spewing their predictions for 2006 and I think I’ve read them all. Some include bunk that could have been predictions in 2004 or 2005, but you quickly come to the realization that the bulk majority of the market moves about 1-2 years behind the major ezine publishing trends. Yes, there are still some email publishers who think their ezine is used purely for a sales acquisition channel instead of the obvious relationship channel it can be.

What Are Your Ezine Publishing New Years Resolutions?

Me? I don’t like to make resolutions, but I do like to contemplate new intentions at the start of each new year…and I’ve picked Jamaica next week to do my contemplating ;-).

I hope you enjoy today’s new Ezine-Tips issue and you have my committment to help guide/coach you in 2006 to make this your best ezine publishing year ever in whatever metric that means to you.

Let’s get on with today’s new article: to read more, click here.

The I AM Foundation just got a new blog, www.millionbooksforkids.com. Denise and I created the blog for our favorite charity, an organization that is raising a million dollars to gift books and music to needy children world-wide.

You can read about it here, by downloading the Press Release:

Download i_am_foundation_press_release.doc

This is my first experience with what is called cause marketing. I highly recommend you adopt a favorite charity for your business, and then donate money, or time, or both whenever you can. It is truly a great way to feel good, and to contribute something of value.

It is really win-win-win. The charity wins, the recipients of the charity wins, and you as a business win, because people are more likely to use your services if they also know that you donate a portion to a worthy cause.

For the I AM Foundation blog, we wanted Steve Viglione, president and founder, and his staff to be able to report out whenever they made a contribution to children somewhere in the world. They will soon leave for Sri Lanka to donate 25,000 book to children affected by the Tsunami. Now they will be able to blog from there and upload pictures onto their blog, instead of having to wait to get back and use their web designer.

Visit The I AM Foundation blog to see where in the world they are doing good deeds.

Blog Squad Interviewed by The Coaching Insider

1ShoppingCart.com Features The Blog Squad

Wow!  The Blog Squad strikes again.  Shop Talk, the online newsletter for 1ShoppingCart and their many private label systems, features us and the Build a Better Blog ebook in their November newsletter’s Merchant Spotlight.

This past Wednesday we interviewed Martin Wales, VP at 1ShoppingCart about the powerful automated shopping cart/marketing system.  Then he turns around and features us in their newsletter. Very cool.  Thanks, Martin! 

P.S.  Check out Martin’s other business, Customer Catcher and sign up for his marketing tips.  He’s good.

P.S.S. Need to automate your systems? Use my affiliate link to try out the best shopping cart system around. Thanks!