subject: Use Blog And Forum Marketing To Promote Your Business For Christmas [print this page] Christmas, and the weeks leading up to it, is a perfect time for connecting with others. We typically meet up with, or get in touch with, those important to us, whether family or friends. The holiday season is a time of conversation and catching up on each others lives.
As applies to business, this time of year is perfect for connecting with potential customers. The online environment is busier than an elf's workshop at this time of year. People worldwide are frequenting websites looking for gifts, recipes, and anything else to do with the holidays.
This is your opportunity, as an internet marketer, to reach a bigger audience. You can reach and converse with your target audience via blog and forums. Through these platforms, you engage in online conversations that help grow your business for Christmas and beyond.
Let's look at blogs. Using blogs to promote your business at Christmas, or any time, involves a focused strategy. You need a purpose for your blog. What do you specifically want your blog to achieve for your business?
Are you looking to get your enterprise name known? Are you looking to use your blog to promote one specific product or service? Alternatively, is your blog a platform to engage potential customers in social discussions? Are you only pre-selling with it and only doing product promotion on your actual website? Understand the purpose of your blog.
Encourage intelligent discussion on your blog, no matter the focus of the blog. Allow readers of your blog to make comments. When they do comment, reply to their comments. Here is the important conversation you want developing between you and your target market.
Work to ensure your blog is informative, entertaining, and useful. People who frequent blogs want timely, relevant information that helps them solve problems. They want answers to questions, and advice and tips that can help them in their daily lives.
A quality blog is akin to quality articles. You write articles and get them to your target audience through using a quality content distribution service. Readers access publications where your articles appear and read them to gain insight into topics. Upon finding an article useful, they often link back to the writer's website to learn more.
Readers expect this same knowledgeable insight from blog posts. Give them good information on your blog and watch your blog traffic grow. Subsequently, watch your website traffic grow as readers' link to your website from your blog.
It's vital you keep the objective of your blog at the forefront. Its objective is to build "your business." Therefore, limit or don't use ads promoting other businesses on your blog site. Advertisements, sounding and flashing everywhere on your business blog take away from your message.
In addition, an ad that shows on your site may be in direct competition with you. Be careful. Any ads on your business blog should be, ideally, banner ads for affiliate products you're promoting. They can also be ads that lead directly to your website.
You engage and keep your audience for your blog, and hence your business, through frequent posting. Make your posts a delicious holiday stew of information in the coming weeks. Include information about your business; why you're passionate about it. Include tips on how to use affiliate or other products you're promoting.
In addition, include announcements of new products or upgrades of current products. You can also provide information on the latest news in industries related to the products you market. If you attend trade shows or other events related to the products you sell, why not blog from those events. Give your audience live reports daily and keep them informed.
Now let's take a quick look at forum posting. Forum posting is engaging in conversation on a smaller scale. This doesn't mean you don't provide useful information to your readers in forums. You can point readers of your forum posts to articles you wrote on a subject. You can also provide links to other informative sites that can help them.
Consider the following three important tips to ensure your forum posts help build your business at Christmas:
1. Spend time posting on the appropriate forums. Don't post just anywhere. Find forums that deal with topics related to the products you're selling.
2. Offer value to your readers. Don't engage in hyped "sales talk." Give forum readers useful information, just as you do on your blogs and in your articles.
3. Respect your readers' opinions on forums. Don't start arguments. Don't be sarcastic. Your forum posts are for presenting you as an authority in your field. Give quality info to readers; earn their respect, and build your credibility as an online marketer.
Set aside time to market your business using blogs and forums. Strive to get useful information to your niche. Use blog and forum posting in conjunction with article marketing using a quality content distribution service. Together, these marketing strategies build businesses in a reputable way.
