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5 Ways to Promote Your Blog Offline

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by Jen Thames

Marketing and Communication

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Between tweeting and booking and blogging and pinning who has time to think about offline marketing? Offline what?:)

People at the end of the day are people. According to psychologists nonverbal communication makes up nearly 2/3 of the communications that build relationships between people. At the end of the day we are humans and things like posture, dress, voice quality and eye contact build trust and clout.

Simply put, these are the things that build 2/3 of the difference between friends, acquaintances and strangers. Now, some of us are stranger than others, and blogging is just such a great place to hide! However, getting the body beautiful out into public and cementing those online relationships in person is something most “successful” bloggers have done. Why not try it?

Wonderful, so where is the best place to market a blog offline? All those expensive “social media” conferences come to mind but actually some of the most successful offline marketing starts right in your own back yard (maybe not literally).

Traditional brand marketing can have some distinct advantages for bloggers and it’s a marketing area that is too often ignored by the web-connected. Here are 5 ways and reasons to promote your blog offline.

  1. Come up with a locals list, then sponsor a picnic, coffee break meeting or some other fun, low key, low cost, no commitment needed, drop by and meet humans event for all your local online contacts. A surprising amount of people will show up. They will likely bring other people with them too. Your online connections already like and “know” you. This is just an opportunity to deepen those relationships and build new ones. A prize drawing for a Doc Martin bobble head doll never hurts to boost attendance.While getting acquainted with people ask about what else they do online and then offer to follow their blog or online business. Make the most out of the event by linking up with smart phones in hand. Above all have a good time.
  2. Look into promotional advertising products. Promotional gifts for businesses have been around for a long time and with good reason. These are items that can carry your logo and message to the grocery store on a shopping bag or around the office on a coffee mug for years. These days there are some amazingly innovative promotional items like the trolley token key chains in the UK that take your logo or message and spread it far and wide. The cost of promotional items can be very small compared to the longevity and advertising value of the items. Even more importantly, unlike online marketing, promotional marketing is not time intensive. This makes it an excellent advertising medium for bloggers.
  3. Search out “captive audiences” and then teach them. The heart of blogging is sharing a passion or an expertise with others. Taking that expertise to a captive live audience is one of the best offline marketing tactics. What is a captive audience? An audience that already meets with a group of people on a regular basis anyway. For example, PTA meetings at local schools meet on a regular basis. Lets assume you have a blog about parenting. Ask to give a 5-minute talk at the beginning of the meeting. Something like: “10 Useful Tips to Communicate with Your Teen.” Captive audiences exist in clubs, groups and all sorts of local places and they can present an excellent marketing opportunity.
  4. Look into local public radio and TV advertising. Non-profit blogs can usually advertise for a nominal cost or for free through PBS stations. Small businesses and large businesses also pay different advertising rates. Simply working the phones as volunteers wearing promotional T-shirts can bring an online blog exposure. In addition, philanthropic donations to local institutions such as museums, hospitals, sports teams and community organizations can almost immediately establish brand clout and recognition. Moreover, donations are usually tax deductible and they present fabulous opportunities for online press releases before and after the event.
  5. Collaborate with a local brick and mortar business and sponsor an event. For example, a fishing blog could partner with a local fishing store and give away free bait and donuts one morning. Both the store and the blog can increase their business and bring value to their customers.

Get creative with offline advertising and have fun. Online and offline communities start and end with people!

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Author’s Bio: Jen Thames writes about marketing and business at SixSigmaOnline. You can find her on Twitter as @SixSigmaAveta

Thank you, Jen! You’re irresistible! 🙂

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Simple and Basic Ways to Get Your Blog Noticed

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A Guest Post by
Susan

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Promoting your personal blog

With the constant expansion of social networking, there are plenty of ways to promote your personal blog to the right people who have an interest in what you are doing and why you are doing it.

Online pinboard tools

Whether your blog is about parenting, business skills or DIY, online pinboards can be an excellent way of attracting followers that have similar interests to yourself. This type of publicity is free and worldwide. Sites such as pinterest.com allow you to create an online pinboard and post pictures to it from your blog using a simple application added to your tool bar. You can have as many online pinboards as you wish (within reason) each with different subjects or themes. The site will then allow you to follow the pinboards of other users that have similar interests to yourself and in turn to follow the things that you post. Your followers can then re-pin your images to their own boards creating a whole large network. Your images will be available to your followers’ followers and so on.

Include relevant links in your blog

Including relevant links to other products and businesses within your blog can help create a network of interest and create new followers. For instance, when writing about an arm chair, use a hyperlink to create links to other relevant businesses and pages. This is a good an easy way to create an interesting and informative blog.

