Blogs are like trees in a forest, there are thousands of them that all look the same until you get up close, and even close up sometimes it is hard to tell one from another! If your blog is like one tree in a huge forest, indistinguishable from hundreds or thousands of others and struggling to be noticed, then you need to concentrate on your marketing strategy.

In this post, I will focus on 7 basic tips which are actually very important and should be considered a part of blog marketing strategy. Some of you might not find it new but as I said, these are basic tips that are often ignored by lots of bloggers. Your job is to pick 1 at a time and implement them because I know they work. Whether you are a pro blogger or just starting out in blogging, make sure you put these tips to work if you really want to see results

1. Host your own blog

Marketing from a hosted solution such as wordpress.com will limit your options. I have always preferred self hosted blogs since you own it and you have total control over it. Let’s assume that you have a blog hosted on blogspot.com which is owned by Google. You start building backlinks day and night and do a lot of marketing. One day you wake up and find out that your blog was suspended for whatever reason, how would you feel? This is some freaky stuff that you don’t want to encounter. The solution is not that expensive. Purchase your own domain name from namecheap, select a good reputable host like hostgator and then start working on the marketing strategy for your blog.

2. Select a stable platform

Marketing your blog becomes easier when you host your blog on a stable platform. There are many options for bloggers and marketers for choosing a platform for their online business. Your selection of which platform to use will dictate how easy your blog updates are and how well they are picked up by search engines. WordPress, Blogspot, Joomla, Drupal, Moveable Type and Typepad are 6 of the largest blogging platforms and they are all well supported. According to me, in marketing perspective, I feel that WordPress beats the rest. Selecting a stable and popular platform should definitely be a part of your blog marketing strategy. Why? Simply because the structure and architecture of some blogging platforms like WordPress is good for SEO. Beside that, WordPress has some amazing plugins and search engine optimized themes that can take your blog to the next level. I am sure you know that SEO can be related to marketing. If you can rank, you are getting better

3. Stand Out

Make it Unique. Remember the forest and tree analogy? You need to make your blog stand out from the rest, and if you have selected wordpress as your blogging platform then this will be easy. This is because wordpress has ton of themes, plugins, hacks etc which you can easily customize and use it on your blog. There are several free themes if you search on google but, if you are serious about blogging and want to look professional then go for thesis; its one of the best search engine optimized wordpress theme available today. With just a few tweaks and clicks, you can customize the theme to suit the requirement for your blog. I have been running my blogs on thesis since the beginning and I can vouch for it. Check out some awesome thesis skins from Kolakube.

I. Unique Logo – Design a unique logo for your blog that stands out and serves as a visual reminder to your visitors. A logo is the most important part of marketing. It represents your blog, company or website. If you don’t have the Photoshop skills then, outsource it and get something done professionally. I recommend logonerds for all your logo designs. They are simply awesome and cost effective. They have created some of my logos including the one on my personal blog. Check them out

II. Tagline – Your blogs tagline is the short piece of text next to the logo or header. It needs to be short, memorable and unique to your blog. It usually describes the mission, purpose or goal of the site. Taglines help increase your blog’s brand identity and are often underestimated in marketing strategy. Sometimes your visitors will remember your tagline more than your domain name. If you look at some of the popular blogs and my favourites like Amish Shah, he has a unique logo and his tagline is “Make Money, Give Back, Create Happiness” which is pretty neat. Another example would be on this blog itself where the tagline reads “Learn the Skills To Build a Profitable blog” which tells you the mission of this blog. Sometimes a logo is powerful enough to create brand awareness. However, taglines make it even stronger.

4. Proper On-site SEO

As I mentioned earlier in point #2, SEO should be a part of your marketing strategy; It is actually a very essential part. Remember that marketing means exposing your blog to search engines, not just visitors. Spend a couple of days researching your keywords and on-page SEO strategy. If you use themes like thesis then, on-site Seo will be easy breezy.

There are plenty of tools out there to help you with keyword research, Meta tags and keyword density. Check out Google Keyword tool, wordtracker and Market Samurai for choosing the best keywords. Use these tools to ensure you stand the very best chance of getting good results from search engines. I have also listed some nice wordpress seo plugins that work and I am sure you will find it handy. Last but not the least, here is an easy wordpress seo guide and a comprehensive wordpress seo guide, check them out and read them all the way to make your blog seo proof Make sure you take action.

5. Marketing your Blog with Press Releases

Most bloggers think that a press release is something that large corporations do when they have an announcement to make, but it is actually a viable way of marketing your blog. When I started blogmasterpoint, I hired some writers to create some awesome press releases for the site. I then had someone send it to major outlets and just in a few days, I had several pages indexed. There was also an increase in visitors on the site. Press Releases might not give you tonne of traffic but if you do it right, you can get huge benefits from them in the long run. Use Press Release outlets such as www.prweb.com to distribute new content on your blog. It’ll reach all the search engines, thousands of journalists and bloggers bringing you new traffic on a regular basis. Writing a press release is a no-brainer. If you can blog, I am sure you can write one up and start marketing your blog.

