Blog Marketing: A lot of people use blogs for many things. In the early days of blogging, people used blogs to share personal information on the internet. A lot of that has changed; people now use blogs to share news updates, pictures, market contents, etc. This brings us to blog marketing, what it is, and how to do it.

Just like social media marketing where people create and share marketing content on social media, in blog marketing, marketers set up blogs and use it to publish marketing contents that give an in-depth explanation about a product or service. The major aim is to woo the reader to take action, either to buy the product, subscribe to a mailing list, etc.

You can have guest writers write about recommendations and reviews about your product, promotional articles, and other marketing contents on your blogs. That’s all part of blog marketing.

There are many blogging platforms that you can use to create a blog for your business; these include Google’s Blogger, Joomla, and the most popular being WordPress. I won’t advise that you use the free domain names that are usually provided by these platforms. That will include some attachments to your domain name, making you look unserious and unprofessional. Invest to get a paid domain and hosting service (if applicable). I said if applicable because in platforms like Blogger, you only need to purchase a custom domain name as the blog is already hosted by Google, but for WordPress, you will need both a domain name and a hosting service.

Since WordPress is the most popular, you should go with it. You can always find a lot of tutorials online on how to setup a WordPress blog in case you want to go the DIY route. After installing your WordPress blog, the next steps like updating blogs with content are things that are extremely easy that you can play around with. There are tons of free themes on the WordPress website that you can use for your design. Apart from free themes, the web also contains loads of paid for themes that you can use if you don’t like the free themes. The only cons of using WordPress is that it might take you some time to learn how to put everything in order especially if it is your first time and you are going the DIY route.

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The pros of blog marketing

1. Inexpensive to start and run: just like I said earlier, there are lots and lots of free blogging platforms that you can use to start your blog, although they won’t give your blog a professional outlook, they are still an excellent way to start. Even if you don’t want to go the free route, acquiring domains and hosting doesn’t cost much and won’t dig a hole in your pocket.

2. Easy to use: you don’t need to be a computer whiz to know how to use most blogging platforms. All you need is to know how to copy, paste, drag & drop, and upload, and you are good to go.

3. Effective way to have new and return traffic come to your website: the content you share on your blog including tips and updates will always give people more reason to come back to your blog.

4. Allows you to show off your expertise and gain trust: people like transacting with businesses that have proven themselves as experts in their field. With the contents you publish on your blog, you can easily stamp yourself as an authority in your niche. Nobody would feel good buying from a rookie, but with a professional, their minds would be calm and settled.

5. Connect with your market: just like social media marketing, you can use blog marketing to connect and engage your customers. The comment section of your blog is a good place to build trust and rapport with your visitors. The comments that users leave on your blog can also help you in improving your product.

6. You can use your blog to promote your affiliate offers.

The cons of blog marketing

Let’s get straight to the points.

1. Time-consuming: creating new marketing content and updating same on your blog can take much of your time. You can mitigate this by hiring freelancers to help you with that aspect.

2. It can take time to see results: seeing as the internet is already saturated with lots and lots of information, getting people to visit and read your blog might take time.

3. It needs to be marketed too: people will not know about your blog unless you advertise it. If you don’t market it, no one will know it exists.

 How to do blog marketing

 Apart from setting up your blog, you need to be updating it occasionally. This is where the bulk of the job lies, as setting up the blog itself might take just few minutes.

1. Make a blog marketing plan: this plan will cover what you will be using your blog for. Is it to share tips? Review products? Or promote your affiliate offer? Furthermore, you need to decide how often you will be updating the contents of the blog. Remember that you need to be updating your blog constantly to keep users. Nobody likes to visit blogs and meet the same content they read last three months.

2. Decide on the blogging platform to use.

3. Fill your blog with posts: nobody wants to keep visiting empty blogs. Write and fill your blog with helpful posts as soon as possible.

4. Market your blog: incorporate things like autoresponders on your blog to always send out posts to your followers and email subscribers.

5. Reply to comments: if you share rich content on your blog, you will attract questions, feedback, etc. from readers. Remember always to reply to these comments. It makes the users feel more comfortable with you. Delete spam posts.