Advertising 101 for bloggers is about building an audience. Without one, it doesn’t matter how great your blog is no one will know. Developing a following isn’t hard to do. In fact, if you don’t use any of these strategies you are setting your blog up to fail.
Nevertheless, with all those blogs out there how do you get your blog to stand out from the rest? It is about paying attention to the small things and producing content that people can use.
Content
Content is so important this can’t be taken lightly. You can’t provide junk and expect people to want to follow you. Build it and they will come doesn’t apply here. The content that you produce has to be all about your audience.
Target Audience
Make sure that you know for whom you are speaking to. Don’t get suckered into thinking that your audience includes “everyone” because it doesn’t. You cannot expect to reach everyone so it is more important to know who you want to reach and cater good, quality content to that group.
Teach instead of Sell
Your overall goal may be to make sales but your audience should feel that way. Shift your focus to helping your audience solve a problem or to enhance their lives and you will be handsomely rewarded. Post information from other useful sites also, not just your site. Your readers will come to regard your blog as the place to go for useful content and they will begin to refer your site to others.
Social Media Icons
Social media is all about socializing and networking. Most people expect to see an icon on your site that points to your twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Pinterest. Display these icons on your blog in a place that is easy to see. When your readers visit your blog, it should be easy to join your network. It should be as simple as clicking the icon.
If you don’t have a Facebook page for your blog, get one. Every time that you make a blog post to your site it will post to your Facebook page too if you have it set up that way of course. Having a presence on Facebook it just another tool to help convert readers into fans.
StumbleUpon
StumbleUpon is an alternative search engine that help you blog traffic to your blog. How it works is users click through to recommendations from other SU users. By becoming a user and submitting your blog posts, you too can increase traffic. Think of it like you scratch my back I scratch yours. You recommend other people’s posts as well. It is a building process, so don’t expect to receive a million followers overnight but bloggers seem to do well.
If your blog represents your professional goals, it should be listed on your LinkedIn profile. By adding your blog as one of your websites on your profile, it will update each time you update your blog post. That is, if you use the blog link application on LinkedIn.
Advertise Your Blog Often
Small things matter such as using your blog name as your username. Promote your blog at every turn. That means that your twitter, Facebook, Pinterest accounts should darn your blog name. Advertise your blog in the signature of your email. Each time that you send an email, the world should know about your blog.
Blogger Groups
Join other blogging groups that are similar or complement your blogging topic. Facebook is a good place for this because there are blogging groups already set up that you can join. If you don’t see one that fits your niche, make one.
Network
Being on social media sites will boost your traffic numbers but it will also help you build relationships and rapport with a potential audience. An added bonus to spending like 30 minutes or so on these sites is that you keep up with the news in your industry and it offers inspiration for future blog posts.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging involves writing content for another person’s blog. This works well because you are now exposed to their audience and he or she gets quality content that can be shared with his or her audience. It is a win win scenario.
In most cases, the blogs will have complementing topics. That way the audience will find the experience to be a useful one and you don’t have to worry about competition.
If you’re creating a blog, you need to add a privacy policy page, and perhaps, a terms of service page. And may be asking why? Is it a legal formality, or is it simply just the right thing to do? You do need to consider the fact that you may be potentially collecting personal information, like email addresses or some other form of contact information. You may also have people comment on your site, so you may want to protect yourself against other users opinions. (you may have heard disclaimers before like, the views on this show do not reflect the views of this media outlet, or something like that.) That’s the type of thing you need to protect yourself against. But there’s actually one other really big reason, which we unfortunately stumbled upon when working on one of our sites.