8 Essential Blog Marketing Tips

More and more people are building blogs. That means there are lots of blogs competing for the same readers and your blog is just one of many. So with all of these blogs out there, and all this information available at no cost, how do you make your blog stand out?

Here are 8 essential tips to make sure your blog stays ahead of the rest of your competitors.

1. Target your content to a niche audience

Unless you want to throw all of your marketing budget and precious time on people who could care less about your blog, then you must pay attention to determine the niche audience you would like to target. Before posting any article, determine if it hits the sweet spot of your demographic.

2. Be original and honest

Don’t follow the herd within your sphere of interest. So don’t simply spin the same old post. Take an original slant on a common topic. Be honest. Verify your facts and provide links to additional resources. Readers trust you to be a good reporter, instructor, mentor or inspiration. So keep it honest at all times.

3. Don’t be afraid of a bit of controversy

Controversy sells.  If it is a part of your business model, be prepared to engage others with differing opinions because, guaranteed, lots of readers will disagree, and you may even encounter a few trolls and haters who frequent blogs for no other purpose than to post inflammatory garbage.

4. Post as a guest blogger

Don’t post to just any blog within your realm. Submit your best pieces to the prestigious blogs – the ones that already have a substantial following. Getting one of your posts published on a top-of-the-line blog is a great way to drive traffic to your website, where readers can find tons of content just waiting for a bookmark.

Of course, getting published on a well-established blog requires insight and something new to be added to the discussion. A rehash of conventional wisdom, regardless of the field of endeavour, won’t make the cut with top tier blogs within any industry or area of interest.

5. Social media marketing

Social media platforms provide bloggers with an arsenal of tools based on the guerrilla-marketing axiom.

Follow the rules and open accounts on these platforms. Every time you publish a new post to your blog, let your readers know about it by posting to these popular paltforms. Update your status with interesting and latest news that fascinate your readers.

6. Don’t oversell, educate as well

If you post to social media platforms all day long, flogging your latest blog post, it won’t be long before your followers hit the hide button. It can’t be all sell and no sizzle.

Instead of just posting information about a new blog post, also post news from other sites that you think will benefit your readers. Know when to stop pushing for a larger readership and when to start giving away information to drive more readers to your blog.

7. Long-tail keywords get you discovered

If you, for example, own a book review blog, a broad keyword like “books” will keep you buried in the backwash of Google’s SERPs.

So, instead of using “books” as a primary keyword, use a long-tail keyword like “independent book reviews” or “book reviews of current bestsellers”. Sure, not as many people will use these long-tail keywords when conducting a search, but those who do, will discover your blog at the top of page 1. And that’s just where you want to be.

8. Optimise your blog for readers and bots

Cut the clutter of 23 affiliate banners, animated adverts and other distractions. Remember, your website should be attractive to human sensibilities. It’s important to look good to readers who follow you. It’s just as important to look good to search engine spiders.

Conduct keyword research using tools like Google’s keyword generator that provides keywords used by actual Google users over the past 30 days. Place those keywords in headlines, subheads and a few of them in your blog posts.

SOURCE: Hongkiat