Get to know your niche

Blogging also gives you a chance to follow and learn about other, more established bloggers in your niche. Watching the best blogs on your topic can show you what people want to learn. You can also check the comments to find out further questions that people are asking.

Interacting and building a relationship with other bloggers can also give you an opportunity to do some guest posting, which is great exposure, especially when you are targeting the same audience. You can also see what kinds of products those bloggers sell, to see the products that work well, or the gap in the market that you can fill.

Establish your authority

Writing informative, useful blog posts is one of the best ways for you to let your readers know that you are an expert in your subject. Giving away helpful information will help people trust you enough to invest money into products you have created, knowing what quality to expect. You can even create free videos, ebooks, and other materials to get customers accustomed to seeing more from you than just short form blog posts.

Grow relationships

It can be much easier to grow a readership when the readers see that you are going out on a limb and really investing in them, even with nothing in return. This can also help them feel indebted and want to find ways to help åyou in the future. Once you build a large enough readership, it won’t matter if the majority of them never become paying customers, because even a small percentage will be able to provide significant profits.

Remember, relationships aren’t grown out of ulterior motives. You need to be genuinely interested in connecting with your readers, not just paying attention to their wallets. People are generally cautious online, and will detect insincere connections quickly.

Start your sales ladder

Getting readers interested in what you have to say is the first step on your sales ladder. On your blog, you can promote your newsletter, to offer more value as well as opportunities to purchase products. Once customers express interest in less expensive products, you can create a list of interested, engaged buyers. This list of contact information for paying customers is one key to selling products.

Meet a felt need

Probably the most important reason to have a blog is to hear the questions that your future customers are asking. You don’t just need to sell a product that they need, you need to sell a product that meets a need that they want to have solved. Half of your work is already done if customers know that the need whatever you are providing for them.

Listen to people’s questions, and notice how the questions fit together. Survey readers about their deepest fear, largest frustration, or biggest stumbling block. Ask them directly what kinds of products they would want to buy, and what the ideal price point would be. Encourage readers to comment or email when they have a problem they think you could solve.

Stay in contact

As you continue to stay in contact with your readers and your niche, you can find out how your products can fit in and sell themselves, instead of forcing people to get interested. Then you can leverage your existing network of readers and begin to pick out the readers who are willing to pay you for your time and expertise.

What are other reasons you might build loyal readers before selling products? Have you experienced this challenge in the past?

RSS feed

Though RSS is technically not a social media platform, many RSS readers (like Google Reader) are becoming more social and suggesting blogs to users based on their preferences. Publishing your blog posts to RSS also allows you to automate posting to a number of sites using tools or plugins. Many content management systems create RSS feeds automatically, but you can also create an RSS feed through a service like Feedburner.

Twitter

Many bloggers use Twitter as an extended RSS feed, both notifying readers of new posts and engaging in conversations. Though this can be automated, responses can be better if you vary the format of tweets about your blog, instead of simply posting the post’s title and a link. Many people recommend asking a related question along with a link.

Facebook

At first glance, Facebook is used in a similar way as Twitter. However, there are some important differences. Facebook’s format encourages users to click on links with multimedia content, so posting videos or linking to blog posts with images can be very effective.

Instead of promoting your blog from your personal account, create a fan page for your blog itself. This prevents you from reaching your 5,000 friend limit and allows a focused channel for all blog-related or business-related discussions.

Social bookmarking

StumbleUpon, Delicious, and other social bookmarking sites allow people to search what others have favorited. It is important that posts bookmarked on one of these sites are associated with appropriate keywords, categories, and have well-written descriptions.

Though it can be useful to have your site’s posts categorized by these services, you lose credibility as a source if you only bookmark links to your own site. To foster more of a community, be sure to post other relevant links as well.

Digg

Though Digg is similar to some social bookmarking sites, whoever is the first person to add a post to Digg can add a description, but after that, people simply vote a page up or down and add comments. Like bookmarking sites, Digg will penalize a user if they are only adding their own site’s posts. Digg users are generally more respecting of a link coming from more involved Digg users.

