5 Things I Learned About Marketing from Running a Blog

Everyone and their mother has a blog these days. Heck, there are blogs specifically dedicated to mothers known as mommy bloggers. With all the blogger noise out there, getting people to actually read it is really hard.

I learned this the hard way when running my own blog between March 2012 and May 2013. You can check it out here. When I started the blog, I was under the naive impression that creating content meant that I would find an audience because content is king, right? Right?

Here are some things that I learned while running my blog.

1. Content is NOT king

Just because you make something, doesn't mean anyone will read it. It doesn't matter how many hours upon hours you do research for the article, or how many painstaking days you spend staring at the blank computer screen, people can't find it if you don't tell them about it. There's so much content on the web and it's being written by people who are a lot smarter and with a lot more connections than you. No one cares about some random person who writes a random article without a reason to read it.

The good news is that the internet gives you the resources to get the word out if you go looking for it. I spent a lot of hours reading articles on blogging and social media marketing to make it even halfway readable. If you're not willing to do the same, no one will find you.

2. Social media is your friend

One of the biggest resources that you can use is social media. Your friends and family are your best bet to generate that initial audience, no matter how small your circle of friends might be. The great thing about social media is, everyone's on it. Facebook alone has over a billion users. Twitter is in the hundreds of millions, and that's only two of the biggest out there.

Get on both at the very least and start connecting to your friends. You can even make new friends you may not ever meet in person. The connections you can make can be invaluable. From celebrities and bloggers in whatever you want to talk about to that random person in Siberia who might be willing to pay you for it. Your audience is out there, you just need to get out there and find them.

3. Don't be a dick

Wil Weaton is a man of great wisdom. I don't know if he actually said it first or not but he's where I learned that lesson from. You can't get an audience by yelling at people "READ ME! READ ME! READ ME!". That's being a dick.

As the saying goes, don't be a dick. Find other ways to do social media marketing to the people in your network. Search out some other relevant content to share and share it with people. I made a point of not filling my friends newsfeeds with my own stuff and they seemed to appreciate it. They still do, as I get people coming up to me at various events and thanking me for all the content that I share.

That's good marketing.

4. It's a zero sum game

Be prepared to put in a lot of work for no money. If you're cash strapped and in desperate need of a job, don't go into blogging. It may be a way to pass the time and building an audience but I never made any money off it and very few people actually do make anything out of blogging.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to make money blogging. It does happen, but it's usually the people who freelance for a bigger site who make money from blogging. The big news organizations have the money to pay people for their work but your own blog probably won't make any money on its own.

5. Content IS king, just not the kind of content you think

The thing about internet marketing is that it's not just about what you say, it's also about how you say it. No one cares about the content of your blog, but that doesn't mean that people can't find it. Searching for things on Google is all about the words on the page, and it likes certain keywords about certain topics. You have to do your research before you write anything and put that into your writing. If you don't, Google will have trouble finding you. And if Google can't find you, no one will.


Conclusion

There are a lot of great blogs out there that make it look effortless, and they often put forward the idea that you need to just go ahead and do it. The truth is though that it's just not that simple. You need to know how to do it properly. I didn't, and it took me a long time to figure out. If I did it all over again I'd start again from scratch using all these tips to make it better.

So if you're thinking about starting a blog, make sure to do your research and have these tips in mind when you do it.



What tips would you give to first time bloggers?
Sound off in the comments below.