Marketing is an oft-used term in the business world. Though most everyone knows what it means, not everyone fully understands what marketing entails. More so, not everyone is convinced that marketing is important - especially when it comes to small businesses. The way that some people think is that since it’s just a small endeavor, it would not really need marketing anyway.

If you think that way, you couldn’t be more wrong! Marketing is an essential part of any business, whatever the size! Marketing should be at the top of your list of priorities when starting up a business. Now, what if you are the only person working for your business? Where will you find time to engage in marketing activities?

That is a very good question. It is understandable that as you are still starting up, you might not have the time and resources to launch a full fledged marketing campaign. As such, you can think of incorporating some marketing practices into your already existent activities.

For example, take advantage of the social and business functions that you attend. Whether you go to a charity dinner or a party at your club, you should be ready to market your business. Looking at it in another way, you can even build stronger relationships with existing and potential clients by extending invitations to such functions to them.

Another way of marketing would be to share pertinent information with other people. For example, while reading the news or other relevant publication, you can choose to send an article to people with a note that reads something like “I though you would be interested.” Take note, however, that you shouldn’t spam. Make sure that what you send is really relevant to the recipient.

More on marketing next time.

One of the most time consuming activities that you have to engage in when it comes to business blogging is promoting your business blog. I suppose that it does not really differ much from the more conventional ways of marketing. You have to take certain steps to ensure that people will know that your business exists and you have to exert effort and set aside time for these things. The same goes with blogging.

Creating a blog is easy. Whether you want to use a free blog platform or you want to use your own domain, the idea is the same and the execution very simple. Coming up with content for your blog is relatively easy as well – perhaps writing might prove to be a task for some but it can be handled quickly.

Marketing your business blog, on the other hand, I find to be more tedious. With the millions of blogs on the Internet today, how will other people find yours? More so, how do you get people you are targeting to discover you online? That is where marketing comes in.

One effective way is to submit your blog or web site to search engines. I have been working on a blog of mine in the past month or so and I have only recently been reminded of the importance of submitting to search engines. Before I did this, I barely had traffic to my blog. After spending several days on focusing on blog search engines, I began to see my traffic going up in the next few weeks. It does not happen overnight, mind you, but you do get results.

You’ve probably heard about social networking. After all, it is all over the web, TV, and print. Still not sure as to what social networking is? Think Facebook. Think MySpace. Digg. Technorati. All these are example of social networking sites. Now you may be thinking – what does these things have to do with my business? These sites are not for business!

Well, think again. The truth is that these social networking sites can help you improve your online presence. How so?

Let’s take a look at Facebook. Becoming a member is free. All you need to do is sign up, fill out their registration form, follow the steps, and you are good to go. You need to build up your friends. You look for people whom you may know or people whom you may want to be friends with online. It is actually a great way to make new contacts, even new customers.

Better yet, you can place your web site’s URL or your blog’s URL in a prominent location on your page. People will then only have to click on the link to visit your blog. There are many ways by which you can promote your blog or web site on Facebook (as well as other social networking sites). You can comment on photos, links, profiles, etc. and place your link in your comment. This would not only create links to your site or blog, it would also make it easier for the people to click the link and visit your site or blog.

Of course, it is very important that you conduct yourself in a professional manner. Spamming other people’s accounts or shamelessly and tactlessly promoting your link will not do your business any good.

In the last post, I was talking about some tips to promote your blog. With all the blogs that exist today, what are the chances of other people finding your blog? It just might very well be like the proverbial needle in the haystack! Well, that is if you do not exert a real effort in promoting your blog so that other people will be able to find your blog even if they do not even know that you exist – yet.

The last of the three tips we talked about was focusing on originality. How does one define what is original? I suppose you can look at it in two ways. One, original in the sense that it is your own work, ideas not lifted off someone else’s blog or web site. Two, original in the sense that the post does not merely repeat what you have said one or two posts ago.

So ask yourself, just how original is your business blog? Are your posts merely full of quotes from other blogs or web sites? Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t find anything wrong getting inspiration and ideas from other sources – that’s how great posts begin actually. But if you do quote from other sources, at least mention it! Also, throw in your own perspectives – those are what make your posts your own.

On to the second point – do you merely repeat concepts and ideas over and over again in various posts? Sometimes this is necessary, especially if there are many aspects to a certain concept. However, make sure that there is something new that you are presenting – it may be the same topic but with an additional point of view, perhaps.

Promoting your blog is one of the most important aspects of business blogging. You want people to be able to find your blog amidst the plethora of other blogs in existence. Different people would have different takes on how one should go about promoting any blog. I ran across some really sensible tips in Business Blog Templates that you may want to consider as you look for ways to promote your own blog.

Have a clear objective for each post.
You always must ask yourself, what the aim of your post is and how it is going to help your site be promoted in search engines. And of course, you should understand that SEO isn’t a one-time occupation. It requires time and permanent attention. Search engines use to change their algorithms, which means you’ll constantly have to think of new ways to satisfy these requirements.

Consider seeking professional help.
If you believe that your business blog can do well without professional help, you’ll have to be in the know of the latest SEO trends and become one of the regular visitors of SEO authority resources. Otherwise trust control over your business blog to your SEO specialist. Always try to consult people, familiar with SEO - professional advice will never be out of place.

Focus on originality.
Create original content, interesting to your readers. Never write for search engines. Always remember, that the content of your business blog must contain 95% of useful and interesting information and only 5% of SEO. All SEO specialists agree that content is the most powerful optimization tool. With it’s help you can attract not only new readers, but new external links, which is another important SEO criteria.

Of these three tips that I found most interesting, I think the last one bears a lot of weight. Let us look into this point sometime in the future.

