Blog Marketing Quick Start Guide

On this page, you’ll find links to some of our most popular and informative articles about blogging and marketing your business blog from our Professional Services Marketing Blog. If you are looking for help creating your marketing strategy, check out our Strategic Marketing FAQ or download our Free Marketing Plan Guide.

For more tactical marketing advice, check out our pages on website marketing and search engine optimization. You may also find our free marketing podcasts helpful.

1 - Get Started With Blogging

If you’ve been thinking about starting a blog, you probably have numerous questions about how to get started, why you should blog, and who reads blogs.

• What is a blog?
• 9 Reasons Why You Should Blog
• Top 5 Concerns About Blogging
• What Types of Blogs Are There?
• Who Is Blogging? Who Reads Blogs?

2 - Setting Up Your Blog

The quickest and easiest way to start blogging is to set up an account with Google’s Blogger.com. More technical users will probably like the Wordpress.org platform better because it offers many more features and control over your content.

• Setting Up a Blog with Blogger.com
• How To Import Blogger.com Posts Into WordPress

3 - Creating Blog Content

Once you’ve set up your blog, it’s time to start writing. Here are articles about what to write about and whether you should hire ghost writers to help you produce content.

• 7 Tips to Consider Before You Post
• What Should You Blog About?
• Why Most Blog Visitors Don’t Comment
• The Ethics of Ghost Blogging

4 - Marketing Your Blog

The biggest myth of blogging is if you write great content, readers will come. Unfortunately, like with anything you do, marketing is essential to your blog’s success. Here are ways to market your blog.

• Reader Q&A: Why Can’t People Find Our Blog?
• Podcast: Search Engine Optimization For Bloggers

5 - RSS Feeds

A great way to gather subscribers to your blog is by using an RSS feed. An RSS feed is a standard feature with most blog software platforms, so you usually don’t have to worry about the technical aspects of setting one up. However, you may be interested in tracking your subscriber statistics and which options to choose for publishing your feed.

• What is a Site Feed and Why Bother with Feedburner?
• RSS Feeds: Should You Publish a Partial or Full RSS?

6 - Monetize Your Blog

While some people publish a blog simply because they enjoy it, others want a measure return on their blogging investment. Here are a few ways to make money from your blog.

• Ways To Monetize Your Blog
• How Bloggers Make Money
• Blog Ethics: Should You Write Sponsored Reviews?

7 - Tracking Results

Finally, you need metrics in place to measure your blog visitors and subscribers. Google Analytics is a free tool that is easy to install on your blog. Learn more about it.

• Blogging Tools: Google Analytics