Gary K
President, CEO and Founder, Marketing Operations Partners; President, CEO and Founder, CommPros Group, Inc.
What are the best ways to promote our blog? Do Internet directories make sense?
I am interested in new ways to promote our blog, Marketing Operations at Work, beyond the traditional blog publicity vehicles. What emerging approaches should I consider? For example, many companies have found value in being listed in Internet directories. Are there any Internet directories out there to help promote a blog? Which ones have the right credibility and focus to reach an enterprise and small business audience?
Good Answers (15)
Jerry H
Radically improving your ROI through decreased media waste, better targeting, and greater contextual relevance
Best Answers in: Public Relations (1)
The power of promotion is in what you do to connect yourself with Authority bloggers. When you are commenting, guest blogging, etc...on an authority bloggers site, you are promoting your blog at maximum levels. Work on getting at least two backlinks from two blogs, whether big or small.
How to find an authority blogger? Use one of these tools, Ice Rocket, Feedster, BlogPulp. These will give you when you run searches on them, some idea of how widely read the postings that turn up in those searches are...that's where the rubber meets the road..is how many people are linking to someone, and the authority of who is linking. If you are the authority....if you link to a blogger, you could drive mounds of traffic to the blog you're linking too....so look at the most prominent bloggers and who are they linking too and that will give you an idea of who is influencing them.
Suggestion!! Get in USA Today's Blog and Podcast Directory and get promoted to 15 million daily readers. I've seen an increase of 400% new visitors to my blog from the directory. Your first month is FREE ..give it a shot.
http://www.hartcreativemarketing.com/clients/hart/email_blog/
Links:
Hi Gary:
1. Yahoo Answers
Start answering relevant questions, well, at Yahoo Answers. Make sure you're the best answer. List your blog as the source. Result: You get some hits and Yahoo contributes to your Google Page Rank.
2. dMoz
Getting listed on dMoz is a sure way of getting listed in many good search engines. I'm an editor for one of the categories. Let me know if you have any queries I may assist with.
3. Blog Directories
Try blog directories like blogtoplist, blogsearchengine and blogcatalog among others. Note that most of these require reciprocation on your site.
4. Accessorize
Do you have visually appealing content? Add it to flickr. Link it to your blog.
5. Visit Blogs
Go to blogs, add relevant comments. This has two results - 1. Owners may visit your site and if they find it of use, may recommend it. 2. Helps your Page Rank. Earlier, there was a no follow directive on comments. That is now on its way out, so comments on blogs help with SEO.
There's more, but these should be good to start with.
Hope this helps.
Regards,
Sid
Links:
Clarification added November 19, 2007:
My notes were in addition to what James and Rob said.
David W
CMO at Silicon Constellations Inc
Best Answers in: Wireless (2), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Starting Up (1)
Hi Gary,
I find that it's useful to participate in value-add discussions (such as this; answering questions on LinkedIn) and then referencing my blog in the signature line. I've done this in product review forums, technical forums, even Wikipedia. It definitely drives traffic.
It helps a lot to create and maintain a sitemap, so that Google et al know where to find you. You'll want to use Google Webmaster tools, Yahoo has an equivalent system.
Regards,
...dtw
Links:
Myles B
President of the American Marketing Association, Boston and CMO Commonwealth Creative Associates.
Best Answers in: Advertising (1), Sales Techniques (1), Ethics (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
When you are writing in your blog, keep in mind that you are initiating a conversation. This is to say a two-way exchange.
I've found that if you contribute valuable comments and questions on other people's blogs, you will begin to see more participation by others on your blog. I typically recommend to my clients that they follow what I call, "the 3 to 1 rule".
The 3 to 1 rule means that for every entry you create on your blog, you should contribute something of value on 3 other blogs within your specific area of interest and expertise.
You will be amazed at what you can receive as you continue to offer something of value to others.
Bill S
Co-Star at Live Media Entertainment
Best Answers in: Internationalization and Localization (1)
Success stories ! Nothing sells like success. What did they do that I can do, will do and show the correlating achievement, step by step. Info. for info. sake is a shotgun approach. Ask relevant questions to draw your readers out. e.g. "What significant results have you achieved within your last campaign?" Could be had a million hits or my team jelled.
Just a thought
My wife and I have been blogging for two years. Here are a couple ways we've found to promote our blog:
1) Participate in a Blog Carnival - Blog carnivals provide a way for new readers to learn of your blog and check it out. A few readers will come back. Many times after participating in a blog carnival we've noticed an increase in traffic. My rule of thumb is for every hundred readers from a carnival we'll get three to five who will come back as regular readers. (I don't have any hard data to support this, it just seems to be about right.) Blog Carnival lists hundreds of carnivals:
http://blogcarnival.com/bc/clist.html
2) Host a blog carnival - Once you have participated in a few you might try hosting a carnival. This will give you a lot of visibility. This is the best description I've found on how to host a blog carnival:
http://10000birds.com/hostwiththemost.htm
3) Comment - read other blogs and leave comments. Their readers will come back and check out your blog.
