In my opinion the concept of blog marketing uproots from this mere fact: a blog is a marketing tool. With every blog, a blogger markets his/her product, or service, or a company or their own skills.
A blog is a perfect marketing tool - A perfect content marketing tool, if used correctly. And it is also the answer to your question “how to get your blog noticed“!
By providing useful, cutting-edge information that is mostly needed by the target audience (potential customers) you can really cut it - in any niche.
That’s in very simple terms how content marketing works.
The good part about content marketing or marketing your business through a blog is that it is free marketing - well free for most part.
You still have to spend time and effort on creating content or if you prefer to hire someone to create the content for you, that will cost you some money.
But I hope you understand what I mean by free for most part, right? Unlike other marketing tactics this doesn’t cost you money really. And your blog will work for you 24/7 marketing your business, product or your brand.
Unfortunately most bloggers don’t know that their blogs can be used as a marketing tool and hence they don’t use their blogs as one. They simply waste the potential of blogging and its very purpose goes waste. That’s why I am motivated to write this very post.
Moreover, as you can read the word “effectively” in the title, I am not going to be talking about the general blog marketing tips, like submit your blog on search engines, post your link on Facebook, Twitter etc.
I will cover some “advanced” strategies you absolutely need to include into your blog marketing efforts so you can finally solve the puzzle: How to get your blog noticed?
OK so let me dive in to first spill some of the blog marketing strategies you could use.
How to get your blog noticed?
Watch this handy presentation!
Define your target audience
Obviously you’re blogging for someone, right? Blogging is communicating. You communicate to someone. So define that someone. This is one of THE most important factors that determines a blog’s success or failure.
Most bloggers fail or don’t convert because they’re not talking to the right people.
For instance, if your audience are interested in golf and if you are trying to market your own skill as a digital photographer, it simply won’t work.
It doesn’t matter how cleverly you market your photography skill, you will never succeed.
Even before you publish a single blog post and even before you name your blog you need to define whom you are going to talk to.
Find out their acute problems
Now that you’ve identified who your audience is, you need to identify what their problems are. This aspect will prove to make your blog “useful”.
Instead of publishing pointless content on your blog and wasting your resources, if you manage to identify what actually matters to your audience, they will adore your blog.
Not just problems, but you should also find out stuff that interests them; you know, you can’t always be publishing “problem-solving” posts. You can also publish entertaining and encouraging posts.
In short - you should get to know your audience and their problems really well.
Come up with unique solutions
It is always important that the solutions you offer or the insights you present have YOUR angle - this is what will make your blog posts unique and will help stand out from the crowd.
Otherwise, your blog post will be one among thousands of other articles on the same topic.
Have a content marketing “plan”
Publishing blog posts, writing newsletters, updating social media - all need to be done according to a “plan”. The very simplest form of planning your content is to have an editorial calendar.
If you are blogging on WordPress platform you have a neat plugin for that - Editorial Calendar
If you want to market your business with your blog, you cannot go by publishing random, pointless content - you need to have a content marketing plan.
You should analyze when you are going to publish a particular topic. You can also plan “themed” publishing of blog posts - say concentrating on content marketing for one month and guest blogging the next month and so on.
Of course, you should allow for some flexibility to catch up with publishing any timely news or other interesting guest posts.
With an editorial calendar you also can schedule a particular day of the week exclusively for guest posts (if you allow them).
You need to adopt a similar planning for all the content you publish - newsletters, re-purposed content like videos etc.
Publish optimized content
I hope you publish awesome, useful content. But that isn’t enough. You need to optimize your content for search engines, if you want traffic from them.
Or in other words, if you want to get noticed.
Do your keyword research prior to writing blog content. Aim for long tail keywords so that it is easy for you to rank.
When you write blog content optimize your post for a keyword - write the post based on a keyword.
But hang on, I am not encouraging you to write gibberish content in the name of search engine optimization.
Here’s a post I wrote where I discuss how to write for both people AND search engines >> SEO: Optimizing blog posts for people
So yes, you need to write both for people AND search engines. Don’t embrace any one and leave the other. Both are important.
How to get your blog noticed? Takeaway
I know I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s involved in blog marketing. This is not a blog marketing 101 post.
But still the points I’ve discussed above are REALLY important candidates and no matter what promotional “tactics” you use, if you miss on the strategy, which is the core part, you will not get effective results!
Of course there are more to this blog marketing lesson, which I will tackle on a later post (I want to make sure that I don’t put too much to chew in your mouth :)).
So go figure out the missing piece in YOUR blog marketing strategy.
