Welcome Back! Today we are covering one of my favorite forms of Online Advertising, Blog Marketing. I like the personal touch this form of marketing provides. It allows clients and potential clients to get to know you and your product a little bit better by the way you verbally interact in your blog writings.

Blogs are basic, regularly updated websites. They act as a private news interface for any Business or Website. The need for fresh content on the web makes the Blogs a preferred destination for Resources. It keeps clients in the loop about all the new and exciting things you have to offer and how your business is moving forward.

The first step to developing your Blog Marketing campaign is to decide where you want to create and post your blog.

Here are some widely used Blog Publishers:

• WordPress
• Blogspot
• Thoughts.com

Once you have a publisher for your blogs, you need to set up your viewing public. Socialmarker.com is a great one stop location to get you signed up and linked to a whole lot of the social networking sites online.

Have a page set up on your website that houses all your blog activity. When the social networking sites show your link for your full blog posting, link them back to the blog page on your website. Pull the traffic to you.

Depending on which blogging platform you use there are many different plugins you could be using to strengthen the SEO qualities of your blog. The same qualities that cover your website and other advertising efforts apply to Blog writing.

Typically around 300-350 words is an ideal amount of text for a blog post. Use the key words and phrases that you have predetermined to best catch the eye of the search engines.
Remember to place your keywords and phrases naturally in the title of your blog posts to increase your search engine pick up ability.

SEO for blogs is no different than search engine optimization for websites. You have to drive some power to your blog in order for it to work how it is supposed to. Approach it as a business and you will see the long term marketing benefits.

Also, make sure you include an RSS feed on your blog to make it easy for others to subscribe to it. Be sure to include links and trackbacks for even more blog traffic.

Choose a tone of voice for your writing that best suits your personality and the personality of your business and offerings. This will foster the intimate relationship between you and your followers and create a better business relationship between you and your clients. Your blogging should include relevant, interesting information that will encourage a following. If a lot of followers are picking up on your blog, chances are the search engine will also.

Subscribe to blogs written by others that complement your tone and topics. Encourage others to share your posts with their followers. Your blog network is an important component of marketing yourself and you should strive to build it as you would any social network.

It is a good idea to give yourself a blogging schedule. This will help in building your following. If your readers know you post Monday, Wednesday and Friday, they are more likely to return on a regular basis on those days to keep up with your postings. If you keep a sporadic schedule, your blog site will easily slip from the minds of your readers.

Have fun with your blogging! It can be a great way to introduce yourself and your product or services to others and creates an online marketing presence that never sleeps.

Next week is our final piece on this series. We will finish up with utilizing Article Marketing and tie it all together with a brief summary of each article from the series. Have a great week!

photo credit: br1dotcom