With all the great blogs out there, you may find yourself with an abundance of competition in your market, and you need to know how to make your blog stand out from all the rest. Danny Brown at For Bloggers by Bloggers says,
While the Internet and social media has made business transactions easier, we still prefer face-to-face contact. It helps build trust between partners we find out more about each other, and we can see what we’re buying – your blog can do the same.
Whether you choose to hire someone to write your blog for you, or use software to create the best one that you can, blog internet marketing is a great tool to help your business make the money that you know it is capable of. Here are a few tips and tricks to help you gain the readership you need to make your blog a success.
The Basics
Contents
You will want to choose a domain name that will center your blog on your brand. Using your own name, or business name is a great way to keep it unique, and something that your readers will remember. If you come across a host that will not allow you to use your own domain name, it might be best to look elsewhere.
Use a reliable platform such as WordPress, but make sure in advance that the host will allow you to use it. WordPress is quite popular, user friendly, and has an array of plugins and templates to help you customize your blog in the manner you see fit.
Also make sure that you do your research on keywords. There are many tools online to get started looking for keywords to frame your blog around. You can even buy keyword tools that will give you better information. Optimize your blog for the search engines. Meta tags, descriptions, pinging are all great ways to optimize your site.
One other idea is to join a site for blog advice, as those are the ultimate resource for building a respected blog. If you are looking for a model to build your blog from, one of those sites would be a great place to start.
Frequency
So how often should you blog? Jodee Jernigan at The Whole Brain Group offers this tip;
Aim for at least one new blog post a week. 2 or 3 posts per week are even better. Consistency is key – don’t start a blog and abandon it. Keep feeding the new content to help your search engine ranking.
Most experts recommend blogging up to 4 or 5 times a week since this can help drive traffic to your blog as long as you have quality content relevant to its main topic. Work with other blog writers to get backlinks to your site, and you should be quick to give compliments to anyone that posts an article of yours. Don’t be afraid to mention names of other bloggers when you post and even post other articles or have guest writers if it’s appropriate.
Profits
Greg Sterling, an Internet and media analyst for market research firm The Kelsey Group, offers this advice,
Depending on your business, starting a blog could be a low-cost method of boosting your profile with potential customers and the media and even helping your Web site’s ranking in “organic” search results.
Many online entrepreneurs are branching out into the world of internet marketing as a low cost means of maximizing profits. The draw of global reach, faster responses from visitors, cost effective measures of online marketing and widespread space on the web and most of all availability of broad range of marketing techniques are hard for advertisers to pass up. But it can be overwhelming for advertisers to choose the right path for earning profits with all the limitless opportunities out there today.
Keeping Up With the Latest Trends
No matter how a great idea is produced, no matter how good the product may be, its benefits or effectiveness is nothing when you don’t have a group or people, a team or an ally to work with to attract potential customers, and blogs are one of the most powerful allies you will have.
The best option is always to choose the most popular and up to date method of conveying messages to your target market, and you should do a little research on how other business are communicating with their audience, and how effective it is for them. The reason blogging is so trendy right now is because it allows writers free reign to use any format, pattern and type and size of files to communicate with any group of people on the web. It’s little wonder then why blog marketing is quickly becoming one of the most profitable way to get results.
Interviews
One great tip for maximizing readers for your blog is to set up interview sessions with the section of your audience that is interested in blogging. When you do this, you can post the interviews on your site, giving you even better results. In order for this to be effective, however, you will need to ensure that the interviews you are conducting actually pertain to the products or market you are working in. One example would be if you are selling products for pets, you would only want to interview people that are either interested in purchasing pet products, or those people that sell them.
Keep It Up-to-Date
Lastly, another great idea is to post breaking news, hot buzzes, and the most up to date information about your products and services to your blog. Most people like to search the internet for breaking news, and if it is offered on your blog, your readers will be enticed to read the news, as well as any new product information. Becoming a reliable source for this knowledge can be a great marketing strategy for increasing your readership and traffic. And people will mark your blog as a go-to site for many things they like to read about.