Hot Topic: How To Market Your Blog

With so many new blog sites on the scene, it can be tough to gain popularity for your site in the beginning. Following are a few tips to help get your blog off the ground.

Know Your Niche

This is not to say that you must stick to any particular niche, but its not a bad idea. A niche is what your site primarily pertains to, such as beauty, fashion, or technology. When your site is niche-specific, your domain name will probably match and therefore will climb search engine ranks for that reason alone. Also, you will be able to join niche-related blogrings as well as general blogrings to gain more exposure for your site. I am aware that my site is quite a mish-mash of topics, but for good reason. I like to be all-encompassing and I am able to market my blog in a variety of other ways.

Break News & Trends

Don’t just play copycat and copy what other blogs are talking about. Read magazines, articles, blog feeds, and such to get the skinny on what’s up-and-coming and hot. Be the first to break news or upcoming trends and products and people will remember you for it.

As soon as I read that high rise jeans, slacks, and skirts were resurfacing in the fashion world, I blogged about it. This was out of sheer interest, but now that people are getting hip to this fall 2007 trend, when they’re Googling ‘high rise pants‘ Frappelattes.com is among the top results out of 2.75 million related pages. I continue to get a steady stream of hits based on this search query alone.

If you’re a beauty blogger, stay up up hot products and seasonal makeup trends. If you’re focused on fashion, cover New York Fashion Week. Tech blogger? Subscribe to Engadget indefinitely and read technology mags for the scoop.

Namedrop

Whoever said that it was impolite to namedrop? In the blogosphere, namedropping (or plugging) is perfectly polite and quite encouraged. With the invention of trackbacks, generally, when you link to another blog within your post, that blog will be notified that you are talking about them. Ooh, drama. But if your blog is diet-drama like mine, you plug other bloggers out of love for them or something they’ve said. However you do it, you will get noticed, and some may even return the favor.

Not all blogging platforms support trackbacks, but Wordpress definitely does.

Network, Network

Networking is crucial to marketing your blog, and those who ignore this fact will go ignored the same. How is anyone going to know your site exists if you don’t tell anyeveryone? A primary way to network is to simply comment on other bloggers’ sites. But don’t be fake about it. Show a genuine interest in their blog or don’t say anything at all.

There are many networking sites out there, a popular one being MyBlogLog. Not only does MyBlogLog connect you with thousands of other bloggers, but it also provides a neat widget that you can place on your blog to see what other MBL users have stumbled upon your page as well as providing a way for people to join your site’s community.

If you foresee your site becoming commercial or you just have a lot of friends, creating a Myspace page for your blog may not be a bad idea. You will be constantly connected with your fans and can update them via Myspace bulletins and blog posts.

Personalize It

In my opinion, adding a personal touch to your blog gives people a way to connect with you and makes for better networking. If you have good wit and brains, photography expertise, killer fashion sense, and/or stellar makeup skills for example, let it be known! Broadcast your personal trials and errors, product reviews, and photos to keep people coming back for more.

Additionally, leave open methods of feedback such as comments or a contact box in which people can ask questions, interact with each other, or tell you how they really feel. Visitors are everything so let them be heard!

Don’t Sell Out

Don’t blog about anything you don’t actually care for just to attract hits. For instance, although blogging about celebrities is like bees to honey when it comes to traffic and your blog, I refuse to go that route because celebrity gossip is not my forte. Similarly, if you’re clueless about a topic, it will be obvious and no one will want to read what you have to say anyway. Stick to what you know!

Monetization

Many bloggers are using tools such as affiliate programs and Google Adsense to monetize their sites. Myself included: I see it as making ‘commission‘ if you will for taking the time to dish out beauty and weight loss tips as well as endorsing cosmetic products that I adore.

First of all, monetization is not for every site. If you’re blogging solely about your personal life, forget about it. If you have content to offer, especially helpful articles, reviews, graphics, and/or downloads of sorts, go for it!

The better you network and climb those search engine ranks (keywords, keywords) the better click-through potential for ad programs. And remember what I said about personalization? If people feel like they know you and trust you, they will be more apt to accept your product recommendations and purchase through your affiliate programs. It all ties together.

There are many techniques and secrets to successfully monetize your website. I will share two of them:

Feed Your Readers (RSS)

If your blog has its own RSS feed, post it publicly for people to readily subscribe to your site. I know that I get my daily blog digests from my PC feed reader, and it keeps me interested and updated on all my favorite blogs. My feed is located at http://frappelattes.com/feed - yours may be something similar or something completely different. Figure it out. That, or simply go to FeedBurner.com and burn your feed for free.

A feed reader basically aggregates all your favorite blog postings to one place so that you can read everything at a glance without having to visit their site. It’s quite nifty and I love the technology. You can download a PC-based feed reader here or use a Web-based feed reader such as Google Reader.

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