Use of Blogs for Marketing

There has been a lot of buzz around blogs lately and for good reason. Weblogs, or blogs for short, are changing the way people market themselves and their businesses.
If you aren’t familiar with this, the concept is relatively easy to grasp. They first began as a shared online journal. A blogger posted diary-like entries about his or her daily life for others to read.

Recently though, this has evolved into a new form of business writing and advertising. Many business owners now use them to promote their goods and services. Others use them to promote their website and get higher search engine rankings. Some politicians even use blogs to reach voters.

The typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media that is somehow related to its topic. Though most blogs focus on textual content, a blogger may include videos, pictures, and even audio in a posts. A blog comprised of videos is called a vlog and a blog that uses pictures is called a photoblog.

The Benefits of Blogging

By adding blogs to their marketing campaigns, business owners are able to market their product with virtually no out of pocket expense. In some cases, bloggers may even be able to make large sums of money. For example, a someone who employs the Google Adsense program can make money from blog readers. The more readers they have, the more money can be made from the Google ad.

A blogger can also be a guide for shoppers who are looking for specific products and services. This makes blogging an excellent tool for retailers or affiliate marketers. Blogs can also be a source of valuable information and niche industry news.

Because there are virtually limitless possibilities provided by blogging, it is easy to see why blogs have begun to have a significant impact on mainstream marketing practices. Many companies have noticed this and have chosen to hire someone to write and post up to date information for customers, shareholders, and employees.

Some blogs now get millions of readers every single day. There are so many readers out there, that experts speculate that the world of blogging is rivaling the mainstream media. New blog search engines are also being created to make searching for a blog easier than ever before.

If you have not yet established a blog for your business, you may want to consider doing so as soon as possible. Keep in mind though that it will take work to attract readers. It must be interesting or valuable to them in some way. You must also concentrate on creating informative pieces that are as honest and up to date as possible. Blogging is serious business and if you make a mistake, it will not go unnoticed by your readership.

If you need help developing one, there are many different browser-based software programs on the market that can help you get a start. Blogs can also be hosted by dedicated blogging services or regular web hosting services.

Last, but not least, you must remember to optimize blog writing for search engines. This is an Internet medium and needs to be approached with Internet principles in mind.

Blogging Example

A typical blog entry includes a title or headline, a body of text, a permalink or URL for another web page, and a post date, which indicates the date and time that the post was published. A blogger may also choose to include a link at the bottom to allow readers to post comments on the blog.

At some point in time you may find yourself struggling to come up with fresh material to blog about. Where do you draw inspiration from when this happens?

This article will provide you with several solutions to help you come up with new content for your blog.


1. Google Alerts
If you have an industry-specific blog, you might consider signing up for Google Alerts. Let’s say you have a blog dedicated to your love of ice cream and all of the wonderful flavors they have: mint chocolate chip, rocky road, french vanilla, mmmmmmm, cookies and cream, mmmmm (sorry, I digress). You can create Google alerts for the following phrases: “ice cream”, sorbet, “Ben and Jerry’s”, Breyers, “Haagen Daz”, etc. You then specify how often you would like to receive the alerts (once a day, as-it-happens, or once a week). Once a day or once a week is usually plenty! But if you need to be on the cutting edge, choose as-it-happens and any time that phrase is mentioned in a blog, forum, or news site, you will be sent an email with the details.

2. Regularly Scheduled Post
Create a regularly scheduled post. For example, our ice cream blog could have a “Flavorful Friday”. Every Friday our blogger could review a new flavor of ice cream, including pictures, nutritional info, viewer ratings, etc. This is content that the blogger can count on to blog about every Friday as long as they make the effort to do it. The ideas are there for the taking. This blog uses the same idea — every weekend Mark posts the “Links for the Weekend”. It’s easy and regular content.

