One of the best ways to market your blog and attract heaps of visitors is through social media. Obviously this is like picking up a gun and firing off a round of buckshot as there are so many options for you to choose from. But social media packs a powerful punch, so it behooves you to pick your poison sooner rather than later, and start building your networks.
In case you missed them, here are parts one and two of this three day series.
In my case, my main choices when it comes to social media are Twitter, StumbleUpon, and Facebook respectively. Occasionally I utilize YouTube and LinkedIn as well as a few others, but primarily the first three are my focus.
What Your Main Objectives Are
When you are marketing on social media you need a plan. Remember back in part 1 when I told you about working with goals? Well, that goes especially big for marketing through social media.
- Build your network: Low numbers equals low traffic. It’s not going to do as much good having 10 people in your network when you could have 100. In this case you should think “The more the merrier!”
- Build relationships: It doesn’t matter how big or small your network is; if you don’t foster a relationship with those followers it’s a wasted effort.
- Create brand awareness: That means be a regular on the scene and make folks see you. Create a “social media” schedule as well if need be. A half hour a day can do wonders.
- Provide excellent value: Call attention to helpful information (yes, it can be from your blog). Help other people in your network. Pay attention to them and what they’re doing. Make them feel noticed and appreciated and in turn they’ll notice and appreciate you.
Useful Tools to Help you Leverage Social Media
Some people prefer to do it their selves, and some like a little help through tools. However you choose to get your marketing done through social media is up to you, and there is nothing wrong with using a few tools.
I actually use a few tools myself to help me with my marketing and they really have simplified the experience.
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Seesmic
Great for Twitter account management, especially if you have more than one Twitter account. You can monitor and respond to all three from the same interface. When you get a tweet and go to respond, it has a “smart” feature that automatically chooses the account the tweet was sent to.
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Su.Pr
A StumbleUpon URL shortener that allows you to track how many clicks you get from Twitter and Facebook on a link. It also allows you to stumble those links for extra StumbleUpon traffic. Just be sure that in between links you stumble, you also stumble other blogs and content as well. Otherwise you’ll end up pissing off the StumbleUpon community.
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Ping.Fm
Allows you to send your blog posts to all the social networking and social bookmarking sites that you’d like, all at once. There is also a plugin you can use if your blog is WordPress called Shorten2Ping that will send each new post you publish straight to Ping.Fm, which then sends it out to all your networks.
Give SEO a Little Kiss
While I don’t give a huge amount of focus and time to SEO, there are a few key things you should make a priority. These simple tweaks will increase your search traffic, which is really some of the best kind of traffic you can go for as a blogger.
These people are searching for information, and if they land on your blog it’s because you can provide it and Google recognized that pertinent little fact. That’s a good thing and search traffic has a higher likelihood of converting to subscribers or customers.
Simple SEO Tweaks to Improve Your Search Ranking
As hard as SEO is to master, there are some pretty basic things you can do to make an impact in the search engines that just aren’t hard at all to figure out.
- General keyword research: You don’t have to dig too deep unless you want to, just do some general research and find some good keywords related to your niche that you can target. It’s OK if they’re competitive but I wouldn’t go for the ones that are ridiculously competitive. Then make sure to use them in your blog posts on a regular basis.
- Keywords in your title tags: Google likes it when you include relevant keywords in your title tags. You can use the All In One SEO plugin if you need a bit of help in that department. It makes things super easy.
- Anchor links: Google gives relevance to anchor links, so use some of those keywords throughout your posts, and convert them to Google friendly anchor links to other relevant blogs or posts.
- Inbound link building: This is done by using article directories, guest posting, using social media sites, and creating killer content that people just can’t help but talk about and link to on their own blogs and social profiles. You can also submit your URL to directories and submit your RSS feed to directories as well. Also things like press releases can help with inbound links.
And there you have it: my little secret sauce to help you market the you know what out of your blog. No, it’s not new or unheard of. Nor is it by any means a comprehensive list of marketing tactics.
There are literally thousands of ways to market and drive traffic to a blog, but they are simply too numerous to cover here. But this handful of methods is simple and effective, and that’s what counts.
And if you couple then with a solid marketing schedule that you stick to, as well as a solid marketing plan, I foresee quite a bit of bloggy growth in your future!
So let’s talk about you… do you use social media to promote your blog successfully? What about SEO? Is it working for you? Drop a comment in the box below and let us know if you’re struggling with anything.
The Discussion
Leave a Comment Read Again?Hey Cori,
Another awesome post. I’m already using social media to promote my blog and it really works great. I’m also working on seo.
