Internet Marketing News – Search Engine Marketing

A lot of people say to us that they’d love to get involved in blog creation, either for themselves or their company, but ‘I’m not a writer’. The physical process of blogging might be closely tied to writing … but even those who aren’t writers can certainly be involved in their own blog creation. Here are the 3 main reasons why anyway can create a blog to market your business … even if you aren’t a writer.

In fact, the three main reasons that you CAN blog is intimately tied to the 3 main excuses we hear for why people can’t blog. These are:
* I don’t have the time to blog
* I can’t write well enough to blog
* I wouldn’t know what to write about.

All of these are very easily solved!

Don’t have time to blog?
The feeling that you ‘don’t have time to blog’ can arise from a number of different conditions:
* Being so overloaded at work that you don’t have time to grow your business: We all know that this is a recipe for disaster. When you don’t have time to ensure the future success of your business, a restructuring is in order
* Being unaware that you can have others do your blogging! There are literally hundreds of freelance websites (and a handful of worthwhile ones) where blog writers will actually compete to try to make your blog the best it can be. It isn’t advisable to use ghostwriters exclusively – you need a personal touch every so often – but this does cut the sheer number of hours right down.

Can’t write well enough to blog?
A lot of successful bloggers aren’t great writers. They make up for this in several ways, and still manage to pull some pretty impressive traffic numbers.
* Structuring their posts well: Subheadings, bullet points, lists – these are all tools that help effectively cover for less-than-perfect writing skills. In fact, even great writers that don’t use these tools rarely get read on the net.
* Including lots of value: New information, insider tips, photos, or humor – these all offer a lot of value to your readers, and will help cover for lack of writing experience
* Having your posts edited: A good editor is worth taking the time to find … they’ll take the meaning in what you are saying and completely repackage it into beautiful, flowing language.

Don’t know what to write about?
This problem will be very easily solved when you get into the swing of writing! Look at other successful blogs in your niche, and check out the topics they use as a basis for their blog creation. Alternatively, hire a writer to help you with this.

One of the most ubiquitous (and most sensible) pieces of writing advice that we hear is to write what you know. Well, most of us aren’t Jacks-of-all-trades; we know a lot about a few things within a very specific niche. Very often, that is what people would rather read about also – things within a specific niche. If your niche website needs some blog marketing, you need to review these 7 important tips!

1. Keep cash out of your mind
In order to make money from niche blog promotion, you have to ignore the idea of money. At least for a while! Always make sure your traffic levels and your community come first. This is the same thing that Google is always telling websites – if you want to rank highly, you have to create value for the visitor. Well, as Steve Pavlina says, if you want to make a million dollars you need to figure out how to create a million dollars worth of value!

2. Get to know your readers!
Invite them to email you; ask for comments, respond to comments when you do get them. Knowing your audience is the key to promoting anything.

3. Make your ‘timeless’ content great
timeless content will continue to draw traffic for many years after you’ve written it. As such, make sure it has lots of value, and you’ll get plenty of traffic.

4. Create a press kit and go looking for advertisers
Create a PDF package that lists the benefits of advertising with your site, and send it out to companies that might be interested in buying ad space. Do a little work now to create passive income later.

5. Keep searching
Don’t make the mistake of believing that these are all single-time activities! You’ll need to keep up with them to stay ahead in your advertising profits.
6. Diversify your income

Don’t forget that selling advertising space isn’t the only way to make income from your blog promotion. Selling ebooks, courses, webinars and membership forum access can also make you money.

7. Be patient
Patience, young Padawan! Success in niche blog promotion will not happen overnight … but it will happen.

Get an idea for a blog, write some content, get advertisers, get rich. The entire process sounds simple, and many people focus exclusively on the ‘idea’ and ‘content writing’ stages of blogging, to the detriment of what could be the most important side … the blog advertising. Like most industries in our very big, very diverse world nowadays, advertising is full of complexities. And blog advertising has its own little quirks that demand good understanding if you’re going to have not only a well-read blog, but a financially rewarding one! Here are the top 5 reasons that blog advertising should be handled by the experts.

1. They have an understanding of fair pricing
People with little experience in blog advertising (either hosting it, or doing their own) usually have little concept of fair pricing in blog advertising. The lack of a realistic price for services will be a negotiations killer very early in the piece.