Hi Jane
I agree with you every content must need a base ,means to whom it related is that subject existe in blog .
That’s right Ashutosh! Thanks for stopping by
I find blogging is a marketing tool since you are trying to gain followers through blogging and turning the into future customers.
Now about their problems, what wold be you best tactic to find them and then to figure out a solution?
I just find that through the engagement on social media, this a possibility to find out.
Thanks of the article Jane!
Hey Sam, yes social media is a great option. But doing your initial keyword and market research will give you a better idea as to whom to target and where the crowd will be hanging out!
It is very important to see all these points before creating a blog. Be clear about what you want to transmit and to whom is the key to success with a blog. Great post, Jane.
Yes Juan, doing your research before you create a blog and its content is highly crucial.
Yes, It is very important to keep a good keyword for content then it will rank better in search engine, And I think this post definitely useful for every blogger. Thanks for sharing such a usefull piece of information.
You’re welcome Mohd.
Hello Jane,
This is a good and interesting post that i love. I have not join the affiliate network but i am still gathering resource and tools and learning from others mistakes so i’ll start with a bang. I love this post so amma bookmark it for future reference. Thanks…
Good luck to starting your affiliate marketing with a bang, Baba
Hey Jane !
Actually you are right, people want to solve their problem they are not interested in our post if that can not solve their problem. So, firstly we should write to solve the problems of our targeted audience. Really liked your tips. specially “come with the new ideas”
Thanks.
Matt Kennedy
That’s right Matt. If there’s nothing in it for our target audience there’s no reason for them to be interested in our posts!
Hi Jane,
I understand your post but I’ve a big problem here. I’ve zero knowledge to what I’m offering for my eCommerce. But I need female audiences. Should I just go ahead to research and write topics I don’t know or should I find other topics to target them?
Thanks
Yes Cecilia, I can say that doing your research will help you create content that will be useful for your potential customers. However, you say you have zero knowledge. So make sure you do some background research to know about the market and any other technical stuff you need to be knowing.
Thanks for your response.
Does blogging still worth doing for the seo changing world?
Or I should just go ahead to blog for users?
Thanks again.
Yes blog is a great idea indeed!
Good post Jane, and right. I think too that a blog is either a marketing tool or an informational thing like a book and that a plan is needed because imho there is a certain amount of posts which can be written before beginning to reinvent the wheel and say the same things. Which happens in many blogs. Obviously the niche has to be taken into account, technology, Seo, News, Gossip, cars and some others can have a pretty long life though.
As regards long tail keywords it’s true that there are better chances to rank only that most of the times their value for ads is very little and the traffic they bring is really low unless they catch well on short tail keywords searches. But they are great to write a post when there are no ideas.
Andrea quite true - long tail keywords come to rescue when I’m kinda dry on post ideas. And plugging them into my keyword research tools like Market Samurai, Long Tail Pro or even Google Keyword Tool will give me enough related ideas to work on
Great illustration of how to optimize your social media efforts. I especially like your advice on creating an editorial calendar for your blog. Companies who are blogging (and they should be!) need to think like publishers!
Great post!
Editorial calendar helps publishing with a theme or a strategy. Without a calendar and advanced planning the posts will usually be theme-less or even in some cases, pointless.
I strongly agree with the way Blog Marketing Strategy: How To Effectively Market Your Business With Your Blog?
but i have a problem here: How many people do you think went to the market that day to buy a set of crockery?
Maybe some. Probably none.
The people that bought the crockery knew that they were all ‘seconds’? Did they really care?
please enlightenment in the next article. thanks
Sawicka, if the information about crockery is cutting-edge, useful and helps solve a problem, I’m sure the readers will care.
One more to add ( re;ying to my personal experience), make a video! People are moving towards preferring video to text; it’s a great way to pump up your marketing campaign
Great addition Evan. Adding multimedia (video, audio, presentations, pinnable images etc.) will make the posts interesting and hence will boost marketing!
Hey Jane I too think that my blog is a business and a marketing tool to increase leads.
Though I didn`t made serious money online my blog helped me get few BIG projects from offline.
~@Khajamoin1
Khaja yes - even if the blog doesn’t make sales directly, it surely works 24/7 to attract leads (who indirectly are your customers).
Now-a-days! using every possible ways to promote blog and so marketing is must! We must use the method of social media like Facebook, Twitter, etc
Krishna yes, social media is unavoidable in your marketing strategy!
Very clean list of everything anyone wants to know about jumpstarting a blog to promote a business. Doing business online takes a lot more than having a good product. It’s also all about how you can effectively let people know that your product exists.