Email Subscriptions

Though many people now use social media networks, a number of people still enjoy receiving email updates for blog posts. Though email is not a new social media avenue, readers can still share their favorite posts by forwarding interesting or useful posts to their friends and contacts. When offering email subscriptions to your blog, make sure that the header and footer make it clear where the content is coming from, so that users receiving the emails will not be confused about the origin of the information, and will be able to click through and read the post online. You can even include a comment in the footer making it clear that recipients are encouraged to forward and spread the information.

Other sites

A number of plugins allow users to submit their favorite posts to any number of social media networks, up to dozens or hundreds of them. Some say that so many options do not offer a clear call to action and can lead to a scattered network of readers. Others point out that users who are loyal to particular social media sites are unlikely to change loyalties based on one blog.

Experiment, and find out which avenues are the best for your site. If you are attracting a significant amount of traffic from a particular site, connect to that site to understand its culture and users better and foster the relationships that began with your blog.

Being flexible is one of the keys to promoting your blog using social media. Are there any situations that you have faced forcing you to be flexible with your blog or readers?

Make it personal

Though you might be ready to jump into these steps as soon as you create a Twitter account, you need to slow down a little. Add a profile picture and bio, and change your background. Remember, it doesn’t have to look perfect, but it does need to show that you spent some time on your account and you’re committed to it.

Respond when people talk about you

Whenever possible, thank someone for a compliment or express concern and help fix a problem. Let people know that there is someone listening. Make sure you do frequent vanity searches so that you can find people talking about you or your company even if they don’t address your twitter account.

Search and join conversations

What if your company is not being talked about? Join conversations within your niche! If you see people asking questions about your specialty, give them an answer. Make sure you are genuinely adding value, and not selling yourself. Let people come and check out your profile instead of pushing information about yourself onto them.

Follow back your followers

This is a point of debate – some people use tools to follow back everyone no matter what, and others avoid following people back just as intentionally. As you keep using Twitter, you will develop your own style, but when you’re just starting out, try following everyone and then un-following as you discover your tastes don’t match, or when you realize the account is a bot.

Retweet your followers

Win over the people who are following you. Retweet them when they have something interesting or relevant to say. Though Twitter now allows a one-button retweet, the older RT style is still used often – simply change your status to include RT, the person’s handle, and the text of their message, possibly with an additional comment.

Share interesting content

Find and share compelling content from within your niche. This lets you offer great content to your followers and attract the attention of the sites and authors you mention. Talking about the big names is great, but help out the up-and-coming bloggers in your niche and they’ll never forget you.

Ask for help getting more followers

Though this method shouldn’t be used too often, you can let your followers know when you’re getting near a certain milestone: “Just a few more followers until I have 100!” When your followers retweet, you’ll be exposed to all their followers.

Ask questions

Asking a question is a great way to solicit answers and start conversations. Asking a question and providing a link peaks people’s curiosity to click through and see if the answer in the linked article is the same as the answer they would give.

Share deals

Treat your followers on Twitter like newsletter subscribers, and post give-aways or coupon codes regularly. Contests are also ways to have people spread the word and encourage new subscribers to follow you.

Be generous

Answer questions. Share techniques. Talk about what you really do. Being genuine, and genuinely helpful, will improve your reputation and keep people begging for more. Some people recommend making sure you don’t share your most useful tips and tricks, but people will see the duplicity before long.

Know when to come on strong

Tweeting too much can backfire, and if you just try to push, everything will begin to sound the same. Let your Twitter stream feel natural. Get excited about special events or promotions, but don’t tweet non-stop all the time.

Automate some tweets

If you read a lot of blogs each morning finding new posts to share with your readers, it can be overwhelming if you share them all at once, and annoying to remember to share some links later. This is a great time to use automation, whether software or a web application, to space out your tweets and make each one count.

Interact on Twitter live

Even if you automate some tweets, being engaged in real-time on Twitter is essential, too. Joining conversations or answering questions works much better within 15 minutes or an hour instead of having a long delay. Even if you don’t want Twitter to distract you constantly, checking it every couple hours works a lot better than checking every couple days.

There are 13 first steps to getting more followers on Twitter. Do you have any other strategies to attract Twitter followers?

Plus, adding a Like button is easy! Check out the steps below.

