How To Market Your Blog (Part Three)

October 29th, 2007 // Promote Your Blog

Catch up on the first two installments if you haven’t already!

Get On Schedule

Once you’ve decided to make a real hobby (or a living!) out of blogging, you’ll realize that a schedule may be needed to stay on task.

I work and go to school full-time, so I try to pre-plan posts to write throughout the week using Google Calendar. Also, I set aside specific times for social networking and other promotional activities because any blogger who has gone that route knows that it can be time-consuming.

Brand Yourself

I’m not saying that you need to be the next Tila Tequila or Dane Cook of Myspace. Just establish your name or alias and a common photo of you around the web so that people will start to recognize you by name and face. On most of my social networking profiles (especially ‘placeholder’ profiles on sites I don’t frequent often), I use the same photo of myself so that people will be able to connect me to the rest of my places on the web. Most importantly, my website. I use the alias ‘frappelattes’ on various networks.

Master the Social Networking Circuit

Social networking can be your greatest tool for driving traffic to your site! This works best with non-personal sites unless you’ve branded yourself extremely well. When trying to promote your blog, you’ll want to dedicate some time out of the week to do some social networking mass marketing. All you’re doing is rubbing virtual elbows with lots of people who may become daily readers of your site.

Message boards: Pick a message board or two to be active in. Connecting with people this way can build enough rapport for people to start coming to your site. Leaving a link to your blog within your signature is also a sure way to get hits when you’re active on mb’s.
Myspace: Myspace is believably one of the best sources of traffic for a niche blog. My niches are beauty, fashion, and fitness, so I have created a separate Myspace account for Frappelattes on which I add girls who may be interested in my topics. Design a decent profile with lots of outbound links to your blog, and keep friends updated via bulletins and blog posts (don’t overdo this!).
Facebook: I have not quite mastered blog networking on this site (mostly because I aim to only add people I know in real life), although there are various applications you can use within Facebook to aggregate your blog posts so that they show up on your profile. There are also lots of groups you can join to gain exposure for yourself.
Digg, Sk-rt, etc: I try to submit my quality posts to Digg or Sk-rt, which are blog news sites. Depending on the topic, you could do well with this or you may not see much traffic at all. For example, tech- and health-related posts have seen better success on Digg, whereas Sk-rt readers seem to be attracted to beauty- and diet-related articles. There are other news sites besides Digg and Sk-rt, those are simply the ones I use.
There are a plethora of social networking sites around, so anywhere you can promote your website freely, have at it!

Do Your Research

If you’re going to be giving out advice, tips, or writing product reviews, do your research. Know what you’re talking about so that you’re careful not to give out blatantly false or potentially hazardous information.

Give Credit Where Credit Is Due

If you loved a picture or snippet from a fellow blogger’s site and decide to use it yourself, be sure to give them credit in return. Exercise discretion on whether or not it’s also necessary to ask their permission first. This credit could be in the form of a shoutout to a simple link back. Not only will this show respect for others, but failing to do so (especially if it was a blatant copycat attempt) may just cost you at least one potential fan and friend and could defame your name should they decide to publicly call you out.

Make Friends

Having key contacts within your niche will enable you to share traffic, news and ideas, or even build online friendships that can carry over into later endeavors in your lives. You have probably already made many friends in the blogosphere. I know I have. But chances are, only a few of them you really communicate with. Support and share with these friends because this will make blogging a much more fruitful and fun experience.

Make Money

There many ways to make extra cash as a blogger. You can be paid to promote products and services by sites such as PayPerPost. You can also utilize multi-level affiliate marketing sites such as LinkShare (where you can place ads on your site for people to click-thru and shop places like Beauty.com and eLuxury) and Amazon. Google Adsense pays you when people click ads on your site; depending on the keyword these clicks can yield up to $12 a piece in revenue!

Depending on how well you’ve incorporated ideas like those from HTMYB Part 1 and HTMYB Part 2, the money-making opportunities are in your hands.