It’s not enough to just write content for your blog and expect people to come and buy. We can all wish that were true, but it takes a bit more effort than that. It’s as much about marketing as it is about having great content.
One of the most important aspects of marketing your blog is making sure you take as many steps as you can to become perceived as an expert. “Expert” blogs tend to get a lot more visitors, a lot more comments, and a lot more sales! You definitely want to cash in on the expert status.
So, what do you need to do? The most important thing is that you make yourself known in the community. If there is a forum in your niche (there probably is!) create an account and start answering questions. People won’t know you at first, but it will soon become clear that you know your stuff and you’re here to help people. After enough time has passed you can usually include a link to your blog in your signature file. This is great for getting traffic directly from the forum posts, but it will also count as backlinks!
In addition to posting on forums you can also comment on other people’s blogs. The more you comment with relevant information, the more people will be inclined to visit your blog. This is also a big part of networking. As you get to know that other big players in this niche you can strike up guest blog posting deals to make yourself even more well known.
Yet another way to market your blog is to write articles. The more relevant, quality content you have out there pointing to your blog, the more likely people are going to be to find you. As you know, the more people that find you the better your chances of developing a good readership and making some money.
Finally, you can even pay for your traffic through Pay Per Click like Google Adwords. You will definitely want to study the art of Adwords before diving in, and you’ll need to create a blog post that is a review of some sort, or is asking people to sign up for your list. When you’re marketing through PPC you need to clearly spell out what kind of action you want the people who are clicking on your ad to take.
These four tips may all seem very different to you — that’s because they are! This can seem confusing to someone who is new to blogging. It’s important to understand that there are different marketing techniques you’ll use to form an overall marketing plan. Pick and choose what will work fro you, but it really does take an army of techniques to become truly successful.