When you just starting a blog you have many things to take into consideration, from choosing a domain name and web hosting services to writing content and promoting your blog.
Whatever you started a blog as a creative outlet or to make some money, you probably want other people to see your hard work. After all, it doesn’t matter how good your writing is if no one sees it.
There are many things to learn such as social media, content marketing, SEO, link building, and a lot of other stuff. It all means you have to take more time away from blogging to research what works, what doesn’t work, and what you need to do to make these things work.
Here’s the first tip for you: Whenever possible, look at what the most successful bloggers are doing. To save you a little time, we went out and found some of the best blog marketers on the entire internet to give us their Top Three Online Marketing Tips for new bloggers. We hope their tips will teach you how to promote your newly created blog.
If you are an online marketer and would like to contribute your own blogging tips then do not hesitate to contact us.
List of all blog marketing tips from experts
Amandah Blackwell
Bio: I’m Amandah T. Blackwell, a results-driven SEO content writer and marketer, copywriter, blogger, and social media specialist who helps businesses (B2B and B2C) create high-quality, researched, content and copy for their audience.
#1: Guest post on popular blogs.
Writing for popular blogs is better than posting content on your own blog if you don’t have a large number of readers. Studying a blogger’s most popular posts helps you to develop content for your blog.
#2: Join communities.
What’s your specialty or product or service? Find communities within your industry add value by answering questions from community members. This is a great way to position you as an expert.
#3: Capture email addresses.
Email marketing is still a viable means of growing your blog. Always ask for subscriptions on your blog and at the end of your posts.
Andrew Herrault
Bio: At Connective Insights, we believe that remarkable design drives conversions, remarkable analytics drives traffic, and remarkable people drive results. We strive to provide our clients with a holistic digital marketing strategy—from website design to visibility to PR. We are discontent to provide the bare minimum for our clients, which is why we make it our mission to develop and execute unique digital marketing approaches that fit each of our clients’ individual situations.
#1: Let your visitors subscribe to your email list and send them notifications when you publish a new post. If you do this successfully, you’ll retain your viewers and as your email list grows so will your blog.
#2: When you publish a new post, don’t hesitate to send out cold emails to help distribute your new content. For example, if you publish an awesome new fitness guide, reach out to blogs and webmasters in the fitness niche and let them know about it. This will help to build links and reach new audiences.
#3: Don’t be afraid to spend some money on advertising dollars. If your content is good, and you’ve set up an email list to retain your visitors, then try out social advertising. A hundred dollars goes a long way to getting some good exposure for a blog post. Just make sure you’re targeting the correct audience, otherwise, you’re wasting money.
Anthony Tran
Bio: Anthony Tran is the Founder of Marketing Access Pass, an All-in-One Online Marketing Training and Services website. He specializes in WordPress website development, search engine optimization, and social media marketing strategies to help you take your business to the next level. As an Air Force military veteran and former Operations Manager, he knows what its like to not to be able to have complete control of your career. Having an online business offers you the ability to build a freedom lifestyle and his goal is to inspire and help you achieve your dreams.
#1: Join a mastermind group of like-minded entrepreneurs in your industry.
A mastermind group will allow you the ability to network with like-minded people who will keep you motivated and provide you with ideas to help you grow your business. A mastermind group can also help support your blog by sharing your content and commenting on your blog.
#2: Invest in yourself by hiring a coach.
The best way to lose weight, in my opinion, is to hire a personal trainer. This type of 1-on-1 attention is what you need to get the results you want. Similarly, in business, you want to invest in your training and development by hiring a mentor or coach. A coach can help you avoid common pitfalls that most entrepreneurs face and can provide you resources that will help you get faster results.
#3: Don’t ever give up!
Blogging takes time to grow, thus you need patience and persistence. Starting a blog is a journey of finding your voice. As you continue to write you will develop your own style and rhythm. People sometimes get the misconception that if you start a blog that miraculously thousands of people will see your articles and passive income will start to fall in your lap. The harsh reality is it takes time to learn other strategies that will help your blog grow such as search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, email marketing, social media strategies, etc. Don’t ever give up and take each day as a stepping stone of reaching your goal.
Aria Solar
Bio: UrbanBound’s web-based platform allows businesses to offer a managed lump sum benefit to their transferees. With our online tools, employees can educate themselves, organize their move, and get connected to vendors who offer preferred pricing. Our breakthrough approach has already enhanced lump sum benefits for hundreds of forward-thinking companies.
#1: Develop a unique tone – It is important to develop a tone and stay consistent with it. As you add contributors to your blog, make sure they stay in line with the angles and tone you have developed, because that is what will keep your audience coming back – consistency.
#2: Write about a range of topics – Decide on a range of topics to cover in your blog, and then write about what others are talking about relative to those topics (with your own spin, of course). For example, we are a Relocation Management Software, but we write about more than just relocation – we write about tech news, startups, Millennials, HR, recruiting, moving trends, and then find a way to tie it back to relocation. As long as you stay current and serve as a source of education for people, not just a sales pitch, you will start gaining traffic to your blog.
#3: Write often – You should be writing on your blog at least twice a week. The only way for people to get in the habit of visiting your blog and using it as a resource is if there is new information regularly being published. As you start to gain traction, see which keywords gain the most traction (using either Google Analytics or a CMS) and then target those as you continue writing, which will help with your organic search.
Avery Swartz
Bio: Avery Swartz is a Toronto-based award-winning web designer, consultant, speaker, and tech skills instructor. A self-described design geek, she helps demystify the web for small business owners, charities, and arts organizations. Avery offers a friendly and casual approach with all her projects. In addition to her web design work, Avery is the founder and CEO of Camp Tech—a learning hub that provides practical tech training in a fun and friendly environment. Avery provides on-site instruction for corporations and has facilitated interactive technology workshops for over 1000 students.
#1: Attend blogging conferences or meet-ups
Blogging conferences and meet-ups are great for picking up tips and networking with other bloggers. You never know where those connections are going to take you. If there aren’t any blogging conferences in your city, consider traveling to attend one. Getting outside your town and immersing yourself in unfamiliar surroundings with new people can be really inspiring. And then you can write about your experience on your blog!
#2: Imagine your reader as someone you know
It can be hard to set a consistent tone for the writing in your blog. Do you write casually or formally, in long third-person articles or short first-person sentences? It can help to pick someone you know in real life (a friend, a colleague, even a family member), and then imagine your blog is written for them. Picture that person when you’re writing, and you’ll be consistent.
#3: Be patient and keep going
Building an audience takes time. If your readership is low at first, don’t give up! Your blog posts will never be perfect. It’s important to just keep writing, and keep going.
Ben Acheson
Bio: Hi, I’m Ben Acheson. I’m a successful Head of SEO with a strong track record, both agency and client-side. I deliver strong leadership and client relationships and get the very best out of teams to facilitate profitability and growth. I’m commercially astute, with the energy and creativity to inspire people in order to drive positive transformation. I have expertise in search, content and social media marketing, with deep specialization in SEO. I also have extensive PPC experience and I can lead integration across digital and offline channels.
#1: Be social. Nobody is going to find your blog in organic search for a while. But you can gain exposure by networking with other bloggers and influencers in social media, building an audience there and sharing your content with them. Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest are the basics. You should probably be on Instagram and Snapchat too, especially if your target audience is young. Socially exposing good content can lead to natural link acquisition, helping to kick-start your SEO too.
#2: Be yourself and be authentic. You’re blogging because it’s who you are because you’re passionate about something and hopefully an expert in it. Blogging is about people. Don’t be shy, let your passion and personality shine. It will make your blog unique and compelling.
#3: If you run out of ideas for content, get up and do something. Then write about that. Life and your experiences are easy to write about. So get to a relevant location or event and then write the hell out of it. Better still, use social media, live, while you’re there, to keep your audience engaged in real-time.
Ben Austin
Bio: Starting out as a small firm providing digital marketing to mainly SMEs, we’ve come a long way in 5 years. We still work with the same aim of providing effective yet affordable digital marketing options- we just offer a lot more of them! From SEO and PPC to website design, social media marketing, and content creation, our approach is spurred by a desire to achieve results, despite the competition now present on the web.
#1: When it comes to establishing a new blog- carving out a readership, building up your traffic and exposure- social is your key tool. It’s been said many times, but the key mistake many people make is simply promoting the same content across all networks. Say for example you are most active across Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, it makes sense to share your more business-focused or academic blogs on Linkedin and share articles of a light-hearted nature for Facebook.
#2: Incorporate influential people. Including other people’s opinions and comments within your blog is not only a good way of creating a more informed argument but also of widening your readership and traffic. This could be influential figures within your industry, spokespeople from local organizations or even clients.
#3: Pay attention to what people are talking about. Ultimately you should always write about what you know and what you feel is most relevant to your business, but it doesn’t hurt to tie it in current topics, issues or events if you’re looking to kick start traffic.
Beth Kanter
Bio: Beth Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest-running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. She is an internationally recognized trainer who has developed and implemented effective sector capacity building programs that help organizations integrate social media, network building, and relationship marketing best practices. She has trained thousands of nonprofits around the world.
#1: Be A Good Content Curator: As part of your blogging, you want to be able to cover your topic deeply and that means reading or following experts in the space, mentioning and crediting their work in your blog posts, and commenting on their blogs. Content curation is the process of seeking out the best quality content in a particular area relevant to your audience, making sense of it, and sharing with your audience. It will grow your network and blog audience.
#2: Set Up A Good Email Subscription List: While your blog will have an RSS feed, also often the option of an email subscription to your blog.
#3: Guest Blog and Share Your Blog on Social Channels: You can also repurpose your blog posts as guest posts on other blogs or platforms. Also, have a robust plan to share your blog posts through your social media presence, but also share the work of others.
Brian Honigman
Bio: Brian Honigman is a marketing consultant, freelance writer, and speaker. He works with both hot startups like Sumall and big brands like Dell focused on their content marketing, social media and search engine optimization efforts. He’s spoken at NYU, UNICEF, Huffington Post Live and for other organizations and conferences. He is a contributing writer to the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur Magazine, the Huffington Post, the Next Web, and others.
#1: Understand the audience you’re trying to reach with your blog to cater your content to their interests.
#2: Don’t be overly promotional with your content but instead write about your industry at large and how those topics relate to your company’s offerings. It’s all about creating content that solves the problems of your audience, not talking about how great your products or services are.
#3: Especially, in the beginning, focus 70% of your time on how you’ll distribute your content. If you aren’t reaching your audience than your content isn’t useful. Quality content that no one reads is garbage, as is widely distributed content that is low in quality. Create worthwhile content and focus heavily on how you’ll distribute it effectively.
Brian Lang
www.smallbusinessideasblog.com
Bio: I started working online in 2002 when I got laid off from my first job. A lot of what you need to know to be successful in business isn’t taught in school. Hopefully, I can share some useful tips and ideas as well as inspire more people to pursue their goals and dreams.
#1: Don’t ignore SEO.
When Google started concealing keyword data in Keyword Planner and Google Analytics, people started saying “just create awesome content”. I see this type of advice all the time in forums and communities, but ignoring keywords and SEO is foolish if you want to grow your blog traffic.
My blog traffic increased over 1,300% in 2014 from the previous year and search engine traffic was a big part of the reason for that increase. I created a list of over 90 keyword tools and ideas that marketers can use to get more keyword ideas that aren’t provided by Google’s tools: http://www.smallbusinessideasblog.com/keyword-research-tools
Don’t ignore SEO just because it’s harder now. The tools you need are still out there, so there’s no excuse not to at least incorporate keywords into your content and start getting some long-tail traffic.
#2: Come up with a good monetization strategy that you can execute quickly
A lot of bloggers think that they can just throw up some ads on their site or sign up for a few affiliate programs and make a lot of money blogging. The problem with that approach is that you need a lot of traffic, which takes a lot of time, skill and work, even for an experienced blogger. Making money from a blog requires more thought if you want to be effective.
To maximize the growth of your blog, you will need to work on it full time. And you can’t blog full time if you aren’t making money from it, so figure out a good strategy to monetize quickly. The most common techniques used by top bloggers include selling their own products/services or using their blog as a portfolio to getting paying clients.
#3: Reach out to and network with other bloggers
You can grow your blog a lot faster if you make friends with other bloggers. I’ve done a lot of outreach and most people might be surprised that busy top-level influencers were more likely to reply than lesser-known bloggers. Relationships are important and you can grow a lot faster if you collaborate and make friends with other bloggers.
Britt Michaelian
Bio: As a producer, writer, social correspondent, and entrepreneur, Britt likes the excitement and creativity that comes with working on new projects. In addition to consulting for tech companies and television networks in the areas of social strategy and implementation, Britt has appeared on the red carpet as a social media correspondent for the Insider and Entertainment Tonight at events for Vanity Fair, the Daytime Emmys, and the Billboard Music Awards.
#1: Before you begin marketing, build a solid foundation. This means knowing what your brand/personal values are and making decisions based on these values.
#2: Create marketing systems that allow you to test and track each activity. Whether your marketing plan involves blogging regularly, social media, video or direct mail, pay attention to what gets the greatest response and do more of that!