3. Future Post
How many times have you had several great ideas for blog posts all in the same day and you decide not to write them up because you just finished posting? You think you need to save them for tomorrow or the next day? That isn’t the case! By tomorrow, you may have forgotten them! Enter future posts. What’s a future post you ask? It’s a post that you write just like any other post, but you schedule it’s release for a specified time in the future. It’s great to just sit down and write a few posts at the same time and not have to worry about blogging for a few days!

Future posts also work great when you’re going to take a vacation and you don’t want your blog to suffer while you’re away.

4. The Great Forums
I find forums such as SitePoint and DigitalPoint to be a great source of blogging material. Often times when I see a reoccurring question in a forum I treat that as a red flag. You know right then and there that people are interested in that topic. That’s gold! It doesn’t get any better as a blogger than to start a post that you know people want to read.

If you’re not a member of a forum I would encourage you to join one. It won’t take long before your find gold in them there forums.

5. The Blogs
Surely you do visit other blogs? And hopefully you don’t just take, but you give back, by being part of the community and commenting. Many of my posts start out as comments on other blogs.

I also find commenting to be a great way to keep my mind sharp and tuned to blogging. It may sound strange, but I’m willing to bet that the people who comment the most are also the people that write with greater frequency on their own blogs.

6. The Magazines
Magazines are also a great way to find interesting topics that you can then turn around and blog about. Just about every topic you can think of will have a magazine or periodical that covers it. I have subscriptions to four magazines: PC World, PC Magazine, PC Gamer and Search Marketing Standard. Magazines provide you with the opportunity to challenge something that was said or just report that so-and-so magazine had this to say on the topic.

7. Author Collaboration
Two heads are better than one so why not work with another author at times to cover a topic? I’ve found it very rewarding not only to ask for help at times, but also to bounce questions off someone else to see what they think on a issue or to see if they have anything to add. In fact this article itself is a collaboration! Proof that it works!

8. Guest Authors
Bringing in a guest author is truly a win-win situation. It allows you to have a break while also allowing the guest author a chance to gain new readership for their own blog. Remember that it’s common courtesy to include a bio of the guest author with a link to their blog at the end of their article.

We would love to hear what other people do to think of content when they are out of ideas!

How to Promote Your Blog

When the “How do I promote my blog” question is asked in forums it usually doesn’t take long for someone to reply with, “Content is king.” Really? Is content king? All websites have content - even the dancing hamsters is content. I would submit to you that giving people what they want is truly king. If that be content, then have relevant content. If it’s driving directions, then give good directions. If it’s discount prices on jewelry, then have quality jewelry at low prices. If it’s nude pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt then she best not be wearing clothes. And if people want to see dancing hamsters, then give it to them - give the people what they want.

There’s a reason your visitors came to your site. Are you fulfilling their expectations? If people visit your blog one day and you’re talking about PHP coding techniques but the next time they visit your blog you are reviewing the movie you saw over the weekend, you may find yourself having a hard time building a steady core of followers.

It’s not that you can’t do that with your blog; you can. That’s exactly what I do with my personal blog. I blog about anything I feel like blogging about: movies, music, Jennifer Love Hewitt, whatever. The problem is that blogs like that have no niche to fill. With no niche you have no target audience. That’s ok, if you don’t want expansive audience.

Give people what they want and do it consistently. Being a one-hit-wonder in a band or in blogging is not a good thing. I take that back, being a one-hit-wonder in a band can still make you millions these days, but in blogging it’s no good. Try and have quality content on a regular basis. It doesn’t have to be daily, just on a regular basis. You may decide to post once a week or twice a week, whatever, just be consistent. If you post three times a week for a month then that’s what your audience will come to expect.

I would encourage you to post quality over quantity. Don’t post just for the sake of posting. If everybody else has covered the unveiling of Apple’s iPhone then you may want to let it go. Ask yourself, “What can I bring to the table?” If you can take an angle that you feel hasn’t been covered then by all means, continue, but if you are just going to post a “me too” post, skip it.

Give people what they want and do it consistently. You do that and people will visit you – and – continue to visit you.