You’re really doing a great Job.
Thanks for sharing this great Post cori.
~Dev
Hey Dev! Good on you!
Social media and seo, can’t beat that combo huh? Appreciate your comment hun, glad you enjoyed it.
C
I think your series has been a great addition to the Blogussion community. I would just say that as long as your personal in building relationships it does not matter how you do it, as long as you are doing it!
Aww…Thanks Seth! So glad you’ve enjoyed the series, and agreed.. relationships are relationships. Be honest and build them with people you have things in common with, but boy.. build them already!
C
Such a helpful post. You said it right – those tips are simple but very effective. That’s what really counts.
Thanks Martin! Yes, I know these aren’t top secret jedi tricks or something, lol but they are effective and easy for most folks to implement. Gotta go with what works right?
Appreciate your comment hun.
C
I admit I haven’t taken advantage of social media as much as I should, but I have used Twitter more this year than any other… and just starting to get used to it. I’ll tackle Facebook and the likes later on, I’m sure, but in the meantime I have a lot on my plate and what I’m doing is working out pretty good so far.
My main focus right now is my email subscriber base, so I promote my squeeze page indirectly through guest blogging (which drives traffic to my blog) as well as blog commenting, and then forum participation.
Hey Jonathan, good to see you. As long as what you’re doing works, and you enjoy it… stick with it. As I said, these are 3 areas that work well for me personally, and everyone will have their own personal likes and dislikes when it comes to the way the promote. The important thing is to make promoting your blog a scheduled priority on a regular basis, regardless of how it’s done.
And sounds like you’re on it, so good for you! Appreciate you dropping in to comment hun.
C
Hi,
Great tools you mentioned there. Regarding Twitter, people also recommend TweetDeck. But I downloaded it, and it was getting in my way of productivity, as it shows up every tweet on my screen!
Do you know the differences between SEESMIC and TweetDeck?
Also like ping.fm, there is also onlywire.com which auto-syndicates your content to top 36 social networking sites. There is both a free and paid version ($2.99 Per month).
Thanks for the post!
Nabeel
P.S.Typo: ‘And if you couple then with a solid marketing schedule..’
Hey Nabeel! Ha.. see, even ghosts make typo’s.
And you can actually turn off those alert features in Tweetdeck. Seesmic has them too, and it can definitely get in the way of being productive. lol
TD and Seesmic are both pretty similar, I haven’t used TD in awhile though. I found it had quite a few bugs and would quit working on me too often. Seesmic I haven’t had a problem with. Seesmic also has a smart feature, so if you monitor more than one Twitter account, you can view them all at once and as you respond it auto detects what account the tweet was from and makes sure you @reply from that account. Very handy!
I have an Onlywire account, but haven’t used it in ages.. mayhap I should investigate it again! lol Thanks for adding your thoughts Nadeel!
C
It’s the 5th article that I’ve read from you Cori (considering that this series amounts to 3 individual posts). But the 3rd part is the most captivating that I’ve found. By the way I also visited your blog, pretty cool darkish layout
Anyway, I have to agree with the methods that you have mentioned here. And you are also right about the thousands of techniques that we can do in marketing a blog. But it’s best to shoot for quality over quantity to achieve great results in terms of reputation, backlinks, targeted traffic and SERP rankings.
I also believe that there are no “super advanced SEO and marketing tips” that you can find, except for “just go learn and do it yourself”.
Regards,
Jason Acidre
Hey Jason! And counting!
And thanks for dropping by BGB. I’m actually in the middle of a revamp, hopefully this week, so the darkish will still be there.. just mucho easier to navigate and hopefully more visually appealing. (At least I think so!)
And most definitely quality over quantity of marketing methods is important… that’s why I stick with just a handful at a time and go with things I know work rather than testing new ideas too often.
As to SEO… well as in marketing, testing is everything, lol. I learn by trial and error! Best way in my book, because you find out for yourself why some things work better than others… and often every niche and person’s experience is quite different.
Appreciate your comment hun!
C
I seriously liked this post Cori, great job! You packed a ton of information, but managed to make it digestible to the average blogger.
Managing your social media and online brand can take up a decent amount of time. Maybe you can write a post on affordable outsourcing or time saving online management. Thanks.
Hey hun, glad you enjoyed it!
I’ll definitely consider doing a post on either or both of those topics at some point, they’ll be good ones to cover. Thanks for taking a moment to comment!
