By Hector Cisneros
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| Photo Credit: hongkiat.com |
How do you get found in a world of billions of competitors? That’s what most bloggers ask me when I meet with them to discuss their marketing needs. Most blogs are like billboards in the desert. Few, if anyone, reads their great literary works because their blog is like a needle in a mountainous hay stack.
This article will explain how any blogger can market their blog and articles to numbers that are objects of most writers' wildness dreams. It will share with the reader how to maximize their blog’s ability to get found, get shared and get read, all in less than 180 days! We have used this method for our blog and many of our clients’ blogs as well and it has always worked. With the information listed here we have grown our audience from nothing, to over 25,000 page views a month, (or 300,000 page views a year) employing this method.
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First, some basics: Your blog and articles have to have certain characteristics. They have to be of sufficient quality; proofed for grammar and spelling; look good with pictures and other multimedia elements; and they have to be focused, concise and provide useful information or content that entertains. (See the previous articles in this series, “The Magic Formula for Blogging Success: a Training Series for Bloggers - Part 1” and “Learning the Tricks of the Trade - Part 2 of Blogging 101.”) Once your commitment and quality is up to snuff, you will need to increase your numbers. What numbers you may ask? Your B.F.I.S.G.E. numbers! This stands for Blog posts, Followers, Influences, Sharing, Groups and Email.
Getting the Numbers on Your Side
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Blog posts – How many blog posts you create and publish will help determine if you’re successful. You can’t have lots of page views and loyal readers without something for them to read. The two articles I already mentioned will help you with this. So will reading “How to Triple your Blog Post Views in 60 Days or Less.”
Followers – You need lots of social network followers to read and spread your message. Actively invite followers in all of your social networks to follow you and do the same for them. Adding just 25 new followers a day will net you around 2,000 new followers a year or more. If you want to learn more about growing a following read “The Twelve Secrets of Social Media Success” and other articles listed in this blog.
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| Photo Credit: inyourshoesblog.wordpress.com |
Influencers – Every industry has its leaders. Today, it’s easier than ever to find who they are. If you use Twitter or Facebook, do a search on some of the keywords for your industry and make a note of those people and companies you find that have a large following. They are the influencers. Be nice to them, promote them, ask for their opinions, and share your work with them. You’ll be surprised at how being helpful to them, in turn, usually ends up helping you. Check out my previous article, “How to Win Friends and Influence People in the 21st Century - Take Two” to get more ideas.
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Sharing by back-linking – Every author wants their blogs and articles to be accepted and read. Help others find their audience. The law of reciprocity will reward you for doing so. This is especially true if your related articles listed are of good quality and the authors are industry influencers. Get a blogging buddy. Find a way to guest author on each other’s blogs. Make this a habit and grow this guest blog circle. Share their work along with yours; sometimes rubbing shoulders with others in your industry (even competitors) will pay huge dividends in the growth of your following. A great book I recommend is the “The Go-Giver” by Bob Burg and John David Mann. It’s worth the read and the audio book is very well acted. Get it, you'll thank me.
Groups – To get lots of exposure, you need access to lots of people. The problem with growing your social network organically is that it takes time. Most of the larger social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Google+ have groups you can join without actually having these people following you. These groups can be huge (hundreds of thousands of people), and by joining them, many will read your posts. Remember to reciprocate and engage the members. Don’t try to sell to them, ask their opinion and help them whenever you can. I talked about groups for the first time in my article, “How to Leverage LinkedIn for Business & Career Enhancement.” It covers many of the ways I use LinkedIn to share my knowledge and connect with others. Check it out if you love LinkedIn, it will help you make the most of that network.
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| Photo Credit:hongkiat.com |
Other Methods
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How to Use Conventional Media – We still recommend conventional advertising for many businesses. We ask our clients to evaluate its effectiveness and return on investment, but most importantly, we ask them to connect their conventional advertising to their web presence. Make sure your TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, billboards and other conventional advertising media direct traffic to your blog or website by listing their URLs on the advertisements.
Promoted Post and Pay Per Click/View – Finding a great place to promote your blog, or website is easy today. You need not look any further than the social nets you're already a member of. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and others all provide cost-effective means for promoting your blog. Clicks can start as low as 50 cents. Also, there are many sites that you can buy banner space or other promotion. Some of the directories we use to promote our business include Klout, Twitter Counter and Tweinds. Plus, you can also negotiate banner space (or even swaps) with other bloggers. This, along with guest blogging on a regular basis, will get you additional exposure.
