Offline Promotion
Image by robertnelson via FlickrYesterday, 3 of Australia’s well-known bloggers featured in a news article on Channel 10. While this is GREAT publicity for Darren Rowse, Karen Cheng and Neerav Bhatt, I believe the potential benefits for ALL bloggers through this publicity is great. The better known blogging becomes as a hobby AND as a potential income earning venture, the more opportunities we are likely to see arise for anyone willing to snap them up.
How important is offline promotion when it comes to making money blogging?
I think this is an area where we’ll start to see more and more action happening.
For those who choose to view blogging as a business, it’s important to approach blog promotion in the same way you’d promote any business. That is, identify your needs and look for places that will provide you with the best value in terms of meeting your business needs and goals.
What do you need in order to generate advertising revenue on a blog?
1. Readers
The more readers you have, the more value your blog provides to potential advertisers. In essence you have a “louder” voice.
2. Reputation
You can have all the readers in the world, but if your reputation is of someone who will say anything in order to earn a few dollars, you are going to reduce your value to advertisers. One of the LARGEST benefits I see in bloggers as product and service promoters is the relationships they are able to build with their readers.
3. Advertisers
The more advertisers interested in the real estate on your blog, the higher the price will be forced and the higher your potential earnings will be. I think we are yet to see advertisers putting the value on blog advertising that it deserves. What they are paying for is reach and reputation. As blogging becomes a more well-known media, I think this value will be appreciated more highly.
Where is the Value in Offline Promotion?
1. Increase awareness of Blogging
It surprises me how many people have still never heard of blogging before. While this is a fast growing area, there is still a LOT of untapped potential out there. The more people that know and understand blogs, the larger our potential readership base is going to be. Competition may also be higher but this will sort the wheat from the chaff. More high quality blogs at the top end of blogging is surely only going to help the overall reputation that blogging has.
2. Find Untapped Areas
A LOT of blog promotion currently takes place on other blogs, via social media and other online avenues. I think as competition for readership increases, the need to find new and interesting way to attract readers to your blog will also increase. There are still plenty of untapped areas when it comes to finding people interested in reading what you have to say. I believe offline media holds the key to finding many of these untapped areas.
3. Reaching LARGE numbers of people at once
One of the advantages of offline promotion is the potential to reach many thousands of people all at once. Very few blogs are large enough to give this type of exposure. Those that are tend to be swamped with people looking for said exposure. Even with a very low conversion rate, the potential to raise a reasonable number of new readers for the amount of time invested is quite high through offline media.
I’m hoping that Darren, Karen and Neerav will share a little of the aftermath of this exposure. I am extremely interested in whether this promotion has led to an influx of readers to their sites. As well as the spin off opportunities that arise as a result of this exposure (radio interviews, links from websites, print media and so on).
I do wonder whether print media is likely to be a more effective offline media for specific blog promotion (in terms of readership) than visual media. After all, how many people sit in front of the television with a pen and paper handy, ready to write down an web address? (Of course, this is where a simple yet catchy blog title will be of benefit as well. If people can remember the name “problogger”, they will find Darren’s site with a simple google search.) Print media, on the other hand, offers the opportunity to present your blog URL in a format that isn’t quite as easily lost and forgotten as a quick television feature.
However, visual media still holds a large balance of power when it comes to reaching potential blog readers and promoting blogging in general. I believe this is a great step forward for blogging in Australia and hope that the spin off opportunities presented allow bloggers to continue to promote blogging as an interesting medium, not simply for making money online but for providing valuable information and experiences for people the world over.
If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Loading ...
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment