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I've taken the first step towards marketing my new blog!
Over the last two days I have submitted my blog to ten "blog directories". To some of you it may seem like an obvious first step however to others it may not.
There are many advantages to submitting your blog to "blog directories" these include:
- Most of them are free.
- People who use them are looking for blogs to read.
- It's relatively quick and easy.
- It will help improve your Google Page rank.
- They are segment by category.
- Competition in some categories is minimal.
- They can send you free traffic.
- Some may feature your blog!
So how much has this cost me? The great news is nothing financially, just the time that it has taken to fill out the forms and virtually all of them have asked for a reciprical link.
I have chosen to list this blog mainly in the marketing, interent marketing and business categories.
These are the directories that I have registered with so far.
This list of directories have an average page rank of 5.6 which is quite high. I will explain the relevance of page rank in one f my next posts however in summary it is a Google measurement tool and the higher the page ranks on your blog and website pages the better chance that you have of gain good organic search listings.
I will let you know how much traffic I generate from these ten directories in the next week and i will add the blog to another batch later in the week. Then I will follow up with my next marketing strategy.
I have just logged onto my new blog and I was really happy to see that I have received my first two comments! How fantastic, it means that I'm not the only person viewing my blog, which already makes it feel rewarding!
So, what's next?
So far I've set up a blog, I have written my two posts, I've added a couple of images to break up the copy and hopefully make it look a little less dull and I've found myself thinking to myself what should I do next. Thankfully, I've found my mind being flooded with ideas however I can't implement them all at once, so I have to prioritise. There were a cou
ple of obvious ideas that stood out from the rest and I have desided to focus on them first.
My first idea, as you would probably expect, as after all I am suppose to be a marketeer, was how best to launch my blog and let the World know that it exists. There are obviously many different ways to do this and over the next couple of weeks I plan to try and more importantly measure the results of all of my marketing activities.
To help me do this, today I subscribed to the free version of Site Meter a statistical tool that was recommended to me recently. I simply copied the Java Script code that they provide, customised the look and feel of it by simply ticking a few boxes and pasted it into the relevant "add element" part of this blog. Now I can tell how many people visit my blog and perhaps more importantly where they came from, or how they found out about the High Impact Blog?
One of the things that has been on my mind, especially when I was considering what to do next is the visual design of my blog. I don't personally think that my blog looks visually very good and considering I run a website design and internet marketing agency my instant thoughts were that I should invest some additional time and effort making my blog visually unique and inspiring. When we build websites for our clients we always try to design something that is unique, preofessional and stylish and (hopefully) doesn't look like an off the shelf template that can be purchased and downloaded for a few hundred dollars. Obviously, there is loads more that goes into build a successful website part from design such as search egine optimisation (SEO) etc however hopefully you already know this, if not there is lots of imformation on the High Impact website.
As you can already see, I have taken a still image copy of the header which appears on our High Impact website (please click here if you would like to see the flash animated version, which even though I say it myself, looks really cool, especially the birds!) So has the header added anything? You can be the judge of that, because after all I have built this blog for you to enjoy and I would be interested to hear your opinions.
I must make it very clear at this stage that I am not a "designer". I have opinions about design and like to think that I can offer creative ideas and input into projects however I can not turn these visual ideas into reality without help. I'm probably best described as a businessman and marketeer, specialising in interent marketing and search engine optimisation (SEO). I have a limited knowledge of Photoshop and Fireworks (and as a result of this project I will probably spend alittle bit more time learning how to use these software package better). I'm certain that when I go into the office tomorrow and show our Head of Design how badly I have bastardised his original header design and reproduce it in such a low resolution , he will want to redo it for me (well hopefully).
So coming back to the question that I posed in the title of this blog post, how important is the visual design of a blog and should I (and the creative people that I am lucky enough to work with) do some work to it before I start to market this blog? I have read articles and scientific studies about the effects of design on the "bounce rate" of websites. But is a blog a website? I guess it is (kind of), although the purpose of a blog is very different to the core purpose of the majority of websites.
As we all know there is no point in working hard on building a blog or a website that nobody visits. We all crave "traffic" or readers of our work and we all hope that those that do visit will leave positive feedback and interesting observations (or if you own an ecommerce site, make a purchase!). So many of us invest time, money, launching and marketing our work to the World or our target audience. Some of us are lucky enough to be successful (for those that struggle generating traffic, I will address this in future posts) in generating traffic however sometimes find that we can not retain it. After all of that hard work no body wants to let visitors slip through their fingers and not view the pages or posts of content that we have worked so hard on.
