Adweek covered a recent study conducted by Universal McCann that shows some interesting things about US consumers and social media. The survey was a repeat of one done in September 2006 by the research firm. The second survey showed that the number of survey respondents who regularly read blogs jumped from just over 50 percent to just over 70 percent. That alone should tell you something about social media: consumers pay attention to it, and if it isn’t part of your marketing strategy, it should be.

Another finding showed that the number of respondents who watched video online grew from 30 percent in 2006 to 80 percent in 2007. The survey also showed major increases in other online content activities, like listening to podcasts, subscribing to RSS feeds and commenting on news items.

Again, this should be telling you something about social media: the number of consumers who use it is growing, and users are subscribing to a variety of different content delivery vehicles. You can reach your target audience in a number of “creative” and “ordinary” ways. The key is to reach out to your audience. They’re waiting to hear from you!

In a survey of Internet users worldwide, Universal McCann found that MySpace and Facebook also have significant contact with networked users. The audience for these vehicles is between one-quarter and one-third, but these social media networks represent yet another opportunity to reach out to your potential audience.

Beyond blogging, social media opens up a number of opportunities to interact with people who are interested in your niche. If you haven’t made plans to do so already, these numbers may justify a review of your current online marketing strategy.

Photo Credit: Steve Woods

Blogging is an essential component of a new marketing strategy, but how do you let the world know about your blog? If your blog is part of your Web site, some readers may find your blog by looking at your Web site. That’s one way to generate traffic, but a more effective way to promote your blog is to use blog directories.

Listing your blog in blog directories is akin to listing your site in search engines. Your blog can still be found in search engines, but blog directories are set up specifically to help readers find blogs.

Each blog directory has a submission process. In most cases, the blog directory will list your blog within a few days of submission. Blog directories offer many advantages, but a big one is the fact that most search engines routinely index blog directories. Once your blog is in a directory that’s indexed by search engines, your blog ends up in the search engine. Blog directory listings won’t get you a first-page placement in the search engines. You can get that if that’s your goal, but you have to work at it. Prime search engine results come over time from steady traffic, quality blog posts, good fresh content, good optimization, good promotion and hard work on your part.

Listing in blog directories can help you publicize your blog and find readers who are interested in your content. Some directories offer basic listing services at low or no cost, and offer an upgraded or premium listing that provides detailed statistics about the number of readers your blog is attracting. Other blog directories offer services strictly on a paid basis. Some blog directories are free and make their money by offering premium blog hosting services. Most blog directories also offer services for video bloggers and podcasters who are looking to publicize and distribute their feeds.

Blog directories don’t offer the only way to promote your blog, but they can offer the ability to publicize your blog site effectively and give your blog some access to the major search engines.

Photo Credit: Carl Dwyer

There’s a (long!) blog written by Amanda Lewis on the Yale Herald site regarding self-promotion as it relates to blogs. Although she takes her time, she does a decent job of covering the basics of self-promotion and the benefits that come from doing it well.

The piece is written from a student perspective, but don’t discard it on that basis. It shows the ease with which college students and recent graduates blog. Most of the blogging described in the article is personal blogging, but the students use it as a tool to develop voice, style and skill in their respective niches. Campus bloggers are minor celebrities, and use their blogs to open otherwise closed doors.

Lewis explains the virtues of being on another blogger’s blogroll, as she describes the experience of fellow student Josh Duboff and what happened when his blog was added to the blogroll of a much more popular blog: his readership went from 30 to 700 overnight.

Lewis also discusses what happens when blog comments overshadow the blog posts. Commenters can indeed change the blogging experience, and she discusses different blogger approaches to comments. – including allowing, moderating and disallowing them.

The article covers the decision to include or exclude personal information in a blog, and why bloggers of her acquaintance have chosen the routes they’re on. While personal information may enhance the blog and deepen the relationship between blogger and reader, many bloggers prefer to draw a line around certain types of information.

The article also discusses the personal relationships that develop between bloggers, and what comes out of them. The value of the social circle is unmistakable, and while it doesn’t always lead to a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, it does help cement a community of interested bloggers and readers together.

All of these points are applicable to business blogging. Even though none of the blogs featured in the article are business blogs, the bloggers’ experiences are valuable nonetheless.
.

Photo Credit: Harrison Keely

If your blog is focused on you and your business, chances are good that your customers aren’t as interested in it as you think they are. The trick to successful corporate blogging is to see your blog as your customers see it. Your customers will appreciate valuable blog content. They won’t spend a whole lot of time with a blog that doesn’t return very much value.

