Marketing With Blogs - Part 2
Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah
In part
1 of this article series on marketing with blogs, I discussed
the reasons why blogs are excellent tools for marketing.
In this article I outline some tips on
using your blog as a good vehicle for your marketing communications.
Tip # 1: Choose The Topic Of Your Blog Well
Make sure you are targeting the right audience
for your products. You might love golf, but you can’t
use it to sell your products unless they’re meant for
golfers.
You generally wouldn’t write about something
like golf on a marketing blog, unless you’re using it
as a metaphor.
Pick the topic that will attract the right audience
– people who are looking for your products, but more importantly,
people who are willing to actually spend money on them.
If you’re not an expert on your topic,
but are learning about it, blog about your learning process.
There’s no shame in being a learner, in admitting that
you don’t know everything.
In fact you journey could even teach others
who are learning and help them relate to your experiences. Products
you recommend would then be easy to sell to this group because
you’ve established the emotional connection that makes
selling easier.
Tip #2: Spend Some Time Learning The Basics Of Blogging
You need to learn how to use your blogging software,
which blog engine will give you the results you need. Decide
how much time you want to spend on your blog.
Hire a blogging coach or buy a blogging tutorial.
Spend some time learning about trackbacks, pingbacks, keywords
and how to use them, linking, blogging etiquette.
When you know how to use the tools that are
available to you, it becomes that much easier to focus on your
goals and save time in the actual process of blogging.
Tip # 3: Don’t Sell
When you start writing a blog, forget about
selling. Too many people use their blog like a sales letter.
Those people just don’t “get it.” That’s
not what a blog is about at all.
Blogs are about communicating – connecting
with your audience. Use your blog to build relationships with
your audience. State your opinions whether they are popular
or not. Politically-correct or not.
A while ago I wrote an article on this titled
“It’s a Blog, Not
a Sales Letter” in which I recommend using your blog
for branding yourself, building your reputation and communicating
with your audience - and not just for making a sale.
As marketers we aim to sell. But when you blog,
you have to forget about selling and focus on sharing. That
doesn’t mean you give away all your secrets on your blog.
But it does mean that you should not use your
blog for in-your-face marketing.
Your readers will be very put off if all they
read on your blog is one sales pitch after another. People are
not stupid. They know when they’re being sold.
The most unobtrusive way to sell is to write
reviews about products and link to them, mention products in
passing, write articles or tips and recommend products (yours
or other people’s) and services on your blog.
Part
3 of this article series discusses more tips on using your
blog to market your products and services online.
Priya Shah is CEO of the blog
publishing firm, Connect10. Subscribe to her free Marketing
With Blogs email course. Request the whitepaper Boost
Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here.
This article may be reprinted as long as the
resource box is left intact and all links are hyperlinked.