2. The technical details can be difficult
The technical specifics of targeting different IP addresses, which ad formats will work best, allowing scripts, etc tae a long time just to grasp their definitions … let alone make judgments on what will be best for your blog!

3. Because if your attention suffers, your blog suffers
And if your blog suffers, then the core offering at the center of that blog advertising campaign is devalued. If your blog isn’t at its absolute best, there is no sense engaging in heavy advertising and marketing for it. If people see it at less-than-its-best, you actually have the potential to create negative publicity. Not ideal!

4. Systems to make it easier
All businesses develop systems for their core activities to make them more efficient and cost effective over time. If you pay somebody the equivalent of $40 per hour to do a task that would take you three hours at $20 per hour of your own labor … the smartest option is clear!

5. For in-house advertising, the pitch is crucial
If you’re thinking about running advertising on your blog, you need the professional’s help to cerate the ‘pitch’ for potential advertisers. Once this has been created (and uploaded to your ‘Advertising information’ page), it can pretty much be forgotten. But having that professional help to begin with can really bump up your blog advertising profits.

Many issues in Internet marketing and corporate web presence have a fairly clearly defined ‘preferable’ side. One odd issue that is evenly divided is in blog marketing – while some people feel that outsourcing blog marketing and writing is the only way to run a blog, others say that completely betrays the spirit of your blog! The reality, as always, is a little more balanced than the extreme views. Today we check out the arguments on both sides of the fence about outsourcing your blog marketing and writing.

Time
Blogging well takes time. And if the people at your company that are ‘qualified’ to blog are worth in dollar terms per hour doing something other than writing, then the amount of time for blogging that their bosses will put in their schedule is nil. However, there is another consideration to make – the occasional post by a true expert in their field can add a lot of value to a blog … in the longer term.

Outsourcing isn’t all-or-nothing
You can outsource part of your blogging, and still retain the personal flavor. For example, there’s no reason for the ‘brains’ behind the blog to do any of the legwork, such as comment moderation, editing and proofing, finding images, etc.

New perspectives versus inconsistent perspectives
We often hear that people who don’t like the idea of outsourcing their blog marketing/writing are worried about having an inconsistent voice on the blog. However, once a blog has been up and running for a while, it really grows beyond the individual single voice that created it. Blogs can certainly evolve without alienating readers. Simply give your ghostwriters or guest writers some style guidelines, or retain the right to edit the posts that they create, and there is nothing to worry about.

Is blog marketing the same as blogging?
Given the blogs are mostly content, most of the marketing of a blog is in the creation of the content. However, there are still blog marketing tasks that SEO firms are well-placed to help with. They’ll also have some pretty handy ideas about content creation, as the subjects of your posts will inform the keywords you can use, which are the basis of good blog marketing.

Incoming search terms:

• should you outsource your blog articles

Blog marketing is the process of reaching a business’ potential customers or clients through the use of a blog. A blog is a communication tool between a company and the outside world. It is a way to communicate products and services in a personal way through commentary using text, graphics or video. Blogs are content driven, so they must have good original content, be frequently updated, and generate traffic back to the website generally to gain additional sales. Marketing blogs is a process that helps gain visibility and allows the information to be easily visible where a targeted audience will find it, benefit from it and respond to it, by purchasing the product or service being offered.

Marketing blogs is essentially like marketing any product or service. It involves finding the target customer or client, offering something to pique their interest, and giving them a reason to purchase the product or service. In this case, the marketing is accomplished with the use of a blog, generating interesting and helpful content, optimized on the web through search engines. Determining the target customer is determined by the product or service being offered. Once they are identified, the next step in the process involves creating and posting compelling content. Just throwing something together for the sake of ‘posting’ won’t do it. It has to be interesting. It has to grab their attention in just a few seconds. The blog posts should be updated regularly, generally 3-5 times a week. Key words must be incorporated in order to improve search engine rankings, which link readers back to the website. The use of social networking sites, forums, and discussion threads to connect with other bloggers is also very helpful.

Additional marketing methods include the importance of monitoring traffic, links and mentions of the blog on other sites. This includes blog pinging to all top blog directories and search engines as well as being promoted to top RSS feed directories. The goal is to build links back to the site for added exposure, so every possible method to do so helps. The use of pod casts and video to provide content for viewers to view and gain from, as well as link back to the site is also very helpful. The goal is to get the word out about the blog to as many places and people as possible and these marketing blog suggestions will certainly help.