Decide where to put it

Pick a spot for your Like button. Both the beginning and end of a blog post are common locations: the beginning allows you to show off social proof before a reader begins, while the end encourages people to click it immediately after they’ve finished reading.

You can include your Like buttons as a part of your template – talk to your designer to set that up – or you can include the Like button code directly in your post. Facebook will generate the code (as you’ll see in the steps below), so just make sure you copy and paste the code into the HTML view of your post, not into the WYSIWYG editor.

Customize your Like button

The first step is to check out the Facebook Developer’s Like button page. This detailed page gives you forms to generate your Like button, and also includes a number of FAQs and usage tips.

At the top of the page is Step 1 – Get Like Button Code.

This form shows you how many different ways you can customize your Like button, and the Like button displayed on the right will change to reflect the changes you make. Check out what each of the fields means:

• URL to Like
  If you leave this blank, the button will automatically like the page that the person is viewing.
• Send Button
  The Send button gives people an option to send the link as a message, and it still counts toward your Like button total count. However, if this is checked, you will only be able to use XFBML (learn more about this below).
• Layout Style
  There are three different layout styles to choose from:
  • Standard: Displays the Like button and social text, and photos if applicable. Minimum size is 225×35 (without photos) or 225×80 (with photos).
  • Button_count: Displays the number of likes beside the Like button. Minimum size: 90×20
  • Box_count: Displays the number of likes above the Like button. Minimum size: 55×65
  • Width
    Change the width of the Like button to add extra padding on the side.
  • Show Faces
    If this is checked and you are using the standard layout, your site will show mini photos if friends of a user like a certain page.
  • Verb to display
    You can actually display a Like button that doesn’t say Like: you can change it to say Recommend.
  • Color Scheme
    There is a less-common dark color scheme that makes the Like button and dialog grey instead of white.
  • Font
    Pick one of a few different sans-serif fonts if you really want the Like button to match your site.

Remember – you can play around with these options until you find a layout you like. Once you do, click Get Code. A pop-up will display your plugin code.

Don’t worry, you don’t have to be able to read this code, just copy and paste it. But wait – there are two different codes there! Which should you use?

XFBML vs. iframe

The two different codes are the same information in two different languages. If you don’t want to tweak anything else on your page, pick the iframe code – it should work right out of the box.

However, if you want to get a little fancy and you can change the code of your whole website (not just the blog post), you can make a few tweaks and use XFBML. XFBML uses Javascript to make the Like button a little more interactive, like dynamically resizing the photos displayed and allowing a user to make a comment or send a message through Facebook instead of just clicking Like. To use XFBML, you need to add the Javascript SDK, something that’s a little more detailed than we’ll go into here.

Check out the Facebook Developer pages for more information, and other things you can do to further integrate Facebook with your website or blog. Get ready to start being Liked!

If you’ve been blogging for a while, see if you recognize these blogging pitfalls. Not to worry – each of them comes with a few solutions to try.

Takes time

It only takes a couple minutes to read a blog post, faster if you just skim the headings. But writing posts, even short ones, takes quite a bit of work. You need to find ideas day after day, add a picture or two, add links to informative content on your site and others, format the post in your CMS, and then publicize it once you’ve posted. The process can definitely be tiring, especially if you’re trying to do it every day, or multiple times each day. And if it’s an additional responsibility alongside all your other work, it’s easy to let it slide.

The solution

First, make sure you have a realistic posting schedule. Posting 2 or 3 times each week and being predictable can be better than posting a ton one week and nothing the next.

Write in batches, if you can. Try dedicating one day to blogging, and then get a week’s worth of blog posts scheduled and ready to go.

Get some help. You might be the only one who can write the posts, but you can always get help brainstorming ideas, and you might even have someone else who could format your posts for you, and maybe even find pictures. Or find someone else who can write some or all of the posts for you.

Hard to monetize

There’s a lot of information online about making money from your blog – but it’s not that simple. It can take a long time to build up an audience that contains people willing to pay for your expertise, and then you need to offer products or services for them to buy. If you are blogging on a corporate website, the line can be even fuzzier, and the impact of your blog can be frustratingly hard to measure.

