A Great Blogger Is a Great Marketer

There is something very important I’ve learned from countless webinars, programs, and services I’ve purchased over the past two years of blogging. Here is the simple truth; blogging is easy, but marketing is the hard part!

Anyone can blog!  In fact, CNet is saying there are two blogs being created every second. This means the blogging arena is full of people who want to express their thoughts, and feelings on topics they feel are important. But what makes some people shine in the blogging world, and others crumble to the ground?

Marketing!

There is a group of bloggers that actually take the time to learn marketing. Why?

Marketing is how thousands of people are going to find your material, purchase your products, and comment on your posts. Just because you start a new blog, get a fresh design, and a cool commenting system. Doesn’t mean loads and loads of traffic is going to come your way.

To be a GREAT blogger you must understand marketing.

Most of the time you won’t hear about Humanizing social media markets. It is important to be relevant, offer epic content, and just be your self. These are subjects many people don‘t talk about, but they need your focus if you are going to be a great blogger. In addition to that, you need to focus on your marketing as well.

Here are a few areas of focus in the industry to make you a great blogger.

What is NOT marketing? Hum Let’s see:

• Marketing is not spamming your link every two minutes on Twitter.
• Marketing is not emailing your lists every day with “Check out my post!”
• Marketing is not spamming top tier bloggers in your industry to check out your latest blog post.
• Marketing is not sending out a massive broadcast text message to everyone in your phone about your guest post.

Marketing is creating a strategy, or system to place your content in front of multiple media sources. People will find your content organically.

The idea of being everywhere is important. If you don’t understand that concept then check out Pat Flynn podcast he will go over it.

When you start blogging you need to setup a marketing strategy if you want your material to reach as many people as possible.

I read a statement that said “the product takes 10% of your time and the marketing 90% of your time” it’s no different when it comes to blogging. You can come up with lots of ideas for your blog content, but if you have no funnel to push that content through then you are going to get discouraged.  When blogging goes wrong people usually give up within the first six months.

Marketing Ideas:

• Tribber: Tribber is an online Twitter community where you join tribes that share the same content as you do. You have an opportunity to have your content in viewed by thousands of people if you join. You can be apart of a tribe with some very influential people. My recommendation would be to leverage Klout. See who is influential in your industry, and see if they would be interested in joining your tribe. Set a goal to  be apart 15 tribes each year. Your outreach should be over 1 million.
• Guest Blogging Weekly: If your not guest blogging on other blogs. You are missing out on one of the biggest marketing opportunities. Have you been blogging for awhile? Are you looking to re launch your blog? This is something that YOU MUST DO! I launched my blog Affiliate Manifesto in January, and I wrote out a blogging strategy for the first year. Then, I wrote out a marketing guide as well. For the first two months of the year I will write out a guest post every week. If I have a little extra time I will write out two guest posts. The reason behind guest posting is to leverage the influence of other peoples audience to express my thoughts on internet and affiliate marketing.For each blog I look at the popular posts they have, and review them to see what information they offer. Then, replicate that information for my own posts. Follow the same template as the popular posts of that blog. Just create your own content. Why? Because these are the posts that received the most traction and you want that for your own blog as well.
• Email JV Partners: This strategy will only work effectively for people who have an active email list. You can create a joint partnership with another blogger in your industry. By sharing summarized blog posts in each others email list.  Then, pick one day of the week and share the top blog posts of that week within both mailing lists. Now you are getting a direct marketing campaign to an engaging list of people.

Back in September, I had a friend to help me test out an idea, and it worked out really well! Each Wednesday we  share our top blog posts for our email lists to check out. I received a lot more attention from this then I thought. Do this with a group of people in your industry. Everyone will choose one blog post per week. Then,  you can see a good amount of growth with your blogging traffic.

I learned a great deal of information about blogging from John Chow and followed his blog often. He talks about not just being a blogger, but a marketer first. I really enjoy blogging, I like talking about different areaPosts that I get into, but  at the end of the day I’m first a marketer.

Understanding how to market your blog is vital if you are looking to make money. How can you market other peoples products or services if you don’t understand how to marketing your own blog?

I really recommend taking the time to learn about basic marketing strategies such as email marketing, guest blogging, and pay per click.

I invested the time to learn these few areas, and it has helped me greatly with growing my blog and my business.

Here are some resources:

• Dewane Mutunga ebook: Email Marketing 101
• Gregory Ciotti: Sparring Mind
• Rick: I Rock Paid Traffic

Editor: Shanee Townsend