Free Blog Marketing Guide

Building a website or blog is just the beginning. In order to be successful with your online venture, you must get customers and that requires marketing. In this article I created a simple twelve month marketing plan that you can use to start building traffic to your website or blog. Below is a simple to follow and implement six week marketing plan for your blog or business.

Week One

  1. Build a quality website or blog using Socrates Premium Blog Template that is keyword and content rich or have one built for you. Your website should provide valuable information on your particular topic. If you already have a website, consider adding a blog to it. A blog will enhance every aspect of website.
  2. Make sure that your website is optimized with this free SEO optimization guide.
  3. Subscribe to Hub Spot to receive up-to-date articles on marketing your blog or business. Sign up at http://blog.hubspot.com/

Week Two

  1. Include a subscription capture form on your blog or website. You can get one of these through services like Constant Contact, Aweber, or IContact. For best results, give your customers something free for signing up on your mailing list. This can be an ebook, special report, or download.
  2. In addition to giving away a free gift, set up an auto-responder through the services listed above and create five newsworthy articles regarding your product or service. For example, give the solution to a problem in each article. You can also tell how your product or service can help remedy these problems. Your letters will help to build trust and make potential customers more likely to buy from you. An auto-responder will automatically send out your articles to subscribers based upon your frequency settings.
  3. Make a list of 12 monthly topics that relate to your product or service that you can promote each month with a newsletter. For example, if you have a photography business, you can create a monthly newsletter around the following themes: wedding photos, wedding videos, children, senior portraits, prenatal pictures, etc. Make sure that your content is interesting and will add value to your customers and not just a sales promotion. Each month create a discounted product(s) that you can promote or highlight. For example, a coupon or discount for ordering by a certain date.

Week Three

  1. Send out a press release regarding your industry/business and submit it to press release directories. Press Release Point will send your press release to 50 press release directories for as little as $15.00.  A press release must be news worthy and not just a sales promo for your business. Try to come up with an informative piece that will add value as well as highlight your business. Send out a new press release anytime you add a new service or product to your business. In addition, make a list of local media that would be interested in receiving your press release. You can make a contact list in your email settings and send out your release to all at once. You can find list of local media by Googling newspapers, magazines, radio, and television stations in your area. Here is a video on optimizing your press release for best result from Hubspot.
  2. Submit 5-10 original and informatative articles regarding your business or industry and post them to article directories like http://www.ezinearticles.com, http://www.goarticles.com or http://www.articledash.com as well as your blog. In fact, always post your articles to your blog FIRST and then wait 3-4 days before posting them to article directories.  With Googles recent change in it algorithym, posting to your blog first will put you at an advantage as your blog is most likely to get higher rankings. Make sure your articles are keyword rich and are on topics that people are interested in or searching for. Write articles that solve problems. Use the Google keyword search tool to research popular search words and topics. To simplify and automate submitting articles, subscribe to Submit My Articles or Unique Article Wizard.  I prefer Submit My Articles. Theses services will distribute each of your articles to 300-400 targeted directories.

Week Four

  1. Design and purchase promotional postcards 4 x 6 that you can give-away, leave at businesses, and pass out at networking events. It’s important to promote your business locally as well as online.
  2. Create a Facebook or Twitter account and Fan Page (Facebook) regarding your business. Post interesting comments to your Fan Page or Twitter Account daily and add up to 40 (Facebook) new friends each day. You can add unlimited friends with Twitter. Find new friends by searching for new friends under topics that relate to your business. If you have a larger advertising budget you may also want to advertise your business on Facebook. Facebook Ads cost around $1.00 per click but because the ads are so targeted, you can pull in the right types of clients. Google Adwords or PPC advertsing is also another popular way to advertise for immediate results but it is also costly.
  3. Create 1-4 eblasts or fliers related to your different products or services and post them on Craigslist at least once a week. Be sure and create a link back to your website.

