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Marketing Techniques For Your Blog’s Marketing Strategy

When deciding how you want to drive traffic to your site you don’t have to spend thousands to have somebody else do a lot of the content writing, website creation, etc.   I was on a site the other day and saw somebody had paid over $1,000 just for a logo. I can show you where to go to get it done cheaper or you may just pass on developing a logo until later. But for right now you need to decide what your marketing budget is because that will determine which of the following marketing methods that are available to you.

Of course I don’t recommend going out and spending thousands of dollars just because you have them.   If you have thousands it would be better for you to plan on stretching that out and learning some of the low or no cost methods first. While you are learning those and seeing what really brings in traffic you will find plenty of opportunity to spend your money wisely either automating, ramping up or just improving what you found that works.

Article Marketing

Traditional article marketing requires you to write articles targeting keywords that are the same or related to the ones used on your blog. You write the article submit it to at least one article publisher like ezinearticles.com, goarticles or articlesbase.com with some sort of link back to your blog site in the author’s box.

The first option to this is to hire somebody else to write the articles for you. It’s common to outsource this task as it can be time consuming and does extensive damage to your productivity. I probably shouldn’t even be writing these blog posts about blogging but as you’ll find out letting somebody else put your ideas to paper doesn’t always cut it.

The next variation on this is to write an article, of course still targeting keywords you are using on your blog, and create different versions of the same article called spinning. Now these “spun” versions of the same article are submitted to many article publishers, one can be used as a blog post and other versions can be used on other publishing/blog sites like Hubpages and Squidoo.

Don’t get too hung up publishing your articles everywhere unless you are going to use a tool that can do the submitting for you. The reason people try to get their articles published to lots of directories is because it helps them generate links back to their site. As I’ll explain in a minute getting links back to your blog are probably the most helpful and important thing you will ever do to get free traffic.

There is another variation that has been developed to only require you to write one article…ever. But as it’s not my method and it is valuable content provided to members of a forum I belong to I will not be explaining it in any detail. Just know that I have already written a blog post about where you can learn some advanced, cutting edge techniques sign up for their trial if you want to learn more.

As far as tools the one I’ve seen used and recommended the most is Unique Article Wizard, this costs $67 per month and helps in spinning your articles and publishing them to lots of article publishing sites. I’ve seen other tools and still more coming out on the market but I haven’t seen the power that this one has.

The Best Spinner is a spinning tool as suggested by the name, if you plan to do article marketing spinning helps you leverage the articles you write by helping you generate more articles on the same keywords from the original. This is done by you rewriting your sentences and phrases so that they mean the same thing but say it in a completely different way. Spinners then take the different versions and mix them up so you get many new versions that can seem completely new. Careful though the search engines have been catching on so “uniqueness” has become more important.

Video Marketing

I haven’t personally used this technique yet but I know of a guy that is making a killing using it. Of course he spends his time finding the less obvious ways to draw traffic too but I digress. Video marketing requires you to create brief videos targeting keywords and information valuable to your viewers. Traffic Geyser is the standard in teaching and software that helps you in your video marketing. In case you are wondering they suggest the first videos you create are you faq’s and saq’s (should be asked questions).

Videos actually do give you increased perceived authority, not to mention video’s have been ranking higher than content sites lately in the search engines. The great thing about publishing videos to sites like YouTube is you can embed this same videos into posts on your blog because YouTube gives you code to use to do this.

Tools for this method, if you are going with this method a simple Logitech microphone and your web camera can get you off to a great start. If you have more money to invest you may want to check into traffic geyser I know he suggests a nice camera to use. Either way it doesn’t take fancy editing software to create your videos and with webcams coming preinstalled now most computers have video software preinstalled too.

If you are having stage fright issues just thinking about this try creating a powerpoint presentation or download Jing it’s free software that allow you to record your screen. Then you can talk and demonstrate what you are teaching in your video. Of course the better paid software is Camtasia I know other people say there are cheaper alternatives but they are unmatched in quality as far as I’m concerned.