#3: Remember that you are marketing to people who have needs and desires. Speak to them as if they were your best friends and tell them how you are going to help them live a better life. When you genuinely create products and services based on what you are passionate about and with the purpose of helping others, your marketing will reflect the honesty and value that people need in order to buy what you have to offer.
Brooke Ballard
Bio: Founder of B Squared Media, LLC. Marketing consultant. Writer for {grow} and Agorapulse. Ready, Set, Podcast co-host. Part-time Lecturer of Marketing & Consumer Behavior at Baruch College. Life goals: #ThinkConversation and #CureCF!
#1: Ensure your blog isn’t just set up for publishing, but also for distribution. It’s one thing to write a super helpful article, and quite another to get people to share it! You can help this process along by having your blog set up to receive comments (make sure you answer these in a timely manner!), and by including a social share bar that allows your readers to share your post on different social channels. Bonus: Ensure your sharing bar is set up to tag your business when shared, that way you can thank your social sharers and engage in conversation.
#2: Many people want to incorporate storytelling into their blog articles as a way to connect and humanize their brand. While this is a smart idea, you should also remember that GOOD storytelling isn’t necessarily about telling your own story, or making it about you, rather it’s about including a narrative to highlight the solutions you’re describing or trying to sell.
#3: Before you hit publish, count how many times you used “I”, or “me” in your article. Too many of these may indicate that you’re focusing too much on yourself or your company. Count how many times you use the words “you” or “we” — these should far outweigh “me speak” to show that you really care about your readers, potential customers, and clients.
Carolyn Capern
www.ct-social.com
Bio: CT Social, LLC is a web marketing company based in Central Florida. We provide web design and optimization, social media management and consulting, mobile apps, and graphic design for web promotions. We emphasize a personalized approach, tailored to the needs of each individual or business we serve.
#1: Focus on producing great content on a consistent basis.
This above all, to thine own self, be true… or at least, be true to what you are trying to create. Some bloggers focus on growth to the exclusion of actually trying to create something worth reading. Make sure your potential readers have a reason to stay on your page… and then a reason to explore further.
#2: Focus intensively on growing through one platform (aside from your blog).
Sure, you should make sure you sign up your blog for an account on all relevant social media platforms. There’s no harm in grabbing the account names, and you should try to put stuff up on each platform as you can. But make sure you pick one platform where you will really invest in building relationships and growing your presence proactively—not everything in life can be automated successfully!
#3: Focus on imagery.
I’m not just talking about photos, although those are really important. I’m also talking about using your words to create a picture in the mind of your reader, that makes them feel something. If it’s a food blog, your readers should be hungry. If you’re a travel blogger, they should want to take out their suitcase and go on vacation. Work on expanding your empathy with others around you… if you feel what they feel, they’ll be able to relate more powerfully.
Cendrine Marrouat
www.socialmediaslant.com
Bio: Cendrine Marrouat is a social media coach / blogger / curator, and the founder of Social Media Slant, a blog focusing on social media tips, tools, stats, and news for small businesses and solo-preneurs. She also hosts the monthly #smslantchat Twitter discussion and is one of Paper.li’s blog staff writers.
#1: Focus on your readers and goals.
Who are you targeting? What do they need from you? How can you help them? What makes you unique?
A way to get started on the right track is to check out successful bloggers in your niche. Look at their content and how readers react to it via comments and social networks.
#2: It’s not about you, it’s about them
Too often, personal and corporate bloggers assume that readers just want to read the latest news about them and their products or services.
Initially, the only thing people care about is your willingness to deliver useful and helpful content. Their advocacy will come after you have proven your worth.
My words may seem harsh but that’s the truth. You cannot build a community of fans on a whim. You have to win their hearts first.
#3: Be patient
A decade ago, when I started blogging, it was much easier to make a name for yourself. Now, each niche has hundreds or even thousands of similar blogs. Millions of posts are published daily. Any successful blogger will tell you that expecting results in two weeks or even six months is useless. Instead, focus on the long term.
Chelsea Hejny
Bio: Chelsea is our social media beauty, and Beyonce-obsessed writer who spends her days crafting blog posts and dreaming up new eBooks that are designed to help our users and other readers see just how much Facebook rocks as a marketing tool. Luckily she hasn’t run out of ideas yet and keeps us looking good on a daily basis. Her family calls her Shelly B. We have no idea why, but who are we to judge? All we know is she thinks pancakes are great for breakfast, lunch, and dinner and she’s also a twin so if we ever need a quick replacement we know where to find one.
#1: Get in the habit of reading and commenting on other blogs that are in the same space. Most professional bloggers understand the reciprocal nature of blogging and when they see that you’re commenting on their blog will take a moment to check out yours. If your content is valuable they will steer their readers to it.
#2: Figure out the types of posts that do best in your industry then make your own better versions of the posts. You can use a tool like Buzzsumo to discover popular articles in your industry. Let’s say you find an article titled “10 Tools Every X Needs to Be Successful” that was shared a lot within the field you want to establish a presence in. Then your next step would be to write an even better version of that post called “20 Tools Every X Needs to Be the Best at Their Job.” You’re essentially taking a proven formula and improving upon it.
#3: Jump into as many relevant Twitter conversations and forums as you can. Don’t try to sell yourself or your content — just contribute value to the conversation and/community. When you do this, people will check you out and when they do, you should have it set up so that the link they discover first is the URL to your blog. By positioning yourself as someone who knows your stuff, people are usually drawn to seek more information out about you. This helps your blog grow.
Chris Brown
Bio: An experienced marketing professional, Chris Brown is the founder and owner of a full-service marketing company that helps manufacturers launch new products, attract new customers and build their brands. Since 2006, she has published the online Branding & Marketing blog (http://brandandmarket.com) with 17K subscribers and over 1000 marketing articles. She also wrote Simple Steps, Big Results: Branding & Marketing for the Small Business Owner, a 230-page book available on Amazon.
#1: Build a community – Find like-minded bloggers and build a relationship with them by commenting on their blogs, mentioning them in your blog and offering to interview them in a podcast. This helps to increase everyone’s readership and improves the content of the blog.
#2: Develop an editorial calendar – A calendar can be simple or elaborate. If you want to blog a couple of times a week, develop it for the month. Perhaps a book review on Tuesdays, Wordless Wednesday photos, product review on Thursdays, helpful links to other like-minded individuals on Follow Fridays. Having a theme for different days of the week or times in the quarter helps to give a rhythm to the posts. When you get “all blogged out” and have writer’s block, it will help to give you some structure too.
#3: Set up Google Alerts around your subject area – In order to stay on top of the internet discussions, new inventions, rapid developments and other idea inspiring concepts for your blog, I’ve found it helpful to have a set of Google Alerts set up to come into my email. These tell me about new things going on or new development to something I typically blog about so I can comment about it. These alerts also help me to discover new bloggers to add to my community.
Dan Petrovic
Bio: Dan Petrovic is the managing director of DEJAN, Australia’s best-known name in the field of search engine optimization. Dan is a web author, innovator and highly regarded search industry event speaker. In addition to industry leadership, Dan also maintains an active academic life as an adjunct lecturer and the chairman of the Industry Advisory Board for the School of Marketing at Griffith University.
#1: Don’t write if there’s nothing to write about.
Seriously, please stop publishing average content just because it’s Tuesday and you have a content schedule to honor. There’s so much “OK” content out there already, we don’t need more of it. Writing a lot and writing frequently won’t help your rankings. I recommend you read this page to get an understanding of what Google means by “quality content”. And please don’t just read the title.
#2: Collaborative writing.
Engage people while working on your new content piece, not after it’s finished. Let’s say you’re writing a story loaded with controversy and competition. These types of topics tend to flame up much easier.
Here’s one idea:
Brisbane: Australia’s most unremarkable city?
Who do you embed into this story? Well, think of places like this who are funded by the city and are trying to make it look attractive. They’ll have spokespeople ready to contribute and defend their side of the story. On the other hand, you might reach out to journalists who’ve covered the topic already in a negative way, for example, Greg Stolz from Courier Mail. You might also reach out to Brisbane locals and get their opinion and do the same for people living in Sydney and collect their views on the city. A nice touch would be to consider a larger study to lend your piece additional credibility. Finally, ask someone important in the field to validate your views and findings. Give them due credit and a mention in the post of course.
Every contributor can turn into a distributor. Think links, mentions, social shares.
#3: Quit you storytelling. I’m not interested.
I’ve been going on about this for over a year now, but I don’t seem to be getting through as many people as I’d like. My study into how people read online shows that only a small fraction of online users actually read stuff word for word. Most just skip and scan looking for the good stuff, tips, and answers.
In today’s TL;DR culture it’s essential to begin your posts with the most important message or take away and then reel people in with the promise of good in-depth content including eventual storytelling. Here’s a good one.
Daniel Cleveland
Bio: Daniel Cleveland is the owner and editor of SmartWebsiteMarketing.com. Smart Website Marketing covers posts about blogging, social media, search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO), branding, affiliate marketing, & content marketing for small business owners & solopreneurs looking to grow their website. Say hi to Daniel on Twitter @dpcleveland.
#1: Find Your Rhythm
With a new blog launched, you’ll need to find a rhythm that works for you. This includes everything from when you write posts, to how you share on social media, to how you interact with fans. Find the methods and tools that help you to enjoy working on your blog, while also saving you time and energy.
#2: Build Your Social Media Following
Social media is one of the best ways to start driving traffic to a new blog. Through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more you can reach a huge audience. Dedicated followers will help spread your message like wildfire and will become brand advocates for you.
#3: Start Building An Email List Sooner Rather Than Later
One of the biggest mistakes you could make is not implementing an email sign up form as soon as possible. A simple form will allow you to collect email addresses from people who are interested in your website. With those emails, you can contact your visitors and let them know when you have something new to offer them.
Following these three simple steps will help you save time, grow traffic, and increase sales, which are the topics I teach at SmartWebsiteMarketing.com.
Dave Davis
Bio: Dave Davis is the managing director and project manager of Redfly, a specialist digital marketing agency based in Dublin, Ireland. Redfly specializes in AdWords management for large accounts, especially eCommerce retailers and SaaS clients, advanced Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager implementations and analytics defined content strategy consultation. To Redfly, the numbers are everything. Dave has been in the digital marketing industry since 2004. He is also a competitive skydiver and skydiving coach.
#1: Use AdWords. Not just to drive traffic and sales to your site, but to define your entire digital strategy. AdWords is the only source of 100% accurate keyword, conversion, and cohort data. Countless keyword tools exist but where do they get that data? AdWords data defined digital strategies are what has helped Redfly clients grow exponentially over the past decade. AdWords is so much more than just another default digital channel that you see a bill for each month. You’re paying for the data as well as the traffic. Use it.
#2: Learn Analytics. Google Analytics is incredibly powerful. It’s shocking how many people use it as a simple “hit counter”. Investing the time or money in implementing the advanced features like enhanced commerce, custom dimensions based on your business case and attribution modeling can quite literally mean the difference between making a stupid decision that can bankrupt a company or making a smart one that grows revenue and leaves your competition in the dust. Intimate knowledge of how Google Analytics works can make or break a business. Big or small.
#3: Give away the family jewels. Online, there’s so much competition, the best way to differentiate yourself is to give away your knowledge and ask for nothing in return. If someone is looking for an expert in your industry, chances are, there are hundreds to choose from. Most people will go with the expert they see has demonstrated that they know their stuff. Fear of competitors stealing your “methods” is an outdated concept. The first to share their expertise and be transparent about their expertise in an industry automatically become the market leaders (in mind-share at least, the rest will follow).
Bonus Tip: Educate your customers. Many people will be looking online for how to do a certain task or service themselves. These will never be your customers. Share your skills and when your real customers see how much detail, effort, and complexity are involved in what you do by way of you showing exactly how it’s done, they’ll know you are the expert that they should pay to get the job done.
David Weaver
www.thesocialwebweaver.com
Bio: My name is David Weaver. I was born and raised in San Jose, California. In 2009, I decided together with my wife to move to Germany. I have spent the last three years developing a best practice online marketing strategy for INFORM’s Inventory and Supply Chain division, and I am constantly looking for ways to improve. I spent the early years of my career in retail, where I served as an associate manager and category buyer.
Over the last few years, blogging has become a passion of mine, and I have been able to gain some insight into what it takes to keep a blog rolling. The following three tips have been the most influential in my blog growth strategy.
#1: Post regularly
I spent a significant amount of time researching what it takes to create a successful blog, and I consistently came across the headline, “Post Regularly!” The term regularly is relative, but the idea is clear: in order to build an engaged blog audience, a certain level of consistency is required.
#2: Guest blogging
Having a top voice in your industry contributes to your blog at an early stage could boost readership significantly. It may be difficult to find people that want to guest post on a new blog, but it never hurts to ask. There is nothing wrong with asking a trusted source to provide quality insight to your blog. Additionally, going out and writing for other blogs will help you expand your readership as well. In most cases, you are able to link back to your own platform.