30 is Your First Magic Number
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Once you have built a library of about 30 evergreen articles, you’re poised to make your first leap in growth. Frequency is the name of the game here. However, you can’t just all of a sudden start hammering your audience with dozens of the same post curated in twelve different ways without losing some followers. Once you reach 30 articles, you can post an article one to three times a day with different curated introductions to it to increase your page views. Also the frequency of newly released articles will make a big difference. The minimum you need is one new article each week. Two are better and creating three new authoritative published per week is the bomb. Recycling your published articles is a must because your social networks need constant feeding. Understand that within each social network are subgroups of members that use the social networks at different times of day. Experiment with posting during different times and with different curated intro verbiage. Measure everything and then stick to what works best until your research tells you otherwise.
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To keep growing you’ll need to double your number of blog posts. Each time your published library doubles, you can increase the number of times you recycle your posts. Your long-term goal is to provide around ten different authoritative, high quality, evergreen recycled posts per day and about two to three new authoritative blog posts per week (which also get posted to your social networks).
In this article, I listed the steps needed to grow your blog's audience into tens of thousands of followers. I covered the quality needed, more than eight marketing techniques, and the methodology, resources and schedule you’ll need to adhere to, in order to be wildly successful.
Six Cardinal Rules for Success in Social Media Marketing
Seven Secrets of Social Media Magnets
Leveraging the Internet in the 21st Century
How to Grow your Twitter Flock - 14 surefire Tips for Explosive organic Growth
You can also type “Blogging” or “Social Medial marketing” in the search box at the top right-hand side of this blog to find even more.
If you found this article useful, please share it with friends, family, coworkers and associates. If you have something to add related to this article or have a different opinion, place them in the Comments section below. It’s been my pleasure sharing this information with you.
That's my opinion; I look forward to hearing yours.
On behalf of all of us at Working the Web to Win, here's wishing you and yours a very Happy Holidays … Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s and of course, a Merry Christmas!
Seven Secrets of Social Media Magnets
Leveraging the Internet in the 21st Century
How to Grow your Twitter Flock - 14 surefire Tips for Explosive organic Growth
You can also type “Blogging” or “Social Medial marketing” in the search box at the top right-hand side of this blog to find even more.
If you found this article useful, please share it with friends, family, coworkers and associates. If you have something to add related to this article or have a different opinion, place them in the Comments section below. It’s been my pleasure sharing this information with you.That's my opinion; I look forward to hearing yours.
On behalf of all of us at Working the Web to Win, here's wishing you and yours a very Happy Holidays … Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, New Year’s and of course, a Merry Christmas!
If you'd like a free copy of our eBook, "Internet Marketing Tips for the 21st Century," please fill in the form below and we'll email it to you. Your information is always kept private and is never sold.
Hector Cisneros is a partner, COO and Social Media Director for the award-winning, Internet-based marketing firm, Working the Web to Win, in Jacksonville, FL. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He’s also the co-host of BlogTalkRadio’s “Working the Web to Win,” where he and Working the Web to Win’s co-founder, Carl Weiss, make working the web to win simple for every business. Additionally, Hector is a syndicated writer on Ezine Online and is an active blogger (including ghost writing). He's a published author of two books, "60 Seconds to Success"(available at Amazon and B&N), and "Internet Marketing for the 21st Century," which you can get by filling out the form above. He’s also the co-author of the book, “Working the Web to Win,” which is now available on Amazon.com.
Hector Cisneros is a partner, COO and Social Media Director for the award-winning, Internet-based marketing firm, Working the Web to Win, in Jacksonville, FL. You can connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and YouTube. He’s also the co-host of BlogTalkRadio’s “Working the Web to Win,” where he and Working the Web to Win’s co-founder, Carl Weiss, make working the web to win simple for every business. Additionally, Hector is a syndicated writer on Ezine Online and is an active blogger (including ghost writing). He's a published author of two books, "60 Seconds to Success"(available at Amazon and B&N), and "Internet Marketing for the 21st Century," which you can get by filling out the form above. He’s also the co-author of the book, “Working the Web to Win,” which is now available on Amazon.com.
Most people fail to realize what blogging really means. Websites are stagnant. Blogs are dynamic. If you have something to say, blogging is the way.
ReplyDeleteNo wonder Working the Web is an award-winning online marketing entity. When Hector speaks (writes), I listen.
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing this article. It was very helpful to me. I totally enjoyed the ease of reading this article too. Full of great tips. Thanks Hector!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Carl. With the introduction of Wordpress, the perception of what is a Web site (notice I use a capital "W" because the World Wide Web is a name of something) and what is a blog has been blurred. It used to be that Wordpress was the platform for interactive blogs, but then they got greedy and started promoting themselves as a Web platform. I have both a successful e-zine and a blog on the same subject, but neither one appears with the other. They're independent. The first is informative like a magazine and the second is question and answer like a blog. Blogs also share the opinion of the writer, much like essays used to do. Check out both my e-zine (http://www.theantiquesalmanac.com) and my blog (http://antiquesqa.blogspot.com)And thanks Hector for sharing your insights. They've been extremely helpful.
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