Link Building

Links to your site are generated when a person bookmarks your website, you exchange links with another website, you put your link in a profile on another site, when you publish an article and put the full url of one of your posts or homepage in the author box, and forums will allow you to put your website in your signature.

All of these different types of links tell the search engine that other people think your site is important and translate that into increasing your “ranking.” Think of it like climbing a ladder the top rungs are on page 1 when a person types in the keyword to search.

You can pay people to create these links for you and they will usually give you packages of varying amounts of links you will get, I’ve seen a couple of people that offer these and the packages are very reasonable. You can create links on your own, like I said earlier article marketing done right helps tremendously with this and so does social networking.

Or you can pay for a service that allows you to create multiple campaigns, you can decide how many links per day you want and they charge by limiting the total number of links you can get. I personally suggest LinkJuicer there is a trial month, they charge $47 for their basic package and that gives you 1,500 links per month or 50 links per day.  Alternately you can use a more robust and costly service like senuke x that runs between $67 to $147 dollars per month and essentially there is no limit because you are in charge of setting up their program to do all the different levels of linking.

I don’t suggest SEnuke for beginners even though they do give training videos I didn’t find them to be easy to follow for someone just starting out. Then there are people like me that would rather outsource or set it and forget it so I use LinkJuicer because I can set it up and walk away, it’s not complex and it works on the same principles.

Google Places Listing

It’s a free listing, it’s vital if you are a local business or organization, it gives you free publicity and credibility. Some tips on using this don’t be afraid to use categories that aren’t listed but realize they want you to use at least one of theirs. Probably the best way I can help you understand what to watch for is to give you some mistakes that I have either witnessed directly or committed myself.

I’ll start with my dentist, out of curiosity I looked them up in Google to see where they were ranking for a local search for dentist. When I say a local search that means I took the keyword and added a city name and sometimes state abbreviation. To my surprise they were about number 5 which isn’t bad but the only reason they were even that low was because nowhere in their name did they mention dentist. It was in the meta description for their site so it did show up with their listing in Google’s search results.

In my own experience I was listing my sister’s business and I didn’t realize that Google didn’t use the description I gave when I filled out the Google places listing, that was well prepared with keywords to help customers find her. Instead they pulled the meta description I had used on her blog that did not have all the keywords nicely lined up. Needless to say that problem has been fixed.

The take home point here is check your listing, try different things, and if it’s not showing up they way you want test and change things.

Your Blog Marketing Strategy

Believe it or not you can make your blog work if you only choose one of the methods I have mentioned but obviously what you decide to do depends on how much money and time you have to invest. Essentially all of these methods are free but to leverage your time and increase your productivity there are tools that I have suggested for you to consider.

To lay a foundation for your blog marketing I suggest establishing at least a Facebook page and a Twitter profile even if you can’t make it all fancy you can still choose some colors put your face or logo on each profile and build a following. I say this is the foundation because traffic from search engines isn’t always consistent and may change depending on the search engines but the traffic you build through these sites will stay your bread and butter.

Then you should pick at least one of these: article marketing, video marketing or link building. If you decide to go with more than one I suggest you start with one and work with it until you get it working for you. Then add another method otherwise you get spread too thin and you lose focus.

Finally create your listing on Google Places even if you don’t have one definite location. Those other four places will all point people back to your blog plus you are somehow developing large volumes of different types of links that point back to your site. That is a wrap for now, I have not forgotten about email marketing but I will be giving that attention a little later on.

Here is the next post in this series:  Sample Blog Layouts

Often Forgotten But Easy Ways To Make Money

Sometimes easy ways to make money can be hidden right in front of our faces. They are those jobs necessary to keep our way of living running smoothly. These include security guards, locksmiths, midwives, and barbers. Where do you dig up these ways to earn extra or full time money you may be asking? ...at the department of consumer affairs, of course. There are more than just doctors and engineers in that list and most of these aren't dependent on whether or not the economy is up.

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