#3: Be social
The sharing of finished articles across various social platforms is my favorite part of blogging. I try to ask a question at the end of every article I write because it can lead to insightful discussions during the sharing process. The sharing aspect is not limited to my own work. If I read a helpful article from another blogger I will share it on the various social platforms. This is an important aspect for any blogger looking to establish a strong presence in a particular field.
Douglas Karr
Bio: Douglas is the founder of the Marketing Technology Blog, Author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies, and has been a key player in the launch of several marketing and technology-related companies. He speaks internationally on online marketing.
#1: Borrow Your Audience – Your audience is already present and following leaders within your industry. If you interview or collect advice from those influencers and publish it on your site, they will share and even promote the content with their audience. That’s what this guide is all about!
#2: Research Drives Attention – Bloggers love to research and love to share the statistics impacting their jobs. Developing surveys and producing primary research can be expensive and time-consuming – but worthwhile. Sharing curated research that others have developed is almost as powerful – especially if you can paint a clear story utilizing disparate data from competing or even opposing sources.
#3: Visuals are Irresistible – Research is great, but visuals are even better. If it’s a single stat that’s easily shareable or an infographic that tells a unique story or provides advice, or an explainer video that takes a difficult topic and describes it in a manner that’s easily consumable. This is the content that’s attractive for both sharing and reading and will accelerate growth. If you don’t have the content, search and find it on Google and YouTube!
Drew Neisser
Bio: Drew Neisser is CEO & Founder of Renegade, the NYC-based social media and content marketing agency that helps inspired clients cut through their categories to deliver genuine business growth. A frequent speaker at industry events, Drew’s been a featured expert on ABC’s Nightline and CNBC.
#1: Don’t be boring both in your subject matter and your word choice. Keep in mind, we could be playing video games instead of reading your post.
#2: Know what you’re writing about or write about someone who does. That’s why a lot of my posts are interviews!
#3: Set a deadline and a time limit to crank out at least one post a week. When time’s up, go grab a beer.
#4: Get yourself Bose noise canceling headphones and a create a playlist you can write to. Once I put those on, I’m like Pavlov’s dog with a keyboard.
Eddie Gear
www.zabroc.com
Bio: 12+ years experience in the field of Sales & Marketing. Eddie writes articles on marketing & everything digital. When he’s not working he loves to blog, work on his motorcycle and read a good book. Currently he’s on a journey to build web-based products that will add value and provide opportunities for web-entrepreneurs.
#1: Spend time on Preliminary Market Research & Write for a target specific audience
Thousands of bloggers fail or give up during their first year of blogging because they tend to start blogging without any basic study of the market. To be a successful blogger & marketer you need define your audience.
With the market information clearly laid out in front of you,you will be able to build your content around these factors & entice your visitors into purchasing your products or the ones you recommend.
#2: Build your own Tribe on Social Media for Traffic & Customers
A new blog does take some time to begin driving search/organic traffic. While you optimise your site and its content for search engines, my recommendation is to rely on social media to drive visitors to your blog. A well executed social media campaign for a new blog can generate anywhere from 5000 to 20000 new visitors monthly.
Pick the top bloggers in your market space (Ignore the industry leaders), follow them and share their content regularly and engage with them on social platforms. Do this diligently without expecting anything in return. They might not share your content or even follow you, that does not matter. Because, this is about you building your own network on the social web as a niche specific marketer.
People will start following you for the type of content you share and soon you will start seeing your content being shared and people following and engaging with you.
#3: Convert Visitors into Leads
Enticing your customers with free samples, huge discounts, value added packages and bundled sales will help you convert your visitors into leads. For a new blog to grow exponentially you will need to rely on techniques that are different and yet enticing to your reader. If you are selling Diapers, offer them a pack of free napkins that would otherwise cost a couple of dollars.
Elinor Stutz
Bio: Starting out as an entrepreneur, I knew nothing about marketing and had never written before. I hired mentors, took classes and self-studied to keep up and in some cases, ahead of the curve. One mentor continually used the word “leverage” and that is what marketing, branding, sales, and social media are all about – leveraging your numbers. Following the advice below, one baby step at a time, will help you to achieve the results you desire.
#1: Deliver what your audience needs, wants and deeply desires; a sales motto. Share your personal experience, including overcoming challenges, as this builds intrigue, empathy and a desire for more. In the process, you steadily build a strong brand and credibility among readers. In turn, your readers become motivated to re-post your blog for their followings. Loyal audiences soon follow and steadily grow.
#2: Promote your blog across platforms. Set up the blog to automatically post to the major social media sites. Extend the blog into articles and submit them to recognized sites. Save the most widely re-posted blogs in a file to later compile into a book. Use similar topics for a video channel, media interviews, speaking engagements and to engage in conversation online. Last of all, include customized links at the bottom of each venue to easily be found.
#3: Collaborate with those whose work you admire. Although you may be in the same field, you approach your work differently due to a unique DNA. Collaborate to learn new strategies from one another, and commit to promoting each other as this will exponentially grow your reach.
Elliot Simmonds
Bio: I’m a digital marketing consultant working with Start-ups and SMEs across the UK, covering SEO, blogging, social media, email marketing and online identity. My background is in marketing and market research, so I have a real understanding of how ‘business’ works and how blogging can be used as an effective business tool. I judged the UK Blog Awards in 2014, and have featured on the Guardian as a Marketing and PR Expert, among others. In addition, I also run Pennine Business News, a news site for small businesses to share news, jobs and PR free of charge.
#1: If you build it they will NOT come: This is true for most things in life, not just blogs, and is why marketing and promotion are so important. Just because you write great content doesn’t mean your blog will gain thousands of visitors – as it exists in a bubble. You need to spread the word! Thankfully, tools such as social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc.) let you do this for free. At the start, it’s also worth speaking to any friends / relatives etc. to see if they will promote your blog on their own accounts – or perhaps even link to it from their own blogs or websites. Twitter has numerous hashtags for new bloggers – including #BlogHour for instance.
#2: Recycle content where you can: Blogging can take as much or as little time as you want but, generally, if you’re delivering high quality content then you’re probably putting in some time. It’s always worth looking at how you can re-purpose your blog posts for marketing purposes. A few ideas are to: include a link to a popular blog post on your email signature (or a link to your blog in general), collect several related blog posts in to an e-book and then publish it as a PDF – you can swap downloads for people’s email addresses and build a list of prospects if yours is a business blog, finally, you can include your blog posts and a snippet of their contents in a newsletter to your followers – this will bring them back to your site and increase engagement.
#3: Invest time in your blog: one of the big things I hear from clients is that they ‘don’t have time to blog’. Whilst this is fine, you need to see blogging as a bigger part of your marketing strategy and how it feeds in to a lot of other sectors. A few examples: target long tail keywords with blog posts – they then stay there forever and so it’s helping your SEO, mention other companies in posts and then email them to say you have done (target potential clients for a nice introduction, and ask if you can have a meeting), your blog feeds your social media (if you write an article, you can tweet about it for months as long as it stays relevant), internal linking (link to your product pages from blog posts – drive visitors to things they might buy / services they might consider), include other departments (if you’re a bigger organization, blogging can help give voice to departments other than marketing), humanise yourself (people buy people, so you can utilise your blog to develop a consistent voice – either for the company as a whole, or for a key figure like the MD or CEO).
Erin Payne
Bio: Erin Payne is a Brisbane based journalist in the digital sphere who works in content marketing and SEO for Reload Media. She is a proud geek and tea-lover, with a passion for all things writing.
#1: Target long-tail keywords
Research what long-tail keywords (more specific keywords comprising of four or more words) have a good search volume and focus some of your content on these. This can be a great way to draw traffic and target readers rather than focusing on broader keywords with too much competition.
#2: Create an email database
If people are really into your content, they will likely be keen to receive ongoing emails highlighting your blog updates. Be sure to explicitly ask engaged readers to subscribe to blog updates!
#3: Have a clear target audience
Writing for “everyone” is confusing and fruitless. Define a target audience for each piece of content to hone in on certain people. Categorize blogs so particular audiences can find the content relevant to them.
Eugene Mota
www.poisecatalyst.com
Bio: I’m Eugene Mota, expert marketer and entrepreneur, and I help entrepreneurs grow profitable blogs and businesses online.
I have successfully grown businesses within both Fortune 100 / Global Companies (Procter & Gamble, Danone, Unilever) and as an entrepreneur.Visit his PoiseCatalyst.com blog for practical blogging tips and make sure you grab his 2015 +83 Traffic Sources Mind Map.
#1: Define Your Ideal Audience. Understanding your audience well is the foundation of growing a successful blog. Understand who your ideal prospects are, where they hang out and what are their challenges. Then develop content that helps them overcome those challenges.
#2: Post Content on Authority Sites. In the beginning, you don’t have a large audience. Therefore, it’s more effective to publish your great content on authority sites in your niche. This will build your brand, traffic and subscribers list.
#3: Leverage Influencers Outreach. Relationships with key bloggers in your field are critical. When publishing a highly useful post on your blog, reach out to influencers. Some of them will help you spread your message out.
Fenja Villeumier
www.linkbird.com
Bio: Fenja Villeumier is an inbound marketing manager at the link bird company in Berlin, provider of the SEO Management & Content Marketing tool of the same name for increasing organic online visibility. She is involved in content management at all stages from topic finding, conception, and production to seeding. Her favorite leisure-time activities are reading, traveling, and photography.
#1: High-Quality Content Creation
Your main focus should be high-quality content. It’s certainly not “if you build it they will come”. You need to promote your content to be visible. But if you don’t build it they won’t come at all. That’s for sure. High-quality content is thus a prerequisite for growing your blog.
#2: Proactive Reputation Building
Participating in relevant forum discussions, joining professional networks, adding value via blog commenting, being present on social media, visiting conferences and networking events all help you to build up a reputation and become a respected authority in your niche.
#3: Targeted Influencer Outreach
Targeted influencer outreach is important for building relationships, raising awareness, and gaining trust in your target group. Furthermore, it helps you to generate valuable backlinks that will improve your rankings, and sustainably increase relevant traffic streams to your website.
Frank Buck
Bio: Frank Buck served as a teacher, principal, and central office administrator during a career in education spanning almost 30 years. He realized early that getting organized and managing time well makes life easier. Dr. Buck adopted and perfected tools that have been with him throughout his career, and for over 15 years has shared those ideas in workshops designed for those in education. His blend of content and humor has made him a favorite with audiences throughout the United States and Canada.
#1: Use Facebook and Twitter to help drive traffic to your blog. Each time a new post appears on your blog, post the title of the post and the link on both Facebook and Twitter.
#2: Use “If This Then That” to automate advertising your blog post on other social media networks. I wrote a “recipe” that says IF I post to my blog, THEN post the title, link, and a few well-chosen words to my Facebook business page. Three other recipes create similar messages on my personal Facebook page, Twitter, and Linkedin.
#3: Use a picture at the top of each blog post. I like http://www.morguefile.com as a source for good, free pictures. I like to pull the image into PowerPoint and add the post title as a text box in the picture. It makes for a nice effect.
Gina Schreck
Bio: Gina Schreck is the President and Chief Hooligan here at SocialKNX. Aside from making sure everyone is heavily caffeinated, she is always looking for new ways to use technology tools to build a business and manage that treasured brand! With a degree in psychology from San Jose State University, she thinks she can analyze everyone on the team to see when the caffeine levels get low. Gina is an international keynote speaker and is the author of 6 books, including Gettin’ Geeky with Twitter and the soon to be released, “More Social, Less Media.”
#1: Get active on social media sites that your target market hangs out on. Being active is more than creating an account. You need to follow or connect with new people each week and then read some of their posts. Comment, like and share their content. Do this every day with new people to begin relationships. Most will want to learn more about you and click to join your pages and profiles.
#2: Tug on some heartstrings. When you begin blogging, you need to find a few cheerleaders and supporters who will comment and/or share. Send a personal email to a few of your friends or influencers in the industry you are serving, and ask them for their opinions on your post. While you can’t abuse this technique, you can send emails to a couple of people each time you publish a post. Most people will want to help you and post a comment. After they comment, chances are they will share your post.
#3: Be patient. Creating a blog community takes time and consistency. Don’t give up too early. Keep writing, sharing and growing your online presence.
Irfan Ahmad
www.digitalinformationworld.com
Bio: The truth is, we never started with any dream of ‘global domination’, or sophisticated blog strategy for www.digitalinformationworld.com – I create infographics and was fascinated by the growth in technology, social media, and digital marketing over the last decade but had nowhere to find a comprehensive index. So I created one with the goal to make that information organized and accessible.
In my experience, the key to a successful blog is enjoying it, being yourself and sharing what you find is interesting, and the moment your audience is in synch with your interests #successfulblog.
#1: Commitment
Above all, you need to keep your blog alive. So before you begin to lose the battle against ‘writer’s block’, why not create a schedule for the next 90 days – and book in the time needed to write for your blog, with yourself, in advance. Using this little trick, you will have the ability to know when you are letting both yourself and your blog down.