6. Leverage the Power of Social Media

Social Media is so powerful that some marketers are starting to rate it above backlinks. And you know what, it’s free. You can easily create a facebook page for your blog, a twitter account, a google page, a linkedin page and more. These are free to create and if you can optimize them well, you can get huge amount of traffic. One other important benefits from creating pages on these popular social network sites is that you get free traffic from search engines; because, these sites have a high PR and rank pretty well on Google. For example, if you search for “Mastermind Blogger” on google, you are most likely to see its official facebook page and twitter account on the first page of the search result. This should explain the power of social media.

With the introduction of the new Google +1, it is obvious that google gives priority and importance to the links that get lots of quality +1s. This means the more +1 your website or link gets, the higher it will rank in Google. This is a great time to create an official Google page for your blog and optimize it for more visitors and better conversions. Same thing goes for a facebook page and a twitter account if you haven’t already created one for your site.

Sign up for ping.fm. Make sure you are at least signed up with the popular social networks. Now link them all together in ping.fm. In this way, when you make a blog post, your post gets directly sent to the connected social networks and then instantly gets indexed This not only saves time but gives you lots of backlinks and traffic.

Social media is just growing enormously and if you are not scaling up with it, you are missing out on a lot of important stuff. Get on with it and rock it.

7. Collaborate!

Collaborating with blogs in the same niche can reap rewards if you can find a way to encourage this participation without seeming too competitive. You can reach a new audience and potential visitor numbers can increase as a result of project collaborations, so be creative, think outside the box and use your initiative.

I. Guest Post- I have seen lots of great minds collaborate and create something astonishing. Guest posting is a great way to reach out to different audiences and start collaboration. For example, let’s assume that I write a guest post on Smart Passive Income Blog. Pat Flynn, the owner of the blog never got to know me until I made the guest post. Since my post was awesome Pat saw my skills and decided to collaborate with me on creating a new product. How cool is that? I am sure you get the point. Guest posting allows you to network, reach out to new audience and get more traffic; you also get backlinks, media attention and maybe future JV opportunities. This is huge so get on with it and show your skills.

II. Reciprocal Promotion- John Chow has collaborated with Shoemoney in some projects in the past. John mentions about Shoe’s stuff on his blog and Shoe does the same for John on his blog. Both of them are a leader in the industry and are exchanging links and promotions. I call this the “Reciprocal Promotion”. Can you see the power of collaboration now? It doesn’t only open doors to new opportunities but also to new relationships which could be really profitable in the long run. Have a great idea? Don’t wait! Find an industry leader and collaborate. This is actually one best way of marketing your blog which is pretty much Free. You just have to know the art of networking

Bonus – Build that List!

Probably one most important aspect of marketing is building your email list. Whenever you decide to start a blog, try signing up for an email list program like aweber which I use and recommend. I realized the power of list building and email marketing after 1 year of starting this blog and today, I feel I have wasted that particular year for not implementing one of the most powerful marketing systems available today.

Building an email list is more than making money online. It helps to keep track of the subscribers who are serious about your stuff, who look up to you and want more stuff from you in the future. An easy example would be the “14 days Blogging Course” I offer on this blog. People who sign up for this course should definitely be interested in blogging and want to learn more. This means, I can send them more blogging tutorials and related stuff down the road.

If you see this from a money making perspective, imagine you have a list of 1000 targeted loyal subscribers. These people are hungry for your stuff ‘cuz they love what you provide. These people see value in your stuff. Let’s assume that I have created an awesome product which is related to blogging and priced it at $27. I feel that the product will help my subscribers so I sent out an email to the 1000 loyal subscribers. Guess what? 50% converted which means $27 x 500 (50%) = $13,500 in sales Now note that I said only 50% converted. If you have a targeted list and if you really deliver the best stuff, I wouldn’t doubt 80%+ conversion rate. Can you now see the power of email marketing?

Verdict

I have seen a lot of articles on blog marketing and frankly speaking, most have somewhat similar points. The main purpose of this post is to educate you on the importance of several marketing aspects that most bloggers often ignore or are not aware of.

If you can follow all the 7 tips mentioned on this post, then you will have developed a great strategy for marketing your blog, and be several steps closer to blogging success, talk soon!

Wordpress Optimization

If you have high traffic to your blog then you must optimize WordPress and your server to run as efficiently as possible.  This is very important and I have provided a step by step guide on how to do that. Follow and Implement. Let me know how this worked out for you.

