Marketing Your Blog Is More Effective Than Advertising
First of all advertising is a component of the marketing process.
You can look at advertising as the end result of marketing.
Marketing is about planning, implementing and controlling a mix of business activities designed to bring buyers and sellers together for a mutually advantageous exchange of products or services.
Whew! Now, let's break that down.
PRODUCT PLACE PRICE PROMOTION Let's look at the marketing pie; it contains four pieces: Product, Place, Price and Promotion.
All four of these pieces must be present in the marketing mix in order to be successful.
Imagine what you are blogging about to be the product.
The place is online; the price (well that depends on whether you have ads on your blog or not); and promotion refers to the method(s) used to make your blog stand out from the rest.
Keep in mind that your customer is your target, your end result of all your marketing efforts.
The goal of your Product is to be the right thing for the right audience.
Know your target audience, know what they want and use your blog to give it to them.
Make sure your blog satisfies your readers' needs.
Knowing your target audience also means knowing what appeals to them visually.
Is the design of your blog garish or boring? Find out by testing out new things, new templates.
It doesn't hurt to switch templates once a month or even every couple of weeks, just to find out what works.
For example, I had one reader tell me one template I was using was too boring, so I changed it.
Place is about getting your blog published consistently.
If you do have a loyal readership, they will quickly leave you if your blog appears abandoned.
I try to post daily or at least five days per week.
How would you feel if your newspaper skipped a day publishing? If you are selling the link to your blog for profit, consider the Price.
Some factors to consider are the break even point, good link-bad link ratio as well as your page rank.
Be careful with selling your link, Google has been penalizing some link farms and sellers.
Promotion is what many bloggers do before they do anything else.
Blog posts are submitted to Digg, etc.
without spell check being utilized.
I've seen some blogs that contained really good information but the grammar and spelling made me cringe.
Look over your posts before you let them go live.
You and your readers will be glad you did.
Finally, remember the reason you blog: to build traffic so that readers will click on your ads and you and your advertisers will make money.
The key is to remember that you are not advertising a product; you are providing a marketing solution for your clients that encourages business growth.
You can look at advertising as the end result of marketing.
Marketing is about planning, implementing and controlling a mix of business activities designed to bring buyers and sellers together for a mutually advantageous exchange of products or services.
Whew! Now, let's break that down.
PRODUCT PLACE PRICE PROMOTION Let's look at the marketing pie; it contains four pieces: Product, Place, Price and Promotion.
All four of these pieces must be present in the marketing mix in order to be successful.
Imagine what you are blogging about to be the product.
The place is online; the price (well that depends on whether you have ads on your blog or not); and promotion refers to the method(s) used to make your blog stand out from the rest.
Keep in mind that your customer is your target, your end result of all your marketing efforts.
The goal of your Product is to be the right thing for the right audience.
Know your target audience, know what they want and use your blog to give it to them.
Make sure your blog satisfies your readers' needs.
Knowing your target audience also means knowing what appeals to them visually.
Is the design of your blog garish or boring? Find out by testing out new things, new templates.
It doesn't hurt to switch templates once a month or even every couple of weeks, just to find out what works.
For example, I had one reader tell me one template I was using was too boring, so I changed it.
Place is about getting your blog published consistently.
If you do have a loyal readership, they will quickly leave you if your blog appears abandoned.
I try to post daily or at least five days per week.
How would you feel if your newspaper skipped a day publishing? If you are selling the link to your blog for profit, consider the Price.
Some factors to consider are the break even point, good link-bad link ratio as well as your page rank.
Be careful with selling your link, Google has been penalizing some link farms and sellers.
Promotion is what many bloggers do before they do anything else.
Blog posts are submitted to Digg, etc.
without spell check being utilized.
I've seen some blogs that contained really good information but the grammar and spelling made me cringe.
Look over your posts before you let them go live.
You and your readers will be glad you did.
Finally, remember the reason you blog: to build traffic so that readers will click on your ads and you and your advertisers will make money.
The key is to remember that you are not advertising a product; you are providing a marketing solution for your clients that encourages business growth.