#2: Community
Take a look at your competitors, and understand them from a top-level view. This will prevent you from imitating single bloggers, let you see who is new on the block, and evaluate current trends that a high ratio of your competitors are all writing about. Share some tips of your own and engage with other bloggers, it’s fun to be part of a bigger team and community – as a group of friends inside a huge digital landscape.
#3: Communication
Always be relevant. This starts from creating the content that your audience prefers (confirms you listen and ‘know how to host an audience’), resharing to communities that have similar interests to yours and continues with staying consistent with how you have defined or categorized your field of blogging. It includes talking back to those who reach out to you.
KEY TAKEAWAY – if you are committed to your blog, and you become part of a community and then you communicate the most relevant information to the most relevant audience – you are going to do extremely well, and have a lot of fun – just like we do at www.digitalinformationworld.com
James Mawson
Bio: James Mawson is a web marketing consultant and copywriter from Melbourne, Australia, providing made-to-measure traffic, content and conversion solutions to a select group of discerning clients.
#1: Work out what you want to say. What are the most hard-won insights you’ve had from your time with the subject matter? Create substantial pieces of lasting value.
#2: Work out how to say it. Seek simple ways to say things best. Trim excess words. Short sentences rule. Use words your audience is familiar with.
#3: Write. Don’t wait to learn more before taking action; you can’t really start learning until you write regularly. Split your time evenly between reading books and websites (like this one), and applying what you learn.
Jason Firch
Bio: Jason is a self-taught digital marketer, nonprofit advocate, and MBA graduate with 6 years of proven experience. He runs a website, Nonprofits Source, where he writes about content marketing, SEO, engagement, brand building, and audience growth.
#1 Get Your SEO And Analytics Accounts Squared Away
If you’re a serious blogger that wants to connect with your audience online, then there’s no excuse for not having at least the basics of SEO down. I recommend learning SEO yourself as it’s incredibly important to understand how a website needs to be structured in order to be 1) found and indexed by search engines 2) promote a good user experience for visitors who land on your site. Learning SEO may feel like an overwhelming task, but it’s nothing a 4-hour audiobook can’t solve.
Once your website’s traffic begins to grow you’ll want to measure the results to prove to yourself or stakeholders that your strategies are working. Google Analytics and Search Console are free tools and in my opinion, are the bare minimum of tracking capabilities that should be set up on your website. Google Analytics will track your traffic results while the Search Console will help with your technical SEO and provides some keyword and page-level insights. If you’re using other Google products like Adwords or YouTube, then I recommend connecting your Analytics account to those as well.
Get all of this out of the way first so that you can focus on what matters most.
#2 Take Time To Plan Your Strategy
It’s important to take the time to define which strategies you will use and identify how they work together in achieving your marketing goals. Content marketing, for example, is highly effective at growing your brand and audience online.
But what if your marketing goals are to generate revenue through membership sign-ups or selling a product/service? Content may not be the best way of accomplishing those goals, at least in the short-term. In this case, setting up a landing page with targeted Facebook ads will likely yield a faster and more expected result than content.
Ideally, you’ll want to organize these thoughts by creating a marketing plan, which is an action plan that outlines every step in the process that will be taken to work towards your goals.
#3 Take An Integrated Approach To Marketing
Blogging for the sake of blogging will only get you so far. Today, you need to take an integrated approach to increase the odds that your marketing will be successful. In other words, get the word out on as many platforms as you to handle.
The truth is that no one can predict how well a campaign will perform on any given channel. What works for one company will not necessarily work for your and vice versa. What you’re attempting to do is to weed out the winning channels from the duds so that you can redirect time and resources on what works. Once you can prove a positive ROI on one platform you can then think about slowly adding new channels and ways for people to interact with your brand.
Joan Stewart
Bio: “Publicity expert Joan Stewart, who frequently ranks #1 for “free publicity” on Google, works with business owners, nonprofits and organizations that need to use free publicity in traditional media and online visibility in social media to establish their credibility, enhance their reputation, position themselves as experts, sell more products and services, and promote a favorite cause or issue–without an expensive publicist.
For almost two decades, under The Publicity Hound brand, she has trained and coached thousands of CEOs and business owners, nonprofit executives, PR agency staff, publicists, marketing directors, authors, speakers and experts via live events, online training, consulting and The Publicity Hound Mentor Program.
Stewart, a former newspaper editor, is the author of 10 ebooks on publicity and PR, and has contributed to more than 60 books on publicity, PR, marketing, small business, book publishing, and social media.”
#1: The gold isn’t in the blog. It’s in your email list that includes names and email addresses of people who have given you permission to market to them. Use a reputable email management company (I love AWeber) and create an opt-in box in the margin of your blog so that it shows up on every page of your blog. Email helpful tips and other industry news regularly, at least once a week, and be sure to make your subscribers aware of your new blog posts. Follow the 80-20 rule of content/promotion. Include a second link from your homepage that leads people directly to a landing page that explains exactly what they’ll get if they sign onto your list.
#2: Pay attention to questions people in your target market are asking. That’s a tipoff to topics that would make excellent blog posts. The two best places to look for questions: in your email and in LinkedIn groups. You’ll also find questions about your topic at Quora.com, the giant question and answer site.
#3: Repurpose your blog posts by rewriting them and publishing them to your LinkedIn profile–a great way to promote your expertise. Google frowns on duplicate content, hence the rewrite.
Joanne Barnes
www.onlinemarketingaddicts.com
Bio: My online career really took off when I discovered Facebook in August 2010 and I spent the first 2 years of my business specializing in Facebook and Social Media traffic before I branched out to all sorts of online marketing strategies. My main focus is demonstrating how to increase leads and sales while systemizing and automating your business using online marketing strategies & productivity hacks.
#1: Consistency Trumps Quantity – Whilst your passion for your new project will have you planning to write every day, the reality is unless you have a writing team or an abundance of time to write quality articles daily, after the honeymoon period has worn off, you will probably find yourself racked with guilt over the blog posts you’re NOT publishing.
Plan from Day 1 to commit to publishing at least one post once a week on a specific day. Your audience will become used to your articles always coming out on that day each week and this will foster trust and reliability. Two great values to have your brand associated with.
It also gives you the time to ensure that, that one post of the week is of the highest quality and includes information that your audience can really use. Thus growing your community even faster through word of mouth and recommendation!
#2: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is – One of the fastest ways to grow your blog is to run ads to it. Publish a great article, post about it on your Facebook page and run a ‘website clicks’ campaign to it. You’ll soon see your audience grow at just $5 or $10 a day.
However, to make your ads even more effective also ensure you have a free offer on your blog or specific post encouraging people to leave their name and email address to access. This means that you are building your email list as you’re growing your audience and the next time you publish a post you can, of course, email the subscribers you have collected thus far.
Another tip is to add the FB targeting pixel to your blog and create a custom audience of ‘blog visitors’ on FB. Now each time you send ads to your posts you can target your blog visitor’s audience on FB, resulting in cheaper clicks to your blog posts. Happy Days! 🙂
#3: Be Free & Easy With Your Blog Posts – When you’re just getting going (and ongoing through your blogging career), you need to offer out masterpiece articles to other bloggers who have already built their audience.
I know it’s tempting to save all the best stuff for your own blog, but you need to look at it as a movie trailer. If you can get an unbelievably good article published on a complimentary blog which is already seeing thousands of visits a week from your ideal target market, then you will start to see a ready-made stream of new visitors checking your site out for more great information.
This, my friend, is commonly known as ‘guest blogging’. Simply google, ‘your niche + guest blogging’ or ‘write for us’ or something similar, do your research on those blogs looking at things like page rank and domain authority, but more importantly just looking at social shares and comments and if it looks like a popular blog, read the guest post guidelines and submit your game changer!
Go above and beyond with your article. Blog owners get very passionate and selective about the content they allow on their site, so focus on the customer results, give the absolute best information you can and ensure your content totally aligns with the objective of the blog.
A small bio at the bottom of your post along with a couple of well-placed reference links through the content will ensure the super-engaged audience will click through to find out more.
Joel Libava
Bio: Most of the information on The Franchise King.com is geared towards prospective franchise business owners. It’s straightforward (to say the least…you’ll see) and to the point. It’s truthful. As a matter of fact, some of the information that I disclose won’t be found anywhere else on the web.
#1: Your email subscribers are the first people to announce the launch of your new blog to. You’ll get immediate traffic because they are already “fans” of yours because they’ve agreed to receive information from you via email. In addition to asking them to check out your new blog, it’s perfectly okay for you to ask them to share it with their social networks. Include a message with a link to your new blog that they can copy and paste. Make it easy for them to share!
#2: The next place to market your new blog; your social media networks. Call me Captain Obvious, but this really is a crucial thing for you to do. But, don’t do it like everyone else. Prepare several different messages that can be posted, and then automate them to go out on certain days and times with Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. Better yet, include the names and/or Twitter handles of some of your more influential friends in your updates. Doing so will guarantee they see your announcement while gently encouraging them to Retweet or share it with their networks.
#3: If you’re a new blogger, you may not have a lot of fans and followers yet. Heck, you may not even have an email list yet! That’s ok. You’ll have to do some very personal outreach. In other words, get on the phone! Call your friends. Call family members. Tell them you just started a blog. Will they be as excited as you are? Probably not. Tell them anyway. Ask them to visit your blog. If they’re in front of their computer screens when you call, ask them to do it while you’re on the phone with them. Ask them if they like the look of it. If you’re really courageous, you can ask them to look it over for a few minutes and send you a review of it via email. It’s a great way for you to get feedback and interest.
John Doherty
Bio: John is the founder of Credo, and also a freelance digital marketing consultant who helps marketplaces grow through B2C customer acquisition via SEO, email marketing, and content.
#1: Plan your content via keyword research for at least 3 months out. Before you even publish the first post, have at least a month’s worth of posts written. The first mistake new bloggers make is starting a blog, publishing their first post, and then never posting again. Consistency is key as it builds your audience over time, and those interactions and repeated visits are a great sign for search engines that your content is valuable.
#2: Read Moz’s Beginner’s Guide to SEO. Every SEO I know (except for the veterans with 10+ years experience) began here. By reading this classic guide, you’ll get a great base of knowledge around how search engines work, writing content that ranks, and more.
#3: Write in-depth content. In the past, you could write a lot of shorter posts (under 500 words) and still rank quite well. However, a lot of blogs have proven recently that this approach does not really work anymore as it is not possible to write the best piece on the Internet about that topic in that few of words. Instead, go for longer, in-depth pieces that fully answer the topic. One example is this real estate marketing guide.
John Lincoln
Bio: John is a CEO of Ignite Visibility, an SEO consulting company that experts in international marketing strategies.
#1: Make sure you’re clear about the purpose of your blog. What is the main topic and theme that you’re going to be writing on? Once you know that so lucky words that you can use to optimize your post. Choose one keyword for each post and make sure you really focus on it so that you can eventually get that post ranking higher in the search engines for that term.
#2: Create a list of all the other blogs and websites in your industry. Develop a plan so over time you mention them any link to them. Every single time that you mention or link to another one of these websites makes sure you send them an email and let them know. When you send them the email asked them to share the article on their social media. This will help you build relationships and you can even ask these people if you can write a guest blog for them and allow them to do the same for your website. Over time you’ll naturally build more links and more traffic this way.
#3: Make sure you are setting up email captures. Email is an incredibly important part of blogging. You should be testing a variety of email captures on your blog and every time that you write a new post you need to have a strategy for sending that it out and a content marketing email. This will allow you to build up loyal readership faster. In addition to email, you need to have social media communities on all the major sites and be actively growing those communities with social media advertising and great content.
Blogging is actually really competitive and there’s a lot to know. Before you jump in and start your first block I recommend you read my book, Digital Influencer, A Guide to Achieving Influencer Status Online. The book will tell you everything you need to know to become a subject matter expert in any space.
Jordie van Rijn
Bio: Jordie van Rijn is a marketing influencer and email and marketing automation consultant.
#1: Create hero content
Not all your blog posts need to be EPIC, but a good mix with a couple of evergreen articles will go a long way. For instance, I have a few on my site that really pulled in a lot of links and rank #1 for their keywords.
#2: Gather email opt-ins and grow your audience.
Someone finds your blog via Google, has a look around, maybe read an article and then goes away never to return, that is what often happens, right? Your email list will become one of your most precious assets, start building it from the first day (or after you publish your first post).
#3: Add marketing automation
Marketing automation is hot and with good reason. Here are the marketing automation stats to prove it. Depending on your niche, diversity of your blog and buyers you might need to start with some automated drip campaigns or true marketing automation. Make sure you have a stream of content and be able to score contacts and ultimately turn them
Joshua Steimle
Bio: Joshua Steimle is a TEDx speaker and a writer for Forbes, Entrepreneur, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. He is the CEO of MWI, a digital marketing firm he founded in 1999 which now has offices in Hong Kong and various cities in the U.S, and he is a co-director of the Hong Kong chapter of Startup Grind. Steimle is an expert trainer at General Assembly and regularly presents to various business groups and industry associations.
#1: Publish great content. This might seem like common sense, but so many people post content that isn’t helpful, relevant, or interesting, and yet they expect to get lots of traffic. Content is “good” if people are willing to read it. Content is “great” if people are willing to pay for it. Go look at the kind of content people are paying for (paid online magazines like the Wall Street Journal, books, etc.) and figure out how to create that kind of content.
