A while back I promised to share a “Blog Business Plan” with you; well, here it is. Instead of one humongous post, I’ve decided to break it down into three or four sections and write a separate post for each section. The sections will roughly be the following:
- Finding a Niche for Your Blog
- Marketing Your Blog (Traffic Generation)
- Monetizing Your Blog
I’m going to start off with ways in which you can market your blog. Joe Vitale–a top internet marketer who has written books such as “The Power of Outrageous Marketing” and “The Attractor Factor: 5 Easy Steps for Creating Wealth (or Anything Else) from the Inside Out”– coined the term “persistent marketing”.
He explains that, whatever business you’re in, you need to be doing marketing every day. Below you will find 35 ways to market your blog; you should be doing at least one or two of these every day.
1. Create valuable content. Steve Pavlina writes that you need to remember that the purpose of each post that you publish is to create genuine value for others.
He adds that when he sits down to write he sometimes imagines myself standing on an outdoor concert stage before an audience of a million people. He then asks himself, “What shall I say to this audience of fellow human beings?” Even if you have nowhere near the traffic that Steve has, copying this attitude is one of the things that will help you increase the number of visitors to your blog.
In addition, strong content not only brings traffic to your blog, it also encourages other sites to link to you.
2. Take advantage of your email signature. Tina Su, who blogs at ”Think Simple Now” wrote in her article “From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 90 Days” –published in Darren Rowe’s “Problogger” –that she added a note about subscribing to her email signature, so it appeared at the foot of every email she sent out. Do the same; let every email that you send out help market your blog.
3. Create a “blog card” for those occasions in which you want to hand out your blog url instead of your business card. Hugh McLeod from the GapingVoid.com will print them for you with one of his cartoons in the front and your blog’s details on the back (go here).
4. Go on Twitter. However, it’s not enough to sign up for twitter and simply hope for the best. Create a strategy for yourself on how you will use twitter. Here’s an example:
- Spend fifteen minutes on twitter every morning.
- Send a direct message to one follower each day.
- Tweet two interesting links which will provide value for others.
- Retweet something interesting one of your followers tweets about.
- Tweet one interesting quote.
- Send one broadcast on your latest blog post.
- Check to see if someone has asked a question in your area of expertise; if so, try to help them.
- Post one or two tweets about your day-to-day life, such as what you had for breakfast or something cute your kid just said.
- Find five interesting people to follow each day. (You can follow me).
Although twitter is definitely a way to meet great people whom you share common interests with, as well as a way of keeping informed, remember that you’re using twitter primarily as a marketing tool. Consider subscribing to Twitip.com for more ideas on how to use twitter to market your blog.
5. Be active on Stumbleupon. Stumbleupon potentially puts your blog posts in front of 6,695,885 stumblers. You can sign up for a free “Traffic Rush Home Study Course” here.
6. Create squidoo lenses. Squidoo lenses rank high on Google, so if you link back to your blog they provide yet another way for people to find you. Simply take posts you’ve already written and turn them into squidoo lenses. For example, one of the main topics for this blog is creativity. I’ve turned several of my posts on creativity into the following squidoo lens: “How to Be More Creative”.
Squidoo.com has a dashboard from which you can check your stats: how many people are visiting each of your lenses, where they’re coming from, and what urls they click on (so you can see how many people who visit your lenses click on your blog url). Join squidoo right now, just click here.
7. Pick a few core social sites. So far I’ve mentioned Squidoo, twitter, and stumbleupon. However, there are many more social sites you can choose from. For a great free introduction into the world of social sites, download “The Authority Black Book”. Remember not to dabble in several different social media sites; instead, choose a few that really resonate with you and aim to become a power player.
Whatever social sites you choose, follow Seth Godin’s advice: the networking that matters is helping people achieve their goals; over time they will return the favor and help you to achieve your goals.
8. Ping your blog posts to relevant services. Ping services automatically notify blog directories and search engines that your blog has been updated.
