Blogs used as a marketing tool is not something new, but anyone who’s had the challenge of driving up traffic for a blog will tell you that blogs also have to be promoted.

Blog promotion or blog marketing is not an easy task. And unless you are already a famous person or blogging for a huge brand, then you can bet that you’ll need to work hard to get the word out on your blog if you want to see those page views go up. It means also means learning how to make use of other internet marketing tools, such as search engine marketing and social media marketing.

Search engine marketing (SEM) and social media marketing (SMM) are two of the major ways you can promote your blog. With SEM, you get traffic by placing ads on results pages of search engines like Google. This is not to be confused with SEO (search engine optimization), which should help you fare better is search engine result pages, but does not guarantee that your links will be shown on the first page like paid ads will do. Obviously, SEM is not the tack to take if you are on a budget, or don’t have one for advertising at all.

Social media marketing, on the other hand, taps into the numerous social media sites to give your blog more visibility. You have the option of putting up ads on social sites that offer them, like Facebook and LinkedIn. Or you can simply (or not so simply) groom your social accounts on any of the popular social media platforms (e.g. Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tumblr, MySpace, etc.) . Keep in mind that while launching a marketing campaign for your blog in more than one site will allow you to reach a wider audience, it is important that you only participate on platforms that will showcase your content best and that you can assure your active participation in.

Originally posted on June 23, 2013 @ 1:59 am