Hey there Cori,
and that wraps it up for all 3 of the superb post you have written cori.
I haven’t really went much in utilizing Social networks to market but indeed i have heard so much possibilities it can do with just a click of a button. I have never actually got the hang of how to ‘intelligently’ use it therefore I never initially bothered working on it. However your post as provided me with a great insight of the overall process to marketing and I will be sure to apply as much as I can during my course of making money online.
I must say SEO is rather the most essential element that needs to be attributed in any of the internet business or blog out there. Apparently, we always mentioned about the big guy here which is Google. Nowadays, many internet marketers alike are so caught up to have their blog/product noticed and be part of Google. I have even come across some that thinks that its the only SEO search engine you should optimize.
And that makes me wonder. what about the other Search engines like yahoo, Bing ( popularity rising ) , MSN that you can apparently work on SEO on it too?
I am sure that they will give as much pleasant traffic for your blog. Besides, competition may be far lesser as compared with the heavy populated Google.
As far as i know, some countries do not even fancy using Google as their primary search engine. If i am not mistaken, Yahoo itself is the most utilized search engine in Japan. Well unless your blog or content is written in Japanese but you get the point,right ?
Therefore, i think we should never neglect the not-so-little guys out there. Who knows, in times to come, they may one day be as good as Google and even to the extend of being their strongest competitor.
haha =) anyway , thanks for such a great insight cori. I will be sure to apply it as much as i can on my new blog that i have created. Took me quite a challenge to tweak and fancy its appearance. so much more to do!
cheers =)
Hey Febap! You’re absolutely right, Google is NOT the only source of search traffic out there by any means.
Google is my primary search source, with Bing, Yahoo, and Aol coming in behind it, in that order.
And you should definitely give social media a shot… currently these are what my traffic sources look like… so the bulk is social media, and referral sites.
Referring Sites (45.93%)- Social media and guest posting sources.
Search Engines (26.00%)-Mostly Google.
Direct Traffic (20.07%)- Probably RSS and email subscribers, and folks who visit BGB by typing the URL.
Other (8.00%) – Who knows? lol
Wow.. statically speaking you have 45.93% contributed nicely for social media and guest posting.. i really need some guidance with social media.. how to fully effectively benefit from it .. you think you would post something as sort ? =P hehe
what about articles posting as such and forums ? do you utilize it cori?
XD
Lol.. I could likely put it on my list.
But it helps massively that I’ve got a fairly large twitter following. I also use Stumbleupon regularly as well, and I’ve landed a few guest posts on high profile blogs.
I have done a bit of forum marketing back in the day that I still see some traffic from, mainly on Warrior Forum, and a paid one called Earn1kaday. I’ve actually done an abysmally small amount of article marketing, considering that I am a writer. lol
Article marketing is good for the back links, and I’ve done some of that here and there but I much prefer putting my articles on another blog as a guest poster, as it gets more attention that way than just distributing to article directories. But again, it depends entirely on your goals.. my goals with guest posting is to help brand myself, draw readers to my blog, and build a good reputation with fellow bloggers. If I was simply looking for a link, then I might get more mileage out of posting to article directories… but it’s just not what I’m after.
c
What an amazing series of articles. I’ve been out of town for a few days and ended up reading all three parts in one go.
I’d recommend this article series to all my readers. Easy to follow tips and ideas for blog marketing. All concisely written and all quality, on the mark techniques for using social media, guest posting, a little SEO and more.
This is a good getting started guide for new bloggers and a good checklist for the rest of us to make sure that we are indeed marketing the crap out of blogs. Going to add these 3 articles to my week in review list on my blog tomorrow!
Hey Joella! Nice to see you, so glad you enjoyed the series.
And thanks so much, I hope your readers enjoy the series equally as well. Hope you were out of town for something fun, I’d sure love a vacay myself! lol
C
Interesting! ^_^
apparently i am a bit of here and there. As of now, i am working on affiliate marketing as well as blogging.Therefore, i suppose i have to subsequently build my name for my blog as well as getting the mileage as you speak of for my affiliate … alas.. i have sort out the best balance for both of them.
thank you for your insight , cori.
=)
I am certain you’ll get it right Febap… learn, implement, tweak as you go and you’ll find what works best for you and garners the results you’re looking for. And you’re welcome, glad I could give you another point of view hun!
C
Coriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!! I had no idea who Big Girl Branding was lol. So happy to read your post again, indeed social media is very important, and i know i haven’t used social media as much. Need to learn and socialize more. Thumbs up Big Girl Branding
Lol…thanks hun!
