Three Keys to Effective Internet Marketing with Blogs

March 6, 2008

By Cory Miller

This is a guest post by Ryan Imel of Theme Playground.

Key #1: Be Original

Blogs are no long a brand new trend. Anymore they are expected. So, if you’re late to the boat, you better swim hard to catch up.

Since blogs aren’t new, the one thing readers don’t have much tolerance for anymore is repetition and un-originality. That time is past. Now you have to be bold, you have to be new, and most importantly you have to provide something useful to the reader. If you can do those things, then you can start to feed a brand to them and they won’t even begin to complain.

Key #2: Stick to the script.

Your blog becomes whatever you write about, and it will take on that personality. So spend a good amount of time at the beginning making sure you have your mission and objectives are clear. Many many many blogs start off without much guidance or intended purpose, and you can tell when you try to read through the posts. A lot of the blog will be improved as you improve your skills as a blogger.

Key #3: Give them something to do.

This should point back to a marketing principle you’ve used elsewhere: it’s no use getting someone’s attention if you don’t have anything to do with it once you have it. you have something you want your readers to do: point them to it with every ounce of your energy on your blog.

There is a balance to this, of course. Don’t add so much flavor to the soup that you can’t down it, you know what I mean? Try to keep the goal of your blog as a theme more than it is a punchline, as an breeze rather than a gust. If you do this well, your readers will catch on and begin to think of your blog as you want them to: a source of X and a place to find Y.