#2: Guest post. If you’re starting out then nobody knows who you are, and no, just building a great website won’t make people come to it. Guest posting, done the right way, is still a viable strategy for growing your own traffic.
#3: Build an email list. Make sure you’re collecting emails from your visitors. Building an email list ensures that every time you post, those people are going to know about it, and they’ll share your posts with others. Once you hit a critical mass, this will become a huge boost to your blog’s traffic and engagement, but don’t wait to start building, set up a form to collect email addresses today.
Julia McCoy
Bio: Julia McCoy’s life career happened when she left medical school to follow her passion in copywriting and SEO at 19 years old. A solely self-taught entrepreneur, she built an online copywriting agency a year later in 2011, which has grown to include more than 60 talented copywriters and 60 content products today. Her latest accomplishment was launching a full e-commerce online Content Shop.
#1: Set a consistent schedule for your blogging. This is key to your blog growing, period. Post at least a couple of times every week. If you don’t have time, you can invest in writing services (don’t worry: most businesses do).
#2: Your blog topics matter (headlines are everything). If you can’t get the reader to click, you won’t get as much engagement. Great headlines usually include numbered lists, a direct question, action verbs or colorful adjectives. You can also include a few keywords in your headline but work with and around keywords, not for them.
#3: Don’t just create content for your own blog. See who is succeeding in your industry, and approach them to see if you can guest blog. You can then cross mention their name and your name on Twitter, for example, when you share, to instantly get more (and highly qualified) followers.
Karin Hurt
Bio: As a keynote speaker, leadership consultant, and MBA professor, Karin helps leaders improve business results by building deeper trust and connection with their teams. A former Verizon Wireless executive, she has over two decades of experience in sales, marketing, customer service, and human resources.
#1: The most important is to create an engaged community. As a question at the end of every blog post to draw readers in, and then respond to every comment in a substantial way. You will soon find that your readers begin to follow your lead and respond to one another. Now you’ve moved from a one-way push to creating conversation.
#2: Offer real value. Take the time to offer substantial, practical advice that people can follow. Too many blogs are sales pitches disguised as content. Be generous about what you’re giving away.
#3: Build real relationships with other bloggers. Comment on their sites. Set up some time to talk and get to know them as people. You will learn a lot, and have more fun, by developing a strong network of trusted social media colleagues.
Kevin Barber
Bio: “Kevin Barber is the Founder and Head Entrepreneur of Lean Labs a Digital Marketing Agency, and host of the new virtual conference, Digital Marketing Day. His customer-centric marketing focuses on the buyer journey and valuable content, under the philosophy that brands grow bigger by getting better at delivering brand experiences that customers love.
His team of 12 people in 5 countries believes that the brands that win today are continuously improving themselves and their website experiences so as to win the trust and attention of their customers. Their award-winning growth-driven design system demonstrates how continuous improvement is the path to becoming a remarkable brand.
#1: Published is Better Than Perfect
Buy a Seth Godin book, read it, and do what it says. Stop waiting, hit the publish button and move on. If there’s a mistake, the world is not going to end. Fix it, and move on. No one ever said “no” to a good product or deal because a blog post had a typo.
Would you not buy a MacBook Pro because Apple.com had a typo? Seriously.
#2: Always, Always Add Contextual Links
Don’t try to cover everything in every article. Learn to stick to the topic like a booger on a wall. (you might not want to use that figure of speech) But sticking to the topic allows you to create other articles instead of chasing rabbits in one article. Then, linking to “learn more” becomes a genius way to not only build SEO signals, but also to keep people moving around your website, and staying longer.
#3: Always, Always Add a CTA of some kind.
Without a next step, is the page even worth building or the email worth sending? The purpose of every piece of content is to lead them to the next piece of content. We don’t even publish a thank you page after achieving a clear conversion without having a clear next step.
Khalid Saleh
Bio: Khalid Saleh (pronounced ka-lid) is the leading e-commerce architect in North America. He was the lead for 12 of the largest eCommerce operations including Motorola, AMEX, Levelor, Citrix, WWT, Nabors, and many others. Khalid managed all aspects of eCommerce design and implementation for these companies; from the initial stages of concept creation, through the grueling process of implementation, and finally to the launch and marketing of the sites. He continues to consult with companies all around the world advising them on e-commerce operations.
#1: Build and Email List Right from the Start
One of the biggest mistakes made by bloggers and upcoming marketers is failing to build an email list right from the start. Some people wait over a year to finally put in an opt-in form on the blog or website and end up missing massive opportunities to connect with the audience. If you have to build an email list, start immediately. There is no harm in capturing only a couple of email addresses at the beginning. The important thing is to continue building your list. If you hope to capture the 10,000th email address, you have to capture the first one.
#2: Networking is important
Networking with other bloggers is crucial if you really want to take your blog to the next level. Blogging is not a solitary activity. In the blogosphere, there is a lot of room for connecting with other bloggers and fans who will help you to expand your network. You can network with other bloggers using different approaches, but make sure you don’t come across as a spammer. For instance, you can visit popular blogs and leave thoughtful comments, offer guest blogs and connect through social media. Rather than just use social media to initiate chats, you can share other blogger’s posts. If you do this, other bloggers might want to share your posts too. Certainly, offline networking is also equally effective. Attend blogger conferences, seminars, marketing events and get to know other bloggers face-to-face. The physical human interaction is very important when it comes to establishing connections and building relationships.
#3: Consistency and patience is the key
The thing about blogging is that your blog takes its sweet time before it even thinks of how to start giving you returns. If you think blogging and online marketing is an instant coffee, you will be utterly disappointed. It is important to keep writing, keep building your email list, keep tweaking your site, keep networking and to keep learning. It is a process. Although there is a starting point, blogging has no destination. If you stop, you are out.
Lily Leung
Bio: “As a Marketing Manager, Lily develops content strategy, creates and manages marketing materials, and implements social media for VA Partners and VA Partners’ clients. Lily has marketing experience in both corporate and startup environments.
Lily’s successes at VA Partners include:
Increasing a sales training company’s pageviews and leads by 300% over a 6 month period
Implementing a brand new content marketing and social media strategy for a B2B company that increased overall traffic by 10%
Increased conversion rates on white paper landing pages 2x to 4x by redesigning pages
Prior to joining VA Partners, Lily was the Marketing Manager at a Toronto mobile startup, and before that, she was a Marketing Manager at a major Canadian bank.
Lily is a photography and travel enthusiast who has visited over 40 countries.”.
#1: Add a link to your blog in your email signature
People you email often check your signature for your contact information and social media accounts, so your blog is a great addition.
#2: Establish an email newsletter
Send regular updates to interested readers to keep them updated on new blog posts.
#3: In addition to sharing your own content on social media, make sure you share blog posts by other influential and growing bloggers, especially the ones you may want to connect with in the future.
Loz James
Bio: Originally a freelance broadcast journalist for BBC local radio, Loz has over 17 years’ experience in content marketing, copywriting and SEO. He founded Content Champion to help business owners and in-house teams master content marketing techniques.
#1: Prepare the ground for your new blog with a solid foundation of launch content. Use Brian Dean’s Skyscraper Technique to put together a handful of the most amazing resources of their type – and lead with these when you launch your blog.
#2: Forget about social media (at first). It’s a far better use of your time when starting a new blog to get your flagship content up, then promote the hell out of it by writing similarly high-quality pieces of content for other popular blogs in your niche. Think about it – you don’t have an audience when you first start out – so until you build up your own platform, spend more time funneling traffic back from popular sites in your sector, than putting content on your own site.
#3: Start an email list from day one. Your mailing list will become the main asset in your online business, so start offering enticing lead magnets and collecting emails from the outset. When you speak to experienced bloggers and ask them what they would do differently if they had to start again – building an email list from the very beginning is always top of the list.
Maggie Patterson
Bio: I know what it takes to stand out and get noticed. Over the course of my career, I’ve secured literally hundreds of speaking gigs and thousands of guest posts and media stories. I’ve turned geeky executives into technology gods, helped tiny startups build mad street cred in their industry and in one crazy run placed over 50 guest posts for a client in a six month period. In other words, I’m not just making this up as I go.
#1: Be consistent. It’s the most basic advice, but building a blog requires time and commitment. Too many times people start with little to no audience and then get frustrated after a couple of months because they aren’t where they want to be. Building a tribe takes months or even years with blogging.
#2: Have a content strategy. We talk about editorial calendars, but that’s a tactical planning tool. A content strategy helps you map out your tone, voice and more, along with nailing your mission and vision. Plus you can nail your process around creating content as part of it. All the great ideas in the world won’t matter if they’re not tethered to something bigger.
#3: Show up to serve. Blogging is about delivering value and serving your community. Look to them directly to see what they need, what questions they need to be answered and how you can create the content they really are craving. By serving them first, they will grow to like and trust you, so when you’re actually selling, they will be more open to it.
Mandy Edwards
Bio: My heart is in serving businesses. I work continually to educate myself in the latest in social media – from apps, tools, Terms of Service changes to platform changes. I have a pulse on what is going on. I serve businesses in consulting, training and managing social media.
#1: Publicize your blog. You’ve worked hard to create it, you have to let people know you are there. Post to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, etc. with your new blog link. Just because you build it, they won’t necessarily come unless you tell them about it.
#2: Make sure you have share links on your individual blog posts. After you’ve gotten readers to your blog, make sure you make it easy for them to share it with their friends. There are many plug-ins (if you are working with WordPress) that allow you to place your share links anywhere on your post – above it, below it or to the side.
#3: Give readers an option to subscribe to your blog posts. This can be done through an RSS feed in any of the email marketing programs or through WordPress itself. You’ve worked hard to get them to your blog, prompt them with a call-to-action to subscribe to receive each post via email. This will develop loyal readers, who will, in turn, find more readers.
Marcus Svennson
Bio: Marcus Svensson is responsible for the Growth of Albacross with previous experience as a founder and background in Mathematics from Stanford. Albacross is one of the top lead generation tools in Europe today and growing with hundreds of new companies every day.
#1: Sell an ad space. My very first tip for monetizing a website is a well-known one. But it really works. If your site is focusing on a narrow niche, this method could bring lots of profits. You can charge a flat fee for a month of running an advertisement on your website. Besides, you always know how much you’ll get, due to the fact the ad is direct.
#2: Paid posts. There are lots of bloggers who do the guest posting. And all of them are interested in link building to their website. Thus, the space on your blog is a perfect place for accepting paid posts. However, make sure the content you publish on your website is not published elsewhere and is 100% unique.
#3: And finally affiliate marketing. I think affiliate marketing is one of the most lucrative ways to generate passive income online. This one is a tricky one, and what works for one may not be as profitable for others. So, my advice here is to concentrate your attention on producing high-quality content, using the right tools and, of course, choosing relevant products or services to promote.
Margie Dana
www.margiedana.com
Bio: I’m a marketing communications strategist with a specialty in printing and print buying – although I also serve clients in other industries.
I’m as comfortable working in social media as I am in conventional media. One of my primary skills is writing content, though I bring more depth and experience to clients. I’ve done loads of direct mail, presentations, webinars, email marketing, event promotion, and converting technical copy into language that laypeople can understand.
Here are my top 3 tips for how to grow (or market) your blog. This is directed especially to B2B bloggers, not consumers because this is my “sweet spot.”
#1: Share the news with your immediate network. Let’s say you’re a business owner. You need to tell your customers, warm prospects, colleagues, and suppliers that you’ve launched a new blog. Send them an email announcing it. Include a link to your blog, and I’d also copy/paste the blog in the body of that email.
#2: Let your social media community know. Are you active in LinkedIn? Twitter? Do you have a company Facebook page? Whatever social channel you use regularly should be the next stop when announcing your new blog. Every new blog post means you share the link on these social channels.
#3: Add your blog in a prominent spot on your web site. I know, you’re thinking, “Well, duh!!” but trust me when I say that many companies fail to feature their blogs on their sites. A link to the blog belongs on the home page, along with a sign-up form so that people can register to receive word about new posts.
Remember to make a big splash about your new blog. It’s key to continually market it so that your community grows.
Mathew Buckley
Bio: Here at New Breed, we do things a little differently than everyone else. Our focus is not just on generating more traffic or leads to your website – we are here to grow and scale your business. Unlike other inbound agencies, we own your entire funnel – from demand generation to sales qualification and acceptance. We work closely with your internal marketers and sales reps to generate highly qualified prospects, close more deals and deliver happy customers. Here are the 3 tips I would suggest for anyone starting a new blog for their business:
#1: Before you start, take the time to understand the needs, challenges and goals of your audience (buyer personas). Completing an in-depth persona exercise before you put pen to paper will ensure that you’ll be creating content they will find valuable.
#2: Use SEO to your advantage. Target long-tail keywords with a high search volume. Focus on keywords with a Google difficulty rating of 0.5 or below with a minimum threshold of 100 or more monthly searches. Find 3 – 5 of these keywords to focus on at a time and craft posts on a variety of topics using those words, optimizing 1 post for 1 keyword.
