Inexpensive and Effective Marketing for Bloggers
Unless you’re writing a blog as a personal journal, there is little point in laboring over your blog posts if you don’t have any readers. The most difficult aspect of blogging when you’re just starting out is learning how to attract readers – and then if you’re hoping to earn income from your efforts the challenges get even bigger!
Since many bloggers are using their blogs to attract internet traffic and hopefully send them on to their website (where products or services are actually sold), this article will give you ideas for leveraging the power of your blog as an inexpensive, but effective marketing medium.
Are You Unintentionally Anonymous?
I can’t even begin to tell you how many bloggers set up their blogs and forget to include a way for readers to contact them. I regularly want to contact blog owners who write great content with questions or comments – and can’t because they haven’t included any method for contacting them! My guess is the majority of the bloggers without contact information don’t even realize they’re inaccessible – so make sure you aren’t unintentionally anonymous!
This is especially important if you are looking to generate income from the blog at some point. Don’t hide behind your blog as some anonymous writer – the blog is meant to develop relationships and trust with your readers and you can’t do that if you don’t include an email address, ability to post comments, or other method of contacting you. You might get requests for joint ventures and invitations to online events that would help you get additional exposure and readers to your blog if people are able to contact you, too.
Make Use of Free Article Marketing Resources
As a blogger, you’re used to putting words to paper. Use that skill to bring new traffic to your blog. You can write additional articles on topics your blog already covers, and submit them to article directories like EzineArticles.com, iSnare.com, or GoArticles.com. These sites publish your articles with your author byline information, which should include a link back to your site.
Other website owners and newsletter publishers regularly visit article directories to pick up articles for their publications. They are allowed to re-print the content you submit to article directories on their own sites and in newsletters, as long as they include your author byline and link. Each time your articles are republished, you’ll have a new link pointing to your blog. You can gain new readers through people who click on your link to learn more; and also through the boost all of these incoming links give you in the search engine listings.
You’ll gain the best results with article marketing if you do it on a consistent basis. Try writing an article once a week and posting to several article directory sites, and monitoring your blog traffic for several months to see if it’s increasing.
Become a Carnival-Goer
There are “blog carnivals” on just about every topic imaginable. Blog carnivals give bloggers another method of receiving quality incoming links to their blog. You submit your own blog posts to the carnivals that are hosted by websites on related topics as your own site; and if they publish your link, you’ll receive readers and additional incoming links for SEO purposes.
If you blog about personal finance topics for example, you would submit a link to your recent article to the host of a personal finance “carnival”. If the host likes your article, he or she would include it in their carnival post, which is basically a compilation of links to many blog posts from several different blogs.
You won’t see big results overnight by participating in blog carnivals, but if done consistently, you’ll probably notice improved positioning in the search engines, and an increase in traffic from the readers of the carnivals. It costs nothing but your time to submit. For a directory of different carnivals, you can visit www.blogcarnival.com.
Write a Guest Post for Another Blog or Newsletter
Writing a guest post is the same as writing an article for your own blog, except that it will be published somewhere else. If there are other blogs that focus on similar topics as your own, consider contacting the blog owner to ask them if they’d publish an article you write for them, along with an author’s byline and a link back to your own blog.
As with the other methods discussed in this article, you’ll gain additional incoming links to your site, and the possibility of new readers who click the link to learn more about you after reading your post.
Marketing does not have to cost an arm and a leg in order to generate results. Most marketing methods will be effective if they are done consistently. Make sure you measure and monitor the results of any marketing methods you attempt, to know whether or not they are worth the time and effort.
Debbie Dragon, guesting for ClubBlogger, is a freelance writer providing articles for Trace Media – a New York seo company specializing in getting websites up, and making sure they perform to their full potential.
Filed under: Advertising, Blogging, marketing | Tagged: Advertising, marketing
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Great tips! I’m so happy to see someone mentioning contact information as that is a problem I encounter often as well. I cannot tell you the number of times I have wanted to contact a blogger only to find there is no contact information available. Thanks for the information.
Great tips! I’m happy to see someone pointing out the need for contact information. While some blog readers prefer to “lurk”, many want to give feedback or interact with the person behind the posts. Thanks for the information.
i also do article marketing, but I don’t seem to ever get traffic or sales from this method. For one, articles take forever to get approved, article directory owners really need to do something about that. How can i make a sale when my articles are taking up to 2 weeks to get published? The only way article marketing works is if you use an article spinner. I like blog commenting and social networking sites to get traffic.
Honestly, I didn’t love to use the free articles package, as it against my ethical as a blogger. However, I love the guest blogger concept, as it can show off our ability and give us more credibility!
wilhb81´s last blog ..The Useful Business Tips 35: The 5 Remarkable Tips to Build Your Referral Business
The blog carnival link is helpful. Also, I have thought about the writing a blog for another site but I haven’t done anything with it yet. I will hopefully in the future. Really good ideas.
Thanks.
Dan
The part, become a Carnival-Goer is a very interesting stuff, as I didn’t realize that by participating in the carnivals, it brings up more opportunities to us!
William´s last blog ..Join The Blog Networks and Make Some Fast Cash!
Great explanation, sometimes i run out of ideo to write content for blog, using free article marketing is a good idea.
Great article. I never knew about the Blog Carnival. I am signing up right now
now I know what is blog carnival exactly. Thanks for the info.
Clubblogger,
Excellent point about being reachable, don’t really hear this being discussed enough because for me, it seems like a given but it’s often neglected by bloggers, both new and experienced. People need to know you exist and that there isn’t someone robot running your blog.
-Mig
Miguel | SimplyBlog´s last blog ..What is Remarkable Blog Content?
There are some really good tips and advice in there to promote your blog. I think the important thing to remember is also to keep trying different ideas and meet like minded people. I will definately be reading your posts regularly as I think I can learn things from you and improve my chances to make money from home.
I will say isnare.com articles can take a long time to publish, but my ezinearticles.com submissions are regularly published in a matter of a day. Same with goarticles.com, articlecity.com, and a number of others! If you’re using directories that take a long time, just look for a few different ones that are faster
If you have talent you could also do a podcast or interview as well.
Ed´s last blog ..Composing Music Online updated Mon Jul 13 2009 9:48 pm CDT
Other great ways are social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, etc.
ah, I forgot about blog carnival, thanks for the reminder. Great article.
Thanks for the tips. Articlemarketing is something I always know I whould but somehow don’t find the energy to keep going. As it is a good methode and many people have good results it is also a slow proces as an article can take forever to be published on ezinearticles if you do not have the platinumstatus. Will start with it again tho as I know I should.
Bibi ´s last blog ..Baby Kid 6Sided Wooden Playpen Yard W/Sheet Yellow
Excellent blog promotion trick. I have book marked this page. Hope carnival would be helpful. Thanks.
Kudos to you for this wonderful post you have here, it really is very informative and well written.
Wonderful post you have here! It really would be very helpful for newbies and “experts” alike. Anyways, kudos to you!
Thanks for these tips, I somehow find it very difficult to actually start out in this “business” you see. Well this really means a lot in terms of help.
Write-ups can just be passed on to outsourcers right? I’m not that good in writing you see.
I agree with these people before me, this is also a very relevant article for what I’m doing right now. Thanks for this!
Ermm I think that there’s nothing wrong with outsourcing specially for write-ups.
Great Post buddy, great website too. There is another online people magazine
I haven’t yet tried blogcarnival. It seems a good idea. Thanks for sharing this nice post.