t4 Marketing Innovations Blog

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Blogs are worth doing for financial adviser firms.  They are easy to do and you don’t require an IT PHD to run one.  Tools such as WordPress and Google’s Blogger allow anyone to keep one.  If you integrate your blog with your website it is a great way of keeping your website updated with fresh material.  Keeping a blog and updating regularly also helps with your Search Engine Optimisation and is one of the key ways to push you up those search engines searches – important in today’s world of digital marketing.  Personalise your website as well.  A lot of websites do what they do but are drab, drab, drab.  A blog giving useful information, sign-posting other interesting sites or giving some views or news about your firm adds a little colour to your website – without having to be a web-design guru.

Promoting your blog is essential if you want to bring in readers. Many times, I have seen links in the signature to someone’s blog.  While this is a great way to get your blog out there, there is a more obvious way of doing this.

One of the ways to get traffic via your signature is to put a link to a new post in your blog and to include the title of the blog with the link. Say for instance you just published a new post titled “How To Grow Big Tomatoes”. Try using this as the title with your signature with the link to this page in your blog.  It is more explicit what are you doing rather than the link in the signature which hides your light somewhat.

Below, I’ve listed a few proven ways to driving traffic to your blog.

1. Social Networking – Social network sites like LinkedIn allows just about any type of self promotion. You can easily promote your blog this way. On LinkedIn you have many options, such as bulletins, classifieds, groups, forum and let’s not forget your signature. Other sites such as Facebook and Twitter also available. A rule of thumb on all social networks is, interact with the members of the site. Don’t just sign up and do a hit and run post, as it’s considered spamming.

2. Newsletters which highlight your blog and feature a link to it are another great way.

3. Leave a Comment.  Spend time reading other peoples’ blogs. Leave a comment and they are likely to check out your blog and do the same.

4. Get linked to other blogs.

5. Follow-up Posts – Have a post or two that will allow for a Part 2, or 3.  This will bring inquiring minds back for more.

6. Social Bookmarking- If you don’t belong to Digg then it would be wise to check them out and perhaps join. You can get a ton of traffic by adding a post from your blog to this site. There are other sites like this as well.

7. Advertise- There are some low cost sites out here in cyber-space where you can get cheap advertising. Some places like MyBouva allow you to list your link for only $10 a year.

Although this just touches the surface on ways to promote your blog. The reality is, there’s thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog. Be creative when thinking of new ways to promote yourself. Soon and hopefully traffic will be finding it’s way to your blog.

Innovator