A ‘How To’ Guide to Using Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Advertising to Get Found on the World Wide Web
Blogging is all the rage nowadays and better yet, you don’t really need any skills or qualifications to do it! However, it’s those people with the gifted ability to write and hold their audience that can take blogging to incredible heights of success. Just look at Perez Hilton. This celebrity gossip queen made a name for his flamboyant self with his acerbic tongue and no-limits blog topics. With the incredible exposure he has gained through making famous people writhe in embarrassment and his audience laugh-out-loud, Perez Hilton takes the time to raise awareness of human rights issues. In reality, however, social marketing blogging is far more than just a means of airing your opinions and experiences. It is a fantastic way for the modern business to maintain a much closer relationship with their target market, as well as their competition. And here is how you can use social marketing blogs to supercharge your online visibility!
But first…
What on Earth IS Blogging? And How is it Relevant to Social Marketing Advertising?
A blog (contracted form of ‘web log’) is a website or a component of a website dedicated to the regular posting of information, opinions and experience; usually written by an individual about that individual. From the perspective of social marketing advertising, a blog can be maintained by a company or enterprise, and through the posting of stimulating content, can serve to keep fans, readers, followers (i.e. potential customers) intrigued and listening. Social marketing blogging is also a great way to provide links back to a business website as each new post – be it daily, bi-weekly or more infrequently – provides opportunities to reroute readers to where they can actually make purchases or become a contact. In other words, social marketing blogging provides a fun portal through which a business can become closer to their audience; making customers out of web users.
In summary, blogging is used in social marketing advertising and social media to:
- Increase the SEO effectiveness of your website (since articles and postings can all be key-worded)
- Is non-invasive social marketing advertising: the people who read your business blog are doing so out of an interest in what you have to offer. So, your potential customers are effectively coming to you!
- Blogging helps a business to gain more visibility in the sphere of social media, which at present has hundreds of millions of followers world-wide.
Social Marketing Advertising: Starting Up Your Own Business Blog
In business, you should never be averse to learning. So the first and best step towards starting your own social marketing blog is to read what your competition is blogging about; in other words, what people in the same industry have to say on a daily and weekly basis. BlogSearch.Google.com and Technorati.com are great places to find blogs relating to your business, products and services. Read and subscribe to these social marketing blogs and you will learn invaluable information about what viewers – and potential customers – are responding to.
The second fundamental part involved in getting your social marketing advertising blog up and running is to get involved with the online conversation! In order to develop a readership, you need to be visible within the blogging community and you can achieve this by posting thoughtful comments on other member’s blogs, sharing links, asking questions and even disagreeing (within reason) to get the debate really going. Make sure you know what you’re talking about and get involved as an interested member with something valuable to contribute. Once other members recognize you (and your business’ name and identity), they will come to respect you as an industry authority; and the links you provide back to your business website in your posts will be the final touch in converting followers to potential customers… and then potential customers to paying customers! This is the underlying philosophy of social marketing in blogging.
Stay tuned for the next informative article in the series, PART 4: Getting Found on the Internet: A ‘How To’ Guide to Social Marketing Blogging, Continued.
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