Jaimie very well said - its about how effectively we market what we’ve got
Blog marketing strategy is a hard one and one of the most difficult of them all. Its easy to set a blog up, slap content or even put content on it. The success will depend on how well you market your blog. Great ideas there. Than you Jane. By the way, I like the idea of coming up with unique solutions.
Indeed Shalu - marketing doesn’t get hold of very soon. But once you get your feet strong, you can easily master it. Connections do matter a lot in this regard.
Hi Jane,
This is exactly the kind of post I need right now. I’m planning to launch my ebook at the end of this summer and I’m following all your tips on both the book and the blog.
My target audience is… Well anyone who wants to be happy. I write about inspiration and personal development.
My techniques, I hope are quite unique because I tend to focus more on psychological methods which most other blogs in my niche don’t do. So that probably sets the pace for me to be unique.
I do have a solid marketing plan for my ebook and of course my blog and guest posting are gonna be my weapons to launch it well into the blogosphere.
The one thing that bugs me is I’m planning to launch it as a premium book because I’ve put in a lot of effort with unique methods in it plus I’ve conducted surveys too for research data.
While most other blogs offer a freebie initially and then launch a premium product, must I too do the same? I know it’s a big ask heading straight into premium products but I do have a solid plan in place.
Please help me with this.
Thanks for this awesome post, really helped me!
Aditya
Aditya, seems you’re doing really great so far. As to the oscillation in your mind, don’t worry. You don’t have to do what others do. You can launch your ebook as a premium one and may be run a launch discount sale - 30% or 50% off for a week or something like that.
Good luck with your launch!
I think it’s really essential to write an article which is unique, it’ll automatically impress lot of people. But yes your article should be accurate and correct with data. Plus you should give proper time for your blog post promotion so that more and more can know about it.
By the Jane, I like to ask one thing here, it’s not related to this blog post. I hope you would answer it. Which plugin did you use to display this floating share-bar on the top? It’s really matching with your blog theme and looking beautiful.
Hey Aasma, Thanks for your comment. The floating sharebar is custom coded. Its not a plugin!
This is great to know Ben. I have ran across some blogs where it took a long time to load and I just gave up on it. I also had to clean up mine as well. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Jane
Nice article..i think its the second post from you that i am reading..i have started liking your way of writing…great post
Glad to know you liked the post Sanju!
Hi Jane, It was an interesting read. You covered all the blog marketing tactics nicely. I think blog marketing is best way to market any kind of business even its related to digital products or physical.
Hi Jane
Now a blog is critical for any businesses online success. As it is now a huge marketing tool. That is why I like coming back to your posts both for tips and to re iterate what I am doing great stuff lee
Wow, for some reason, my lastpass bar was going nuts on this page and making it so hard to fill in this comment. I comment on blogs all the time and haven’t had the problem before. Weird.
Anyway, I like your blog marketing strategy post. A lot of great information. I need to come up with a new angle for my content that is more unique. I really like what you had to say on that. Since my blog is about a network marketing product, I think I have lost my unique voice and that isn’t doing my business or my blog any favors.
Stephano I use LastPass as well - I’ve been there before
Glad you could still leave a comment despite the battle!
Given that there are thousands of blogs that are competing in any niche, coming up with your unique angle is absolutely unavoidable.
great Post !!!very helpful and useful suggestions and strategies ,blogs are really very helpful for promotion and marketing of your business..and thanks for sharing such useful ideas
fab post….internet marketing through blogs is becoming the latest trend among people….n its beneficial too…
Hi Jane
Recently speaking to anyone in business that has an online section or are purely on line no matter what line they are in they all are saying the same thing that a blog to do with your website is now an integral part of the site to engage with your visitors.
Great post lee
Lee, yup! And apart from the “marketing” cause I enjoy engaging with visitors
Thanks for sharing! Absolutely a create cycle for strategy. Some blogger failed because they did not figure out their problem and have no plan. I love your strategy. Thanks again for good advice, it useful for me.
Thanks for making me think about blogging! It should be like any marketing tool - aimed at the client/customer and their needs, wants, fears, passions etc. If you hit their ‘hot’ buttons with your marketing then success will come.
Hi Jane,
I agree with you totally. I’ve always preached it anytime I have the opportunity that a blog is nothing but a marketing tool. Everything you do on your blog is with the purpose of marketing your business whether that is a product or service. And like you mentioned it all really starts with identifying your target audience and building your content focused on that audience. Anything you outside of this will hurt your marketing.
Thanks for sharing this. And must say the slideshare presentation is awesome!