SEO

Part 1- SEO

1. Permalinks are important so make sure you set good ones which are visually attractive.

2. Change settings with Robots- Nofollow/noindex  wp-admin, login pages, inappropriate categories etc

3. Write better titles. Make use of All in 1 Seo Pack or Platinum Seo Pack Plugins

4. Do not generate meta descriptions automatically. Write them yourself or just leave it blank

5. Create proper pagination- WP-pagenavi might help

6. Disable comments on Pages (About, Advertise, Contact etc)

7. Check out my wordpress optimization guide. Follow and implement every step you find in there.

Speed

Part 2- Speed

1. Install WP Super Cache

2. Move .htaccess directives to your server config ( only if you have the option). Disable .htaccess parsing

3. Combine CSS files into 1 big CSS file

4. Make sure that Java script is loaded in the footer

5. Use CSS Sprites

6. Add a php opcode cache

7. Replace the crappy plugins with the better ones available online

8. Switch to a better hosting. Check out the reviews at King of Hosting- Yes, this is one of my site and you are most welcome to add your reviews.

Maintenance

Part3- Maintenance

1. Use WP-dbmanager to backup your files frequently

2. Optimize and backup your database everyday if possible

3. Check your queries with the debug wordpress plugin

4. Use anti-spam plugin to kill spam in your blog comments

5. Remove any irrelevant and useless widgets

6. Track your uptime. You can use several tools to do that.

7. Check for 404 errors and fix it using redirection.  404 notifier can be helpful

8. Remove unnecessary meta tags, info or details.

Social

Part 4- Social

1. Use good social plugins that will allow your readers to submit the posts they like. Good ones would be sociable, sexy bookmarks, Digg Digg etc

2. WP greet box is awesome. Use one on your blog and greet your visitors

3. Allow visitors to subscribe to your comments with a link or plugin

4. Enable discus or gravatar to allow the readers display their avatars.

5. Add a ReTweet Button to your post

Analytics

Part 5- Tracking/Analytics

1. Google analytics is the best so far. You can use a plugin or insert the code in the footer section

2. Signup with feedburner to track your RSS

3. Use a twitter analytic to track traffic from twitter

4. Use Blog metric plugin and improve yourself everyday

I hope you found this useful. If you think I have missed any which are worth mentioning then feel free to add them in your comments.

Wordpress is the GOD of blogging Platforms!

There are many blogging platforms available online today. But, the most popular and powerful one I believe is the WordPress. This is also the easiest and user friendly blogging platform to work with. Even if you are new to blogosphere, wordpress will definitely leave you admiring it in no time you start using it.

To gain the maximum benefit of using the wordpress, you need to be well aware of the functions like plugins, widgets and themes. They allow you to get the best out of your blog. You can change the way your blog functions and appear to the readers by using these add-ons which also allows your blog to reach to wider audience.

Today, I will explain the functionalities and the tips to build a better blog from scratch using wordpress.  But first, you need to know the three important parts of wordpress which make this blogging platform GOD!!

Theme

Thesis Theme

The theme you choose can make or break your blog. One of the most important tasks in building a better blog is choosing the right theme. Most bloggers are aware about this fact and spend most of their time choosing a theme that best suits the needs of the content and the niche. The theme you use gives an idea to the readers about the niche of your blog even though you might not have content in it at first. Choose a theme that speaks of the blog topic and make sure the color combinations used are not hard on the eyes because the main purpose of blogging is to attract visitors and turn them into loyal readers. If they don’t like your style or theme, they will not love you!

Plugins

WP Plugs

The invention of plugins have changed the way a blog appears in terms of its strengths. There are many powerful plugins built by the vast number of supporters, coders and fans of wordpress. It is no exaggeration that there is more number of wordpress plugins built than those of any other blogging platform. Plugins work in many ways; some work on the background of the platform. Some of them help in search engine optimization, to collect the statistical data of the blog, to optimize the ads displayed, posts, comments and even to enrich the appearance of the blog. All the plugins are not suitable for every blog. So before choosing a plugin for your blog, find out if it supports the version of wordpress you are using. You also need to make sure that it serves the purpose. It will be awkward if you install a recipe plugin in a tech niche blog. Most plugins are free to use and are very easy to install.

Widgets

Adding Widgets to your Sidebar

Widgets are the extra elements that are located in the side bar of any blog. These include adding links to pages, posts, recent posts, calendar, text note and even posts and comments subscription options. You can even add external html or JavaScript code snippets in the sidebar with the help of these widgets. You can even delete any widget with the click of a mouse anytime you like. It is that simple! You can always experiment on adding new widgets to your blog. Widgets usually come with a drag-drop feature that makes it easy for you to place any widget you like at any place in the sidebar.

I hope this post was useful, if you have any questions then feel free to ask. In my next post, I will write a simple step by step guide on setting up your wordpress and writing your first post.