Want to Promote Your New Blog and Increase Blog Traffic? First, Think Small.

August 23, 2010 Filed under: SEO,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , —

Increase blog trafficWhen you start your own blog, don’t expect to make it big.  At least not initially.  While some book authors make a killing on their first novel, it’s far less common in the blogging world.  Most experts will tell you it takes 6 months to a year to build momentum and traffic to your blog.  For many, it takes even longer, especially if you can’t sustain a schedule of 2-3 posts per week.

But, while it’s tough to achieve widespread fame and popularity in the blogging world, it’s very possible to build a following, establish your reputation, improve your search rankings, and draw qualified traffic and leads to your site.  The trick is to focus.  Narrow your goals.  Start small and build from there.

Focus Your Topics

Choose a handful of highly relevant keywords that crystallize the topics you want to promote and be found for.  Do some keyword research to make sure those terms are not too competitive, and to find wording that searchers are actually looking for.  Build your content around those terms.

Be Unique

Don’t state the obvious or repeat what’s already been said elsewhere.  Find your own voice, draw your own conclusions, look for unique insights.  They don’t need to be grand or profound – just a different twist on something of interest in your market (here’s a fun blog post on how to document your epiphanies, from Marnie Pehrson).

Identify A Narrow Audience

Promote your blog as a big fish

Blogging strategy: Big fish, small pond

When you first launch your blog, tell everyone you know and make as big a splash as possible – you never know who might come.  But once you’ve gone public, define the target audience where you want to make your biggest impact, and tailor your promotional efforts to them.  Aim first to be a big fish in a small pond; make good impressions and let the word spread.

Establish Yourself

Search Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to find out who is talking about your topics.  Talk with them, share relevant links (including, but not exclusively, your own blog posts), host discussions, answer questions, offer helpful hints.  Give before you get. Find a Bookmarking site or an online forum that services your target audience, and make yourself known there by offering valuable comments.  (My favorite is a wonderful small business site called BizSugar).  Read and comment on other blogs in your field. This helps you get known by other bloggers, who, if your posts are good, will link back to you. Contribute guest blog posts on related blogs and link back to yours.  Or, publish interviews with other bloggers and they may return the favor.  Add some video into your blogging mix, as it will appeal to people who are tired of reading.

Ask Your Followers to Spread the Word

If your content is good and interesting and unique, people will follow it.  If you want to build your followers, ask people to subscribe, to share your posts, to retweet — and make it easy for them to do it.

Be Patient

Finally, don’t set unrealistic expectations for yourself.  Learn as you go, redirect as needed, and be patient as your following takes its natural path.  It may take you a while, so don’t get on the blogging train unless you intend to hang in there for the long haul.

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5 Big Worries of a First Time Blogger – And How to Overcome Them

May 10, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —
  • What if I blog and no one cares what I have to say?
  • What if I run out of interesting things to say on my blog?
  • What if customers post negative comments on my blog posts, in front of all my other customers?
  • How can I possibly find time in my busy schedule to author a blog?
  • Aren’t most blogs just insiders talking to insiders?  My customers won’t care.

Sound familiar?  Have these fears kept you up at  night as you weigh the decision of whether to join the ranks of bloggers?  These are the very real and understandable concerns of clients we’ve worked with as they face the decision of whether to blog.  To blog or not to blog – that is the question. 

It’s a good question, and one that any potential blogger should think through carefully.  The above list of worries, while they are often just a case of the jitters, deserve serious consideration before taking on the considerable commitment of becoming a blogger.  Rather than brushing away these fears, I typically encourage clients to dig in and think them through, as the answers will give them important insights into whether they should blog and what kind of blogger they should be.   So, here’s a paraphrased conversation I had recently with a small business owner who is currently wrestling with this very decision. (more…)

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Content or Die?

March 30, 2010 Filed under: Internet Marketing,Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

It’s a gloomy, rainy Tuesday in Seattle, and the weather is making me rather philosophical.  So, rather than sharing my own tips and experience, I’m going to share my reactions to a recent blog post entitled “A Challenge: Content or Die“.  Sounds pretty dire, doesn’t it?   The author’s point isn’t quite as extreme as the title suggests.  I invite you to read it, but let me summarize it quickly:  if you don’t keep creating new content, your web presence will stagnate, your search ranking will suffer, your revenues will drop.   It may not mean death, but clearly it’s not good.

