Blogging

Internet Marketing and Blogging

Blogs can be a very effective and profitable internet marketing tool if used correctly. Profiting from blogs is just a matter of attracting and retaining visitors based on your content. You don’t have to be, or want to be, perceived as a salesman selling something. Here are some suggested steps to successful blogging.

1) Starting a Blog

You can start with a free blog posting service, or choose from a variety of companies that offer WordPress hosting. For example, at my hosting company, FuseSky, I can host up to 25 WordPress blogs for $9 per month. I’m going to advocate and recommend going with WordPress over the free blogging service.

WordPress is easy to install and is the most common publishing platform around today. Hosting costs are low and you don’t need to know scripts, hosting, or programming to get a WordPress site going. You can be up and running with your own domain in literally a matter of minutes. Build an audience and some buzz for your blog. Blogs are typically organized in chronological order, with your latest entry displayed first for visitors. Be sure to post new content often!

2) Niche

A niche is a targeted product, service, or topic. You should first decide on a product, service, or topic you are passionate about. You want to update your blog on a daily basis, so make sure it’s worthy of your time!

Use keyword research tools like those available from Google , or Yahoo! Buzz Index to find popular topics. Your blog will attract an audience if it is focused, has original content, and is search engine optimized. See the beginning of this post for keys to success.

3) Add Content Daily

Updating your blog daily not only builds readership and encourages return visits, it also gives your blog fresh content that makes it more appealing to search engines. Content drives successful web sites. Sites with more content are regarded more favorably by the search engines. To keep your blog traffic and retain your visitors, update your blog daily, with multiple entries if possible. Set aside a specific time on a daily basis and make it a priority to write at least 2 posts. The first one for the day is usually the hardest. Just set a goal, a specific time, and a specific amount of time you can spend. Treat your blog as a job. You would not miss work on a regular basius and be employed long. If you want your blog to be successful and be your own boss, show up on time for yourself. If you don’t show up for work on your blog, you’re communicating to your visitors that the blog is not important and you will lose them.

4) Be a Traffic Magnet

You must have traffic, either for profit if the goal of your blog is to make money, or encouragement, if your blog is a hobby. You can build traffic with:

search engine marketing
paid or free advertising
viral marketing
RSS/XML feeds
word-of-mouth

I talk a lot about search engine optimization, but some other ways to promote your blog at little or no cost are:

Use your blog’s web address in the signature of your email, forum discussions, message boards, or any other communication media.
Submit your blog’s web address to search engines and blog directories.
Submit your RSS/XML URL feed to blog ping services like Technorati, Ping-O-Matic, and Blogdigger.
Share your blog with family, friends, co-workers, associates, and business professionals when it relates.
Socialize your blog on Twitter and FaceBook.
Submit your blog entries (the good ones) to content syndicators like GoArticles.com or ArticleCity.com. Once submitted your articles can be picked up and published by others. Be sure you include your Blog URL address in the “About the Author” passage. This creates link popularity and backlinks for your blog, when someone picks up your article from the syndication then publish the article on their website the “About the Author” passage is included and your link is followed, crawled, and indexed by search engines. Search engines will credit you as an authority on the topic, correspondingly increasing your search engine ranking. The small effort of writing it takes to write a well-written article is rewarding. Make it a goal to write at least 1 full length article every week for syndication and submit your article to article syndicators.

5) Track Your Blog

How do you know if your blog has traffic? Just because no one is leaving comments doesn’t mean your blog isn’t growing. Many visitors do not leave comments but they are returning visitors.

Tracking your blog is easy. Again I’m encouraging and assuming you are using WordPress. There are lots of traffic plug ins available. Visitors, returning visitors, and unique visitors should be standard for any traffic stats option you choose.

6) Listen to Your Visitors

Your traffic tracking plug in will tell you how others are finding your blog. If your visitors are arriving from search engines, you’ll see what search terms or keywords are being used to find your blog. Changing your posts and page writing to target the most common keywords and keyword phrases will increase your visibility and your traffic. Be sure to use the keywords and keyword phrases in the titles, descriptions, excerpts, and content of your pages and posts.

7) More Than One Blog

Consider using multiple blogs as long as you’re not watering down your efforts and duplicating content. As long as your content is original on each web site, you can link to your other web sites and create your own backlinks. And you may attract different visitors to each site that you can refer to your main site. If cost is an issue for you, and again, web hosting is pretty cheap, try setting up a blog at a free blogging service like blogger.com.

But don’t divide your efforts to the point where you’re neglecting your content or losing your passion. Focus on your goal and what you can achieve to get better each day. Particularly early on, focus on one web site and do it well.

And do not duplicate, copy and paste, content between web sites. It’s tempting to think that you’re creating different articles in different publications, and to some degree you are. But the search engines are pretty clever at smelling out duplicate content and you’ll end up compromising the ranking of both sites.blog with JournalHome.com and others.