4) Use tags at the end of your post. As I explain here:
http://whyhomeschool.blogspot.com/2006/08/tags-power-of-tags-how-to-add-easily.html
Tags have been very powerful. Currently I'm using the tag builder at this site:
http://marshallk.com/?p=36
(click on BlogTags)
5) Use site meter to track your traffic. I find tools like site meter very helpful in finding out why people ended up reading our blog.
http://www.sitemeter.com/
If you have any questions, let me know.
Good luck.
Links:
I use a few addons to my wordpress blog that automatically tag my posts on many social bookmarking sites. The addons are Auto Social Poster and Ultimate Tag Warrior. I tag popular keywords in my posts and those keywords appear on popular websites like de.icio.us, technorati, blinklist, blogmarks, propeller, spurl, furl, magnolia and others. It generates a lot of traffic if you're using popular keywords in your content.
Links:
Penning original bylined articles and opinion pieces for CNET, ClickZ, etc., offering yourself and your colleagues to these outlets as subject matter experts and otherwise cultivating third party-sources of validation (e.g., customer testimonials, analyst references) can boost visibility, and importantly, credibility to your blog.
Shonika P
Pioneer of Youth & Teen Entrepreneur Coaching
Best Answers in: Business Development (2), Education and Schools (1), Career Management (1), Ethics (1), Blogging (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Hi Gary,
While I am no means a PR expert :) I am a small business owner who has experimented with about everything in the world of 'emerging' approaches, some successful right away, others have taken much longer (directories included).
I have found your 'best marketing tool' in the end comes down to intellectual property, resourcefulness, creativity and leveraging your current existing and prospective customer base. Of course your resources, online expertise and understanding, personal and professional experiences and personality all play a role in what is good, better or best so I will try to offer you some of the things I have tried (in practical terms) that have worked for me. Results may vary ok :)
1. As simple as it may sound, posting your blog in your email signature, in your invoice receipts etc, and in the header of your online corporate newsletter (make an announcement as well) can work wonders. It is subtle, but consistently there. And one day someone just may be compelled to click through.
2. Tis' the season....why not notify your clients i.e. a holiday greeting card? It certainly would not seem unusual. Thank them for their business and tell them to reciprocate your appreciation you will be featuring select clients on your new blog through the end of January. Ask them a thought provoking question or something related to what you do i.e. kind of like a service you offer and how they benefited and the best responses will get featured on the blog (you obviously will have to personalize it a bit). Tell them if they are featured their company name will be mentioned and they will get a link back to their company website. Serves as a testimonial for you, a value add to your customers and the best benefit is your customer is your best and least expensive advertising for your company :)
3. Contact local newspapers and trade associations and tell them the problem that your blog addresses for the business community/your target audience etc. and how it ties in to something relevant/a hot topic today. Try to get booked as a speaker or a story featured in the local paper. Plug your blog as a resource for timely answers to those problems.
4. Regarding your directories ???--- Note: While you can utilize online directories such as dmoz or yahoo (some are free, some cost $$$) you can also search Tier 2 internet directories (which have smaller audiences but have a faster turnaround time and are free or significantly less expensive). Tier 1 directories are best, google, ask, live (formerly msn), often are looking for content rich sites so if you are just starting out it may be a time consuming endeavor to focus on now with little or no return. dmoz is great but is reviewed by humans. So that could take ??? how long. Yes, you can submit it now and forget about it as well....but realize they will get to you when they get to you.
5. Go to feedburner.com and make sure you register your blog so that timely information gets pinged out to all the online world every time you make a post. For 9 months I was writing in my blog and NOBODY was looking at my blog. I optimized and a little traffic trickled in. I put it on feedburner and now the traffic has steadily increased each month.
6. Post on small business forums like evancarmichael.com and startupnation.com and use your blog signature in your online postings. When people are searching for relevant topics they will find you.
7. Try to get featured on podcasts or internet radio shows that target your ideal customer.
Remember- If you want to become a powerful person you must empower others ;-) So provide great information and leverage yourself as an industry resource and the traffic will soon follow.
Hope everything works out for you.
Warmly,
Shonika
Ted M
IT Enterprise Architect/Program Manager/Social Media and Internet Marketing Strategist
Something not yet mentioned is gaining SEO benefit by hosting your blog under a highly-ranked site....for example, if you've got a highly-ranked site already, host or FTP-publish the blog under your domain - this will help translate page-ranking to your blog and more quickly drive traffic to it...I host several blogs under www.dullessouthonline.com, and they all benefit from the traffic that comes through the main site, plus obviously links and referrals I make among them.
