Harness the Power of Business Blogging Through Smart Blog Marketing

By now you’ve undoubtedly heard the buzz: blogging is the new reporting. It’s the new advertising. It’s the simplest way to share your expertise and experience with the entire world.

Having a blog, whether it is a business or personal endeavor, involves more than simply finding a topic and writing about it. Blogging is one of the best ways to get your ideas out to the world, but your efforts will be wasted if no one ever reads what you write.

Developing a blog marketing strategy will put you much closer to reaching your blogging goals than will simply blogging without a plan. Blog marketing is all about figuring out how to attract readers and keep them coming back.

First and foremost, your blog marketing plan should involve knowing your topic. This shouldn’t be a problem when you’re blogging about your product or company because you are intimately acquainted with the subject matter. However, it never hurts to do some extra research.

Begin by reading up on other industry blogs. Keep an eye out for key topics and notice which ones seem to attract the most readers. Set up news alerts so that every blog containing your chosen key words is delivered to your inbox.

Place comments on blogs pertaining to your industry. This approach is effective in many ways. First, reading blogs and their comments helps you to understand industry trends and consumer feelings. Commenting allows you to get your name and your company’s name out there without using conventional advertising methods. An added benefit is the opportunity to correct misconceptions about your business and industry.

When you are confident that you are ready to start marketing your own blog, there are several approaches you can use. Of course, the easiest is to link to your blog from your website. But you can also purchase advertising space on other blogs or arrange a link exchange.

Social networking sites are a very effective way to spread the word about your blog. You can submit individual posts to be passed around and rated by users. This is a tricky blog marketing method, though, because it allows poor reviews to travel just as quickly as positive reviews. To increase the chances of your blog posts being rated positively, remember that content counts. Your blog posts should be helpful, informative and entertaining without sounding like advertisements.

By far the easiest and most widely used type of blog marketing is search engine optimization. By making your blog more attractive to search engine users, you will receive more targeted traffic.

Search engine optimization involves using common search terms or keywords in the content of your blog. When people use search engines to search for these keywords your blog is included in the results. Most blogs are naturally optimized for search engines because they contain lots of relevant keywords and are (or should be) updated frequently, keeping the content fresh.

If you are at all unsure about how blog marketing can improve your company’s outlook on the whole, consultants abound on the topic. Blog marketing consultants can teach you how to optimize your blog and drive up traffic, which eventually leads to bigger profits for you.