Use Social Marketing to Promote Your Blog
Published April 1, 2010 | 
Do you know what the main purpose of a social networking website is? If you are an avid internet user, you likely do. Social networking websites are online communities that make it easier for internet users to meet and communicate with each other. If you are an internet user who enjoys using the internet to meet new people, there is a good chance that you already belong to a few social networking websites. What about an online blog? Do you have one of them? If you do, do you know that you could use your social networking websites to promote your blog? This is called social marketing.
Promote your blog? Why would you want to do that? Honestly, if you have to ask yourself that question you probably shouldn’t even have one. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular topic, issue, or subject. What good will your blog do if no one reads it. In addition to sharing your thoughts with the rest of the world, did you know that you could also make money from your blog? You can signup for affiliate programs or ad programs like Google Adsense. If you are using your blog to make money then you will definitely want to promote it through social marketing.
When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing use special techniques that reads the content on your website. That content is then used to rank your website with particular keywords. This means that if you run a blog on graduating from high school in Denver, there is a good chance that your blog will appear in searches done on Denver high schools. Although many blogs are successfully ranked in search engines, not all are. That is why you you shouldn’t rely solely on search engines, when it comes to promoting your blog.
As previously mentioned, if you love meeting with or talking to people online, there is a good chance that you belong to a social networking website or community. The individuals that you talk to and that are in your community are likely the individuals that you wish to target. Since most social networking websites work to connect internet users who have the same goals and common interests, there is a good chance that your online friends will enjoy reading your blog. But, before they can read your blog, you have need to do a little social marketing to let them know that it exists.
When it comes to using social marketing to promote your blog, you have a number of different options. Your first option is to include a link to your blog in your community profile or profile page. This will allow other community members to checkout your blog, only if they wish to do so. The other way is to inform your online friends of your blog through private messages. Once you join a social networking website and create or join a network of friends, you should easily be able to communicate with those friends. Sending each of your friends a private message with information and a link to your blog tends to be more effective than just placing a link in your profile or on your profile page.
Although there is a good chance that you are already a member of a popular social networking website, you may not be. If you are not already a member, but would like to become one, you will need to find a social networking website to join. This can easily be done with a standard internet search. In your search, you will likely find a number of popular network sites, such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Tagged. Before becoming a community member at one of these networking sites, you may want to first examine the website to ensure that it is everything that you want it to be.
As you can easily see, there are a number of different ways that you can go about using social marketing to promote your blog on social networking websites. You never known, but, in addition to promoting your blog, you may also make a few new friends along the way.
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Posted in Blogging, Social Marketing | 
promote your blog, social marketing, social network | 
4 CommentsHow to Promote Your Blog
Published February 28, 2010 | Blogging can be a great deal of fun for some bloggers but for others it is a source of income. Whether this income is earned through an AdSense campaign, paid advertisements, affiliate marketing or some other type of revenue generating source, one of the key elements to maximizing this profit is by driving greater traffic to the blog. This is because the more visitors the blog receives the more opportunities there are for the blogger to have visitors click through the advertisements in the blog. There are a few basic techniques which bloggers can rely on to promote their blog and increase traffic to their blog. This post will cover a few of these key concepts including participating in relevant message boards, optimizing the blog for search engines and keeping the blog interesting to visitors.
Active Participation in Message Boards and Forums
Participation in message boards and forums which relate to the blog topic is actually one very simple way for blog owners to drive traffic to their blog. However, one caveat to using this type of promotion for the blog is to avoid violating the rules of the message board. This is important because some message boards have strict regulations regarding the inclusion of links to other websites on the message board. Failure to follow these guidelines may result in the blogger being banned from the message board and may also cause other message board users to not think highly of the blog owner.
Another careful consideration for the blog owner is to avoid posting the web address to his blog in a way which will be considered spam by other message board and forum users. This is important because other users are likely to not visit the blog if they believe the blog owner is simply spamming the message board. This can be avoided by including the link to the blog in the signature and ensuring the posts made on the message board are informative and of interest to the other users. Building a reputation as a useful contributor to the board will be beneficial to enticing other users of the site to visit the blog.
Optimizing Your Blog
Search engine optimization is another factor which blog owners should also carefully consider. Optimizing the blog for search engines can be beneficial because improved search engine rankings often lead to increased blog traffic. Depending on the amount of competition on the blog subject rising to the top of the search engine rankings may not always be easy. Blog owners who have a blog with a very popular subject may face stiff competition for search engine rankings from other blogs and websites which may have the means to hire professionals in the search engine optimization industry to assist them in achieving high rankings. However, there are some steps the blogger can take to attempt to boost rankings. Some of these steps include researching and using relevant keywords naturally throughout the blog postings, incorporating these keywords into the title, META and image tags and avoiding black hat optimizing techniques which could result in the blog being penalized by search engines.
Keeping Your Blog Interesting
Finally, one of the simplest ways a blog owner can help to drive traffic to his blog is by regularly updating the blog and keeping it interesting. This is important because a blog which is interesting is much more likely to not only maintain blog traffic but also generate new traffic. This is because readers who are interested in the posts on the blog are not only likely to keep coming back to the blog but are also likely to recommend the blog to other members of the target audience. This type of word of mouth advertising can be very beneficial because those who have an interest in the content of a particular blog also typically have friends who would also be interested in the blog. Once one blog owner recommends a blog to one or more friends, these new blog visitors are also likely to recommend the blog to others if they find it to be interesting, useful or otherwise worthwhile.
Posted in Blogging | blog optimizing, blog traffic, Blogging, forums, message boards, promote your blog | 6 Comments