The solution

Decide your success criteria for your blog. Track analytics, and congratulate yourself on subscription rates, readership, and mentions by other blogs. Those are conversions, just like your sales are.

Run promotions for blog readers. This can both encourage more people to subscribe and increase sales.

Test, test, test. Know what kinds of articles bring in readers who are paying customers, and don’t be afraid to weed out some readers in order to focus more specifically on your customers and future customers.

Create a separate email newsletter. Use the blog to introduce concepts, and follow up with the newsletter to make sure people know about your company and what benefits you can provide based on the reputation you established with your blog.

Lonely work

Blogging, like any form of writing, requires a lot of time working by yourself. For some people, that’s a relief, and for others it’s torture. If you like working directly with people and being around them all day, blogging probably isn’t for you. When you don’t enjoy what you’re writing, it’s almost guaranteed that others won’t enjoy reading it!

The solution

If you don’t have the personality to work well alone, find ways to adapt your blogging style. Maybe you want to focus heavily on interviews, lists, or surveys that allow you to interact with others.

Encourage commenting on your blog. Answer comments, engage in conversations with your readers, and help them feel like they’re not alone while reading.

Be active on social media. Twitter and Facebook can encourage as much or more engagement with your brand, and can be a lot more social than just writing a post.

Get to know other bloggers in your niche. Many bloggers use Twitter as an informal spot to chat, both about blogging and just relaxing.

Want to be part of my solution? Leave a comment and let me know if this information was helpful, off-base, or if you have something to add.

Read

Read, watch, or listen to anything you can get your hands on, especially if it’s related to your niche. Don’t plagiarize, but do recognize what areas other people are talking about that you are knowledgeable in, too.

• Newspapers
• TV news
• Radio (NPR is great)
• Magazines
• Books (you could even preview the table of contents on Google Books or Amazon)
• Public domain books
• Related/suggested books on Amazon
• Other blogs (use Google Reader or another feed reader to make this a lot faster)
• Your old blog posts
• Podcasts
• Article directories
• Quote sites like Brainy Quotes
• Forums
• Social bookmarking sites like Digg
• Question-and-answer sites like Quora or Yahoo Answers
• Headline formulas
• Sales pages for competitors’ products (especially courses)
• Your email

When reading, ask yourself what is missing from other people’s content and how you can expand on it and make it better, or explain it in a different way. Or find stories that you think are interesting to pass on to your audience.

Research

Use the right tools to get yourself thinking. Finding out what words other people are looking for, or what topics are related to your niche.

• Related keywords tools like Wordtracker
• Google Wonder Wheel (click Wonder Wheel below All Results in the left navigation after any normal Google search)
• Search engine trends like Google Trends
• Trending topics on Twitter
• Follow links in Wikipedia

Now you know which keywords to optimize your site for, and you probably have some related subjects you haven’t written about on your blog yet.

Write

Don’t be afraid to just put pen to paper. Try setting a timer and cranking out ideas as fast as you can, or carrying a notebook and jotting down ideas whenever you can.

• Freewrite (handwrite or type)
• Create mind maps
• Carry a notebook everywhere
• Make a list of common misconceptions about your niche, then debunk them in a post
• Predict the future
• Review a product
• Tell your audience how to do something

Make sure you are writing down ideas sparked by the other categories here, too. And keep your brainstorms and mindmaps for future post ideas, or create an editorial calendar incorporating your best ideas.

Engage

Talking to people can spark ideas you might not have thought of on your own. It’s easy to forget that other people don’t have the knowledge that you take for granted.

• Talk to a beginner in your niche to find out their questions
• Interview an expert in your niche and turn it into a blog post
• Survey your audience to see what they want to hear about (or keep hearing about)
• Profile an employee
• Profile a customer
• Ask friends and family
• Talk to children
• Start or join conversations on Twitter or Facebook
• Go to a conference or seminar
• Challenge your readers to do something and then report the results

Yes, some of these will be harder if you don’t have a very engaged or vocal readership – but that’s not stopping you from stepping out to engage them!

Make a change

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much you brainstorm – you won’t find anything to write about, or you’ll be discouraged about what you do find. In that case, take a break, clear your mind, and do something completely different.

