Introduction

I would like to take this time to introduce myself. My name is Gustav and I will also be contributing to the content on the website. You can read more about my accomplishments in the about section of the website. I have been in the background performing much of the marketing for the website.

This article will be one of several in a series devoted to Entry Level Blog Marketing. Much it will be advice of how to market your own blog through my own experiences.

There are two strategies that I undertook as part of an effort to market our blog as a useful resource for branding, marketing, and product management: Google Adwords and Web 2.0 social networking websites.

My Experience

I taught myself Google Adwords while I was a GM at a small single-owner operated pizzeria. I was extremely successfully in marketing our product in an incredibly competitive market (there were over two dozen pizzerias in just a 4 mile radius). In just over 3 months, with a budget of just $150/month, I was able to obtain a return on investment of 9:1. I was able to convince the owner that internet marketing is not only inexpensive but also extremely profitable.

Strategy A: Google Adwords

I applied the same strategy to our blog except the budget was significantly less ($50/month) and our blog was competing for ad space on a continent basis (North America was the geographic range) instead of a local basis with the pizzeria. While I was concerned, I decided to move forward because regardless of the outcome it would provide useful knowledge as our blog moves forward and garners attention.

The first setback occurred when many of the keywords that were relevant to our content were highly competitive and expensive. Words such as ‘branding,’ ‘marketing,’ ‘product management,’ ‘product branding,’ etc. had CPC(Cost-per-click) well over $1.00. Such a high CPC was unfeasible with our budget and made little sense when we have no current revenue stream. It wasn’t worth spending over $1.00 when it is highly unlikely each click will result in a conversion (conversion in our case was defined as an active reader of articles)

The second setback occurred when the keywords that were affordable (around $0.10 to $0.20 CPC) didn’t generate enough impressions to expose us to a large enough audience. With around 20 to 30 keywords per Ad Group we were only generating around 300 impressions in 2 weeks. That comes out to just over 20 impressions per day. When you don’t generate enough impressions, your CTR (Click-through-rate) won’t go up and as a result your quality score for those cheaper keywords will start going down resulting in a higher bid price in order to stay on the front page of results. This led me to believe that Google Adwords is not a good place to start for demand gen on a blog.

Strategy B: Web 2.0 Social Networking

Next, I decided to try the Web 2.0 market or social networking blogs that were frequently used around the world. The social networking blogs on my list included Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Mixx, Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Sphinn. While all of these social networking blogs differ in the content offering, feature set, and business model, they all have one thing in common: users of any of these social networking sites have an opportunity to submit their own content and have it viewed or rated by other users. This sounded like a great opportunity to get some exposure at no cost.

After about 2 weeks of posting to the above aforementioned websites, we had over a 500% increase in traffic to our blog. This was impressive. With just about 15 minutes of work posting to each of the social networking blogs per day and an additional 15 minutes or so participating in other content and articles, we were obtaining some serious ROI.

It should be noted, however, that social networking sites should not be exclusively used for your own personal gain. The whole purpose of them is to develop an active community of members that post content from a wide variety of sources. If you choose to market your blog through these sites, then make sure you return the chance at free advertising by actively contributing to other articles and posting links to other domains. Many of them also implement auto spambots that detect and flag users who use their service exclusively for personal gain so it would be wise to follow my advice. Also make sure the quality of your content is high. People won’t vote up what you submit or visit your blog if they believe there isn’t content there worth looking at. We at MGMT Now strongly believe the business content and analysis we provide will help others make insightful business decisions.

Conclusion

When deciding between Google Adwords and social networking websites for initial blog marketing the answer is simple: Go the no cost way of Web 2.0 social networking. However, once you have a revenue stream and can increase your monthly budget on Adwords to a competitive level, Adwords will prove to be very helpful. Adsense is a great way to generate advertising revenue, but I will leave that to another part of this series.

Being my first attempt at marketing a blog, it is very exciting to see the strategies that work and the strategies that don’t work from my own personal experiences. I take the time to write these articles because I want my readers to benefit much in the same way I have. I believe that everyone with an entrepreneurial spirit has a right to learn how to make a successful presence on the internet.

We’ve enjoyed a great boost in traffic from submitting our own articles to websites that rely on users as a filter. I would strongly recommend this tactic (when appropriate and relevant) to drive eyes to your site.

What Not to Do
Learn from Ben over at Sports Illustrated and do not ask other people to vote for you. Yes while social communications is a great tool for your business there needs to be a level of respectability in how you utilize it.
Asking your audience to vote you up on Digg or Reddit etc can have disastrous yet humorous consequences when they decide instead to publish your email. At this point the post is already up to 340 Diggs which makes for one heck of an embarrassing first page story.

Screen Shot Provided Below

 
If You Feel Like Voting it Up or Down URL Provided Below

http://digg.com/other_sports/Sports_Illustrated_Caught_Soliciting_Digg_User