Don’t expect momentum to last
I think what John Chow is talking about is personal momentum – the drive that keeps you going with regard to your blog. If I understood his message correctly, then I totally agree with him. In everything you do, you will most certainly be all excited and raring to go in the beginning – there is nothing to that. The challenge arises when you lose momentum somewhere down the road – this is inevitable too. However, it is up to you to keep going, to keep your productivity up and continue to achieve results. If you don’t expect momentum to last, you can anticipate loss of drive (albeit temporarily) and come up with a plan to deal with it.

Don’t overlook content in the quest for promotion
Promoting your blog is very important – we all know that. We want to be able to get the word out that a blog exists and then attract people from all over the world to take a look at it. However, promotion can only go so far. You may have the best promotion and marketing machine in the world but that will not do you much good if your content sucks. Promotion is the first step – getting people to visit your site. Yet if you have nothing to offer by way of content, these very same people will not go back to your blog nor will they tell others to do so.

And that, my friends, is what John Chow has to say about NOT making your blog a flop.

Here are some more compelling reasons to improve your online presence.

Save money on printing and distribution costs.
If you are operating “offline,” the chances are that you spend a considerable sum on printing and distribution costs. This is because the traditional method of marketing involves paper and then physical distribution – either through post or manual distribution. Either way, you have to shell out money to get the job done. This happens with each issue of a newsletter or a flyer.

When you decide to maintain a web site or a blog, though, you would considerably lessen these costs. How so? Of course, you would have to spend some money on the setting up of the site as well as the maintenance. The cost is much lower than the traditional method, though. With a blog, you need only to post entries and make use of the existing technology to distribute your new entries without having to spend a lot.

Get wider exposure for less cost.
Information on the Internet is available to anyone anywhere in the world. Think of your blog as a “free” means of getting the publicity that you need and want. All you need to do is work on your blog and make sure that you reach as many people as you want to. This means crossing physical boundaries – the potential is limitless!

Operate 24/7.
Business hours offer limitations but they are necessary. You can open a hotline which customers can reach 24 hours a day, 7 days a week but the costs may be beyond your reach. With a web site or a blog, however, customers can seek the information they need anytime they need it.

Small or home-based businesses face the seemingly insurmountable problem of getting the word out there. Though they may offer a good product or service, if no one knows about them, their business is not going to grow the way they want to. Are you facing this kind of issue in your small or home-based business?

I know that you have probably heard that one of the best ways to advertise is to build a web site. These days, having an online presence is a must if you want to get ahead in the game. Having a site wherein people can find out more about you and your products from the comforts of their homes or offices is on of the most effective ways of advertising.

Yet have you ever thought that you could actually use your business blog as your web site? If you don’t have a web site for your business yet, you could start a blog for the business and generate traffic and potential customers as well.

Blogging is a cost effective way of communicating to the world what your business has to offer. Think about these advantages:

-You can start with a free blog hosting platform.
-You don’t have to know HTML and those things with most blogging platforms.
-Blogs are (generally) search engine friendly.
-Readers cum customers will find your business blog more informative and interactive with comments and responses from you.

You don’t have to start big and spend money on a hi-tech web site. Start simple and reap huge rewards with a business blog as your web site.

Another aspect to Google’s blogging protocol is that the blogs of each product team is focused solely on Press Relations. That means that comments are turned off for the blog posts. This in turn means that readers cannot voice their opinion and bloggers cannot respond. In short – conversation is not possible.

How can this be beneficial?

I have always stuck to the belief that one of the strongest aspects of a blog is the fact that you can encourage readers to comment and share their own ideas. Gathering information from readers in this way is quite efficient and effective – both in terms of time and money. So how does Google do it without allowing people to comment on their posts?

Perhaps Google already has an advantage of, well, merely being Google. Despite the fact that they do not allow comments in their blogs, their posts serve a purpose similar to that of a pebble being thrown into a placid pond. A tiny pebble thrown into calm waters gives off ripples that have a far reaching effect. Same thing with Google posts – they incite such active discussion in the blogosphere such that their ultimate aim of making their presence even more felt online is achieved.

How can your business benefit from this strategy?

I think that you can adopt a similar policy of using your blog as a venue for press releases. Though you may not feel comfortable letting go of the traditional press release as of yet, you may want to ease into this pattern little by little and see how it can benefit your own business.

Image from: Drawn

People are inevitably drawn to free stuff. One surefire way to get more traffic to your blog as well as promote your product is by hosting a contest on your blog. What makes a good contest though?

From what I have seen there are several mistakes that bloggers make when hosting contests. First is that some make it too easy to join the contest so that contestants become one time visitors that wait for results via email. Second is the opposite. It is so hard to join the contest and there are too many exclusions (buying a product, writing long essays, etc.) that you automatically turn off the majority of those who might have wanted to join. And last, is offering something “worthless” as a price (like a backlink when your blog obviously has only two readers - no value).

From these observations I came to realize that for a blog contest to be successful you need to do the following:

• Have cool prizes. What is cool will depend on your target audience. While being added to the blogroll or having a post written about them is great note that this won’t be seen as valuable unlesss your blog has lots of traffic. Online gift certificates are great because winners get to choose their prize.
• Have 3 or more winners. Having just one winner is discouraging. Always give away prizes to 2nd and 3rd place winners or to category winners.
• Give varied ways to join and win prizes. For example while some may win a small prize by simply leaving a comment and thus be included in the random draw (easy way of joining) others can hope for bigger prizes by linking back to your blog (Yay for links!), posting a related story there or posting a picture. Buying a product from your online store can also earn them points for the raffle draw. This way you will get more people to join the contest as well as get something out of it automatically.

Image Source: MK Rules - Keeping it Positive; Keeping it Real