Gary B
Buyer of Refrigeration, HVAC, Climate and Temperature control components | LION | Invitations Accepted
Best Answers in: Professional Networking (2), Staffing and Recruiting (1), Graphic Design (1), Ethics (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
All the answers above are very true and will help. As mentioned you want to "ping" it and get it listed with many of the Blog lists out there.
The best tool I have found which has never failed to generate traffic to my blogs is pingomatic, simple tool, and free.
All you need to do is enter you Blog title, blog address and check the boxes of the directories you want to notify of your blog updates (presumeably all of them). hit submit and you are done.
Each time you update your blog, get it "pinged" again.
HTH
Links:
To begin with ...
Remember that corporate blogs are not part of the traditional approach to marketing. Blogs are dead center in the middle of non-traditional Web 2.0 marketing and social networking. So don't begin with a traditional marketing mindset when promoting your blog.
First ... you need to practice "linky-love". Don't just post a rant on what you want to talk about. Find other bloggers / uber-bloggers that comment on similar topics as your blog. Respond to one of their posts both on their blog and on your blog as well. On your blog post, link out to the post on their blog. When they link to yours ... you'll boost your traffic ... especially if they are an uber-blogger that everyone reads. If another blogger places you in their blog roll. you'll get more traffic. Place other bloggers in your blog roll and they may return the favor.
Second, practice basic SEO techniques on your blog. Identify a lengthy list of keyword phrases and then ensure that these keywords show up in your categories, the headlines of your posts, and within the content of your posts.
Third, your company must already send out an eNews to its client-base. Consider featuring the best posts on your blog in your eNews or sending out a dedicated email featuring the latest posts on your blog. Hopefully, your loyal clients will begin going to your blog and subscribing via RSS.
These are just a few hints to get started... but on a side note...
Don't use your blog as an extension of your Website. A blog should not be a place to promote the features of your products. A successful blog will talk about business issues, technical issues, and critical pain points that the target audience is interested in. A blog should sometimes be controversial and not tow the corporate line ... in a sense ... irreverent.
Clara K
Marketing, Project Management and International Communications Specialist
Blogging is a conversation, so you have to think about whether it's in the right taret market for you to get involved, and usually it is a good idea.
I think the best way is to just get involved in the conversation yourself, link to other blogs that you read, thus as Alex says, RSS feeds are good to keep updated and I didn't see anyone mention Twitter...if you can find some of the key bloggers in your industry and find if they are using Twitter, it's easy to start conversations with them about stuff there. I like the answers where people have said it's good to leave comments with a link to your blog.
Using thoughtful keywords helps optimize your search on Google Blogsearch or similar--still not easy to do, but keep your terms simple :o)
Technorati or Blogsearch are good places to find blogs to join in on the conversation although Technorati tends to be more nebulous and tough to gauge the impact of the influencers you want to talk to.
Links:
Mack C
Social Media Consultant/Speaker
Best Answers in: Business Development (2), Internet Marketing (1), Writing and Editing (1), Blogging (1)
The best way to promote your blog, is to leave it.
Wait, I'm serious! Start reading other blogs. Which ones?
1 - Anyone that comments on your blog, that has a blog.
2 - Blogs that cover the same topics you do.
Now what's going to happen as you start reading these blogs is you'll find interesting posts. Interesting posts that you'll want to comment on, and interesting posts that will give you inspiration for new posts at YOUR blog. And reading those interesting posts will make you smarter, and in turn make YOUR posts more interesting!
And when you write those new posts at your blog, you then link back to the blog post that you read that inspired the post.
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Now what will happen is all the comments that you left will encourage those bloggers to come back and check out YOUR blog. Which makes them much more likely to comment on your blog, and link to it.
Then of course we can't forget those other blog posts that you've been linking to. Those bloggers will also discover your linking to them, and that will make them more likely to....come check out YOUR blog and then comment on your blog, and/or link to an interesting post they see that YOU have written!
Do this every day, lather, rinse, repeat.
This is all a long-winded way of saying 'be a good community member'.
That's it. Growing your blog is painfully simple, but it does require some work, and a willingness to give first to others, in the hope that they will return the favor (hint: they will). The blogging community is like so many other things in life, you get back what you put in.
Barbara R
Social Media PR Optimizer-Speaker & Publisher @wiredprworks
Best Answers in: Blogging (3), Event Marketing and Promotions (1), Small Business (1)
Directories that bring my blog - http://www.barbararozgonyi-wiredprworks.com - traffic listed in resources. Mybloglog and Technorat serve as directories, search engines and community builders. The TopRank Online Marketing blog list is the one I use when I promote a new blog. Submit your site to each, most free, and you're on your way.
