Designing a Great Blog Advertisement
Although many bloggers swear that they don’t spend cash to advertise their blog, there are a few ways that, in everyday writing, you help promote your blog. Advertising your blog can be an alternative to producing content on a daily basis, as your traffic stream will continue to be high even when you aren’t producing content, plus there are dozens of avenues - both free and paid - that will help drive new visitors to your site, not limited to social media sites, small and large advertising networks (textual and image-based), and other methods that you may not even realize.
Your Introductory Statement/About Page/Content
The first, and sometimes the most prominent “advertisement” that you shove in your visitor’s face is the design, layout, and content that is seen upon entering your blog. It expresses what you are about, and is often duplicated on other blogs, creating a fluid advertisement. Often, your tagline and introductory “about” paragraph are quoted on other websites that mention your site. For this reason, it is extremely important to put a lot of throught into how you write these areas of your blog.
Everything from the main page, layout, and content displayed can leave a huge impact on your readership levels - now and down the road. Don’t skimp on these areas; place world-class copy and you’ll surely market your blog to success. After all, the whole purpose of these areas is to ensure that your blog isn’t empty and without a personal touch.
Create several versions of these statements and vary the length, so you can quickly copy and paste them when someone asks you about the main point of your site. Don’t hesitate to use them whenever possible, there is no such thing as too much marketing.
Text Links
Whenever someone asks you to exchange links with your blog, give them a specific link to use. Include several words that may or may not include the title of your blog, but ideally, it should be less than five words so it fits in their sidebar blogroll area. Every time you exchange links, use the same exact link, allowing search engines to recognize (if the link is followed) those keywords, raising your search engine rank for those select keywords. Gaining a good number of backlinks also allows you to refine who is visiting your site, through the use of high converting keywords that compete with other sites in your niche.
Throughout your blog, you can also repeat a set of links, although not in a “spammy” fashion, which may result in similar results as the above method. Moreover, it is important that you don’t focus on any single area of marketing your blog through keywords and internal linking, instead focus on building content that people are willing to link to, which already has the intended keywords built into the trackback URL.
Banner Advertisements
Designing a banner advertisement, whether for a traffic/link exchanging community and network built for bloggers such as Entrecard or Spottt doesn’t necessarily require a lot of work, as these services are free to use. However, when you enter the category of paid banner advertising, it is crucial that you design a banner or have one designed for you that “wows” people and makes them want to click. It doesn’t necessarily need to be anything fancy, it can be textual and basic, drawing in people that just click to see what site the banner points to or advanced, characterized by a colorful graphic, possibly animated.
The three main rules when designing a banner ad or having someone design it for you are:
- Include information about the type of site that you are running, whether in the form of an image, short text, or by your URL (if it contains keywords).
- Don’t make the image “flashy” or too advanced, or some sites will not permit it to run on their site.
- Optimize the image for the web. Try to keep it as small as possible, while still retaining most of the original quality. Any JPG, GIF, or PNG file will do fine, but the GIF format appears to be the prominent choice for smaller and animated banner ads, followed by the other formats, as both can be rather small in size. Many sites do not allow advertisements over the 40-100 KB range, so this is also to be kept in mind.
- Colorful, sleek, and ads that don’t reveal the entire purpose of the site generally convert the best - after all, you are trying to get people to click on the ad and visit your website.
- Create several different sizes, so it is easier in the long-run to advertise on multiple sites without needing to create new ads.
Video and Elevator Pitches
In the era of video blogging and a large presence of viral marketing, creating a short thirty to ninety second video clip of what your site is all about can help promote your blog. Keep it as simple as possible, as you are targeting people who wouldn’t normally visit your blog. They want to be able to hear about your blog in a few short sentences - why it is different from everyone else’s and what you have to offer. Don’t time date the video, as it likely has the time stamp as the date you uploaded the video. You want to be able to use the video as long as your blog exists in its current form and the topics that you are writing about.
An elevator pitch, either placed on your about page or in the video, should be short, typically the size of a paragraph or two, and express what your blog is about.
Creating a video or series of videos instead of posts on your blog can quickly grow your blog. It is easier to market to a group of people using video rather than text and the video can be embedded on nearly any website without breaking any copyright laws.
Overview and Key Points to Remember
The biggest point that you should take from this article is the fact that you need to continually optimize and change the way you market your blog, documenting each revision that you make to your layout, advertisements (textual and image-based), and marketing strategies. Find one that works best for your blog, then stick to a variation of that model.
This post wasn’t meant to help you necessarily design an advertisement, but lead you in the direction of creating one that “forces” others to click on the link/image advertisement that you have created.
How have you designed your advertisement(s) and what methods do you find work best for you - textual, image-based, video, or paid/free advertising?
