Blog Marketing

  | December 2008  Posted in Business Blogging, Marketing, News   |   0 Comments   Tags: Blog Marketing, blog writing

This article is unlike most in the sense that any time we talk about Blog Marketing here at blogging for business 101 we will not be talking about ways to market your blog, but rather how your blog works as a marketing tool for your business or brand.

There are several things that you can do to market your business or brand online, but I do not believe any of them to be as productive and effective as blogging.  Not to mention the affordable price of blogging compared to some of the other options.

What are those other options?

PPC (pay-per click) – using tools like Google adwords to advertise in search engines.  Other options for PPC include Facebook they offer an advertising service as well.  More Info…

SEO (search engine optimization) – this is a process of optimizing your website to be more search engine friendly. More Info…

Social Networking – a process of plugging into online communities where people discuss different topics and share ideas and information.  More Info…

There are other methods, some not worth the time and others I just don’t want to mention, but I think that out of all the options the above three are the most important out of all the options.  However, I do believe blogging to be the power house!

Let me explain the term power house…blogging requires a consistent effort, for example, daily content.  And these daily efforts result in new opportunities for your blog or company to be exposed in new ways.  And those “opportunities” and “new types of exposure” extend from your post titles, so the things you write about.

You can only effectively optimize each page of your website for 1-2 keywords max.  i.e. Lets say you have a 5 page website, you can use a total of 10 keywords on your website.  2 per page and each page is going to need different keywords.  And 10 is not bad!  But lets say you have 100 blog post (articles) that’s at lest 200 keywords, if you hold to the two a page.  And ideally because you are writing and article that should have more then 400 words, its likely that you could optimize that page for more then 2 keywords.  i.e. Lets say you are writing a post about business relationships, you could use all or some of these key terms;

• business communication
• business relationship (s)
• managing business relationships
• business relationship management
• developing relationships

And on top of these words could be hundreds more if you narrowed down your topic to something more specific like, building business relationships with a blog.

Now the trick to making the multiple keyword strategy work for you is to know how to properly place your keywords.  Lets use the list and topic previously picked.  The blog title is Business relationships.  You main keywords should now be ‘business relationships’ and that has become your <title> & <H1> tag which search engines are going to see first and that will tell them what your post is about.  Now that ‘business blogging’ is your main keywords, lets branch off from there…

Note:  You don’t ever want to force any keywords into your post, it will read poorly and search engines could catch it.

You want your first 3-4 sentences (or the first paragraph) to be chalked full of your keywords (naturally).  For example using the above keywords you could start off like this;

Business relationships, are they a good thing or a bad thing and how do we manage those business relationships?  There seems to be a thin line that is constantly moving (depending on where you work) that defines the type of business relationships you can have.  When you go to work somewhere, do you bother to develop relationships, or just remain quiet and do your work?  Maybe the focus of business relationships should be on your clients and customers, developing relationships of trust with those you do business with.

So you can plainly see that nothing in that paragraph is forced, but our keywords are mentioned at lest 6 different times.  Now as you continue to develop the article you will want to strategically use your keywords all the way through.  Maybe its once ever other paragraph it really does not matter as long as you continue to use them.

Note: Your blog articles are only as affective as the results they produce.  You have to ask yourself, what do I want my readers to do now?

You need a call to action…What is going to make your readers read this whole article, or to read the next one?  If you want them to subscribe to your feed, you will need to give them a reason too.   A great way to get reader interaction is to put a poll into your post.  Ask a question that can be answered in the comments section.  I think that it is beneficial to have two action calls in your post.  One above the fold, the fold being everything that you cant see above the point where the screen ends.  To continue with our example, after the first paragraph I could insert a poll such as;

[poll id="16"]

The reader will answer the question because it is easy, and it might even keep them reading to find out if they are wrong or right.

Another favorite tool of mine is using images and videos in my blog post.  With videos, you will find people will look at the video before they even start to read the blog post.  And images, they draw attention to the post.  You can also use the alt= tag & title= tag in the image code as a search engine tactic to place your keywords in additional sections of your post.

Once your reader is done with one post, you need to consider how you can get them to read another post.  It’s simple, because we (humans) are lazy don’t expect them to go looking for more content on their own, some might, but don’t risk it.  Give them a list of related post at the end of your articles or throughout the article in strategic places, maybe using your keywords as anchor text.

For example, we are writing a post titled business relationships, and I happen to have another post titled building business relationships with a blog, so I am going to mention that post in my article and make those keywords a link, building business relationships with a blog…

Note: When inputting a link into the text of your article, it is wise to set that link to open in a new tab or window. (click the link above for an example) That way the reader is not distracted from the article they are currently reading.  If you are providing a list of articles at the end, again their is a benefit to setting the links to open in their own window.

The final steps to making your new article a success, include promotion, and conversation.  Promotion is easy, if you have other blogs, or a social network account like Facebook, tweeter or any of the others, be sure to post links or the whole article in different locations to promote it to audiences that might not see it otherwise.  The other option is to add your articles to your favorite article directories.

Once the conversation gets going, be sure to stay in the mix, readers may ask questions or leave a comment that needs addressing, either way they want to know that you are interested and listening to what they have to say.  Answer their questions, or respond to their comments by leaving a comment of your own.

Summary

Use a blog as a personal marketing tool.  Write keyword rich content, but write your content for your readers and not the search engines.  Having repeat visitors and RSS subscriptions is more important to the longevity of your blog then how well the robots can read your blog.

Using the techniques above will allow your blog to benefit from both the bots and the humans.

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