Blog marketing is marketing of a business with a blog, and it’s about the cheapest form of marketing you can do. You don’t need to spend any money on expensive print, radio, or television advertising where you have no idea of its effectiveness. With blog marketing, you don’t even need to spend money on internet advertising. Blog marketing is cheap marketing.
The Blog Marketing Breakdown
Let me break it down for you.
You’ve gotta have a website, anyway, right? So they say. What, exactly, is that website supposed to do for your bottome line? If you have a ready answer on that one (e-commerce sales, lead generation, etc.) good for you! You are ahead of the game. If you had to think about it for a moment, or if your answer was something like “to provide more information about blah blah blah,” no star for you! You are throwing money away on hosting and domain renewal fees. Your website had to help the business bring in money. Your old non-blog site (or no site at all) isn’t exactly helping you do that. You need to replace that broken thing with something that makes the needle on the money machine move.
Contribute to the Bottom Line
If you’re running a business, everything about the business should contribute to the bottom line. The purpose of marketing is to get sales. Your website is a marketing tool. We all understand the idea that you have to spend money to make money, but that notion is highly amplified by blog marketing: you get a lot for your money. And in these economic times when companies are slashing their marketing budgets, your dollars need to go farther than ever.
Having a blog really changes things. You are now the main marketing person, and what you write on your blog has a much better chance to attract prospects via search. Once you have them visiting your blog, you can move them towards a purchase.
You can create a blog with little technical knowledge, and there are a lot of book or internet resources to help you. You can save a lot of money by setting up the blog yourself.
Hosting, Domains, and… Time
The only cost involved to getting started in blog marketng is your web hosting and domain name renewals. Blog software, such as WordPress, is free to download and install on your web server. That is the best way to go, and many hosting companies have “one-click installs” of WordPress (pick a hosting company that has some kind of decent tech support service, like GoDaddy). You could use a free hosted service like Blogger or WordPress.com (different than the previous WordPress.org), but you really want the blog to be on your own site.
Writing on Your Blog
One the blog is up, you write a short article on it every day, called a post. What do you write about? This is hard at first, but here’s a great tip to get you started: write out the answers to the questions your customers ask you all the time. Use the questions themselves as headlines. There is certainly much more to it than this, but this is just a starting point. There is much information on the web about how to write a successful business blog that pulls in new customers and keeps existing customers happy.
Learning the Ropes
You will spend practically nothing but time. Be prepared to spend some time learning the ropes and writing blog posts. You will have to spend time trying to get your blog known to others. If you already have the email addresses of customers, tell them about your new blog. Tell everybody you know about your new blog.
Blogging is only part of the equation of pulling in customers from the internet. Another part is making sure you appear in search results (called search engine optimization), and yet another is interacting socially with people online (this is called social media). Blog marketing and social media go hand-in-hand. Neither of these need to cost any money, and they offer a huge payoff from a little learning and effort. I’ll discuss those in these next two posts:
I agree. Blogging is a very effective way to market a business, and it’s cheap, yes. It can be time-consuming, though, so I think the trick is to find the balance between effective and exhausting
Time-consuming it certainly is. But as modern day entrepreneurs, we certainly have it much easier than say, a generation ago, when nothing of this sort would have been possible.
Sir Richard Branson, for instance, had to thrash about in a friend’s basement making cold calls over the telephone to gain ad space sales for his ‘student’ magazine. We don’t have to do that for our blogs, do we?
Almost everything has been automated for us, except for “getting started”;” staying the course, no matter what happens” and “coming back to life, in case you go kaput”.
With regards to blogs, Mike, you couldn’t make it sound more structured and easy to understand than this. It’s true that finding focus will be difficult but it will be a part of “learning the ropes” as you rightly suggest.
I am loving the process. I don’t see building a new blog any different from building a new business ( although I know they are two different aspects).
Great Post, Michael. Looking forward for the other posts.
I definitely agree with you Michael. Social media and search engine optimization are basically free ways of getting traffic to your blog. So many people overlook these two things but if you just do it right then you don’t have to market your blog any other way.
Great post Michael!
As a newbie blogger, it’s easy to get overwhelmed – there’s so much blogging info out there that it can be tough to know what to do first. And then comes the big question: What the heck should I write about? And who should I tell?
But you broke it down and put it into simple steps. Like you said, I’ve just got to learn the ropes — and it will take some time, effort, and planning. But hey, that’s what running a business is all about, isn’t it?
My clients always have plenty of questions, so they’d be more than happy to read my posts. They WANT to read what I have to say, and get their questions answered.
So I just might go ask a few customers what they’d like to read about, then go write a blog post about it. And go tell everyone I know
Thanks, Michael for taking away the overwhelm and breaking it all down. I look forward to your next post!
Hi Michael,
Indeed blogs cost only time. The only problem is if you’re not doing the right thing it can take a very long time before you see some results. I have learned from my own mistakes and I still do.
Blog marketing is cheap but you have to know what are you doing or use the services of a blog coach.
Really nice post Michael. There’s one more thing I’d want to add:
There is no “build it and they will come” with blog marketing — which is what differentiates this so much from advertising. You make mention of needing that element of strategy (what is the blog FOR?). That’s so important, because you’re going to need to do some serious work to give your blog legs of its own.
Blog marketing is cheap in money, expensive in time … but the payoff is massive.
Fabulous post, M.
You’ve covered all the basics… and then some! Along with key tools and tips, you highlight the appropriate mindset and approach to succeeding with a blog as a business-building tool.
@Toma Bonciu: I’m a newbie blogger and agree that I’ll have to learn from my mistakes as I go along. You’re dead on with your observation about working with a seasoned blog coach to shorten the learning curve.
Speaking of great coaches, you’re the best, Michael. You’re a master at separating the wheat from the chaff.
Can’t wait to read the next installments in this series.
Very nice article! You got some points there, personal branding takes time but people can actually make a living on it. Take a look on many upcomers in the tv-industry, many of them are bloggers from the beginning.
[...] week I wrote about blog marketing, with the promise to continue in further posts. That all got interrupted for a few days while I had [...]
[...] Blog marketing could quite possibly be the cheapest form of marketing out there right now. With a blog, there’s no need for expensive print, radio or TV ads and the uncertainty of their effectiveness. Learn why blog marketing is cheap marketing and effective marketing in this recent post by Remarkablogger. [...]
I previously tried with a website. It was difficult to maintain write add etc… But since i have switched over to blog it is so easy. Now i dont even look back at my website. Sad it lost the PR 1 it had. Hey at least i am happy. In 2 months time my log got PR 2
I recentlly started a blog to help promote my other sites but it seems that my other sites send more traffic to the blog than vice versa. I am new to the blogging thing but so far I enjoy the time i spend ranting and raving for the world to see. lol
Michael,
I am so glad you decided to include this in your “my best posts on blog seo, all for you” email.
Hit the spot 7 months later! I even did a review on my own blog about it I liked it that much. I love learning about new things, and tweaks to old things.
Thanks a bunch.
Thanks, Kimberly, I said hello on your blog.
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Thanks – really useful artical – I agree it is important that every part of a business can be traced to a profit line within a business