9 Steps to Successful Blog Marketing

Why is this important?

▪ It gives constantly updated and fresh content on your site thus bringing in greater organic search traffic.
▪ Blogs are sharable content that can be integrated with social media, creating social signals for your site.
▪ You become an authority in your industry and earn the trust of your site visitors.
▪ Content marketing is the fastest way of building your brand via organic search.
▪ You can share useful information about your products/services via your blog, instead of crowding that information on your website’s sales page.

Step #1: Host Your Blog on Your Main Website

Ask your web developer to set up your blog in a subdirectory of your business website, for example, www.yourdomain.com/blog.

TIP: Add a Recent Blog Post section on the home page of your website which shows snippets of the recent blog posts.

Step #2: Produce Quality Content

Produce quality content for your blog in the following ways:

▪ Hire authors with widespread industry knowledge.
▪ Invite guest bloggers to write on your blog. We will discuss more about this in our next email.
▪ Create content that shares valuable information. Blog ideas that attract readers are things like How-to’s, Pro Tips, Free Tools, Myths and Facts, Did You Know, Lists, Steps (like this one), Top 10, DIY and so on.
▪ Post blogs written on case studies, as this builds credibility for your company.
▪ Proof read the blog several times for spelling and grammar mistakes.

TIP: Blog consistently. An active blog page ensures quick indexing of new blogs.

Step #3: Use rel=author Markup

Hosting your blog on your website is not enough. You must also build an authorship with a Google+ profile. This way your blog content is associated with you (or the author of your blogs) through a Google+ profile and Google can collect social signals from its own social media product (Google+). By doing this, you will be able to see the author’s Google+ profile picture and the number of Google+ circles they are in within organic search results, as shown below:

To get these rich snippet search results for your blog, follow the steps below:

▪ The author of your blog (which may be you) must have a personal account on Google+.
▪ Next go to the Google+ Profile page.
▪ Click Edit Profile.
▪ Scroll down on the page and Click Contributor to.
▪ Click Add Custom Link.
▪ Enter the name of the blog page and the blog URL.
▪ Click Save.
▪ Click Done Editing on the top blue bar of the page.
▪ Copy the page URL at the top, as shown in the example below:

You can link your Google+ profile URL to your blog content in both of these cases:

If your blog has a single author:

▪ At the bottom of the blog in the author’s bio, create a hyperlink to the author’s Google+ profile, for example, Greg Sterling on Google+.
▪ If you have a picture of the author, hyperlink the picture to their Google+ profile URL.
▪ Add the rel=author attribute to the anchor tag of the hyperlinked profile, as shown below:

If a blog has multiple authors:

▪ The blogs can be linked to individual Author Bio Pages, as shown in the example below:

Use the Rich Snippet Testing Tool to preview your blogs’ search results and check if the author details are shown. It may take a few days up to a few weeks for author details to be displayed.

Step #4: Add Social Share Buttons

Add Social Share buttons to your blog page. The buttons can be placed on the top or bottom of the blog or as a floating bar that moves as you scroll the page. Make sure to add share buttons that show the number of times the content has been shared, as shown below:

The following are some free tools and plugins for adding these social share buttons:

▪ AddThis
▪ Po.st
▪ ShareThis
▪ Sharexy
▪ Janrain
▪ Sharre

Step #5: Promote on Your Brand’s Social Media Pages

You need to have brand pages on popular social media sites, such as:

▪ Facebook
▪ Twitter
▪ Google+
▪ Pinterest
▪ LinkedIn

On each of these social media profiles share a link to your blog content.

Step #6: Email Marketing

▪ Add a Call-to-Action button on your blog page to Subscribe via email, as shown below:

Some popular Email Marketing Services are as follows:

▪ iContact
▪ MailChimp
▪ BenchMarkEmail
▪ MadMimi
▪ VerticalResponse
▪ ConstantContact

TIP: If you use Gmail for your business emails, you can make use of a WiseStamp Email Signature that includes your blog feeds.

Step #7: Submit to Blog Directories

To get greater visibility for your blogs, submit it to blog directories.

A list of blog directories with their PageRank is given below:

Blog Directories:

Ontoplist – PR: 6 (RSS included) (free listing requires you to include their badge on your site)
Alltop – PR: 6 (Free)
BestoftheWeb – PR: 6
Regator – PR: 5 (Free)
Liquida – PR: 5
Globeofblogs – PR: 5 (Free)
Blogdigger – PR: 5 (Free)
Blogcatalog – PR: 5
Bloggeries – PR: 5

NOTE: When submitting your blog, make sure you choose the right category so that all your links source from your niche and look natural. If you hire someone to do the submissions for you, make sure they are doing it manually and not with the help of a submitting software.

Step #8: Submit RSS Feed to RSS Feed Directories

To further enhance the indexation of your blogs and pass updated blog posts automatically onto various sites on the web, you need to submit your blog’s RSS feed to RSS feed directories.

Some of the RSS feed directories are listed below:

Free Sites:
Pulse
Flipboard
Superfeedr
Social Buzz Club
Twingly
FyberSearch
Fuelmyblog
Plazoo
RSS Network

Paid Sites:
Wingee

Step #9: Submit to Social Bookmarking sites

Submit your blog to social bookmarking sites, as listed below:

▪ Digg – PR: 8 (Free)
▪ Reddit – PR: 8 (Free)
▪ StumbleUpon – PR: 8 (Free)
▪ Tumblr – PR: 8 (Free)
▪ Delicious – PR: 8 (Free)

Resources for Further Learning:

▪ Blog Article: 10 Instant Blog Content Ideas
▪ Blog Article: Blogging for SEO
▪ Infographic: How to Promote Your Blog Posts

Next week, we will walk you through steps to find guest writers for your blog.