Thrive Learning Institute - How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Website

At Thrive Learning Institute we are all about finding new innovative ways to market your online business and blogs are an awesome, free way to do that. In this article we'll take you through 4 basic steps to get you up and blogging in no time.

Step 1: Learning About Blogging
A "blog" is an online journal, a place where people can share their ideas, interests, and advice by writing postings every two or three days. The word "blog" comes from two words, combined: "Web log".

Begin learning about blogging by looking over your products and seeing if there are any particular themes or topics. For example, if you're selling some fishing poles and reels, then "Fishing" would be the topic of those two sites. Next, go to Google.com and search for the theme and the word "blog". In our example here, you'd search for "Fishing Blog".

Google will return with a list of a lot of blogs that deal with that particular topic. You'll simply click into each one, one at a time, and begin reading what those bloggers have written on that topic. This will help you to understand better what blogging and "the bloggosphere" (the network of blogs) is all about. Reading other people's blogs will be an ongoing part of your promotional efforts for your website.

Once you've seen what blogging is all about, it's also helpful to understand that internet marketing is all about what are called "inbound links". That means that you want to get links TO your site from as many other relevant sites on the internet as possible. Not only does that bring you traffic, but it also means you'll be found by the search engines quicker and you'll rank higher. Blogging provides the opportunity for you to do that in two ways: Using other people's blogs, and creating your own blog.

Step 2: Posting Comments

In the process of reading other people's blogs, you'll find an occasional blog entry that catches your attention, inspires you, or makes you think something. When you do, click to post a comment. Leave your own opinion (politely and respectfully, if you disagree) and experiences that relate to what the blogger is writing about. Don't just say, "Nice blog!" or "Me, too!" Add to the conversation. When you post these comments, there is often a place where you can leave your website address, creating a linkback to one of your relevant product sites. This is a great way to start to create traffic and attention to your websites.
Step 3: Creating Your Own Blog

Creating your own blog will allow you to establish inbound links to your website, and and help you to draw traffic to it. Begin, again, by looking over your products and seeing if there are any particular themes or topics. If your website is well-centered around a good niche, this should be pretty obvious. Choose the topic of your blogs. Remember that you'll want to write in this blog every two to three days, so you'll want to have a theme that you can write about often.

Go to Blogger.com, create an account, and create a blog in that account. Make a note of the address(es) of the blog(s) you create, so you can send them to your coach, and use them in your promotion.

Step 4: Blogging

Begin by writing a blog entry in each blog. A blog entry should have:

1. Anywhere from 250 to 500 words. That's just a guideline. Nobody's counting!
2. Good, usable information that relates to the theme of the website's products. It's important to not just write sales copy about the product. That's called blogspam, and Blogger might actually pull the offending blog off the web. If you're not sure what to write about, you can read what other bloggers are writing about that same topic and get ideas and information to re-write into your own blog.
3. Lots of good keywords that your audience is searching for. See Dropship Benchmark #3 for good information on how to discover good keywords.
4. Links to your website. If you're writing about the theme of the products, you could mention a particular product in the blog entry, and create a link to it. Make sure that the text that becomes the link includes some of your good keywords!
5. Links to other people's blogs that gave you ideas. It's not only OK to link to other people's websites and blogs, it's a good idea. Then go back to their sites, and leave a message that you mentioned them. They'll probably link back to you, so their readers can see what you said about them!
6. Links to any of your other blogs or websites!

Continue by writing more blog entries, creating more links, posting more comments in other people's blogs and being active in the bloggosphere!

For more tips and advice From Thrive Learning Institute browse our archives.