How to Think about Marketing in Your Blogging Business

There is a new face to marketing thanks to the blogging community. Professional bloggers have changed the game.

Based on community development and nurturing their readers, bloggers’ take a unique approach to “selling” to their audience. Long gone are the days of traditional marketing strategy approaches often found in business plans. Marketing for bloggers is not about selling. Marketing for bloggers can’t be called “marketing” or “selling”. It is so much more than sales for blog business owners and their audiences.

Bloggers have incredible influence on their audience. Bloggers receive direct feedback on their work. They ascertain what topics relevant and what topics get at the heart of their readers. The insight is remarkable based on page views, yes, but even more than traffic, bloggers have direct access to the minds and hearts of readers. This direct access through newsletters and various social media platforms, particularly Facebook, affords an opportunity to not only understand readers’ pain points and passions but to literally use the exact language used by readers in comments, email responses, and Facebook group threads.

Your Professional Blogging Marketing Strategy

Bloggers connect in ways never possible by standard marketing approaches and brands are all over this fact. Readers listen to bloggers they trust and respect and brands are willing to pay for this loyalty.

Audience members convert for bloggers because – whether readers realize it or not – they were part of the product development process from early on the process. This involvement automatically builds in trust and buy-in from the end customer. Bloggers create products to make their readers’ lives easier, to solve a problem faced by their readers, and based on feedback from community forums and popular content.

Bloggers create products to make their readers’ lives better. Bloggers are uniquely positioned to have insight into the biggest problems faced by readers based on feedback from community forums and popular content.  From this insight, bloggers create products based on popular content and concerns expressed by their audience. Not the other way around. Bloggers don’t create products and then sell them to their readers. The readers drive the product creation. 

So, where does that leave us with creating a marketing strategy for our blogging business?

Getting readers to convert comes down to two main components: Community Development & Relationship Management

How to Develop Community for Your Blogging Business

By creating a safe space for readers to gather online and to connect within a vast range of interests from local running groups to international movements is how bloggers create value for their readers. Particularly strong are the parenting communities, for example. Coming together without judgment and instead with support & encouragement impacts parents in ways that will undoubtedly have a positive impact on our world.

Through these groups, bloggers get to know their readers and develop ideas and strategies based on direct interactions that will serve or solve a problem expressed not by one but by the masses of the group. This forum also provides more direct paths to paid mastermind groups and marketing services and programs beyond Facebook.

How to Manage Relationships for Your Blogging Business

Professionals bloggers need not fear if they lack in ‘sales’ skills. A focus on relationship management is key. Readers won’t accept bloggers in any other way.

So, how do you manage relationships with 1000s of readers?

1. Listen to them when they write comments and email you
2. Show up in your communities
3. Create a nurturing system via email and your Facebook groups that they cannot resist because it speaks directly to them.
4. Lean into your subscriber list. Your newsletter is perhaps the most powerful tool.
5. Focus on deliverability. Vital is having a strategy that focuses specifically on deliverability and click-through rates. So, for deliverability, make sure your list is high quality. Don’t focus on the numbers. Focus instead on the quality of your email list. For high click thru rates focus on truly understanding what makes your reader get up in the morning. Be unique. Oh, and segmenting by interests helps in huge ways.
6. Your social media strategy reigns queen. Here is what you don’t want to do: real-time promotion. I have been there and it feels awful emotionally and physically. Avoid spinning your wheels by hiring help, implementing effective tools, limiting your social media platform focus, leaning into share groups that actually share, and finding your tribe support and encouragement.

One slightly not relevant point I’d like to make is that the blogging community is a force not built upon competition to succeed but instead through collaboration. Just as a rising tide lifts all boats, an increased focus on community and relationship building lifts all aspects of your blogging business. Approaching your blogging business with this mindset will set you apart and will ultimately bring you success.

Let me know how it goes and be sure to follow along within our private Facebook group and as a subscriber to my newsletter.

Marnie