The author’s point is valid.   I’ve been in marketing for a long time.  Before the days of social media, marketing consisted largely of advertising, public relations, events and sponsorships.  They were all ways of communicating your brand to your public.  And they were all big, costly undertakings.  Because they were big and costly, each campaign had to last a long time, so marketers got used to communications with a long lifespan.  In advertising, you would pay big money to develop an ad campaign, and it would run for months.  In PR, you’d need “big news” to compete for limited print stories, and big stories don’t happen very often.  And sponsorships or events, well, they only happen a few times a year.

Now, we’re talking about search engines that come looking for new information multiple times a day.  They’re hungry and they need to be fed.  If you don’t feed them fresh, new food (content), they won’t regard you as highly as sites that do.  And they may not come to visit that often, if they don’t expect to get fed.  Online marketing, therefore, requires a major  change in mindset. 

If you want to keep the search engine spiders happy and well-fed, you need to change the way you think about the lifespan of your information.  You need to deliver good content on a regular basis and you need to keep it coming.  I don’t mean to suggest that content becomes obsolete as soon as it’s published; in fact, if it’s good, it may get shared, bookmarked, retweeted, and linked-to — and in the process get noticed by a far larger audience than you anticipated.   But the more frequently you add fresh content to your website or new posts to your blog, the better your chances of ranking well, being found, and building your brand.

The Bottom Line: if you want to market your brand on the web, you need to adopt a new marketing rhythm.  Think short and compelling content, frequent publishing schedules, and active online engagement if you want to do effective branding in the virtual world.   And measure your results so you can continually revise and improve as you move along.

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How to Guest Blog

March 19, 2010 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , —

I’ve recently been working with several clients who are thinking about starting their own business blog but are either not ready to make the time commitment required, or are looking to share the responsibility with other “contributing writers.”  Guest blogging is a good way to make a partial commitment or to share the load .  If your plan is to ultimately author your own blog, but you need some practice to find your voice or to build your comfort level, guest blogging on someone else’s blog can be a terrific first-step opportunity.   Even if you have your own blog and post regularly, guest blogging can give you an opportunity to expand your audience and send more traffic and links back to your blog.  Or, if you’ve decided to take the full plunge and author your own blog, inviting other guest bloggers to contribute will give your readers some variety of perspective and give you some breathing space and some new content to build from.

The trade-off, of course, is control.   The beauty of authoring your own content on your own site is that you have full control of the brand you put forth.   If you’re guest blogging on someone else’s blog, you’ll need to select the site carefully so that it’s consistent with your own brand and its readers are an audience you want to reach.  If you’re inviting someone to guest blog on your site, again, select carefully.

I found a post that I think does a terrific job of covering the what, why,  and how of guest blogging — so I’m pointing you there rather than trying to say it all myself.  Check it out — Guest Blogging, the Ultimate Guide – and consider guest blogging yourself!

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Learning to Blog in 5 Easy Steps

January 21, 2010 Filed under: Social Media Marketing — Tags: , , —

There are an estimated total of well over 100 million blogs on the Web and roughly 20,000 blogs are started every day.   How can there be that many people with worthy information to add to our collective knowledge?  And with that many people already contributing, you may ask yourself how you could possibly add any more value by starting yet another blog.  And how on earth, you might ask, can you come up with new content (and spare time to write the content) on a regular basis to keep your blog fresh and interesting? 

Those are good questions – and, frankly, the most common questions people ask when they think about starting their own blog.  We work mostly with small-to-midsize business owners, and many of our clients are on the fence about whether they can create a blog following and whether creating a blog is really worth their time.

To blog or not to blog

(more…)

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Welcome to the Sound Web Solutions Blog

October 15, 2009 Filed under: Internet Marketing — Tags: , , , , —

Sound Web Solutions blog

 

 

 

 

We publish this blog to share our insights and commentary about Internet Marketing.  Why? Because we work with many clients, partners, industry insiders and Internet Marketing practitioners, and blog-writing helps us distill those experiences into valuable learnings and practical advice we can share.   Because we’ve done marketing and website optimizing for many years, and a blog lets us share our experienced perspective and hard-earned wisdom.   And most importantly, because we want to be accessible and responsive to our clients. This blog — and our linked Facebook page – gives you the opportunity to talk with us, share your ideas, give us feedback, and stay in touch.   Welcome!

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