How To Drive Traffic With A Blog
Copyright 2006 Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc.
Blogs are different than regular static sites. Although a blog
is really just a fancy word for a content management system,
therefore it is just a regular site with enhanced and easy
editing, a blog has a sense of urgency and "newness." People
read blogs because there is a general feeling that the
information posted is more current compared to static sites.
This is true when the blogger is very regular with new material
and gives people a reason to tune in frequently.
Promoting a blog, I have found, is far easier than promoting a
regular website for many reasons.
Because you can create "news" on your blog at the drop of a hat,
you can create buzz. Buzz is infectious, produces links from
"buzzed" website owners looking to present their visitors with a
buzz, and gets you attention that is harder to acquire for
regular sites.
You can promote a blog through RSS and get subscribers who would
rather use a "podcatcher" (a newer phrase that simply means they
subscribe to your RSS feed rather than your email list with a
tool like FireAnt http://fireant.com).
People like being anonymous in this over-emailed world of ours.
Getting subscribers to a blog via your RSS feed means you are
offering a way for the justifiably paranoid to access your
material without committing their personal information in the
exchange.
So you have another way to promote here as well. Rather than
sending people to your opt-in page only, you can grab RSS
subscribers on every page of your blog, no matter which page
they come through.
Now you can trade links, or trackbacks, with other bloggers in
your niche which is a much more highly respected and valuable
form of reciprocal linking that Google actually loves.
Having a blog means you can "podcast." Podcasting is making
audio and video files available in your posts that can be picked
up in your RSS feed by people using places like iTunes.com to
find multi-media content.
This is a MASSIVE new open market of people really getting into
iPods, especially the new video iPods, and seeing what their new
gadgets can really do.
By creating an informative how-to video and podcasting it from
your blog, you can get listed in iTunes and other podcast
directories that are practically empty on many niche topics
right now!
These are things you can do with a blog that you cannot do very
easily or at all with a static site.
Don't forget that there are other directories only bloggers can
promote in. Directories like Syndic8.com and Daypop.org are only
open to bloggers with RSS feeds.
While everyone else is working down in the trenches on their
one-dimensional static html site, bloggers can enjoy promoting
their sites in far less competitive areas with extreme amounts
of traffic flowing through them.
In short, a good blog with the right plug-ins will give you
marketing power I wish I had when I was starting out. My blog
would be 7 years old this year and would have an archive section
a mile long with content syndicated all over the web established
over those 7 years!
This time next year you are definitely going to wish you had
started your blog today! Especially when you consider the vast
potential of audio and video podcasting and syndicating your
content easily through your feed to places that only accept
bloggers. Static sites need not apply!