• Volunteer
• Take a class
• Have an experience
• Do something outside your comfort zone
• Campaign for something
• Do your finances
• Take a walk
• Meditate
• Stop thinking about blogging!

Our brains will keep processing ideas behind the scenes, and you can talk about your new experiences in your new blog posts. Plus, hopefully you’ll be less stressed out, too!

What tips do you have for generating fresh ideas for your next blog posts?

Much of the answer is found in Chip and Dan Heath’s book Made to Stick. An eminently readable book itself, this book describes how to communicate ideas in ways that stick with people. After looking at tall tales, fables, and urban legends, the Heath brothers came up with a recipe for evaluating and encouraging sticky stories in all forms of communication, from ad campaigns to blog posts.

This formula is called SUCCESs, and it’s an acronym for the words Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotional, and Stories. These are six elements incorporated into sticky ideas, and they will help your blog posts stick, too.

Simplicity

At the end of the day, you want people who have read your blog post to know one thing. Decide that most important objective, and then find ways to state it in the simplest way possible.

Of course, this doesn’t mean to be content with platitudes or to make the rest of the post’s content mediocre. What it does mean is that you need to be aware of the post’s objective so that the rest of your writing can support it fully.

Unexpectedness

People remember things that surprise them. A company that accepts any returned item, no matter how much it has been used? A memory card that stores more than early computers in the same amount of space as a coin? A dog picked up in a tornado who finds his way home?

Find ways to use your blog to share something unexpected. A business blog that tells a joke? A financial advisor telling you about how to spend your money instead of save it? Is there a way to work against the assumptions surrounding your niche?

Be careful not to be inconsistent within your company’s image. But you can play up anything about your company that sets you apart from your competition.

Concreteness

Don’t be content with abstractions, telling your customers that your high performance products will increase efficiency and make life better. Instead, look for ways to show them.

The Heath brothers include a story about a CSPI nutrition campaign in 1992 telling the public how much fat was in movie theater popcorn. The message: “A medium-sized ‘butter’ popcorn at a typical neighborhood movie theater contains more artery-clogging fat than a bacon-and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac and fries for lunch, and a steak dinner with all the trimmings – combined!” At the news release, the CSPI even set out a table illustrating this fact much more vividly than if they had simply pointed out that a medium bag of popcorn contains 37 grams of saturated fat.

How can you make what your company does real to your audience? Use your blog posts to illustrate and inform your audience about your company and products, not just meaningless mission statements.

Credibility

A main reason for having a company blog is to establish your place as an authority on your subject matter. Make sure each of your posts relays information that your audience needs. Give vivid, specific details about how to do something. How-to articles also make your authority testable – your readers can follow your recommendations and see that it works for them.

Statistics are another great way to make your posts real and credible. Back up some of your posts with research, and be sure to include where you got official statistics for an added dose of authority.

Emotional

People respond the most when they see the benefit for themselves. Instead of just spelling out blogging techniques that work for the average blogger, write about “blogging techniques you can use today.” Appeal to people’s desire to benefit themselves.

However, self-interest is not the only emotional appeal that works. The Heath brothers point out that people also look to their own idealized self-image to make decisions, asking “What would someone like me do?” You can point out that your product is best for detail-oriented executives, or moms who want to put their children first. Help people see themselves the way they want to be seen.

Stories

The last element of the SUCCESs rubric is the easiest to explain, and encompasses a number of qualities from the other categories. Simply put, illustrate your company using stories. Tell stories that epitomize the corporate culture of the workplace. Tell stories of the changes made by a customer because of your product. Tell stories.

These stories shouldn’t be made up. Instead, you should be ready to notice a good (and unexpected) story when it comes along, and then tell it in the most simple, detailed, and emotional way possible. Show people what you can’t tell them, and watch as they transition from readers to fans, and even to customers because of your ideas that stick.

1. Shut down distractions

It’s hard to get started writing when you’re distracted. You can’t get rid of all distractions, but you can cope with them and get started writing on the right foot.

