Blog Marketing

In my recent article I talked about making your blog your business. In this article, I will talk about how your business either online or offline can benefit from blog marketing.

The concept isn't really new... In fact, a lot of companies and individuals have already done it. The reason why this is all working now is because we are now in the information age... And people are hungry for fresh information. Blogs fit this need, as I would explain more below. Let's examine the different reasons why you should consider putting up a blog for your business.

Why is Blog Marketing Effective?

Blogs are attention grabbers -  Because blogs are usually focused on one particular topic, it makes it easy for people searching for your product or service find you. Blogs also allow for good search engine traffic, you just have to make sure that you mention a keyword enough times and submit your site to search engines in order for it to relate searches to your blog's content and lead traffic to your site. Overtime, search engine traffic becomes like free marketing.

Blogs are source of information - Like I said above, blogs fill a need for people to be updated. For example, I like to follow a sports blog that always kept me updated about Manny Pacquaio's training camp prior to his fight with Antonio Margarito. I may not realize it, but the sense of being updated has grown to be a need for me. Alright, I won't argue about what's really a need or not. I'm of course referring to need in the scope of "marketing".

Blogs are socializing tools -  We like to socialize... You know... Talk about this stuff, that stuff, that guy, that girl, etc. People like it when they read something that agrees or partly agrees to their way of thinking. It's very seldom that I see "flame wars" or negative arguments in blog post comments, these are more familiar with forums but not with blogs. But with blogs, you usually get to attract people who have the same mindset and opinion as you (the writer). Because of the ability of blogs to allow posting of comments, blogs are as dynamic as it can be. Thus, forming a community around your website. Blogs stimulate discussions making the blogs' content richer and richer.

Blog Marketing Tips

Alright, so this is usually the area where people go straight into. Here are some blog marketing tips. 

Write Good Content - A good content does not only mean that it is lengthy, spell-checked and properly written... A good content also means "good" to your readers or you are providing what your readers want to read about and not always only on what you are interested about. When they like it, they will tell other people about it... Usually using modern tools like social media sites or e-mail.
 
Network - Together, we can do far more than we can alone. Link to other sites and ask for a link back (link-exchange). Comment on other blogs and don't just post any comment... Provide value to the website you are commenting into. If you only posted "nice post" here in my blog with a link back to your site, chances are I will delete it. So provide values, and stimulate more discussion if possible.

Help Other People - Help other sites produce content... This is otherwise known as "guest posting". I'm sorry but I do not allow guest posting here at every peso counts. I would link to your post if I find it interesting though and if I ever get to discuss the same topic or a topic close to your blog posts' topic.

Google is your friend - Learn SEO or consult people who knows about SEO. Basically, it's all about choosing the right keyword for your blog posts. I will discuss more in debt on my next post when I discuss about Search Engine Marketing or SEM. The above techniques are of course part of SEO.

So I hope this helped you a little about how blogging can help improve your business. If you like, you can go to part 1 of this series and read more about internet marketing. To receive updates on my next post, be sure to subscribe to my mailing list.

Photo Credit: owenwbrown