When you’re business blogging, it can be hard to look at your blog from your customers’ eyes. How can you focus on your customers while still delivering your message? Hopefully, those two things are complementary. If your message is customer-focused, the blog is a great tool to use. If your message isn’t customer focused, you should step back for a moment and think carefully about what you’re doing.

How well do you think your customers will receive a message that isn’t customer-focused? If the message doesn’t have anything to do with them, it’s irrelevant to them. Why should they care? You make them care about your message by focusing on them. When they have a stake in what you say, you’ll have a very attentive audience.

Your business blog is a vehicle for you to communicate with your customers and potential customers. If, through your blog, you offer your customer resources they can use somehow, they’ll return to your blog over and over. Your customers will look at you and your blog differently than they look at your competitors. They know something about you and they have a relationship with you. They know your stake, where you stand and what you offer. That gives you a huge leg up on your competition, and it breeds customer loyalty.

The utility of your blog is directly related to its promotability. Customers who read your blog and find it useful will pass it on to others. That’s a pretty high compliment, and you end up with two focused customers instead of just one. If you haven’t done so already, step back and look at your blog with your “customer eyes.” If you weren’t writing your blog, would it be something you’d take time to read?

Photo Credit: Peter Skadberg

Last week, I talked about the value of enabling comments on your blogs. Comments from readers are like gold because they can tell you how well you’re reaching them with your message. Leaving comments on other blogs is likewise valuable, not only as a blog promotion tool, but also as a way to keep up with conversations, and to make yourself known in your target community.

Comments you leave on blogs should be insightful and topical. They’re not just a thinly veiled excuse to leave a link to your blog. Instead, they help you establish your voice, and let you develop insights into other potential readers within your market. Additionally, other blogs, and commentaries within them, can inspire subject matter for your blogs

Bloggers generally welcome comments from other bloggers within their niche. When you develop good relationships with other bloggers, you open the door for blog promotion opportunities. Always add blogs that you find valuable and interesting to your blogroll, and let the proprietors of those blogs know that you’ve done that. Blogroll exchanges are another valuable avenue to blog promotion, and readers are more likely to visit blogs that appear on your blogroll. They’ll also visit your blog if it appears on other blogrolls.

Commenting doesn’t have to be competitive. Blogging and commenting are more like cooperative ventures, and the more cooperation you offer, the more you’ll get. Over time, these seemingly small blog promotion efforts will drive traffic to your blog and your site. If you can establish yourself as an authoritative voice in your community, it may even open the door to wider media exposure.

Commenting on other blogs turns out to be a very valuable technique for developing authority and authenticity, and should be a key part of any blog promotion strategy.

Photo Credit: Rose Ann

Blog promotion can come in a variety of ways. You can promote your blog via directories and catalogs, via links in forums that are related to your subject matter, word-of-mouth in communities that are interested in your business area, and through other blogs.

The Wall Street Journal ran an article yesterday (unfortunately, it’s available only via subscription now) that makes an excellent point. It’s entirely possible to trade promotional space with other bloggers. In the WSJ article, a man with a product wanted to get a review from a popular blog. The blog turned him down for a review but did offer to trade ad space for a few months in exchange for some of his product. He made the trade and his sales volume picked up. He also received national exposure from other big players as a result of his advertisement and his business has never been better.

The businessman did learn a valuable lesson: bloggers can effectively influence your marketplace. He now makes it a point to court bloggers regularly as part of his promotional strategy.

Although this businessman was looking to promote his product, the same quid pro quo arrangement can work for blog promotion. You can easily trade links, advertising space, or product through your blog. In doing so, you reach out to the community members who are most interested in your niche. Make it a point to be consistent about your blog promotion to other bloggers, and don’t be disappointed if you get turned down. A fellow blogger may not think that a link to your blog is wise, but may know of other bloggers who would be willing to consider your request.

As always, blog promotion works best among bloggers when there’s a subject matter relationship between cooperative blogs. A link from an automotive blogger will hold more value for a car dealer’s blog than it will for a local restaurant’s blog.

The point here is simply this: when looking for blog promotion opportunities, don’t forget about other bloggers. Links to your site are like gold, but you may find that bloggers offer other trading opportunities that can drive traffic to your site just as well.

Photo Credit: Stefanie L.

You know that you need to promote your blog, and you know about blog directories and catalogs, but you’re looking for other ways to build links. Blog promotion isn’t limited to directory listings. You can use other avenues to build permanent links to your blog and to your site.

First, look at your business. What do you do when you have more business than you can handle? If you’re like most small business owners, you have built (or are building) a network of professionals you can call upon to handle work that either you can’t manage, or that’s a little out of your specialty.

