Over the last few weeks while I’ve been traveling you may have noticed a new sponsor on ProBlogger in the headline banner position. Where as previously we’d kept this position for internal advertising this month we’ve launched a premium sponsorship package which was quickly snapped up by new sponsor
Firepow.
Firepow is a new (well actually it’s soon to be released) software developed by a fellow Aussie Hansen that aims to help you make your blogging and niche site marketing a more profitable experience.
Firepow will be launched on 30 April and Andrew is currently building a prelaunch notification list so that you can be informed of it’s developments over the coming weeks.
I’m yet to use Firepow but have had Andrew walk me through some of it’s features and aims and from what I can see it is designed to help bloggers with three main challenges:
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How Can Twitter be used to promote a blog? In this guest post Chris Brogan sheds some light on the topic.
Twitter is a lot of things to a lot of people. For some, it’s a virtual water cooler. For others, it’s a great way to get answers to questions.
Since I started using Twitter, I have more than doubled my blog traffic over the last several months, and I can tell you how.
Some people just dump their blog posts into Twitter automatically, with a simple “New Blog Post: Money is Better Than Dirt” and away you go. I’ve found a way of using Twitter to encourage participation on
my website, and it’s better than easy; it’s tasteful.
Ask a Question
Instead of telling your Twitter audience that you’ve published a new post, ask them their opinion on the core topic you’ve covered. “Do you think banner ads are dead?” followed by a link to your site is much more appealing than posting to Twitter, “Banner Ads Are Not Dead.” Asking a question engages your Twitter followers and solicits
their experience.
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This seems like a really subtle thing but it's something that I've tried to do and that is establish a personal brand and maintain it throughout all of my online activities.
Maintaining a personal brand using your own name or alias can actually be easier than maintaining a corporate brand, especially when it comes to social networks or blog comments. Using a company name within blog comments or setting up Facebook groups for a company often has that "spammy" feel to it. You look like your trolling for links instead of being an unbiased contributor to the conversation.
I've been lucky in that my last name, Snook, is relatively unique and memorable. Ironically, as a teenager and with my desire to fit in with the crowd, I didn't want that uniqueness. I even thought changing my last name might be an option. Luckily, I didn't make that mistake and have finally in recent times come to embrace the name. I've been slowly expanding on that to the point where people just call me "Snook" (or Snookums, affectionately). And that's a good place to be.
Here's a quick list of things you can do to help maintain your personal brand online:
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Over the past week I’ve shared
five strategies that I’d use to promote my blog if I were starting from scratch again today.
We started off by looking at how the majority of your efforts need to be focused upon Readers You Don’t Already Have (obvious but important) and then looked at the five strategies of:
- Guest Posting
- Networking
- Advertising
- Social Media
- Viral Content
Together I believe that these five strategies pursued together would give a new blog a good start (note: pursuing just one of them might have some impact but together they are more effective).
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Did you realise that today is
International Women’s Day?
I’ll be celebrating by hosting a panel on the subject of
“Women in Technology” and a session about using social media to create, publish and market your book at Creative Camp, taking place in Kilkenny.
I’ve also been invited by
Frank Fullard, CEO of the Mayo County Enterprise Board to facilitate a workshop for female business leaders in celebration of International Women’s Day 2008.
The event will take place at
Knockranny House Hotel, Westport on Tuesday 11 March 2008 starting at 7pm with refreshments and networking at the end of the workshop at 10pm.
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One of the things I have come to realise when considering implementing social media marketing strategies to build your brand and attract more clients is that many organisations have still not mastered the basics of online marketing.
In fact at a recent workshop that I led, less than 50 percent of the business leaders of small professional services practices had taken the first step in building their brand online and attract more clients. The problem they faced was that they did not know where to start in creating a presence on the web.
What is more disturbing is that some of the people that are teaching entreprenuers in Ireland through workshops being held by the
Enterprise Boards in Ireland to build their business online have an ineffective presence themselves.
In fact I was speaking to one person last week who runs an ecommerce training programme for a number of the Enterprise Boards and their website actually consists of a PDF uploaded online. So they are definately not teaching ecommerce from a position of expert knowledge.
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