According to the latest estimates, there are roughly seventeen trillion blogs in existence right now, with another nineteen gazillion going online every day. Okay... those numbers might not exactly be scientific, but you get the point - there are way more blogs beingwritten then there are being read.
Does this mean you should give up and leave blog marketing to other, more established writers and marketers? Absolutely not. One of the greatest things about the Web is that it runs on attention. While it might take a little bit of time to build up a readership, it doesn't really matter who you are or when you started, only what you have to offer the people who arrive at your site.
Because most blogs don't actually make it, and because you need traffic to meet your online marketing goals, here are three easy ways you can make your blog stand out from the digital crowd:
Find a focus. Before the Internet, you needed at least a few thousand people to be interested in any idea, concept, or product before you could profitably market it. Usually, this would be in the form of some obscure magazine, newsletter, or outdated mailing list. Unless what you are selling was targeted to the masses, it could be difficult - not to mention expensive - to reach out to your customers.
Search engines have changed all of that. By scouring the Internet for precise keywords and phrases, they allow people, more often than not, to find exactly what they're looking for in a matter of seconds, even if the search isn't on a very popular topic. This is becoming more and more important, to searchers and marketers alike, with the rise of the "long tail" searches that deliver traffic to highly-focused websites.
Think long and hard about your audience and customer base, and then tailor your messages directly to them. Ignore those who fall outside of that group - a blog for everyone is a blog for no one.
Take the time to write well. No one wants to read an article that's riddled with typos and grammatical errors. They aren't just hard to get through, they test the reader's patience. You don't have to be a professional writer to generate quality pieces (although I'll admit it helps), you just need a bit of free time and a $10 style guide.
If you can't devote the spare minutes to writing, organizing, and proofreading your blog, then by all means hire a professional to do it for you. To have your blog succeed as a marketing tool, you have to post quality articles consistently. That's not always easy to do, but posting strong content is the quickest and easiest way to get a leg up on your competition.
Find a good look. The old saying is that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, but as anyone who's worked in the publishing industry knows, customers do exactly that millions upon millions of times every day. They just can't help themselves. We are all drawn to what looks good, and tend to skip over something that doesn't seem up to par. That's true whether you're marketing websites, shoes, or corn chips.
The lesson here is obvious: either find a very good blog template, or hire a good web designer to build one for you. A terrible looking blog isn't going to attract as many readers as it should, so pay attention to the wrapping to put your articles in.
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Matthew Aaron is professional blog ghostwriter, working with marketing professionals and companies of all sizes to achieve their marketing goals with fresh, compelling online content. You can see more about him and his work at http://www.blog-ghostwriter.com Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matthew_Aaron |
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