#3: Make sure that you continue to blog consistently, and allow people to sign up for email subscription notifications. This will do two things, first it will help establish you as a trusted source of information for your audience where they will want to return again and again to read your content. Secondly, it will enable you to begin to build a subscriber list of contacts that you can continue to engage with over time and ensure that your blog stays top of mind with new posts appearing in their inbox.
Michael Conway
Bio: “Means-of-Production is a marketing agency for businesses whose uniqueness comes from a sense of place. We interest prospective customers in your services by instilling a desire for a look and sensation that only your firm can provide. It’s done through brand positioning, a well-designed website and a content marketing process that sets your company apart from competitors. We plant perception of luxury in a prospect’s mind and then reinforce an aspirational longing using a variety of marketing channels. Our objective is to improve your bottom line with an increased valuation for your companies services and products.
We are passionate about helping businesses with content marketing, graphic design, thoughtful copywriting, and concept driven advertising that targets the right audience. Now more than ever, marketing intersects art and technology. Let us help you attract the right clientele, gather behavioral data and implement automated marketing strategies that help drive sales.”
#1: Get Found.
With the number of blogs coming online every day, it’s important to have a long-tail keyword strategy in place. It will help you stand out from the crowd. Use specific phrases that include a highly searched keyword in your title, within your body copy and even as image captions. People don’t search for “dress”, they search for specifics like “Alexander McQueen wedding dress”
#2: Size Matters.
Website’s load speed matters in search results and too many blogs are loaded with images that are improperly sized and have very little written content. Try to use images to augment the information in the written copy and resize the images to fit your blog. I fill my column width with images that are 650 px wide and I try to keep the file size to less than 300 Kb. Photoshop Elements is an inexpensive easy to use software that allows you to size images for the web in seconds.
#3: Written Well, Gets Read.
Writing well is the act of rewriting. This is the predominant message in William Zinsser’s excellent book “On Writing Well”. It is a book that I turn to often for guidance when writing nonfiction. Follow the 3C’s rule, Clear Concise and Correct and use the smallest, jargon-free words whenever possible. Bonus Tip: Dictation software allows me to shorten the process write more freely.
Michael Guberti
Bio: Teenager Entrepreneur is a movement that educates and empowers teenagers worldwide to take their passions and convert them into products. By making a profitable income and propelling their future, teenagers will foster self-confidence by discovering their life’s purpose.
#1: Orient Yourself to Over-Deliver
Overcome the barrier of extra work to achieve stand-out greatness. Your diligence in providing excellent value can create powerful word of mouth marketing from your blog readers.
#2: Utilize Social Media
Two strategies to market your blog using social media are sharing content and interacting with your followers. Peak content and strong follower relationships enhance your credibility.
#3: Engage in Guest Blogging
By writing more high value content, you improve your writing skills and gain exposure through another individual’s platform. The backlink leading to your website on that individual’s website is also valuable for marketing purposes.
Michael S. Melfi
Bio: Maintaining a competitive advantage in today’s digitally driven marketplace requires an active online strategy including intellectual property and social media. Entrepreneurs and companies can increase public recognition, distinguish their identities, products and services through strategic digital solutions, all the while safeguarding their digital assets and valuable proprietary rights.
#1: Define content buckets to speak to your audience. If you know what they are interested in, and you have several areas or themes to use to reach them, they will be more engaged.
#2: Create a Plan/Schedule for CPR – Consistent, Predictable and Reliable Content! When you publish consistently, your following will know to expect your posts; focus on topics that are of interest continually to your audience to be predictable, and be a resource that is reliable – meaning your information is trustworthy.
#3: Just Publish! There is never a good time to start and the work product is never good enough – you can revise forever! Instead, just publish it!
Michel Fortin
Bio: Michel and Sylvie often speak on stage at events around the world. They have coached thousands of people all over the globe on building successful businesses, creating profitable websites, and selling sought-after “how-to” information products. They have created The Licorice Group to offer the same training and powerful how-to advice to aspiring freelancers, service providers, business owners, entrepreneurs, and Internet marketers.
#1: Build your list. Make sure you have a) tools in place (plugins, popups, autoresponders) to allow people to subscribe to your blog updates and news, and b) maximize real estate on your blog to ensure people don’t miss (add a subscribe form at the top, sidebar, and bottom of every page).
#2: Make sure to have mechanisms in place that notify, interact with, and attract traffic from social media sites whenever you post a new blog post. Even better, ensure that commenting either uses social media to connect commenters or allows people to notify their social media followers of their comments. Sometimes, it’s even good to have commenters add themselves to your mailing list when they comment. (Some plugins or platforms do this.)
#3: Ensure that for both #1 and #2 above, you offer something, an incentive, for them to join your blog. It can be a free report, a free spreadsheet, a free software, a free tool, a free checklist, whatever. Make them worth their while to subscribe. And allow them to pass that tool around, but in a way that forces others to join your list to download it, too. You can even make it your top 10 best articles on your blog, which all link back to your blog somehow.
Mike Gingerich
Bio: Mike is an expert in developing and outlining effective online marketing and business strategies that deliver results, drive revenue, build healthy companies and yield positive ROI.
#1: First, you need to be writing resource-rich content that has depth and value! 400 word posts don’t cut it anymore! Aim for 600 at a minimum and for top value go for 1000+. The content must not be “salesy” but offer value to the reader that makes them want to come sign-up to get your posts!
#2: Consistency and Readability are key. You must publish on a regular routine, a minimum weekly and the day of the week for publishing should be consistent. You want your audience to get into a rhythm and cadence with you, knowing when to expect your next post. As well, the post should be “skimmable.” Meaning, by using sub-titles, ordered lists, and short paragraphs (3 sentences on average!) you make your content digestible for the skimming web reader. This adds value and keeps readers coming back.
#3: Promote your posts! There’s a load of content out there and you need to be seen. In order to be seen, you must market your new posts. It’s not enough to publish great content, you need to share it socially in a strategic way. One tweet is not enough! Create a routine for social sharing and even adding in Facebook ads to the mix to ensure your content is seen on social and brought to your site.
Mitch Joel
Bio: Mitch Joel is President of Mirum – a J. Walter Thompson and WPP owned digital marketing agency. Marketing Magazine dubbed him the “Rock Star of Digital Marketing” and called him, “one of North America’s leading digital visionaries.” Mitch is a past Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Marketing Association and a former Board Member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau of Canada.
#1: Read. Don’t stop reading. Reading will bring out the best ideas to blog about.
#2: Write. Don’t stop writing. Writing a blog post is not an idea. Write as if there is no end in sight. Writing is a process. If you’re not always in the process, your writing will die.
#3: Nose for news. Always be on the hunt for a great story. Take notes. Lots of notes. Sniff around.
Abrar Mohi Shafee
Bio: I started my online journey with PTC (Paid-to-Click). I had no clues on how clicks can make real money. But I kept clicking for several months to test if it is real or not. Eventually, my doubts were gone by collecting the first income. And I made a deliberation, “It is possible to earn money online.
That’s the starting. Next, I took an interesting step, actually my life-changing step, how the sites got benefited when I clicked on them. After some times I realized that was paid promotion. It was my eye opener and the dictation to learn marketing, seo and blogging gradually.
Now I’m like a marketing worm who loves to spends weeks, months and years on perfecting digital marketing, search engine optimization and nevertheless blogging.”
#1: GWrite contents to its depth until your heart feels wow
Whether you are a marketer or blogger, I can tell you want to get more traffic from search engines. In that case, long form of content can help you. Long, in-depth and valuable contents (no weeds!) tend to get more search traffic than anything else.
Nowadays the contents are everywhere. So in order to draw reader’s attention and potentially get more search traffic, you should consider writing longer contents. How longer? Then I will say until you reach the root of the topic and your heart feels wow.
#2: Don’t let your contents die when you can repurpose them
You’ve written an awesome article but sooner or later it may start to die. I’m sure you will not want to lose its value.
So what you can do is that repurpose your content into infographic, video or presentation and contribute it to other sites that will drive traffic and link equity to your original content. Eventually, it will help you keep it up and evergreen.
#3: Capture email addresses.
Be advantageous of influencer marketing
You have talents but in the very beginning stage, you may not have the scope to prove it widely. For instance, if you are a new face in industry and write a new post in a very new blog, it may not get that much traction by yourself.
But if you can recourse under some influencers by building loyal relationship, they can help you spread your name and works. They have already earned people’s trust. So be sure, what they will say about you will make difference.
Triberr is my favorite influencer marketing platform where we can easily engage with a large range of influencers, build relationship and form it into an assistance to promote your works. I conducted an expert roundup on Triberr what will be a good reference for you to get started.
Neil Eneix
Bio: I’m the COO & brand manager for Fannit.com, a Seattle Inbound Marketing & SEO Company. I enjoy improving marketing strategies, technology, curry (in any form), and spending time with my wife and daughter. I’m also a contributor on Business 2 Community and Social Media Today.
#1: Make sure your blog is high quality (In Information & Design)
#2: Make sure your blog articles contain actionable elements for your readers
#3: Don’t be afraid to Collaborate
If you just started a blog and want to grow quickly, it’s important that people find your blog useful. This means that you’ll want to provide high quality content that is also actionable at the same time. Join forces with others in your effort. It helps get your name out there, tells people (readers & peers) that you play well with others, and also provides even better information for your audience!
Pam Didner
Bio: Pam Didner, selected as one of BtoB’s Top Digital Marketers in 2011 and 2012, is also an author, speaker and marketing consultant. As a former Global Integrated Marketing Strategist for Intel, she led Intel’s Enterprise product launches and worldwide marketing campaigns. She also provided strategic guidance on audience development, messaging architecture, editorial planning, content creation, media buys and social media outreach on a global scale.
#1: Thou shalt know why thou blog.
#2: Thou shalt know thine audience.
#3: Thou shalt have tools to measure thy blog’s success and optimize it accordingly.
Understand your motivation for starting a blog. Map that to your target customers’ needs. Make an effort to be helpful, educational or entertaining. Give them a reason or a hook to come to your blog. In addition, have tools to measure viewership, engagement and conversion. Use the data to refine your writing, editorial and keyword choices. Bear in mind: there is no short cut. It takes blood, sweat and tears to build momentum.
Pamela Wilson
Bio: Pamela Wilson is Executive Vice President of Educational Content at Rainmaker Digital where she leads the Copyblogger side of the business. She owns BigBrandSystem.com
#1: Know your audience but stay flexible. It’s important to have a clear vision of who you’d like to reach with your blog. But it’s also important to realize that your blog may resonate with a different group than the one you originally targeted. So in the early days, have an audience in mind, but keep your eyes and ears open so you can get to know who you actually attract.
#2: Write your cornerstone content first. Cornerstone content pages establish your authority and expertise around the topics you’ll most-often cover on your blog. They serve as resource pages and, once written, you can link to them frequently from your posts, any guest posts you may write, and even from your site navigation. Write them early (and add more later if needed) so search engines will see them and help you rank for the terms you’re targeting.
#3: Set a realistic publication schedule. Quality is important, so don’t set an overly-ambitious publishing schedule for yourself that will compel you to scramble and publish anything just to meet your deadline. If two solid, high-quality posts per month are all you can manage now, aim for that. Consistent quality is more important than frequency.
Patrick Kitchell
Bio: Patrick is a Dynamics CRM Technical Professional at Microsoft in Denmark helping customers understand and leverage the immense potential from their CRM solutions. Before Microsoft, Patrick worked in Sitecore managing their internal Dynamics CRM system with a focus on helping Sitecore drive value from their internal system integration. He has a keen eye for data and is passionate about finding the right business processes to help drive continued Sitecore success. Patrick is originally from Northern New Jersey and has been living and working in Copenhagen, Denmark for the last 16 years with his family. Patrick is curious about technology, social media, and PC gaming.
#1: Have an opinion!
Be willing to take a stand and be proven wrong.
#2: Curate Good content and add your own opinion to what you curate.
Always recognize the author and build further on the content.
#3: Be good and do good.
Social your content with more than just posting it, live it.
Rachel Sprung
www.rachelsprung.com
Bio: As a product marketer at HubSpot, Rachel Sprung sets the positioning and go-to-market strategy for HubSpot’s Analytics and Blogging software. She is also a frequent contributor to HubSpot’s inbound marketing blog and other marketing publications. Previously, she managed internal and external events including HubSpot’s annual conference INBOUND. She has worked in media relations and the HubSpot speakers bureau. You can find her on Twitter at @RSprung.
Here are my tips:
#1: Talk to your audience on social media or other channels about what they are interested in hearing about. This can help you create your content strategy before you have concrete data.
#2: Don’t worry about the length of each blog post you write. As long as you are providing value through the content, it doesn’t matter if you write 100 or 1,000 words.
#3: Once you have a few posts, look at the data to see what posts are generating visits and leads. This will help you prioritize what content to write.
The theme behind my tips is content and data. To grow a blog you need to make sure you are creating content that is providing value to your audience. You can figure this out initially by talking to your readers and then eventually through concrete data that shows what content performs well.
