It’s Not Just the Blog! It’s the Marketing

5 Tactics from Blogworld Expo New York

After three days at BlogWorld Expo New York, my head feels like it’s grown five hat sizes with all of the information I learned. Do you want to improve your blog marketing? Then apply these top five key marketing tactics from Blogworld Expo New York to take your blog to the next level.

  1. Start building your email list as soon as possible. Having started my career as a direct marketer, this point was a head slap moment since a direct marketer’s house file of physical addresses, email addresses and phone numbers is considered corporate assets. Of course, the key is to grow your housefile over time to effectively drive your message and get readers to return to your blog. Don’t wait until your blog attracts a certain size audience to begin developing your email list. Echoed by several top tier bloggers, this tactic was one of the most common phrases heard at BlogWorld Expo.
  2. Spread your content across the social media ecosystem. Each time you create a piece of content, assess how you’re going to extend the content to other format platforms. The goal is to increase the number of impressions to drive sales and to streamline content creation. For example, how will you break-up an infographic to be used in presentations, blog posts and other content marketing initiatives? This is driven by the fact that everyone interested in your content won’t see it across all of your platforms.
  3. Provide a combination of original and curated content. You don’t have to write it all yourself. Part of the strength of your blog is its role as a curator to give readers another way to surface information that they might otherwise miss.  Like an old-fashioned newspaper editor, you’re providing information that your target audience is interested in learning. When you reference other people’s work on your blog or website, make sure that you reference the original source and its author. “I found it online” isn’t sufficient to meet copyright requirements. Also, make your content findable and sharable so that it can be distributed to other social media sites.
  4. Encourage multi-platform usage. Driven by user behavior, ensure that readers can receive your blog content across a variety of different formats. This means adapting your content for smartphones, iPads and other tablets. Bear in mind that these other technologies may require special websites, applications and/or search marketing to make them useful for consumers.
  5. Monetize your blog beyond the banner ad. Driving revenues was a key interest among attendees and a variety of options were offered. While most bloggers are keen to get compensated, at least in part, consider the implications of carrying different types of ads before you jump in. Further, based on FTC regulations, it’s critical that you disclose your relationship with the vendor to maintain your credibility with your audience. This depends on how closely your blog is associated with your personal brand. The closer this association is with the selling organization, the more you need to be able to explain your reasons for choosing it. Alternatively, you can create other information products.

For bloggers, the essence of these points is to build a base of fans and ensure that you’re marketing to your best customers. The market has matured so that it’s important to incorporate messages to these customers into your non-blogging communications in order to ensure that you’re effectively messaging prospects and customers.

Is there any thing else that should be added to this list? If so, please include them in the comment section below.

Happy marketing,
Heidi Cohen


Here are the other posts from BlogWorld Expo.

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