Blogging with a purpose

– draft notes for my talk at the London Blogging Meetup

Why are you blogging and who do you want to reach?

I speak to a lot of bloggers who say I want this or I want that and I do not know how to get it.

What I would say is blog about what you want. What do I mean by that?

When I started blogging I was contacted by one company that wanted to advertise on my site, I did not say that I would write about them but I did as things came up. I then had more and more material on that subject and my readership was more and more focused in that area. That then attracted more and more advertisers in that area. They saw both the exposure that advertiser was getting and the audience I had built up in that area.

Think about how you could apply that to your own blog. Who do you want to connect with and about what? Write more material about that area even if you do not know all the answers and want to know more start the conversation and engage in that topic. Learn to become part of the conversation.

Quick analogy

Everyone knows someone who is nuts about cars and talks about it all the time, the more they talk about it the more you know them as an expert about them. If you are planning to buy a car you will go to them to learn more about it. What do you want more off? Talk more about it and become the information source about it. Google has a long memory and stores all those conversations so others find them, your old posts are there so the more you post the more their is that can be found.

I know the audience I want to reach how do I get there.

Research your competitors

If you are blogging as a business then bog about your business and things that your customers and potential business partners are likely to search for and engage in.

If you are blogging as an affiliate look at related sites in your niche and teach what they blog about and learn from them.

How to do specific research around what to write about? Think that publications create car sections and holiday sections.

Find out what your competitors get traffic for and what they rank for and write about those topics tools. Think this is research about what your audience is searching for and wants to read about.

Tools to use Alexa, Google Keyword tool, Keyword Spy, SEM rush

Find out where they are in social media

Search.twitter.com, Facebook.com, LinkedIn, digg, stumble and blogs and comment and engage in conversation.

Affiliate marketing and making money from affiliate marketing. Think about what you want to sell. Write what your audience will want to read about and then write about it including affiliate links. Use Skimlinks and their SkimKit tool or their competitors Viglink.

How easy are they to use? VERY. They make your links to companies affiliate links all you have to do is add a piece of code the bottom of your site and where there is an affiliate program it will become an affiliate link.

Quick analogy

You have developed a reputation as a car nut by talking about them. As a car nut who people listen to if you refer them to your friend Dave the local garage owner he might give you a commission. SkimKit connects you with lots of Dave’s.

Quick tip about getting links?

Ask for them, if you liked this please link to this post 🙂

Notes from the Q and A

Disclose when you are getting rewarded for a post.
Write what you really think about the produce good or bad, I try and just write about things I like which makes it enjoyable to write about them.