Week Five

  1. Create a You Tube video for each of the original articles you created in week three using a web-cam, video camera, or Powerpoint presentation. I recommend converting your articles to video using either powerpoint (click link for tutorial) or a service like Articles2Video. Use Youtube to find additional tutorials. Submit your videos to You Tube, Metacafe, and other popular video directories.
  2. Sign Up for Google Alerts to receive daily or weekly alerts regarding your top industry keywords.
  3. It’s time to get started on some more link building, bookmarketing and social media campaigns. Back-links are one of the quickest ways to dominate the internet in your specific niche, therefore the more the merrier. Sign up for  Link Juicer or WP- Syndicator which will save you hours of time and automate this process for you.  In week two you submitted 10-20 articles to various articles directories either manually or with the tools recommended.  Now, you need to create a  Link Juicer or WP- Syndicator campaign for each article once it is published and you have its URL (where it is located in the article directory).  Each article has your resource box with a link to your site. The link juice created by your campaigns will be passed on to your site via the article sites, which are not classed as social media. The same principle applies to blogs and videos. Just blog about your site, then create a campaign to promote your blog. Upload a video promoting your site to a dozen or so video sites, then promote the videos. By following these simple steps you will ensure that you get lots of direct and indirect link juice, and a significant percentage of your backlinks will not be from social media sites. You can also hire SEO professionals to do White Hat Link Building for you through services like  Odesk. White Hat means that the link building is legal and not spammed which can get you in a lot of trouble with Google.
  4. Social bookmark your websites and all or a few of your articles with the free program SocialAdr or Socialmatic.  These programs allow you to register once, and then easily bookmark your information quickly to a variety of bookmarking sites all at once.

Week Six

  1. Sign up for Live Deals in your area and do a promotion every three months.
  2. Find at least one website that provides low-cost advertising and targets your audience and place an ad.
  3. Do one joint venture with a business owner that sells a similar product but you are not in direct competition. Draft a letter asking if you can cross promote, meaning, you will promote his product or service to your audience, if he will promote your product or service to his audience. You can ask him or her to post your press release to their blog with a link back to your website. Download the Self Growth Joint Venture Directory to find business owners looking to cross promote.
  4. 80% or more of all links to your site should be direct links to inner pages. Using the Link Juicer or WP Syndicator,  choose 4 inner pages in addition to your home page, and create a Link Juicer or Wp Syndicator campaign for each of the 5 URLs. Set the maximum links per day anywhere from 1 to 3. This will give you a natural link velocity.

Week Seven & Beyond

Monthly Marketing Activities
  1. Continue to submit 5-10 original and informative articles regarding your business or industry and post them to your blog, article directories, and then convert them to video and post Youtube and Metcafe. Make sure your articles are keyword rich and are on topics that people are interested in or searching for. Use google keyword search to research popular search words and topics.
  2. Syndicate your articles by becoming a guest blogger. You can locate many blogs related to your field and submit articles to them on a regular basis. This is a great way to gain additional exposure as many blogs have a large following, and best of all, it’s free. Learn more at http://www.buzzblogger.com/500-places-to-syndicate-your-content/.
  3. Send out an email newsletter based on your 12-monthly themes.
  4. Send out one Joint Venture letter offering to cross promote.
  5. Evaluate your advertising and continue or find another avenue to advertise.
  6. Need more local advertising, look into CityGrid Media. CityGrid Media is an online media company that connects web and mobile publishers with local advertising organizations by linking them through CityGrid®, its local content and advertising network. CityGrid Media owns and operates leading local consumer properties including Citysearch, Insider Pages and Urbanspoon.
Weekly Marketing Activities
  1. Post one of your eblast or fliers to Craigslist in relevant categories.
Daily Marketing Activities
  1. Post to your Twitter or Facebook Fan Page daily and add up to 40 new friends each day. Find new friends by searching for topics that relate to your business.
  2. Persue through your Google Alerts and post comments to other people’s blogs or request a link exchange with businesses that similar to yours.

Keep Growing As An Internet Marketer

Continue to look for new ways to grow and expand your business. I highly recommend Self Growth’s Marketing Membership. They provide you with a large variety of tools and instructions on how to build a successful online business by providing ongoing webinar training, video tutorials, and a support forum. Learn how to write and sell an ebook, market effectively with facebook, find joint ventures, and more. Also visit Online Profits 4 Beginners.

At Blog Your Business Now we provide low cost marketing services for business owners who don’t have the time to market their online business. Services include article marketing, set up autoresponder, press release writing and distribution, and more. You can also hire low-cost help from Odesk, Elance, and Freelance.com.

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