9. Use article syndication. Take a blog post you’ve written, change it around a bit so that it’s not an exact copy of the blog post, and submit it to Ezinearticles.com. For example, I took my blog post “14 Tips to Stay Young” and turned it into these three articles:
- “How to Stay Young: Three Things You Probably Didn’t Know”
- “Five Secrets to Reverse Aging”
- “Five Common Sense Tips to Help You Stay Young”
From the “Author’s Area” on Ezinearticles.com you can see how many URL clicks you get for each of the articles you have submitted to them. This makes it easy to measure how much traffic you get from them.
10. Submit your blog to directories. Although admittedly not very “creative”, another way to get found is to submit your site to DMOZ and other directories that allow free submissions.
11. Create an e-book and give it away for free. Hunter Nuttall explains in his blog post “How to Realistically Get 500+ Blog Subscribers” that he wrote an e-book called “The Zen of Blogging” when he first started out with his blog. He managed to get Darren Rowse from “Problogger” to link to it, people enjoyed his e-book, and this gave him a nice subscription boost.
12. Create a vibrant community on your blog. By encouraging people to leave comments on your blog, and responding respectfully to those comments, you can create a vibrant community on your blog. If people enjoy stopping by your blog and feel a sense of belonging there, it’s very likely that they’ll tell their friends and encourage them to stop by as well. Word of mouth marketing is one of the most powerful marketing methods that there is.
13. Hold a contest. Luciano Passuello over at Litemind.com created a contest on his blog where he asked participants to submit their “Best Personal Excellence Tips”. He then visited several personal development blogs, contacted the owner of each of these blogs, and invited them to participate in the contest. I had never been to his blog before, but he contacted me, I participated in the contest, and I became a subscriber.
14. Follow up on first time commentators. Set a goal to send a personal e-mail to one new commentator each day thanking them for taking the time to leave a comment and encouraging them to subscribe to your blog.
15. Participate in forums. Participate in discussion forums in your niche area and contribute regularly. Many of them allow you to add your link as a signature to your posts, and if you have something of value to say, it is very likely that people will follow your link back to your blog.
16. Network with other bloggers. Remarkablogger has a great post entitled “Create a Blog Pack to Get Blog Traffic and Increase Subscriptions” in which he explains that a “blog pack” is “a loose, informal alliance between people who are all near the same level in order to help each other grow.”
Members of the pack help each other to grow by subscribing to each others’ blogs, submitting their friends’ best posts to social media sites, linking to each other (when appropriate), commenting on each others’ blogs, and so on.
Also, participate in the projects carried out by members of your network (without stretching yourself too thin). This year, I’ve participated in several projects hosted by members of my network, including the following:
- Stacey from Createabalance.com asked her network to participate in creating an e-book, and I contributed an article;
- Robin from Let’s Live Forever asked her network to send in a recording of their voice, which I did;
- Melissa from Writing Forward asked members of her network for a creative writing tip to include in a post she was putting together, and I sent in a tip; and so on.
17. Have other bloggers interview you. An offshoot of networking with other bloggers is that sooner or later someone will ask to interview you on their blog, which will expose you to their readers. (And if they don’t, take the first step and ask someone in your blogging network to interview you, as long as you’ve noticed that they interview people on their blog.) For instance, I was interviewed on the blog MizFitonline.com here.
18. Comment on related blogs with thoughtful comments that add value to the conversation. This has two benefits: first, if the blog is set up with “do follow” you get a back link to your blog. And second, people who read the comments might click over to your blog. In addition, this helps you to build up name recognition in your niche. Look for lists of blogs in your target niche and make it a point to comment on at least one new blog each day.
19. Join blog networks such as Alltop and 9rules. I receive Yaro Starak’s “Blog Tips Newsletter”, and in the December 28, 2008 edition he explains that his traffic rose considerably after being admitted into the 9rules network. In fact, shortly after his membership was announced on the 9rules blog his subscriber count went up by 25%.
20. Create links and trackbacks. For each post you write ask yourself if there are relevant posts on other blogs that you can link to. This adds value for your readers and creates goodwill with other bloggers. In addition, many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so there will be a link to your blog in their comments section. This can bring traffic and attract the attention of the blogger you’re linking to.
21. Join Blog Carnivals. At the very least joining blog carnivals creates links back to your blog, but it can also be a source of traffic.
