When you begin to look at getting started online, you hear a lot about Blogs. Why should you care? You can create a blog and start blog marketing fairly quickly. It is also one of the easiest ways to get your feet wet in Internet Marketing.
Your blog can serve as an online newsletter to keep regular readers informed, announce news, events, products, etc and build your audience.
So, what is a blog and what differentiates a blog from a website?
The term “Blog” comes from “web log”. Blogs are a type of web page where posts are made about your chosen niche or related topic. With the default setup, as new posts are made, the older appear further down the page. This allows for the latest information to be highlighted.
Ideally, you want most of your posts to be between 600-800 words in length, with 300 as the absolute minimum. Posts generally include images or videos to help your readers understand.
If you are a very good writer, posts of 1000 words or more can help you rank in the search engines if they are done properly.
Lastly, your readers can leave comments on your blog posts. While you can easily opt out of allowing comments, I suggest you leave comment on. Most readers enjoy the opportunity to chime in on the information being shared. It’s also a great way to allow for readers to share their experiences with your products or services. This creates free advertising for you.
WHAT IS BLOG MARKETING?
So now that we have established what a blog is, let’s look at blog marketing.
As you may know from browsing the web there is a huge amount of information available on the internet. While this makes the web a great resource, it also makes it extremely competitive for those seeking to make money from a blog.
My definition of blog marketing encompasses two areas:
1. Make your blog more accessible and easy to find (i.e. get it to the top of the search engines)
2. Optimize your blog in order to publicize and/or advertise for the purpose of making a profit from the blog.
WHY DO BLOG MARKETING?
You can use blogs as a means of building a business and making money to support your lifestyle.
Some of the reasons for blog marketing are as follows:
Build Your Brand with Your Blog
People buy from names they trust. I’m sure if you think about it you probably look for particular brands when shopping. Your goal as a blog owner is to build your brand and become a trusted name in your chosen field. You can use blog marketing to do this.
When building your brand, be sure to regularly post useful information. Your posts should be well-written, informative, and reliable. The more people trust your brand, the more they will visit, and the more they will recommend your blog to others.
Low-Cost
A blog is low cost to set up which makes it very appealing. The only real money involved in setting up a blog is purchasing the domain name. While there are free blog hosting services available, most professional bloggers will recommend that you purchase your own domain so that you have a more professional web address.
The other cost of blogging doesn’t involve money, but rather it involves your time. As long as you have the time to dedicate to setting up, maintaining, and updating your blog, you can keep it up and going for fairly cheap to free.
Monetization Opportunities
Blogs offer a number of ways to make money.
A few of the methods you can use to earn using your blog are:
- Affiliate Marketing
- Ad Networks
- Selling Your Own Product or Service
It costs very little to nothing to monetize your blog and you can benefit from the large audience that the internet has to offer.
The biggest cost of monetization of a blog is the time you’ll need to put into your blog in order to drive traffic to it.
In the next installment, I’ll talk about how to start your blog.
