The goal for most bloggers is to increase traffic, engagement, interaction and in many cases income, especially if you are a small business or into affiliate marketing. Blog marketing strategies though time consuming are extremely rewarding in terms of meeting these goals. The secret to effective blog marketing is to slowly build your brand using multiple channels and strategies while at the same time not relying too heavily on any one technique. Each of these blog marketing strategies have immense potential and when combined together are surefire ways to increase traffic and conversions.
#1.SEO
Good SEO techniques and proper keyword research will improve your organic search rankings which in turn will mean that more people will find your site and the net results are an increase in traffic. Of-course, your content needs to be outstanding, relevant and informative for conversions.
An excellent blog marketing strategy actually begins before your post is even written with effective keyword research. Try choosing keywords that are relevant but have a lower competition. The higher you rank for a particular keyword, the more people will see your link and click through to visit your post.
If you find seo or keyword research cumbersome or difficult, a good seo specialist or seo copywriter will do wonders for your organic search rankings. Seo is easy to learn and although Google keeps changing it’s algorithms with Panda and now Penguin, the fundamentals of seo remain the same. SEO techniques should be applied to other search engines as well such as Bing and Yahoo.
#2. Social Networking Sites
The best social networking sites in terms of increasing targeted traffic are LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The key to interacting and marketing successfully in these communities is to engage with others and to promote their content. If you only update your information and links you could come across as spammy and unfriendly. According to most experts, the best etiquette involves:
- participation
- sharing your followers info
- asking questions
- conversing
- sharing your own info and links in that order
The social networking sites that work best to increase targeted traffic and also promote your brand are:
Linked-in groups
consist of professionals who are already part of your target audience assuming that you are sharing your info in the right group. They will not only read but if they find the post relevant will engage, share and comment. I shared an article on style guides with one of my LinkedIn groups recently and it was a tremendous boost to my traffic and I also received a ton of comments and social shares.
My traffic stats indicate that 20% of my traffic comes from twitter. Twitter marketing though immensely powerful is time-consuming but well worth the trouble. Here are some time management techniques to help you harness the full potential of twitter.
Although most people use Facebook for personal social networking, creating a FB fan page for your blog and joining Facebook groups that are interested in your topic are great traffic generators.
Other social networking sites that convert well are those that are set up for a particular industry or profession. Examples of professional networking sites include academia.edu for research and flickr for photo-sharing.
#3. Social bookmarking sites
Social bookmarking sites allow users to post their favorite sites, using tags (or keywords) to categorize and organize them; then other users can take these bookmarks and add them to their own collection or share them with even more users.
The social bookmarking sites that send traffic to my blog time and time again are StumbleUpon, Reddit, Delicious and Digg. Here is a list of various social bookmarking sites that you could use as part of your blog marketing strategy.
#4. Blogging communities or “social blogmarking”
Blogging communities or “social blogmarking” sites like blokube and blogengage are great way to promote your blog and build backlinks. Blokube is a good social community for search engine marketers and bloggers.
BlogEngage is another community where you pay a fee and register. The key again is to build relationships in these communities.
#5. Guest posting
Jon Morrows, the associate editor for Copyblogger actively promotes the strategy of guest posting, believing that guest posting is the one leading way to increase traffic to your blog. Guest blogging was and still is one of the few techniques remaining in the list of legitimate and Google approved back linking.
#6. Email list subscribers
Email list subscribers are a group of people that are already interested in your content. It’s easy to promote a new post, ebook or event by emailing them. Popular email list provider services such as Aweber and Constant Contact allow you to conveniently send out appropriate emails, thanking your list members, sending them free webinar info. or free ebooks and whitepaper offers as well as a weekly update on your latest posts.
#7. Google Adwords
Although I have yet to try this strategy, many famous bloggers promote the concept of paying for advertising your blog. If you are an affiliate marketer, the advantage with Google Adwords promotion is that your ads reach people who are actively looking for information on your product. When your ad is displayed to them, they will be interested in seeing what you have to offer, If done right, your ads will reach out to your target audience and will mean more income potential.
Please share with us blog promotion ideas that have worked for you. Also, please generously share this article on all your social networks. Thanks.
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Some great tips in this post, Gazalla. I think email subscribers is perhaps one of the most undervalued yet most efficient tactics as it survives the test of time, which can’t be said about all other social networks.
I think this list is pretty complete, but I would add another important one: promoting your blog offline. The best example: conference speaking or attending seminars. When presenting to an audience, mentioning your blog is a great way to let it be known it even exists!
And while you do mention Twitter, I would go a step further and recommend participating in various chats related to your preferred topic. It’s a great way to meet like-minded folks, and every know and then you can share the URL to a specific post written about a topic, when the conversation steers around it.
Cheers from Quebec City,
Frederic
Frederic Gonzalo recently posted..Les 4 défis d’une agence réceptive québécoise en tourisme
Thanks for the offline marketing idea – will include it in one of my upcoming articles on blog marketing. I actually plan on doing an entire post on twitter blog marketing in which I will mention chats and how much they have helped me as well.
I agree with Frederic. Building an email list should be at the top of every bloggers list as it brings in captive traffic.
Another source of traffic I have found useful is article promotion services such as Outbrain. You’ve probably seen “Recommended Articles” before but with Outbrain they put your articles into other blogs recommended articles section. Can be very effective if you use it right.
Howie recently posted..How to Start an Email Newsletter The Right Way
Email lists are great traffic generators and the subject of your current informative post. I have yet to try Outbrain. I usually prefer trying the free methods. I guess at some point I will need to try some of the paid options as well.
I haven’t used Reddit in a long time, is it still a good bookmarking site to use? I have only tinkered with LinkedIn groups, I should check it out some more, thanks for the tips Gazalla.
Oh, you are very welcome. Reddit is excellent – the key is interacting and sharing in all these communities. All the best and be sure to stop by and let us know how they worked for you.