22. Review relevant products on Amazon.com. Also, create product lists on Amazon for your niche.
23. Take full advantage of Technorati. They allow you to submit 20 tags relevant to your blog. A lot of people use technorati when they’re searching for information, and the tags that you choose can lead these people straight to your blog.
24.Use attention-grabbing headlines for your posts. Using attractive headlines is one way of getting readers to visit your blog from Search Engines and Feeds. For the ultimate list of blog heading templates, go here. Here’s another one: “100 Proven Headline Formulas for Social Media“.
25. Make it easy for your visitors to submit your posts to all major social bookmarking sites. You can use plug-ins such as the Sociable plug-in.
26. Make sure that you ask visitors to subscribe. Salespeople are always taught to ask for the sale. You might think that by placing a large orange subscription button on your site it can be inferred that you’re asking people to subscribe. However, it’s important that at the end of each post you ask people directly to subscribe to your blog.
By the way, if you’re enjoying this post it would be a great idea to subscribe to “Abundance Blog at Marelisa Online” by clicking here. 
27. Use a professional looking blog design. I’m sure you’ve heard of the 4 P’s of marketing: Product, Pricing, Promotion and Placement. However, there’s actually a fifth “P”: Packaging. No matter how good your product is, it will be more difficult to get people to buy it if it comes wrapped in an ugly package. Likewise, you can have great content on your blog but if the design is inferior many people will simply bounce off your site. If you’re looking for a great theme for your blog, you can’t go wrong with the Thesis Theme.
28. Email A-List bloggers about your best posts. Make sure that you only email those blog posts that you’re certain would benefit their readers, and that you lay the proper groundwork first (comment on their blog frequently with comments that add value, submit a guest post that does well, answer their questions on twitter, and so on). Here’s an article on Copyblogger with great suggestions on how to get A-List bloggers to link to you: “Why No One Links to Your Best Posts (And What to Do About It)”.
29. Don’t forget the “alt” tags for your images. Image searches can bring a lot of traffic to your blog.
30. Write five pillar posts. This is one of the techniques that Yaro Starak suggests in his free e-book, “Blog Profits BluePrint”. Pillar posts tend to be “how-to” in nature, they’re very comprehensive, and they pack a lot of value for the reader. These posts tend to become authoritative posts, which attract a lot of links.
31. Brand yourself. Get a recognizable gravatar so that people automatically link it to you when they see it in the comments section on other blogs, on stumbleupon, on twitter, and so on. Also, make sure that your core message remains consistent. Does your design, copy and layout reinforce your core message? How about the comments you leave on other blogs? How can you own a keyword term so that it becomes synonymous with your brand? You can find tips on how to build your brand here and here.
32. Write guest posts. This is the strategy recommended by Leo Babauta from zenhabits.net. He explains that once you have a few good posts on your blog, you should write valuable guest posts as often as possible. I’ve written guest posts for “Dumb Little Man”, “Pick the Brain”, “The Change Blog”, and “Write to Done”.
33. Unleash an idea virus. According to marketing guru Seth Godin, the future belongs to people who unleash idea viruses; that is, an idea that runs amok among the target audience. You can download his book “Unleashing the Idea Virus” for free here.
34. Write a tutorial. Tutorials attract a lot of traffic and they also serve to establish your expertise in your target area.
35. One of the best ways to get your blog found is through search engine optimization. Download Google’s “SEO Starter Guide” for free.
Bonus: Copyblogger compiled a great list of resources for marketing your blog, which you can find here.
Conclusion
I once read that having a business, and failing to market it, is the equivalent of a man winking at a girl in the dark: he knows he’s doing it, but no one else does. If you run a Google search you’ll find lots of additional information on how to market your blog.
Basically, you need to set a target of how many visitors you want to attract to your blog; then choose a marketing method or a mixture of marketing methods that you will apply to achieve your target; execute; then measure whether or not you achieved the results you were after. Adjust as necessary and repeat.
So, what else? How are you marketing your blog?
Editor’s Note: The second installation of this series has been published: “Blog Business Plan – Monetization”.
photo credit: Arturo de Albornoz
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