Renée Warren
Bio: Often referred to as a ‘geek in stilettos’, Renée has been in the marketing and entrepreneurship space since she was 17 years old. Having run a successful restaurant at such a young age, she quickly learned the necessary skills and tactics needed to promote her companies. Then, the birth of the Internet as a marketing channel gave way to what is now Onboardly.
Renee is primarily responsible for Onboardly’s operations and Inbound Content Marketing efforts.
#1: 30/70 Rule
When first starting out, look to contribute 70% of the content you create to relevant blogs that already have a decent following. Devote the remainder of your time managing your own blog. This gives you the opportunity to establish yourself as a relevant contributor (and expert) which builds trust, thus making it easier to bring your new following over to your own blog.
#2: Make Friends with Influencers
It seems straightforward, but you need to be strategic about it. Pick three industry thought leaders that you’ve learned from, admire and are open to conversation (you can find this out simply by engaging with them on Twitter or their blog – do they respond?), and start to pay very close attention to how they do things. Comment, share, mention them in comments and blog posts and start to tastefully let them know you exist. DO NOT cold pitch them. You need to establish rapport (and respect) with them before you go in for your ask.
#3: Plan
I hate even saying that word because it seems so obvious, but most people don’t plan. And if they do, they suck at it. Start with the end in mind, and work your way backward from there. Ask yourself: 1) What are your personal/business goals? 2) How does blogging help move the needle? 3) Who and what do I need in order to achieve that goal? 4) How much time and money will this cost me? Most people are clueless when it comes to the actual effort it takes to blog successfully. What I’ve learned in the past six years is that it always takes 20% more time and more money then you plan.
Rich Brooks
Bio: Rich started b1 communications–now flyte new media–in his living room in 1997. His design skills, project management, and ability to understand even the most basic accounting concepts have required him to hire much smarter and more talented people than himself. He’s an Expert Blogger at FastCompany.com and contributes regularly to Social Media Examiner, the world’s second most popular blog on social media marketing.
#1: Optimize your posts for the search engines. Google will be your best referrer when you’re just starting out. Make sure you use keyword-rich titles and copy that address your ideal reader’s biggest pain points…what would THEY search for at Google?
#2: Guest blog. If you’re just starting a blog, chances are you have ZERO audience. The best thing you can do is find appropriate blogs that serve a similar audience and guest blog for them to tap into their audience. Include a call to action or reason for them to visit your blog when they’re done reading.
#3: Build your list. Don’t rely on people to remember to check back on your blog. Use a lead magnet like a free report or Top 10 list that requires an email opt-in. That way you can email your list with every new blog post.
Rick Ramos
Bio: Rick Ramos is a seasoned veteran in online marketing with over eighteen years of experience developing global brands for companies of all sizes. He has written several best-selling books on online marketing, including books on content marketing, landing page optimization, social media, blogging and more. Presently, he is the Chief Marketing Officer for HealthJoy, a healthcare startup.
#1: Do Some Guest Blogging.
It might seem counterproductive to write on someone else’s blog to grow your own audience but it is the best way when starting out to get exposure and some inbound links to your blog. Yes, you need to put in as much work as when your creating a new blog post for your own website. You need to go where the eyeballs are at and right now, they are at someone else’s blog.
#2: Develop your social following.
I love social media, it’s the best source of traffic for my blog http://rickramos.com. It actually beats Google as a source of traffic. I write a lot of “evergreen” content on my website – content that is continually relevant and stays “fresh” for a long time. I constantly post older posts on social media to continue to get ongoing traffic. Develop your following by being consistent, writing and sharing what your audience really wants. Reach out to influencers and truly interact with them. Make sure that you put social share buttons on each of your blog posts.
#3: Make sure it searchable.
SEO is a huge part of starting a blog. If your using WordPress for your blog, get the SEO plugin by Yoast. Do proper keyword research for your blog posts. Learn the basics about SEO by visiting MOZ.com, they have a great beginners guide.
Rob Watts
Bio: Rob is a social media executive at Ph.Creative, who is a full service inbound marketing agency based in the heart of Liverpool, UK. He specializes in the management of big social media accounts from clients all around the world with followings from as little as 500 people to 50,000. Starting out my career as an apprentice, he was able to get to grips with all parts of digital marketing before making the move into social media and content. He’s also a keen blogger and a big Liverpool Football club fan!
#1: Know your audience inside and out! – Create Twitter lists, follow influential users around your blog topic and start engaging with them before the blog is even live. Build relationships with influencers and then leverage their influence/audience online when the blog is live.
#2: Make it visual! – As much as a blog is about the text, you need something other than a catchy title to catch most people’s attention. A nicely designed blog banner, optimized for the right social media channels will help you catch the eyes of your audience as well as having a visual representation of what they can expect from the blog.
#3: Find your Tone of voice! – Finding your own tone of voice is key to building your audience and community. Let your personality shine through. Put yourself in your audience’s shoes.
Ryan Gum
Bio: “Hey there, I’m Ryan Gum. I run a startup called Attach and an online community for salespeople called Closing Call. Previously, I was a startup marketer from Sydney Australia, recently moved to Stockholm Sweden.
I believe that the best way to learn something is to do it and teach it. So in saying that, I started this blog to teach my experiences, thoughts and learnings on growth and online marketing. It helps me understand what I’m learning, and also hopefully gives you some value as well. Some articles will be high level concepts and strategy, others will dive into specific tactics and practical examples.”
#1: At the start, create for shareability first
You don’t have the luxury of relying on your large email list or search traffic, so make content that is extremely sharable within your audience. This means creating top of funnel content – content that isn’t specific to your product but solves a problem for the wider target industry. This also means it has to be epic. What does epic look like? Some examples are 20 Tips for Dramatically Better Emails and 101 Sales Email Templates. Spend more time on fewer posts. You’re better of posting 2 epic pieces of content a month than 2 pieces of bland content a week.
#2: 50% creation, 50% promotion
Again, without a pre-existing audience or the benefit of SEO, you’ll have to spend a lot of time promoting your content if you want it to get out there. Find and email at least 20 influencers, telling them about your content. If you’ve linked to them or mentioned them, they’re more likely to share. If the content is valuable, they’re more likely to share. If the content makes them look good, they’re more likely to share. Play these angles. Share it on online communities like Reddit, Growth Hackers or Closing Call.
#3: Don’t forget the basics
- Setup your social tags (e.g Facebook og tags, Twitter cards)
- Provide sharing options and control sharing snippets (what images and text are shared)
- Have form/s to collect email addresses
- Have an irresistible CTA or content upgrade in exchange for that email address
Sarah Riley
Bio: My name is Sarah and I create products to support entrepreneurs like yourself who want to do great work they are proud of and share them right here on Inspired Courses. It’s terrifying to start something new, and difficult to know who to trust to give you the right help, advice and tools for your journey. But now more than ever you have everything you need within easy reach. You simply need to know where to look… and that’s where I can help. My background is with the leisure and hospitality industry, as well as Government Agencies. I am a consultant, trainer, freelance writer, social media coach, blogger and virtual assistant. My work has been been published by Government agencies, in magazines, in online resources and in ebook stores… including the iBooks Store, Amazon and Barnes&Noble.
My top tip for getting your blog to stand out amongst the crowd is to think carefully about your branding. This is made up of what you are, what you want to be and how people perceive you. It is how, what, where, when you share your message and whom you plan to share it with. It should show the customer instantly what they can expect and helps shape how people identify your presence when you’re out and about, both physically and virtually.
From names, symbols, logos, websites, taglines, design templates, color schemes, packing and promotional materials, they all go towards establishing and communicating your brand, which is unique to you. And on that point, the more unique your brand is the easier people will be able to spot you in the crowd and remember your work… so make sure you don’t become a ‘me too…’ and copy others. The key here is to spend time developing your uniqueness and wrapping it up in a brand that people find unforgettable.
Sean Si
Bio: Sean Si is the CEO and Founder of SEO Hacker and Qeryz. A start-up, data analysis and urgency junkie who spends his time inspiring young entrepreneurs through talks and seminars. Check out his personal blog where he writes about starting up two companies and life in general.
#1: Know your target audience and write for them.
There are few things worse than writing for the wrong kind of audience. It won’t generate leads, won’t generate revenue, won’t even generate the right kind of interest. This is a critical foundation of content strategy for any kind of blog.
#2: Lay out a Content Strategy
Know what you’re going to write about when you’re going to write about it, where you’re going to promote it and how you’re going to promote it. I’ve seen blogs who ‘just write’ and they never make it past the 100 traffic a day mark. Sad but true and it’s all because they don’t have a working content strategy.
#3: Promote like there’s no tomorrow
Spend more time promoting than writing your content. There’s just a ton of content out there on the web today. And chances are, what you’re writing right now isn’t anything new. So make sure to get your words to the audience who really wants to read ’em.
Sean Work
Bio: Sean is an ex-rocket scientist turned internet marketer.
#1: Have a professional SEO make sure the blog is SEO friendly from an on-page SEO perspective.
#2: Spend as much time on social networks as you do writing content. Joining conversations, promoting content, etc.
#3: Create your own images and make sure you use image alt tags. Traffic from Google image search and Pinterest can be a nice source that most bloggers overlook.
Selene Benjamin
Bio: What started as an interest in bettering her own freelance writing career, Selene developed a passion for all things online marketing. In her role as blog editor, she hopes to use her geeky love of SEO and words to help Firepole become one of the go-to authorities in the world of online marketing as well as helping make the world a better place.
#1: Be in it for the long haul
We’ve all heard the story. Some friend of a friend’s friend started a blog and two days later, bam! Millions of dollars, followers, and fans.
Now, is that an impossible dream for you? Not impossible but most likely, improbable. Keep the dream alive but be ready to do the work, and don’t be discouraged if it takes longer than you hoped. Build a strong foundation (on-page SEO, solid customer avatar, etc.) then focus on consistently creating good content, and give it time.
#2: Develop a unique style/voice
I have to disagree with Chuck Palahnuik. You are a unique snowflake. But there are a million other unique snowflakes out there interested in and trying to do the same thing you are.
Does that mean you should chuck it all? Of course not! But it does mean you have to find your own voice, your own style. Let your uniqueness shine. That’s how you’ll stand out from the crowd.
I know when considering guest post pitches for Firepole, I’m always drawn in by the authors with their own spin on things. And I’m not talking about just writing style. It may be a topic everyone’s already written about ad nauseam, but they approach it from a different angle.
#3: Reciprocity
Do for others. You can’t expect people to help you out if you aren’t willing to extend your own helping hand. Well, you CAN expect it but it doesn’t mean you’ll get it.
Building relationships with potential partners is a huge part of getting out there and staying there. I’ve found in business and in life, when you focus on “how can I help?” Rather than, “what can I get?” You actually end up getting far more than you could have ever dreamed.
Sometimes I get pitches at Firepole asking right off the bat for a link and telling me how great they are. But it’s obvious they haven’t read our blog. They didn’t try to find out our guest post pitch guidelines. They have no idea who our audience is, or who we are. While I do still consider these, it doesn’t start us off on the best footing.
Shel Horowitz
Bio: I’m a green and social change business consultant showing business how to profit while solving hunger, poverty, war, and catastrophic climate change. Also an international speaker and bestselling author of Guerrilla Marketing Goes Green. My blog, at http://greenandprofitable.com, has been running since 2004.
#1: Write a great blog. Understand how to put words on paper with a fresh, unique voice and a viewpoint that’s a little unexpected. If, like me, you are not wired to focus on a single topic, use your Category tags so visitors can easily see just the posts that interest them.
#2: Set up automatic posting to social media whenever you have a new blog post. Mine populate to Facebook, Twitter, and LInkedIn. Sometimes I also set up notifications to publish later on, using HootSuite to schedule them in advance (not too often–maybe once a day at different times for three days, with lots of other content in between).
#3: Engage with your readers. Ask them to comment. Respond to their comments.
#4: Use guest posts. Bring in writers you like, edit their stuff before it goes live, run the edits by the writer for approval. Also guest post yourself, on high-traffic blogs. I’m your slug (two-line author bio), direct people back to your own blog.
Simon Brisk
Bio: Simon is Co-Founder& Commercial Director of Click Intelligence.
#1:Quality is Essential
Everything about your blog post should scream quality. Each post has the potential to attract a new audience to your blog, and so you must spend the time to make sure that you do everything that you can to attract a revisit. Check spellings and grammar,check facts that you cite and make sure that any links you have are working and revert to authoritative sites.
Quality content is only half of the story. You also need to apply this quality check to your site’s onsite SEO. By paying attention to the finer details such as the title tag, meta tag, the URL,and image alt text, you are making every aspect of your blog post a valuable addition. Think logically about how to incorporate keywords but avoid overusing them!
Search engines are hot on the heels of poor quality sites,and they aim to increase user satisfaction by diminishing the ranking position of ineffective and poor-quality content and websites.
#2: Add Value
Readers do not want to read the same respun generic articles. They are investing their time in reading your blog post, and so it is important that you repay them by giving them a unique blog post that is useful and relevant to them.