Good Luck!
Links:
More Answers (14)
Get other bloggers to link to it...
Links:
I would suggest you populate it with as much relevant content as possible so others can spread the word about your articles through linking. This will also help search spiders index your site and rank it. I would also encourage your customers to read your blog, this can be a good source of referrals to the blog. If you have a newsletter you might want to have a section with an snippet of a blog article with a direct link to it.
Explore using AdWords with carefully chosen keywords to have your blog come up in keyword searches.
There really is no real way of instantly getting traffic to a site or blog unless you're willing to spend money (AdWords, SEO, etc). Otherwise you just have to wait for the word to spread on the Internet, increasing your rank on relevant searches.
And don't forget to promote your blog with traditional marketing communications techniques...put your blog address on your business card, letterhead, email signature, professional biography when you speak to groups, ads, direct-mail pieces, e-newsletters, printed newsletters, brochures, postcards, association directories. You can drive people to your blog with inducements.
Links:
Richard S
Strategic Marketing Professional
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (2), Viral Marketing (1), Ethics (1), Starting Up (1), Using LinkedIn (1)
Richard S suggests this expert on this topic:
I work with Ryan Christiansen on several web based projects and he has several blogs that are successful. Look him up on Google and he is in the top 10 results.
Dan P
Google Advertsiing Professional - Adwords PPC - Pay Per Click Direct Marketing
Square One: Optimize for conversions... bring targeted traffic with Adwords, track for conversions.
Funny how this basic step gets missed before rolling out traffic generating tactics that cost more money.
Don't burn your cash on adwords without tracking for conversions, otherwise you'd be a fool, like 95% of adwords advertisers.
Links:
Veiko H
Independent Internet Professional
Best Answers in: Advertising (2), Job Search (1), Offshoring and Outsourcing (1), Business Development (1), Mobile Marketing (1), Planning (1), Project Management (1), Market Research and Definition (1), Small Business (1), E-Commerce (1), Computers and Software (1)
What I have found most useful (SEO) strategies:
1. Comment as many related articles as you can with the link to your related article. (some blog sites are not allowing links in comments, so forgot those).
2. Ping it every time you submit a new article to technorati, feedburner, etc.
Internet or blog directories have so far not yet sent me a single visitor.
Veiko
Some Suggestions
-Linking to other blogs
-Have good content and update as much as possible
-Social Bookmark your blog entries that you feel others would enjoy (Digg,Mixx, etc)
-Advertise on another Blog
BTW whats your website or blog url
Jim S
Marketing Copywriter, Content Developer at Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority
Hi Gary... I happened to read a good article related to this just this morning. It focuses on SEO for blogs, but that is probably mostly what you would be focusing on. Here's the link:
Links:
Publishing your content on social news portal sites such as propeller.com, reddit.com and digg.com can drive tremendous traffic to your blog, potentially earning you a readership assuming you keep your content updated and relevant.
Links:
Answer:
Directories do not hurt
if you want the most traffic be controversial and write about current events
in addition:
Find the largest media companies in your space and partner with them
they do this for a living and likely have much more traffic than companies in their space
Hope this helps
In addition to all the wonderful answers I've seen, I think it's important to get relevant media to notice it. A well-crafted invitation to view or join in the conversation could do wonders if in the right hands.
Gary, I have never used an internet directory, not do I know of anyone who uses them. I think they might have some use to companies that need to reach large groups of people quickly, like spammers, but not it seems to me that you have a much more targeted audience that the directories don't drill down to.
I am wondering what you consider to be traditional blog publicity vehicles. Do you mean sending out emails to friends and coworkers when you make a blog post and asking them to tell others? Do you mean commenting on other blogs and adding your blog url as contact information? Do you mean adding tagwords to your blog to increase search engine hits?
Hey Gary, RSS Feeds are an excellent way to promote your blog. People can sign up for an RSS feed directly from your blog, or, even better, get your blog into a feed that pulls articles from multiple blogs. I recently learned about an excellent resource, http://feeds.ogilvypr.com, that has a VERY broad range of feeds, each feed having MANY different blogs. I get about 10-20 RSS feeds a day per category.
Jim C
Emerson's Chief Blogger and Communications Manager
Best Answers in: Internet Marketing (1), Starting Up (1)
There are lot of great suggestions here. One I didn't see or scanned over is to set up persistent RSS searches on key topic areas of your blog. Using Technorati or Google Blog search with applicable keywords can help you discover conversations that you can develop posts about, or add comments to.
This action helps you organically grow your circle of readers and participants over time.
Take it easy,
Jim Cahill
www.EmersonProcessXperts.com
