Is it essential to do Blog Marketing?

Every day there are thousands of blogs written. Have you ever wondered how many blogs are ranked and get noticed by Search Engines? What are the secrets which help blogs to rank? Let’s us read more about it.

Before understanding Blog marketing, understanding of what blog is, is essential.
Blog is defined as the art of creating content related to your website, brand, topic etc.
Blog can be written on anything. It can be about Travel, Fashion, Business, SEO, Social Media etc. Let us concentrate on what is Blog marketing.
 
Blog Marketing is defined as a process which helps in advertising a website, business, a brand or may be a service by the medium of blogs. Blog marketing involves many marketing activities such as promotion of the blog through entries on third party blogs, marketing through ads on blogs, recommending and reviewing the blogs by blogger and cross syndication of information through multiple blogs.
Blog Marketing is also known as blogging for business. Hence, defining it can also be defined as a marketing tactics to attract more attention of the visitors or viewers through blogs to increase online visibility.

It is a way to reach out a business prospect via a medium known as Blog. This method is quite cost efficient. Blog marketing is an effective technique to improve search engine rankings for search engine optimisation(SEO).

Is there a need for marketing your Blogs?

Marketing your blogs play a vital role because you want to increase the traffic on your  website, for your brand. This is only possible when your website is easily visible and available on search engines and you don’t have to type the website’s URL individually.
Whether you are a start up, a small business or a multinational company, creating content through blogs and marketing it is the basic element required in every business.
The more webpages you have, the better are the chances of your website to rank in search results. This means when you right a new blog post, you ought to update that in your website by creating a new webpage. Once the new web page is created, Google will start crawling and indexing your web pages, leading to more opportunities for your site to rank in search engines.  

The reasons why there is a need to market your blogs are:

• Drives traffic - The main power you have in your hand is the content. The content you create should be so powerful, that your relevant customers get attracted and drives traffic to the website. The content of your blog should be such that it attracts all the traffic from social media platforms.
  One easy method to drive traffic is by posting inbound links into the blogs, this will lead to direct traffic on particular landing pages.
   
• Rank on Search Engines - With the help of fresh and unique content, your website can rank amazingly well. Content is an important on page factor to increase your search engine rankings. Use keywords in your content related to your business, blog and you might simply start ranking well on SERPs. 
   
• Establish authority - When your company has a section of blog, the content which is given drives traffic because of the trust and confidence of your customers in you and your brand. Your content should always be written in the perspective that your customers will be benefitted. They get the relevant information they are looking for. This will lead to authority in the brand and make you an expertise in your field.
   
• Better customer relationships - The content of your website is a great source to deepen the bond between you and your customer. By creating blog directly on your website, your clients will get a complete idea about you and your brand. By giving them relevant information, you become a reliable source leading to your customers being happy. Customers appreciate all the small things done for them. If any customer feels cheated, reply them through blogs or comments and see they will love to get back to you. This helps in building better customer relationships and brings long term results.

Fews tricks to market your Blog or website!

Ssshhhhh…..!! Let us discuss some blog marketing strategies to market your blog or website:

• Social Media: Social Media is a great source to market your blog. Whether it’s facebook, twitter, Pinterest or Linkedin, writing blogs which interests your customers will definitely fetch you traffic. Social media is a wonderful platform to market your blogs or product. If you are lacking in social media, start doing it from today. As it is said “Better late than never!”

• Build your Brand: Building your brand for the outside world is the most important thing. How your brand looks to the visitors matters the most. Whatever your customers see or hear about you, they assume that it might be correct. So better be cautious when it comes to building your brand. Your positive image will fetch you traffic and negative image will destroy your business. Therefore, go out and communicate, tell your customers your story, share it with them. Hence, this will help you in spreading your brand name.
   
• Inspirational list: Create a list of 10 brands or blog according to you which are better than you. You look up to them. Creating a list will help you get inspiration if you are stuck anywhere in between.This list will give you a great source of power and a reference source.

• Be visually appealing: We live in a world where everything is transparent. Even your online business is visual. The pictures you put on your blog or on your website should be great. The pictures should be clean and clear with white background. Make sure there are no blurry images. Try to create natural images, this will show that you have an eye for beauty. The editors will love to share your work. Your customers would love to share your images leading to driving traffic on your blog.    
   
• Curate content: Be unique with your content. Whatever you write, make sure that involves keywords related to your brand, products or business. Whether it is writing blogs for your products or writing tweets or may be uploading a post on facebook. Just make sure it is relevant to you and your business.
   

• Know your target audience: Once you have created content, it is the right time to share with the people. Before sharing, you should be clear with your target audience. To which people are you reaching out, who are your customers. Once you are done with targeting, start sharing your blogs.
   

• Profile picture: Give your best shot here. Present yourself with a decent profile picture of you or of your business. In the online media, the profile also makes an impact on your business. No partying images, no cheap images. As decent as possible. 

Possible strategies for marketing your blog!

Great strategies for marketing your blog are :

• Blog commenting - This is probably one of the best strategy to market your blog. This will help to share your views, opinions, and you will also introduce yourself leading to you will make connections with bloggers and other readers. By this you are growing the marketing network.
   
• Speaking and teaching - When you are speaking and teaching, you are creating opportunities for yourself for a new platform. Do not restrict yourself to online media. The events are sponsored by big organisations leading to you getting credibility from your association with the event.
   
• Guest Posting - When you are guest posting, you are writing the content which is related to their site, they link you with their site. Also, guest blogging is such a powerful tool in helping to grow a blog and to market it.
   
• Article Marketing - This is now an old technique to market your blog. This strategy was used earlier. This is a free and an easy way to get links and traffic for your blog by simply posting your blogs on article sites such as ezinearticles.com.
   
• Forum Posting - Another strategy of marketing your blog is by doing forum posting.When you put any comment or ask any question on forums, the active ones will comment you back. The experts will reply to you, by creating a dialogue. A way to create link is by leaving your signatures in the forum. So, do not forget to link back to your blog in your signature. 
   
• Blog Carnivals - This form of blog marketing is the most neglected one. This is so because blog carnivals are not as popular as they were in the early days of blogging. Blog carnivals is defined as when a blogger used to call for other bloggers to send their best blog in their niche and publish them on a regular basis.
  The bloggers contribute links leading to authority and traffic from the people who wants to explore the content.
   
• Blog tours -  A blog tour is defined as when an author visits a lot of communities, and where a blogger will introduce them to new audience of readers who are interested in the author’s book. A blog tour will help you in meeting with other readers of the blog, just as in guest posting. But here you need to travel from one blog to another in limited time.

Conclusion

Nowadays, Blogging is no longer just an individual’s hobby. It has become necessary to realize your ideas, to drive traffic and to create your brands online presence.It has become an influential marketing tool for the businesses today. You do not require millions of dollars to maintain a blog; Just use proper content and methods to promote and you are done!