Blog marketing
One thing I would like to accomplish with this blog is persuade as many people as possible to blog for themselves (especially if you're a start-up). Here's another data point. I wrote a fairly short post on Google Base's traffic this past week. Took me a few minutes to write. Today someone asked me to send the link, and rather than use the Technorati search tool (fix this please :P) on my blog, I put "Google Base Traffic" on Google for the heck of it.
Looking at the results to the left, my post was number 2 out of 13.2MM. Nice :) Now this tells me two things. First, something about how blogs are prioritized on search engines are potentially out of whack (no complaints here of course). Two, even though there are umpteen billion bloggers out there, someone like myself who blogs once or twice a week must be in the minority.
I've been evangelizing the power of blog marketing to a bunch of start-ups that I've worked with this past year. The immediate reaction was always focused on the amount of work required to make it work. Here's a few things to keep in mind.
1) If you share the workload across your team or have someone who likes to write, the workload is minimal and requires only limited sweat equity (not much sweating going on here)
2) Don't use blogs as a marketing tool alone. No one likes splogs :P Use it to personify your business and let readers/potential customers/investors put a face to your site, product or company. Here's a good example from a former classmate of mine, Gibu Thomas, founder of Sharpcast. Gibu posts about his experience as an entrepreneur (plus), his esoteric views on Web 2.0 (minus ;)), pokes a little fun at a Google translation (plus) and in the midst of this, mentions what the heck Sharpcast is trying to do (<= notice the free marketing). And believe me, Gibu is no genius (jk Gibu).
3) (No surprise) titles of blog posts drive a ton of relevancy bar none. I now have near top billing on MSN and Google for "Lockness Monster", "Google Porno" and "Google Base Traffic" based on title choice. As you can tell, I have no idea what I'm doing, but heck, hopefully it proves that if you did choose titles well, it could be an effective way for driving traffic.
I've run out of other points... just start blogging already :)
Looking at the results to the left, my post was number 2 out of 13.2MM. Nice :) Now this tells me two things. First, something about how blogs are prioritized on search engines are potentially out of whack (no complaints here of course). Two, even though there are umpteen billion bloggers out there, someone like myself who blogs once or twice a week must be in the minority.
I've been evangelizing the power of blog marketing to a bunch of start-ups that I've worked with this past year. The immediate reaction was always focused on the amount of work required to make it work. Here's a few things to keep in mind.
1) If you share the workload across your team or have someone who likes to write, the workload is minimal and requires only limited sweat equity (not much sweating going on here)
2) Don't use blogs as a marketing tool alone. No one likes splogs :P Use it to personify your business and let readers/potential customers/investors put a face to your site, product or company. Here's a good example from a former classmate of mine, Gibu Thomas, founder of Sharpcast. Gibu posts about his experience as an entrepreneur (plus), his esoteric views on Web 2.0 (minus ;)), pokes a little fun at a Google translation (plus) and in the midst of this, mentions what the heck Sharpcast is trying to do (<= notice the free marketing). And believe me, Gibu is no genius (jk Gibu).
3) (No surprise) titles of blog posts drive a ton of relevancy bar none. I now have near top billing on MSN and Google for "Lockness Monster", "Google Porno" and "Google Base Traffic" based on title choice. As you can tell, I have no idea what I'm doing, but heck, hopefully it proves that if you did choose titles well, it could be an effective way for driving traffic.
I've run out of other points... just start blogging already :)
posted by Ro at 5/03/2006
5 Comments:
i agree 102%! group blogs are a v. smart way to divy up the workload of blogging - in any size business. plus, it gives your company a humanized voice. and we humans like doin' bidness with humans.
just do it.
I can't wait for the Parts & Accessories Team blog!
This is the Parts & Accessories Team blog :)
I can't even make it past the first paragraph of your blog. Do you have Cliff Notes?
You could of course also hire out a blogger.
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