Facebook

There are many different ways in using Facebook as an excellent tool to promote your personal blog. Facebook groups are there to join together users that have similar interests and want to join discussions on matters that are related to you. It is always beneficial to join groups that can help you forward your ideas and create a good buzz about your blog.

Following other users, pages and businesses on Facebook will often give you the opportunity to promote your blog. For instance if you keep a personal blog regarding crafting, you may want to consider following businesses and even magazine publications that are about the same or similar subject matters. You will often find that like-minded people will be following the same pages as you and will pass on links to your blog.

Finally never underestimate the power of sharing your personal blog with family and friends. These loyal followers will often share your links creating a web of interest stretching out across hundreds of people and businesses.

Twitter

Twitter is an excellent way of promoting your personal blog in an unobtrusive way. Expand the list of other users that you follow to again include people and businesses that have similar interests to yourself. You will find by doing this that Twitter will begin to recommend your tweets to a wider range of users on the site.

Joining blogging sites

By joining a blogging network you will make your blog available to thousands of other users. You can use an RSS feed to automatically update your page on the blogging network so that when you create a new post or make a new tweet. This will work in your favour if you are a frequent blogger.

A good blogging site will also give you access to hundreds of blogs that are on a similar subject to your own. By following those, not only will you be able to find new and interesting ideas to help you along the way, but also attract followers from these blogs in your own right.

Effective use of search words

Most internet users will search for certain words and phrases if they want to find out information. If you are writing about a certain subject matter, make sure that you mention the subject frequently within your blog, this way it will be picked up by the search engines and your blog will increase in popularity.

StumbleUpon

Stumbleupon.com is a very good website searching tool where users can recommend sites that they have found to other like-minded people. When you register an account users can set their preferences to help them find blogs on the subject matters that they are interested in. Whenever you create a new blog post, by adding it to the Stumble Upon register you will make it available to thousands of people who are looking to read articles and information on the things that you are writing about. They will also be able to ‘like’ your blog in turn passing the link on to other users and increasing your bloon behalf of her favorite catnapper recliner specialist.

Thanks! Susan!

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

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How to blog series

140 Ch Can’t Say It All Intelligently from the Heart

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Every day I greet the Internet with my coffee and a clear purpose and I find lots of opportunity — information, ideas, and input — offering itself. Never a question about finding that.

If I’m not focused my head is filled with thoughts and energy sparking and flaring in directions that look something like this …

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Unfortunately without focus so much can stay dispersed in that beautiful, but disintegrating way. I can end up responding to and considering bits of data like swatting gnats. Not much progress is made in a world of randomness.

Twitter, in particular, offers ideas I can encounter and pass along, but if I do that, most of what I think vanishes into past thoughts considered and soon forgot as unconnected bits.

If we want folks to know us we also need longer conversations in stronger venues. Telephones help. Personal conversations at meetings are great. If only we could stretch and scale our resources to share that way. So we write.

It’s why I keep my blog. In fact, that fact makes me passionate about why I write every day. But it’s not just the connections that keep me writing.

7 Real Ways a Blog Raises Influence and Increases Expertise

Writing is one way to share our thoughts with more folks more efficiently. Publishing makes the connection more natural and accessible. The words stay present and available through time for anyone who wants to access them. We get visibility and benefit others when we write, but we benefit ourselves as well. By recording our thoughts we make them more in so many ways.

  1. Writing gets us to clarify our thoughts. We have to find words to communicate ideas. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make them more concrete.
  2. Writing teaches how to see what we think. We have to find words to articulate what’s on our mind. We think the ideas through for ourselves. In that process we make our ideas more concrete, more transportable, and more memorable.
  3. Writing teaches us how words communicate meaning. Every time we write we choose the words we need to express a thought or idea. The more we practice the more we learn how to make choices that help people connect to what we mean.
  4. Writing helps us develop a voice that is natural and consistent, strong and confident. Even when we write for ourselves, we go back to read, listening to what we wrote. We question. We consider. We critique our choices.
  5. Writing teaches to manage our internal editor — to value our own thoughts and to be quiet until feedback is useful. Too often when we just think ideas we can shut them down before we’ve fully considered their possibilities. Trying to put them into words keeps us going to a longer process.
  6. Writing is an opportunity to share our expertise. Everything we write has an audience. Every time someone shares something that we write they add value to our ideas — when they change them and when they don’t.
  7. Writing makes us more thoughtful readers and responders. We bring the insights and appreciation of a writer to what we read. It gives us a venue to ask questions and solve problems with help from the world.

As efficient as Twitter is for conversation, it’s not enough for working out ideas. 140 characters can’t express a full-on deep thought. A soundbyte might get attention, but it doesn’t show depth of knowledge.