• Pick a time to write when few other people are around, or will be asking you for your attention. This might mean waking up early or going to a different room or a coffee shop.
• Find a time when you work most effectively. If you don’t have a choice about when to write, at least make yourself comfortable with a beverage or good chair.
• Close, or at least minimize, your browser windows or extra tabs.
• Have a pen and paper or calendar at hand. If you think of worries or to-dos that will distract you while you are writing, write down whatever you’re worried about so that you can stop thinking about it.
• Decide a time limit or set a timer. Instead of checking the clock every few minutes and wondering if it’s time to be done yet, decide how long you’ll work (and then decide how long your break will be).

As long as you have an action plan to avoid or deal with distractions as they arise, you can get started writing much faster.

2. Brainstorm

If you need help getting started generating ideas, just start brainstorming. Write down anything that you know is connected to your main topic, and then keep branching off to include related ideas. These ideas could become subtopics, blog posts, or even major themes or series.

You don’t have to be an expert in everything that you write about – gathering some resources on the topic and presenting them to your audience is a perfectly acceptable way to create a blog post. After all, just knowing that the topic exists and telling your readers about it might be just the level of introduction they need.

And don’t be afraid to cover duplicate content on your blog. A large number of your readers will not go back into your archives, so writing a post on a similar topic a week or month later is perfectly normal. Just try to put a different spin on it.

3. Research

If other writers have covered your subject (and chances are that they have), find books, blogs, or information products covering that subject and start looking at the headings, chapter titles, or sales pages. Do not plagiarize content, but do start thinking about content you have experience with that you could expand on.

Add these ideas to the list that you brainstormed, and see what ideas you came up with that were not covered by other writers.

4. Outline

Sometimes, the hardest thing is just getting started. Take some ideas that you brainstormed and lay them out in an outline. Decide which content should come first, and which wraps it up nicely. Some people only need to write the subheadings. Others jot down key points they want to touch on in each section.

Writing an outline also lets you double-check that the content you will be writing is at the right level for your audience. You don’t want to write your post to be too high-level or too low-level. It can even help if you decide what knowledge you are going to assume, and what you’re going to explain in detail.

5. Write for 30 seconds

This is the most important step. Just start writing. Don’t promise yourself much – just write whatever you can for thirty seconds. Or a minute. Or five minutes. Countless professional writers still set a timer and make themselves write without a filter for a certain amount of time. A blank page is intimidating, so just take one tiny step, which will make the next step that much easier.

If you don’t want to shut down your IM client, make an elaborate mind-map, research, or outline your post, you don’t need to. To write, the only thing you absolutely need to do is start writing. So go ahead!

4. Speed Through It

A blog post might be short to read, but it still takes some time to write, not to mention research, find pictures and add formatting. If everyone in your company is already feeling pressed for time, either don’t have a blog or sacrifice something else that’s of lower importance.

It is generally recommended to write regularly, though once or twice a week can be just as powerful as twenty times every day. Don’t burn yourself out one week only to stop posting completely the next week. And if something does happen, don’t apologize for being gone – just make sure your next posts are good ones.

It’s worth noting that some companies spend even more time on long, amazing blog posts – but only post them once a month or less. A significant example of this is the blog of Ok Cupid, a dating site which has become known for its extensive posts of original research using its customer data. Now that RSS readers are becoming more prolific, it’s easier to maintain readers between long silences.

3. Write about everything

It can be tempting to jump onto every bandwagon you come across – but you shouldn’t. Even though you might be able to get more one-time hits with a broad array of subjects, it’s harder to attract readers who will return over and over. Writing about everything also makes it difficult for readers to remember what your company actually does.

Instead, narrow your focus, especially your focus on your audience. Marketing, social media, and blogging are several large topics that can still be tied together by an internet marketing firm, while a manufacturing company wouldn’t create an audience of customers if they blogged about the same subjects.

2. Ignoring Web Conventions

Bloggers have developed a number of conventions which your readers will expect from your blog as well. If you’re going to break the rules, at least make sure you know what the rules are, first.

