I have been doing a lot of thinking lately about blogging and internet marketing. The reason I decided to write this post is because there seems to be a huge divide between many ‘real’ bloggers and internet marketers.
Whether you’re a blogger or an internet marketer, you have to find your own path, and follow your own passions. By discovering which side of the fence you sit on, you will then find your own voice and the online business model that fits your own particular strengths. In my case I am a blogger, but I am now incorporating parts of the internet Marketing model into what I do.
I must admit I was horrified when I read internet marketers advising others to write about whatever subject is popular regardless of whether they have any interest in that subject. To them you can forget totally here about passion, it’s all about following the money. To me this is using a blog no differently than you would a sales letter page. But these same people will argue passion alone will not get you anywhere. If you read my blogs you know for one I don’t believe this, and secondly it’s my passions that have paid off for me.
I recently got to talk with an internet marketer, John Jarvis. We are now friends. His site is John Jarvis Online and he is president of Nana Team Online a fantastic group where he offers free advice and coaching on all areas of internet marketing. We Skype virtually every day. I quickly realised that he had a great deal of knowledge to share that could be of benefit to me, as I had that would be of benefit to him. A perfect win-win situation. He has opened my eyes to internet marketing. Similar to me John comes from a place where giving, service and helping others is the norm. I’m excited to be working with John, exchanging ideas, and together we have put together, if I say so myself an awesome product, which we support with our personal help and coaching. We share a vision. We both enjoy helping people in times of need and making an impact, but also inspiring them to follow through to their peak potential. We are both sincere and determined to see change in others’ lives and we will do whatever we can to help individuals to be excellent in being online entrepreneurs. We will make a difference in their lives through our knowledge, information, coaching, encouragement, motivation and support.
I can assure you getting up every morning to spend your day absorbed in doing something you love is a fantastic way to live. I am now not only in love with coaching and writing on personal development, but I’m also passionate about helping others make a success and a living from an online business. I help those new to blogging focus on their strengths, help them uncover their unique voice and message, and then help them build an awesome online business.
I now see that blogging and internet marketing done right could be a match made in heaven, as they enable focused individuals to “harness the power of our passions.” Each supports the other, together allowing you to pursue your dreams and monetize your passions. They can create a really profitable partnership.
The world of internet marketing is very different from the world of blogging. I am slowly learning what these differences are. In my eyes one of the biggest differences can be seen within social networking.
Social networking has enabled me to establish a solid presence and become recognized as an ‘expert’ in my field. It has also allowed me to establish many long term mutually beneficial friendships. It is the place that has enabled me to build my personal brand reinforced by my blog. I have not used it to build a sales funnel. But of course networking leads to sales. It’s what perspective we use. My principle was to build relationships first, and let sales happen in their own time. But I do understand, that there is no more powerful weapon than being able to build a loyal following in your market as a blogger and then be able to offer them something to buy later on in time. But first and foremost in order to make a living online, you need to establish personal connections and build relationships based on trust.
Many of the internet marketers I’ve come across previously, use their social media presence right from the start as a marketing tool. They use the social networks they join to simply pitch their business in an attempt to generate sales leads. They seem not to bother themselves with building real relationships or friendships. Of course there are exceptions to this. Many who I work with now, are great networkers full stop, and build multiple relationships and go out there way to help others.
You should ask yourself one key question when it comes to social networking, and that’s not how do I find people to make a sales pitch to, instead:
How do I want to be known?
Creating a strong profile that shows you as a real person with big dreams and passions is surely the right way to approach social networking. To me my social media presence gives me the opportunity to help improve people’s lives, allowing me to be a source of inspiration and knowledge. My belief is that by sharing my knowledge with people and providing support helps me to build my personal brand and followers, as well as reinforcing my expertise.
A good blog will provide useful content to its readers, and with the right social networking focus you can develop a loyal group of followers who will come back to your blog on a consistent basis, and even leave comments. Others will ultimately come over and check what happens on your blog, and if impressed, they will bookmark your blog, subscribe to your RSS feed, receive updates via email, and so on.
Another everyday blogging activity is social bookmarking a blog article to the top social directories. This is a great way to get your blog article spidered by the search engines. You need to have a presence on the highly visited social directories such as Technorati, Digg, and Stumbleupon. We are proud of what we write, and want as many people as we can find to read what we write.
Blogging is a great way to attract search engine traffic. The tighter the focus of the blog the more likely Google is to love it and is one of the main reasons internet marketers are looking more and more at blogging. Search engines are constantly looking for new content and this is exactly what blogs offer. As a blogger I know the importance of getting my blog posts found by the search engines, as over 60% of my blog traffic comes from search engines, particularly Google.
Internet marketing has shown me to place more emphasis on my keywords. What I have now learnt is that combining good keyword research and using the right words and terms in my blog articles certainly strengthens the chance of my posts getting high ranking on the search engines.
The principle of creating lots of quality unique content will always remain my number one objective. I do love creating my posts. When I get into the focus where my creative inspirational juices flow into words there is no better feeling.
Internet Marketing though does bring me now a new way to look at monetizing my blog. It has introduced me to sales funnels, and conversion tactics. It provides us bloggers with ways to convert some of our traffic to sales leads, a key to being able to make money online.
Many bloggers do not think of themselves as marketers and certainly don’t regard ourselves as sales people. And alas this is why so many bloggers see absolutely no financial return from their blog.
Internet marketing tells us if you want to make money online with your blog, then you need to sell things. This means you are in sales. I’d rather think of it as there are so many opportunities awaiting all of us online, when we match our passions of doing what we love, with offering a product that is first class creating awesome results, then our success and financial rewards will come to us.
When it comes to your blog, are you a real blogger, real Internet marketer or both?
Tell me in my comments area! I’d love to know
Thank you for visiting my blog!!!
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