Writing is clear thinking made visible. — Bill Wheeler

 

I heard that quote a long time ago and I hold it close every day on the Internet. It keep as a reminder that writing raises my game.

We meet more people in print than we can ever possibly meet face to face. Many people will know our written voice as well as they know our names. Writing is a huge opportunity in a noisy world to teach what we know and to learn from the best of the people we meet.

What sort of thinking have you shared today?

Be irresistible.
–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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Gardening, Blogging, Life, Comments and How Relationships Stay Made

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The Authenticity of Gardening … and Blogging

When I was a luxury farmer, I brought in bark mulch by the truck load. I had conversations with dirt that was so dry that you had to wet it to call it dust. It made be feel like a cowboy. It made me feel like a king. I could put my hand in the dirt, work for hours. Then through some miracle of nature color would happen. Things would grow. Not right way. Oh no. It took longer than blog years, but suddenly in the sun things started to show.

Every year we the weather gets warm and my hands want to be playing in the dirt I’m reminded that all things I’ve ever done have happened because I was willing to spend the time they took.

A blog. A garden. A life.

No one does them for the comments really.

But the comments sure do feel good.

Would you leave one for me now and then go leave one for those you know who’ve been working hard?

I’d so appreciate it and so would they. It’s how relationships start and how they stay made.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

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The Value of A Comment

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Leaving a comment on a blog is an excellent way to say what you think about the content of the blog you have chosen to read. Commenting is becoming part of the conversation. People comment, or write a blog post about the topic themselves, because something they read interested, motivated, angered, intrigued or just plain made them happy. So why does there seem to be fewer and fewer comments on blogs these days?

Blogs with huge readerships, the “A-Listers “ have no problem getting comments. People comment there to be seen engaging in the conversation, challenging the ideas contained in the post and promoting their own sites. We don’t question that A- List bloggers input great value and knowledge into the blogosphere. I’ve gone to many other blogs that also provide great information and insight but have small readerships and very few comments. I wonder why?

There’s been some conversation lately around the issue of the value of comments. There seems to be a trend towards less commenting and more posting of links, for example, on Twitter. This isn’t new. I’ve seen the topic come and go. I keep wondering about this the longer I blog and the more I read.

I read a lot of blogs and comment on few. I’ve been thinking about that lately. At times I believe I don’t have anything of value to add to the conversation or I’m intimated by the other comments. Sometimes I have too many to read and not enough time so I just tweet the link. I know that when I receive comments on a post I wrote I feel like they add value and I truly appreciate hearing what others have to say. I enjoy and learn from the conversation.

What is the value of a comment to you?

from Kathryn Jennex @northernchick

photo credit: Linda Cronin

LINK BAIT and COMMUNITY

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Link-baiting is the concept of writing in such a way as to attract other internet-based resources back to our blog.  It means creating something that naturally attracts back-links for your web page by getting people to talk about it, discuss it on forums, blog about it, post it on del.icio.us / Sphinn / Digg / Stumble , and link to it from their sites. It also attracts a lot of visitors. 

Link-baiting is not a new concept and not a concept used only on the internet. Rae Hoffman has a great explanation of how politicians use link bait all the time and always have.

Being passionate about what you write and how you convey that passion is key to growing your community. Richard Reeve talks about touch points and eloquently explains how this process of attracting readers, and the analytics involved, builds relationships. Whatever the intent or purpose of our blog, we’re all interested in that relationship which forms from the links that are made.

Building community is more than just having high page view counts. It’s about increasing readership and engaging with those readers in a meaningful way.

Some things to keep in mind:

  1. Are you looking to have as many visits to our site as possible so we can say we have high numbers
  2. Are you trying to build an audience that signs up to the RSS feed or returns regularly?
  3. Does you writing change as a result of thinking about the numbers?
  4. Is it possible to get high numbers and attract repeat readers?

There are lots of great resources out there to explain how to use link bait and honestly, we all would like traffic on our blog. The Golden Rules of Linkbaiting is really helpful. It feels good to know others read and value our writing. It feels good to know we have an audience. People love to discuss how many visits they got that day and where the traffic comes from. Building community is more than just having high page view counts. It’s about increasing readership and engaging with those readers in a meaningful way

 “One way to make sure your link bait is successful is to pick a subject that you believe in, are passionate about, and that will bring out an emotional response from members of your target audience. Or you could play it safe and write the 5 ways Twitter is helping web 2.0 businesses. The first is memorable the second is utterly forgettable.” – Michael Gray  

Do you have link bait in mind when you write?

Kathryn aka northernchick

Special thanks to graywolf and photo credit: INV/ALT DESIGN