Blogging is one of the many ways to make money online. What makes some bloggers so successful, while others struggle to obtain a following? Blogs can be monetized once the blog has a large amount of traffic and targeted followers. Good content is one factor in generating traffic, but integrating social media, likeability and encouraging interaction is what gives some bloggers the edge.
How to Promote Blogs and Make Money Online
Resist the urge to send repeated advertisements and links to the blog. One in five or one in ten posts can be about the blog, and the rest should be about life outside internet marketing. If every Facebook post blatantly promotes blog topics, readers will become annoyed and stop following. If every Tweet includes a hyperlink, it not only results in followers that engage in spam, Twitter may impose limits or deactivate the account. Brand the blog as fun and people will follow without a hard sell.
Personality Makes People Read Blogs
Be subtle about the business message. People read blogs because the blogger has personality and style. Use social media to offer up fun contests, promotions, or to offer to assist others who are just getting started in blogging. Direct potential followers or clients to the blog by posting or tweeting funny events, even if they are not directly relevant to the product. A well-written blog will lure readers and a fun person behind the blog will make people coming back to read.
Keywords Make Blogs Searchable Online
The right keywords drive traffic to blogs. There is an ongoing and heated debate over the effectiveness of long-tailed and short-tailed keywords. Longer strings of keywords were once thought to increase search engine optimization and help users find relevant blogs easier. Now, there is insufficient evidence to show that longer strings of keywords outrank shorter strings of keywords. The key to increasing page rank and helping readers find the blog is a mix of keyword strength, position of keywords on the page, and occurrences of keywords in multimedia applications, such as picture and video captions and file names.
Encouraging Comments Increases Blog Views
Bloggers need to encourage repeat visitors. Repeat visitors increase the number of views for the blog, and the associated adsense revenue. More importantly, repeat visitors build confidence about the brand and become future buyers.
Encourage readers to leave comments on the blog using several interesting methods. Post information, but also post interactive questions that prompt readers to leave a response. When prompting readers, keep the blog post short and accompany it with a simple photo. Comments are fantastic when they're relevant to the blog subject and allow for genuine interaction. Make sure the blog has a method for the administrator to filter out unwanted postings, including the ability to approve, edit or delete comments.
Building Links Improves SEO
Building numerous inbound and outbound links increases your chance of being found by searchers. Inbound links are hyperlinks from other pages to your blog. Outbound links are hyperlinks from your blog to other websites.
When well done, blogs can be excellent marketing tools. Start a new blog for your business and increase loyalty of existing customers, find new groups to market products to, foster relationships and improve your chances of being found online.
Sources
1. Darren Rowse, 7 Considerations on Getting Traffic to Your Blog (ProBlogger, 2010).
2. Joe Vitale and Jo Han Mok, The E-Code (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005).
Jule Rizzardo - Jule Rizzardo is a freelance writer, specializing in small business advertising and management skill development.
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