Business owners always appreciate referrals, and your network is a source for permanent links in your blog promotion campaign. Colleagues are usually quite willing to accommodate a request like this. Don’t forget to offer a link to their site (or blog) as well. Mutual blog promotion works well as long as the subject matter of each blog is directly related. Link exchanges won’t have nearly as much value if your businesses aren’t somehow related.

Second, look at your customer base. Many of your customers and readers will happily promote your blog content as long as it is meaningful. Successful blog promotion benefits from word-of-mouth. Chances are good that readers who value your content know other readers who would also value your content.

Social bookmarking also plays a role in blog promotion. Give your readers every opportunity to promote your blog. Include Digg, StumbleUpon, Slashdot, del.icio.us, and BlogIt widgets in your blog. Make blog promotion easy for your readers.

If you think about it, you’re likely to come up with other opportunities for blog promotion. Professional networks and organizations you belong to may be another link source. Be careful, however. The number of links to your blog is not as important as the number of relevant links to your blog. Relevance is extremely important. Irrelevant links will be ignored, or worse, counted against your blog.

Blog promotion doesn’t happen overnight but if you take the time to examine your circumstances, you may find some very fertile ground for solid link building and promotion.

Photo Credit: Mike Johnson

As you will likely read just about anywhere, blog promotion is such an important aspect of having a blog.  Getting your blog out into cyberspace for all potential customers to read and enjoy is a step closer to getting more business.  But once it is out there, how do you know how well it is doing?  And, how do you know your blog is supported by internet viewers?

An interesting article by Paul Wright called “The Best Blog Metric” says this, “…1 subscriber is worth way more than 1000’s of irrelevant uniques.”  When you view your stats to see how many unique viewers are coming to your site, you may have one hundred per day.  However, if none of them choose to subscribe to your blog, how do you know how interested they really are in your services?  The point of RSS marketing is to encourage site visitors to subscribe to your feed.

Business blogs are obviously tightly woven in with e-commerce, so you might chart your success through the sales you receive.  However, not everyone is going to purchase your product the first day they happen upon your site.  More realistically, if you provide a blog that gives them relevant content and enlightens them of applicable information, they will be more likely to subscribe to your blog’s feed.  Then, whether it is today, tomorrow or a month down the road and their need arises for your service, they will turn to you, the business that has consistently built that expert relationship with them.

A business knows that you get many different buyers, including the impulse buyer and the one who needs to sit on a decision until they feel most comfortable.  Build that comfort level through your blog and you are sure to get the inevitable sale. 

Read Paul Wright’s article in its entirety here.

If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you know that having quality content is an important part of a business blog. Your readers will not only appreciate content that’s interesting and relevant, they will also reward your blog with all-important inbound links to you material.

But does quality content guaranteelinks? Can you be certain that quality content will generate page views? The best blogs don’t rely solely on their content to deliver traffic or links, so you shouldn’t either.

Blog promotion plays an important role in elevating your search engine visibility, earning links to your blogs and leading new readers to your site. Yes, you need quality content, but you also need to help potential readers find your blog.

If you take the time to develop relationships with other bloggers in your niche, you will find it easier to promote your content and get related blogs to link to yours, especially if you have good content that’s worth sharing.

When you have a high-quality piece, actively promote it to related blogs. Bloggers are always looking for content and will give your material its due. If you doubt the value of promoting your blog content to other blogs in your niche, take a look at this item from Search Engine Land. It nicely illustrates the difference between a blog that relies solely on its content to attract readers and one that actively promotes its content to build links.

Ultimately, if you develop a good strategy to promote your best content to other niche community members, become an active and visible member of your niche community, and reciprocate by linking to other related blogs that offer your readers valuable content, you’ll earn many more high-quality links than you’ll receive if you rely on content alone.

The content that you opt to include within your blog must be a perfectly planned, blog marketing strategy.  When a customer first lands at your website, the percentage of them that specifically came to utilize your offered service is small.  Instead, some were linked there from a search engine query based on a keyword you had strategically placed in one of your blog posts, some were linked to your site from another site, or any of the other various ways they happened upon your site.  Now, how long can you keep them there?

A study done by Keynote Systems revealed that the more time a customer stayed on a site, the higher the chance that they were to make a purchase.  So, that begs the question, how do you keep your potential customers on your site long enough to peak their interest?  That answer can be summed up with two words - relevant content.

A potential customer is going to want to know about whatever it is they may purchase.  That may seem like a no-brainer, but if your blog does not point out specifics about why the consumer should do business with your company, it’s very likely they will leave your site and go on to the next one that does.  That doesn’t mean that each blog entry is a product description.  It just has to come back to your product or service in some way.  Remember, the whole point of this process is blog promotion.  Your goal is to promote your blog in a way that entices the buyer, in the hopes that they will utilize your service.