Popular Blog Topics include:

• Marketing In Crowded Waters Series
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• Data Crunch & Munch Series
• Insane In the Fast Lane – Media World Domination
• Google’s “ZMOT” versus “Maximize What Matters™”
• Steely Dan’s “Jack of Speed”
• Speed, Speed, Speed, Responding with Instant Web Sites
• Can the “999” Tagline Win a Presidential Primary
• Measure Clicks and Sales – Not Brandlift

Getting Blog Traction:

It is a beautiful feeling to evolve into a competent, or even great writer. However, being a competent or great writer is just one piece of the puzzle for achieving notable reader distribution to your blog(s), i.e., “Blog Traction.” This piece of the puzzle requires a methodical discipline that includes the use of state-of-the-art web technology.

The Discipline:

You will need to adopt or create a daily routine that includes:

• Joining a number of blog posts and offering substantive commentary on a regular basis
• Sending out newsletters/press releases to other bloggers to establish relationships aimed at increasing blog awareness
• Researching hot, topical information in the news, or other areas to keep your content timely
• Posting your blog within various social media channels, that will forward your blog to other blog outlets such as Digg, Reddit, Stumble Upon, and, tweeting about your blog post

To gain some perspective on a blogger’s challenges, think about your daily efforts to gain blog traction as being similar to a writer’s efforts, to get his/her book published by a major publishing company.

Writers who are pursuing a deal with major book publishing companies, are in fact, content creators looking for distribution. Conversely, a blogger who is looking to increase blog traction, is also a content creator looking for distribution, only the distribution channels are different.

Both disciplines share a common bond in that they require sweat equity to achieve increased distribution. Note: If you believe that because your friends and family enjoy your writing style, your blog posts will automatically gain blog traction, then you are engaging in wishful thinking. MatterMax Media believes wishful thinking is a positive attribute. However, wishful thinking alone will not guarantee increased distribution.

Blog Marketing:

Think of your blog as a product. Your blog content is considered intellectual property - any selling product/service that has been marketed to us through some media outlet; Cable TV, Network TV, Newspaper, Magazine, Flyers, Smart Phones, and yes, the web.

MatterMax Media strongly recommends that you market your blog and develop a blog marketing strategy.

Strategic Ideas:

• Create a tagline for each blog post and post each one to Facebook and Twitter pages with back-links to your blog posts
• Invest in Google Ad Words for upcoming special blog content
• Create a name for your blog
• Include an “upcoming section” inside every blog that highlights content of the next blog post
• Develop relationships with bloggers you like who have a large following. Comment on their blogs and provide links back to your blog pages
• Send out online press releases for special blog topics
• Buy targeted ads on Facebook

These ideas are just the tip of the iceberg, and should start your creative juices flowing. Marketing your blog on a regular basis is a critical step in achieving blog traction.

Technology:

No matter how much energy you place on distribution efforts, you will need to understand and employ web technology. Further, your marketing strategy will demand creative knowledge and foresight embedded in web technologies.

For instance, if you are a personal blogger and blogging is the primary focus of your online offering, then a Word Press site would make sense. Web gurus and bloggers commonly hold Word Press as “the” software package for personal blogging initiatives.

If you are offering more than just a blog, such as ecommerce, books, downloads, multimedia, then possibly a Joomla site would be the software of choice in that instance. Joomla is similar to Word Press at first glance, however, Joomla software is more extensive in its capability to customize and integrate.

Your site technology should contain the following attributes:

• Trackback and Pinging
• Email forwarding
• External blog forwarding
• Customizable blog layout
• Optimized code for site load times
• YouTube, Vimeo video inserts
• Google Plus outbound link
• Social Media sharing
• Smart Phone viewable

For the Word Press crowd, you can probably set up one of these sites fairly easily and quickly. If you require your Word Press site to contain more customization, you may need a web designer, as compared to other site software technologies, Word Press is limited.

Joomla, among similar web technologies such as Ruby On Rails, delivers full-blown, entrepreneurial web sites capable of: Containing a blog component, an array of multimedia inputs, as well as ecommerce and organizational dictates, under an extremely customizable framework.

If you are a regular blog visitor on MatterMax Media, you are probably aware that we update our blog weekly, every Tuesday and Thursday. Therefore, we recommend that you attempt to update your blog at a regularly scheduled time of your choosing; every day, two days a week, one particular day of the week, etc..   Case in point, you may choose to update your blog every Monday morning.

Next week, Today’s Marketing Blog will present part 4, the final installment of the “Blog Creation” series, “Assessing Readership.”

As we blog about those subjects that matter to all of us, we will continue to demonstrate the “Maximize What Matters™” concept and hope you are enjoying this series offerings. See you here next week for “MatterMax Media’s Today’s Marketing Blog – Thursday Edition.”

MatterMax Media is a full service integrated marketing agency located in Stone Mountain, Georgia. MatterMax Media provides strategy, technology, marketing and training for individuals, businesses and government. Today’s Marketing Blog focuses on Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Web Matters. When you require assistance with your branding/marketing strategy, feel free to contact us.