To do this, you need to understand the audience that you are targeting. It is essential that you know who your blog post is aimedat so that you can craft a post that both appeals to them and engages them.It can answer questions but also inspire them with solutions. You need to understand the mindset of your readership, so you know which direction to take your content and understand how it can add value to your readers.
A blog that consistently provides relevant and useful posts will develop a loyal audience who know the quality that they can expect. You can increase perceived value to your blog post with the addition of infographics, custom images,and quotes. Don’t be afraid to mix up the content styles that you use, changing the format of your content will bring new visitors, play around with video and new pictures to keep your content fresh and alluring.
#3: Measure and learn
You will find that during the process of writing for your blog that some subjects are more popular than others, but if you fail to consider the metrics of your posts, you won’t be able to see which ones are successful and which are less so.
The most basic of these metrics is how many times a post has been shared or commented on, but there are a host of other metrics that you can use to check that you are on the right path for blog success! By understanding how many times individual pages are hit, you will be able to adjust your content accordingly. If your homepage gets plenty of hits, you know that your site is now considered a destination site as people are directly accessing your site’s URL – a sign of repeat visitors. If visitors are coming to your site from indirect sources, you know that they are likely new visitors.
Use the metrics that are available to you to build a strategy to support your success. Having to tweak your content is not a sign of failure, more of an opportunity to learn where and how to improve your blog.
Stephanie Frasco
Bio: To help you navigate this confusing world of online marketing, I’ve put together a free E-Book & free video training series to help you unlock all of the mystery & learn how to build a complete Small Business Web Marketing strategy that actually works for your specific type of business.
#1: Be consistent
You should be blogging on a regular basis, not only will this increase your return readers and turn them into regulars, you can look at each blog post as an open invitation for more people to learn about you and engage with your content.
#2: Share each blog post EVERYWHERE and all the time.
The beauty of blogging is that it lives on. So the first step is to share it right when it is published. Share it everywhere that makes sense from LinkedIn groups to Pinterest. The more people you reach the better. Then share it again. You can’t expect to reach everyone in one go, so maximize your odds and keep sharing.
#3: Connect with other bloggers for cross-promotional purposes.
Blogging is a community and bloggers like to help each other. Reach your head out, make friends with other bloggers and help them grow. It’s the power of reciprocation and it works.
Stephen Pitts
Bio: Stephen Pitts is a marketer with over 15 years digital marketing experience and is an Associate Partner in charge of SEO at Rosetta where he oversees a team of SEO professionals serving clients across industries like retail, financial services, travel/hospitality and technology. Many of the challenges that I have faced in my professional experience have given me insight into the process of building, managing and maintaining search engine rankings and search marketing optimization.
#1: Be yourself
The internet isn’t short of websites that reconstitute other’s opinions, but as you gain your voice, it is important to bring your thoughts and views through with a blog and no one wants to read a stale blog.
#2: Be engaged and get to know your audience
Blogs aren’t just about publishing your thoughts, it’s about engaging an audience with your views and to do that effectively, you need to engage with those that are commenting.
#3: Be your greatest critic
There are plenty of blogs that are off the cuff but those that are crafted well build strong followings and high engagement, you will only be successful if you have an audience.
Steve Goldner
socialsteve.wordpress.com
Bio: Social Steve is currently the Chief Engagement Officer at Social Steve Consulting. He has recently consulted for iCrossing, LG, Adobe, Salon Grafix, and Savor.co providing digital and social marketing strategies and plans. Steve brings 20 years of marketing leadership and management to his role having served in brand marketing, product marketing and management and marketing communications positions.
#1: Be yourself, not someone else. At the same time make sure your content reinforces your personal brand.
#2: Share information that your audience values – not your agenda.
#3:Stories and personal anecdotes allow your content to resonate with your audience.
Steven J Wilson
Bio: I fell in love with blogging and helping others achieve online success a few years ago. I realized that there are many others out there that love blogging but face the same struggle that I face on a daily basis. That is blogging part-time.
#1: Focus on Visual Content
Most platforms are optimized for your visual shares. Use this to your advantage and draw more attention to your content.
#2: Pick Two Platforms To Start With
It will be tempting to want to be on all the social networks etc. Start slow and find the two platforms that work best and get good at using them before adding more.
#3: Share Your Content More Than Once
After learning the best practices on that platform, share your content with it multiple times. Ex. It’s okay to share the same post multiple times a day on Twitter but on Facebook, once a week works best.
Ted Rubin
Bio: Ted is a leading Social Marketing Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Brand Evangelist and Acting CMO of Brand Innovators and in March 2009 started publicly using and evangelizing the term ROR: Return on Relationship™… a concept he believes is the cornerstone for building an engaged multi-million member database, many of whom are vocal advocates for the brand, like the one he built, as CMO, for e.l.f. Cosmetics… EyesLipsFace.com.
#1: User-Friendly Navigation: Keeping your blog easy to navigate with intuitive category labels will help people find the information they seek much faster. Also, make it easy for readers to leave comments and share your posts on various channels that will help lead others back to you.
#2: Commenting on Other Blogs: Look for other blogs in your industry that have a good amount of traffic and comments, and contribute a comment, but only if you think you can add value to the conversation. Be careful not to promote your blog here; just add some insight, and do it on a regular basis. Make seeking out and commenting on other blogs a part of your daily activities. The more you contribute to the conversation happening around you, the more you’ll be seen as a thought-leader (and people will click on your link to check you out).
#3: Syndicate, syndicate, syndicate…share your content via all social channels always including Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn, which also makes it easy for others to share. And don’t be afraid to do it more than once periodically sharing old posts via your social channels, especially those that were well received. Also, let others freely repost your content with a link back to the original post.
Tommy Landry
Bio: Tommy P. Landry has over 20 years of experience in marketing and business strategy at companies ranging in size from small startup to enterprise. In addition to a concentrated interest in research and the evolution of human communications, he has been involved in various social media technologies and search engine marketing for over 15 years. Mr. Landry has founded four businesses since 2001, including RotoExperts.com, a leading internet business focused on fantasy sports.
Currently, Tommy serves as president and founder of Return On Now, a forward-thinking Social SEO consultancy headquartered in Austin, TX. Return On Now demystifies the overlaps between SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing and helps businesses of all sizes increase their website visibility, traffic and lead flow.
Starting a new blog from scratch can be a bit overwhelming and for good reason. It’s a mountain of work building and maintaining a content plan, and executing on that plan (i.e. writing and publishing a consistent stream of blog posts).
If you are able to wrap your arms around all of the operational pieces, then you are faced with the challenge of building an audience and driving traffic. Here are my three tips for getting you off the dime in that department:
#1: Keep Google Apprised of Your Work – If you plan to put a lot of hard work into your content, you need to ensure that Google knows it is there and indexes your posts. To do this, the simplest solutions is submitting your XML sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools directly. If you blog on WordPress like most of us do, there are plenty of XML sitemap plugins you can use to have a sitemap updated in real-time and to have Googlebot pinged each time you publish new materials.
#2: Seed the Content to Your Social Networks – Especially in the early days of a blog’s existence, social promotion is the key to success. It will take you time to build domain authority so you will rank organically. While that builds up, you should absolutely curate other related content and mix in your own posts on social networks and bookmarking services.
#3: Participate in Conversations Off Your Own Website – The success of a blog will follow the effort you put in to build and engage with like-minded members of the online community. Some ways to get involved are to earn guest posting opportunities on other websites, take part in online discussions on sites like LinkedIn and Quora, and generally build a network of fans and followers. I would recommend starting before the blog goes live, because otherwise you will be in catch up mode from Day One.
There are plenty of other things you can do, like paid syndication on sites similar to Outbrain. But if you want to growth hack your way onto the map, start with these three tips and you’ll be off and running. Whatever you do, keep the faith and don’t give up. With time and consistent effort, it will happen for you and your blog.
Tony Popowski
Bio: Tony has been a member of the GRM team since 2008. As Director of Communications, he provides a creative copy for websites, e-mail campaigns, press releases, white papers, sales collateral, speeches and blog entries for clients. His content has been published in various national, state, local and trade publications. Tony additionally serves as the primary Account Manager for numerous GRM customers. He works with his clients to develop their ongoing marketing communication strategies and tracks the ROI of their integrated marketing programs.
#1: Provide Valuable Content, Not Self-Promotional Information: People are sick of being directly sold and tend to tune out sales pitches. Instead, use your blog as an opportunity to provide content which is genuinely interesting and helpful for your target audience. This includes industry news, top 10 tips, solutions to problems, etc. By providing useful information, you can establish your industry credibility and position yourself as the go-to “online resource center” for your targets. Then, when your readers are ready to make a purchasing decision, they’ll come to you.
#2: Be Concise and Write the Way you Speak: Bloggers sometimes fall into the trap of “trying to sound smart.” Instead of using big words you found in a Thesaurus and rambling on using technical jargon, express your thoughts as if you were having a simple conversation. It’s a blog, not a college English paper.
#3: Post Regularly: Blogging has proven benefits such as increased website traffic and generating more leads. However, you’re only going to get results from your blog if you put in some effort. Consistency is key, so shoot for at least one blog entry a week.
Troy Hollenbeck
Bio: “Troy Hollenbeck is the founder and CEO of Evolve Journal LLC, a Digital Media Marketing company from Vancouver BC. Former sportswriter, union insulator, and hockey player. He has taken his writing talents to the next level by blogging about sales, marketing and traffic strategies. Specializes in Solo Ad traffic, and is a contributing writer to B2B marketing.”
#1: Hire a proven coach
When i started out in marketing getting a proven successful coach was at the top of my list. Without one you can learn to realize that the internet is a landmine field out there, and the possibility of success is quite low. Hiring a mentor is the quickest way to cut the learning curve and get the results faster than on your own trying to learn the market and pitfalls.
#2: Give away something of value
One of the best ways to build a list is to give your reader something of value in return. Build your list and build your trust, and building on that to an audience of people. It also acts like a ‘lead magnet’ and promote your FREE resource through social media channels to build up your brand and readers, worked well for me.
#3: Your “About Me” page
This page on your blog is by far the most important but most overlooked. Why? people want to know who you are and why they are on your blog. Create a lengthy, honest, story about yourself and what you have done to be in this niche. Also goes a long way to build trust relationship with your audience and your personal brand.
Andrew Webber
Bio: Andrew is a proud owner of SEO Maverick. He believes that SEO and online marketing is a highly effective and profitable medium for businesses and is a great channel to drive leads and increase sales.
#1: Install Google Analytics
The data Google Analytics provides is vital information for any new blog – without analytics, you’re flying blind and have no way of monitoring your growth!
Analytics will tell you where your visitors are coming from, which blog posts and content pages are most popular, and how many visitors are signing up to your email newsletter or downloading your guides (or performing whatever your target action is).
#2: Use WordPress and Install the Yoast SEO Plugin
If you’re starting out in the blogging game and want to grow your blog, I highly recommend building your site on WordPress. It’s extremely easy to use and relatively “SEO friendly” to begin with.
To really ensure your site is ‘ticking all the SEO boxes’, you should install the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast – this gives you full control over how search engines like Google will read the content on your website. You can control and optimize your page titles, meta descriptions and URLs to include your targeted keywords, and entice visitors to click on your listing in the search results.
#3: Write more comprehensive blog posts
To grow your new blog, your posts need to be high quality, informative and engaging to keep people coming back, promote social shares and also attract links from other websites. On average, longer and more detailed posts are shared more on social media websites, and linked to more often from other blogs and websites.
So focus on producing top quality blog posts filled with actionable tips and recommendations – your users will thank you for it and Google will reward you in the long term as well!
Zac Johnson
Bio: Zac has written over 1,000 articles which cover all aspects of entrepreneurship, business and online marketing. With thousands of monthly readers and a social media following of over 50,000, his site has helped propel many individuals, brands and businesses in the right direction, while also referring over $5 million in new business to its site partners.
#1: Know the niche and audience you are going after, then niche down one step further. A good example of this would be (Basketball –> Basketball Skills Training –> Basketball Jump Training). The more niche-focused your audience and content, the easier it will be for you to rank in the search results.
#2: Research the keywords you want to rank for. This means looking at all variations and long-tail keywords. At the same time, put in the time and effort to see what competitors are ranking for these keywords and the power of their sites. Through software like LongTailPro, this process is done quite quickly.
#3: With your niche focus are target keywords now in mind, it’s time to create some great content. Look at what’s currently ranking at the top of Google and create content that’s better. This means adding text, images and video (so your resource is best). Once this is done, go live with your article and focus on getting valuable backlinks from other sites within your niche market.
29 comments on “84 Experts Reveal The 3 Best Blog Marketing Tips”
Leave a Reply
Hi Marco, well done on such a comprehensive post. It was a pleasure to read this. By the way, will you ever have a podcast series for marketing tips with these known marketing experts? Thanks!
Thanks Alice! We’re thinking to start podcasting series. Stay tuned!
Awesome compilation! Communities and industry-specific groups are indeed great places to build relationships and forward your business ideas. They are also good places to establish credibility and industry expertise. Platforms like LinkedIn provide a lot of scope to do that.