• Write an attention-getting headline. Study copywriting techniques, and don’t be afraid to use headline formulas that have been proven to work (like lists).
• Use short paragraphs. Make sure they get to the point.
• Use sub-headings to let people skim the article and still understand your point.
• Break lists up with bullets and include other formatting to make it easy to read fast.
• Don’t use industry jargon. Make your blog posts as approachable as possible.
• Spell words right. Misspellings just make you look rushed and unprofessional.
• Link to other pages, especially when referring to groups, people, or blogs. And make sure to embed your link, so that you’re linking to Google, not forcing people to copy and paste http://www.google.com.
• Publish an RSS feed – if you use a content management system, RSS is probably even built-in.

To understand more blog conventions, read the blogs of others in your niche, and even outside of it. And if, in the process, you find something interesting, don’t hesitate to share the link with your audience, too.

1. Having the Wrong Objective

You need to know why you’re blogging – and “because everyone else is doing it” or “this book said I should” are not the right reasons. You don’t want to create a blog just to be read by someone – if you want your blog to help your business, your target audience needs to be your customers.

Once you know that you are targeting your customers, start writing and giving away content that they would want to read. Make sure your blog posts have value: if they are simply glorified sales pitches, no one will want to read more than one or two.

You can include some news, updates on product development, or messages about individual team members, but don’t make your blog all about you. Also include information that will help anyone who wants to buy your products or services.

Now that you know a few things to avoid, and plenty of things to work on, your blog is ready to get started. If you’re already blogging, are there any other mistakes you see that you think other bloggers should avoid?

However, that is not what internet marketing has to be. Any method of reaching out to potential customers is internet marketing. The core of internet marketing, like all marketing, is understanding the desires and needs of your target market, and showing that audience that your product will meet those demands.

Here are a few ways to understand how to approach internet marketing for the best results.

Internet marketing needs focus

You cannot market to everyone. Find out exactly who your ideal customer is, and then find out exactly where those people are online. You can run multiple ad campaigns to target different customer groups, but don’t run one generalized campaign expecting to get everyone in one shot. The more specific and unique the message in your advertising is, the more it will impact the audience it is targeting.

Start defining your approach now. What is your message? What is the goal of your marketing campaign? Which keywords will your audience be using to find your site? With a marketing campaign outline, you can make sure that

Internet marketing takes time

Writing two or three or ten articles does not constitute article marketing. Creating a Facebook page or Twitter profile is not social media marketing. Adding random keywords to your site will not increase your SEO overnight.

You need to be patient with your internet marketing efforts, instead of jumping on every marketing bandwagon. Decide a specific technique to focus on. Concentrate only on attracting targeted users – how many followers you have on Twitter or how high your site ranks on search engines are not as important as attracting visitors and making sales.

Internet marketing requires quality

If you try to take shortcuts, your internet marketing will fail. As Gary Vaynerchuk wrote in The Thank You Economy, “You cannot underestimate the sharpness of people’s BS radars – they can spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away.”

Don’t just find a generic, free website template. Instead, make sure your web design is pleasing to the eyes. Don’t spin the same version of an article dozens of times. Instead, research issues directly related to your target market, and then present your findings in a new and interesting way.

Internet marketing targets humans

Meet your market where they are. Use real English to communicate with people. Deliver on your promises. Don’t be afraid of humor or sarcasm, especially if you are targeting a specific niche or a fun-loving market.

Establish your authority and trustworthiness. Include photos of your company’s leaders or team, and help your visitors understand better what your company does. Don’t forget to include testimonials and examples of real people who have gotten real results with your products or services.

Internet marketing sells when it should, and not when it shouldn’t

There are a lot of good places to sell online. If you have a great product for your customers, a lengthy sales page can help people understand what you are offering and decide if it is the right solution for them.

However, there are also wrong places to sell. If you are giving away information for free, make sure there are no strings attached, and no hidden sales messages. General information blog posts and FAQ pages are the places to inform your customers.

Internet marketing is measurable

Like any other endeavor online, your marketing efforts should be motivated by concrete goals, and you should measure your progress regularly to revise those goals or add new ones. Establish ways to measure the impact of your marketing efforts from day one, and understand how your analytics work. Take stock of what works and what doesn’t, and be willing to follow the voice of your market, not just what’s trendy.

Now that you can see how good internet marketing can help you reach your target market. Have a high standard of quality, the patience to see a campaign through, and the flexibility to answer the demands of your customers.

Have any internet marketing strategies worked well for you?