Keep me posted on how it works out for you, it’s been a huge part of my own growth.
Warmest
C
I quit all social media last year, going so far as to delete accounts altogether.
I was one of the morons that joined 50 per day and did nothing but get overwhelmed.
Now, I’ll be starting back real slow; one at a time, starting with recently rejoining Twitter…we shall see.
I’m still looking for one kind soul to learn me KW research, literally from the ground up. I know the basics, but nothing of the mechanics…..numbers, charts, etc.
Ha ha.. yeah, 50 might be a little over whelming. I tend to focus on just 2 or 3 consistently, and the rest I auto update from my blog, but don’t get real involved. I’d be chattering all day and night if I tried to keep up with any more than that. lol
I’d look into the keyword academy if you haven’t already… I’m considering it myself, I hear it’s pretty great stuff, and no BS.
And it’s not so expensive it’ll kill me. lol But I’m still on the fence, because I’ve got no patience with keyword research. I know I probably should, and I’d probably have more search traffic if I did… but ugg… I’d rather just write!
C
Indeed. I’ve heard fantastic things regarding KWA.
No patience? Don’t even go there, I’ve all but given up on it. lol
I “lol” but I’m actually not kidding.
Lol.. well we’re in the same boat then. And when I’m tired.. yikes I feel sorry for anyone who tries my already teetering levels of patience. And I have too, about KWA.. but still on the fence myself, because I reeeaaallly don’t enjoy kw research. lol In fact if I could find someone I trust to hire and do it for me (and well!), I probably would!
Outsourcing it, that may be where I’m headed as well.
I agree that social media brings a decent amount of traffic. I think another way to reach our followers on a personal level is to thank them whenever they share our content in Facebook and Twitter
Definitely, it’s nice to thank folks when you can catch it. Sometimes you miss though, and can’t be too hard on yourself if you do.
I remember someone telling me about Ping.fm several years ago, but I’ve since overlooked it. Will definitely check it out now as I was just contemplating auto-broadcasting the release of blog posts. Thanks for the heads up.
You’re welcome Callum! Glad you found something of value in the post.
c
I think networking is key because if people like you they’re more likey to promote your work. From all my blog marketing experiments there seems to be one big winner: guest posting so great to see that this is a guest post! Thanks Cori, Alex and Seth:)
Hey Annabel! You’re welcome, so glad you enjoyed the post. And yes, guest posting is a great winner in my book!
I think Ping.fm is an amzing Source. Thanks for sharing it with us all
You’re welcome Sascha!
Hi Cori.
Another great post, thanks for the tips. I really need to start putting a little more effort into Social media myself. I have been spending a lot of time lately building new content, as well as guest posting…
It’s great fun, but I have to admit I have let the social platforms slip a little. Su.Pr is awesome though, I’m glad you mentioned that one.You’ve given me the the push to bring Twitter and the likes back into my game now.
Hey there Mark! Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Yes, I’ve been on the same sort of kick, but I get a lot of value from my Tweeps as well, so mustn’t neglect them. And I’ve put a lot of time into it over the past two years, so it’s important to me that I don’t let them slide too much.
How refreshing to hear that it’s okay NOT to partake in every social media out there. For now, I’m just doing my blog/site, and Twitter. I know I should have Facebook and all the rest but I don’t want to right now. I have enough just to keep up with local concerts and events.. and write killer copy.
Starting to get a nice following on Twitter, and I’ve doubled my site traffic every month since I started four months ago. I believe that’s because I’m focusing on what my readers want, and building relationships.
LOL.. thanks, glad you enjoyed the post. Most definitely, getting sidetracked by every social media site on the planet is NOT a good strategy at all. Unless of course you’re super human or can afford a marketing team to handle it for you.
Good for you for narrowing down what’s important and seeing growth from it. As long as you’re seeing progress I’d say you’re doing it right!
c
Get a keyword first, keyword is the main foundation of SEO, cause it’s what’s SEO all about.
I will have to try some of these tools, particularly Seesmic. I thought it was more of a video twitter. Thanks Big Girl Branding.
Hey Matt! Definitely do, Seesmic rocks.
I couldn’t live without it. Well.. I could, but wouldn’t want to!
c
LOl
Awesome Post
Some very famous blogger they are more interested for making huge network through blog commenting, social networking and social bookmarking. According to me blog commenting is very crucial part marketing and I like to follow this way of marketing.
You’ve given a lot of useful tips in your posts. It will really benefit a lot of your readers. Keep up the good work!
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