Be Short & Sweet…too

Aside from the lengthy article a week for syndication and publication your blog entries should be short & sweet. Number of posts is as important as length. Stay focused on specific keywords and keyword phrases. You can add really good content by including videos from YouTube. There are YouTube videos about everything. Find some that are specific to your niche, include them in your posts, and write a couple of hundred words about them. This particular posting method is called Rank and Pillage posting.

You do not want to make your visitors work hard when they get to your site. Visitors are searching for solutions, products, services, and entertainment. Make your content what they’re looking for and they’ll extend their stay. And they will come back. And they will tell others.

9) Digital Art

internet-marketing-world-view Along with videos, include non-advertising graphics, pictures, photos, and art in your blog entries. Graphics add to the readability and overall experience of your visitors. Again, it keeps them from having to work too hard. Don’t compromise the quality of your content with over-use or substitution of graphics. Using digital art effectively accents your content and improves the visitor’s experience. Make sure the pictures fit the content. Add a caption or other content with each graphic. And remember that the search engines don’t read and understand pictures. So use the Alt Tag to tell them what your pictures are about.

10) Make A Personal Connection

A blog is most successful when it is real. You alone can share your personal story better than anyone else. People are looking for honesty, integrity, and real experiences. Try to include personal experiences which relate to you niche. Tell your visitors about your failures as well as your successes. Let them know, “Hey I tried this and it did not work”. They will appreciate it.

Include a mission statement page in your blog. Your goal may to make money. If so, tell your visitors that on your mission statement page. But commit to your visitors that you won’t try to sell them something that does not benefit them. Let them know that when you make a recommendation, it is intended to truly benefit them first. Stay away from kaing your posts sales letters. You’ll drive people off in a hurry the minute they detect a salesman. Instead, share product reviews and personal endeavors.

You’re not writing a business publication, probably, so don’t write in a formal business style. Write with a more personal style and use first-person narratives.

11) Be Interactive

Begin interacting with your visitors. Create a regular theme such as: “Monday Money Tip” or “Picture of the Week” which entices your visitors to look forward to each week. Create a calendar and let your visitors know when you’re adding content, offerings, whatever.

Give your visitors advance notice about a product, service, or topic which you are going to review.

Encourage your visitors to comment on your posts. Make sure though, that you set your blog settings so that you have to approve comments before they appear. This will help you maintain the quality of your blog by reducing spammy comments and protecting your visitors from remakrs they may find offensive.

12) Be First, Be Fresh

Try your best to find exclusive information or new information related to your niche and be first with it. Obviously you don’t want to disclose confidential or secret information which is deemed illegal or can potentially get you into trouble. Remember that visitors are searching for products, services, solutions, and entertainment. Be controversial as long as you remain true to your values and respectful of others.

Give your best effort to dig and search the internet for exclusive information and you will possibly come up with something useful. Your visitors will appreciate this and they show their appreciation through word-of-mouth referrals. People want to share discoveries. Imagine your visitors telling friends, family, and others about information they only can find at your blog.

13) Make Money

Once your blog has gained some real momentum and your blog traffic is increasing, you may want to turn some of that traffic into profit.

Contextual advertising – like Google AdSense, is usually text links which use the content of your blog to publish targeted ads on your blog. The payout is usually based on a pay-per-click model, meaning for each click an ad receives you are paid a small percentage of the profits.

Banner Ads – such as BlogAds.com, Amazon.com, MammaMedia, are a possibility but proceed with confidence here. If you start cluttering up your site with billboards, your visitors won’t stay long. So you might be able to tell I’m not a big fan of the banner ad. It has its place, and if its in line with your content and niche, less is more.

Affiliate Marketing – This is the most popular money-making route for the blogger. You’re becoming an expert in a niche and people are respecting your opinions…and your recommendations. Remember that people are looking for products, services, and solutions. When you find these and think they are worthwhile, tell your visitors! And become an affiliate of the company that offers the product. Create hyperlinks in your posts to the vendor’s offerings that include your affiliate code. If the click results in a sale, you get a commission. There are lots of affilate offerings out there for anything you can imagine. Amazon, Clickbank, Commission Junction, and Shopzilla, are just a few places to start looking.

14) You’re an Authority But Not A Sole Authority

Your visitors appreciate what you know and they appreciate knowing you don’t know everything. When you refer your visitors to other authority sites in your niche, they appreciate it. And so do the other sites. You’re likely to get backlinks from them. Try to team up or strike up a relationship with other bloggers. This can be in your niche or not. This will create a more interesting and more powerful blog. You need encouragement and ideas. I regularly get tips from a friend of mine who shares discoveries, plug ins, strategies with me.

Following these blogging techniques should make your blogging experience much more rewarding. There is no guarantee that your blog will become popular or a household name, but the effort should at least put you one step closer. Making money online is not an overnight experience like many may think, but making money online is definitely a foreseeable possibility.

Likewise, growing popularity on the web is not an overnight experience, but through time, dedication, and persistence you will find blogging rewarding.

My hope for you is that you achieve your goals and that your blog is rewarding personally, spiritually, professionally, and financially.