How to Market your Media Blog

            So you've been writing your posts for some time now and you can't help but wander, what else can I possibly do to get people to look at my blog? Well the truth is you can have as much writing talent as a flea and still get your content noticed. Take me for example, I may be a student but I'm hardly the next George Lucas or J.K. Rowling. If you're serious about maintaining and marketing your blog, especially one concerning the media, then read on and you might learn a thing or two.

            Well you must be fairly committed since you've decided to read on, that or you really are the prince/princess of procrastination. On a serious note though commitment is by far the most important thing needed to create and maintain a successful blog, don't panic though since it's not all research and writing. The main thing I'll be focussing on in this post is not what your blog is about but how you are going about adding content and sharing it with your potential audience.

Courtesy of usmansheikh.com

The Theme

            Picking the theme of your blog and sticking to it is definitely a great place to start. Although it's all well and good having loads of posts on your site, they need to maintain some form of continuity otherwise they are ultimately a waste of time. With that in mind and once you are happy with your theme, create an 'about' page (calling it whatever you like) and fill it with your mission statement. In other words this is a page dedicated to telling your viewers what your blog is about and what you hope to acheive whilst writing it. As an extra bonus this can serve as a personal reminder on what your writing about which should hopefully help you to maintain focus.

courtesy of LiveScripts

The Name

            If you've come up with a great theme for your blog but can't think of a name then don't panic, just keep it simple. As you can probably tell from the name of this blog I struggled to come up with anything clever, however search engines like Google (which accounts for more than half of the hits for any given website) don't like clever puns and flashes of genius, but they absolutely love key words. For example the key words in my blog's name would be Career Planning, Media and Student. When anyone types these key words into an online search engine my blog will show up (eventually) and I may have gained a new page hit as a result.

Courtesy of Google

Key Words and Alt Text

            As with the name of your blog, the title and opening paragraph of each individual post should contain key words. Let's be honest how often do you go beyond the first results page of a search? The answer is inevitably very rarely, so get key words in to your posts as often as possible to ensure your website makes it to the top of any relevant searches. Another simple way of improving your blog's accessibility is through the use of alt text. When you hold your mouse over an image (the cursor not the actual thing in your hand) more often than not a short description of what the image contains should appear. Not only does adding alt text to an image increase your page's chance of appearing in a search engine, it can open your blog to a whole new audience as well. That new audience is the blind community and any alt text an image may contain will be read out to a blind internet user by their web reader. Ultimately this means a greater chance of regular page viewers for you so making your website as accessible as possible via alt text is essential.

Labels

            Another quick but effective way of advertising your blog to search engines is by adding labels to each post you write. Labels are basically key words you can use to tag your posts with, for example, some of the labels I added to one of my previous posts A review of Apple's new iPad 3 were Apple, iPad 3 and retina display. I chose these since they are all going to be common searches online, Apple is probably the most popular company in the world today, the iPad 3 has
been speculated since the launch of the iPad 2 over a year ago and the new retina display it contains is one of the most talked about additions to the California based giant's latest tablet. As a result anyone typing any of these three words into an online search may be presented with my blog's review and I may of gained another page hit. In short be sure to label your posts with any key words they may contain and you should see a marked improvement to your viewing figures.

Courtesy of icanhascheezburger.com

Promoting Your Blog

            By now you're posts should be filled with key words, labels and images containing alt texts resulting in a blog you are hopefully proud of. If that's the case then now you need to get out there and market it to your potential audience. This may seem daunting and let's face it the internet is huge but it really is fairly simple. Start off by linking as many other blogs and websites into your posts as possible, especially ones you've spoken about or taken content from. Doing this will further advertise your blog to search engines but the main goal here is to build relationships with other bloggers and websites. By linking other people's content you are effectively advertising their work and more often than not people will return the favour or at least leave a good review. If you find yourself struggling to connect to other bloggers than try to get involved in their discussions and try to link your blog in a comment on their page. Although you want to gain as much attention for your blog as possible,  make sure you don't spam people with links and content, this will only irritate them and alienate yourself from the online community.

Courtesy of subtractme.com

Gadgets

            As well as actively sharing your blog online there are some useful gadgets to help other people share your content for you. Adding gadgets like 'Share It' allow viewers to share your blog over social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter which is perhaps the best exposure any online content can get these day. This means that whilst you should always update your own social networking sites with your latest blog posts, you might get other people to do that job for you. Another extremely useful gadget to have on any blog is a well placed 'Subscribe' button, if someone subscribes to your blog then they'll automatically be notified everytime you put new content online. This is perhaps the easiest way to ensure that people who view your blog keep coming back for more and audience loyalty is one of the best things any blog can obtain.

Commitment

            Last but certainly not least, just keep posting! If you only post to your blog once a month then your audience will get bored quickly and search engines will drop you way down on their pecking orders. Make sure you are adding new content to your blog as often as possible and sharing each new post on your social networking sites. Sites like Twitter can work both ways, you can have your latest tweets appear as a list on your blog page and you can tweet about your latest blog update on Twitter itself. As long as you keep updating your blog and getting your audience to connect with you on as many different social networking sites as possible then you will be on to a winner in no time.

Courtesy of splashmedia.com

Any Questions?

            If you're interested in finding out more on how to successfully market your blog then check out this great post on blazingminds.co.uk which is a great website for all of your blogging questions. Alternatively leave a comment below or follow me @CA_Brit and let me know if this post has been helpful or if there's anything else you'd like to know.