Hello, my name is Dee. I work as a full time in-house SEO for Sea Waves. Also, I blog part time at Net Business Blog. I’ll be blogging once a week here. More specifically, I’ll be giving tips that will help you market your blog. Subscribe to our feed and you won’t miss out.
Today let’s talk about marketing without spamming. What’s the difference? How can you keep your marketing from becoming spammy?
Here are some equations that might help you understand the difference between spam and marketing.
Promoting low quality/irrelevant content = spam
Promoting with no prior relationship = spam
Promoting with good content and networking = good marketing
Good blog marketing is not just about letting people know about your content. You also need networking and good content.
Why Good Content?
People will share high quality content. But bad content, they’ll make fun of or ignore. For example, you promote one of your posts to popular bloggers. Popular bloggers are known for having quality content. For those bloggers to link to you, you must have quality content that their readers will enjoy. So, promote your best stuff and aim to increase the quality of your content.
Tips for Producing Good Content
Think about what people in your niche like to talk about. Would they share your content with their friends? Ask yourself if other bloggers would freely link to your posts. The key here is creating content that stands out from the crowd. There are many ways to do this. Here are 3 of those ways.
1. Cover the areas in your niche that no one else is covering.
Example: Follow the popular blogs in your niche and write about an important subject they’re not covering at the present time.
2. Write about your niche in a unique angle.
Example: Whenever you post a news item, add your opinions and views.
3. Format your blogs in a creative way.
Examples: Take quality content from your blog and other blogs and aggregate them in a organized list post. Also, make sure to have usable, clean, up-to-date blog design.
Finally, your content needs to be relevant to your audience. Therefore, know your audience well in order to give them what they consider useful/important/entertaining.
Why Networking?
Think about some blogs where you’d like to have a link. For example, if you have a basketball blog, you’d definitely want a link from TrueHoop? If you have a copywriting blog, you can get a lot of traffic from a link on Copyblogger. How would you go about pursuing these juicy links?
You could email them your best content. However, popular bloggers are used to getting promotional emails. Some of these promotional emails come from their friends. Hmmm. Are the popular bloggers more likely to link to their friends or you, a stranger? We are social creatures by nature. We like to support our friends more than random strangers. So, you have a much better chance of getting links on popular blogs by being friendly and networking.
Networking Tips
Here are some practical networking tips.
Think of networking like building offline friendships. Small talk first.
- Think of networking like building offline friendships. Small talk first.
- Introduce yourself to other bloggers by emailing them. Don’t promote any of your posts. Give them your blog URL and tell them a little bit about yourself. Ask them a small, relevant question.
- Leave insightful comments.
- Link out to quality content. Bloggers like trackbacks.
- Do interviews.
- Offer to guest post.
- Target bloggers who like to link out rather than the more “isolated” bloggers.
Conclusion
There is a lot more to say about quality content and networking so stick around. I’ll give more practical examples in later posts. Until then, reevaluate your networking efforts and the quality of your content. If you do this, you’ll be on your way to increasing the effectiveness of your marketing.