I was recently involved in an interesting experiment which focused on this very subject. We took a website which has a vast number of pages and around 3000 daily visitors. However the design of the website was..........actually there wasn't really any design or branding, it was just words (well written and interesting words, hopefully much like my blog) . We wanted to see, if with a small (we would have liked to do much more) amount of professional design could reduce the bounce rate on our friends website. Bounce rate by the way for those of you not familar with this term is worked out as a percentage and it measures the amount of people who land on your web page and then either stay their or click the dreaded "back button" to continue their search. The result was very encouraging, we managed to improve the bounce rate by 10%. So instead of having to invest in generating 10% more traffic we managed to better utilise the traffic that the site was already getting by improving the design and making the site look more professional and better laid out.
Fortunatley, today I don't really have this problem, as the stat counter on this blog clearly shows. I'm hardly receiving any traffic however it is my intention that I will. Talking about that, I guess, I should set myself a target. A million visitors in the first year sounds like a testing and pretty daunting challenge! So be it, we will crack on a bottle of Champagne if the stat counter has reach seven digits by this time next year and two or three if it does it sooner!! (don't forget to tell your friends, all visitors welcome :) )
Continuing to answer my own question, at this stage (my blog is only two days old) I don't think that i'm going to lose any sleep over the fact that I have chosen to use the most basic template design offered by Google. I'm not going to spend a load of time over the next week building a unique, customised template (this may all change when our Head of Design sees this) and instead i'm going to focus on writing more posts and my first marketing activity for the blog.
So what's this going to be? I aim to list my blog on as many relevant blog directories as I can find. Earlier I did a quick search on Google, typing in the phrase "blog directory" and there appears to be plenty! I'll spend a couple of hours this week adding my blog details and let you know how I get on!
In conclusion to the question I set myself, today, I'm of the opinion that a blog is more about the content than the visual design and that the visual design shouldn't have much of an effect on the bounce rate. It is my belief that the majority of people don't expect a blog to be visually creative or have that instant wow factor! What do you think?
I'm certain that I'm not the first person to ask themselves this question?
There are many reasons why I'm starting a blog however my main motivations are probably guilt and curiousity! These probably don't sound like the best reasons for starting my first blog and may come across to some as a little shallow, although fortunately there are many more legitimate reasons which I will go into a little later on.
I have read many different articles, forums, blogs and websites which all discuss the ben
efits of owning, writing a well thought out, interesting (i can only try) and frequently updated blog. There is no doubt that a successful blog that is read by many people can be extremely rewarding both emotionally and potentially financially. Blogs can be incredibly effective marketing tools, this is because search engines seem to love them and I'm already getting the feeling that writing a blog is going to be fun.
I've found myself frequently telling clients how easy it is to start a blog (i've read it many times, so it must be true and it only took me five minutes to set this one up). I've also told them what a wonderful tool it can be to communicate with people (i actually think I used the words "potential customers") and to further market their ideas, website or small business quickly and easily. But, I've always felt a little bit of a fraud because I hadn't previously practised what I was preaching! But today that is all about to change, because when i push the "publish post" button all of this is about to change!
I've already got lots of ideas and goals for my blog, but the main goal has to be to encourage people to read it and hopefully enjoy it. It's also an opportunity for them to share their thoughts, feedback and opinions with me and (hopefully) the other readers. Personally, readers comments and feedback are one of the most appealing things to me about blogging and of course as an internet marketing and small business owner myself I want to find out how much traffic I can drive to this blog. I also want to see how long people spend reading my blog content. Content which I hope people will find interesting and usefully.
I am a strong believer in win / win relationships and I also believe that you have to give to receive. I intend to give my readers as much useful information about how to be successful in small business website and internet marketing as I possibly can. I will explain in more detail in my future blog entries why I am well placed to help you in these areas specifically however if you are curious at this stage then please visit my custom website design agency website where there is a little bit of information about me and what we do for our clients at High Impact.
So why start writing a blog today? Well, at the weekend I met a very interesting individual called Dr John Crippen, who whilst we were talking told me that he started a blog a couple of years ago. When we were very talking he didn't instantly come across as a person who would be actively involved on the internet. How wrong I was!
Because of my huge interest in successfully marketing websites I asked him if he new how many people visit his blog on a daily basis and I must say that I 
was really impressed when he told me that around 2000 doctors and medical professionals view his blog everyday, which you can see here. What an achievement, that is an impressive amount of traffic for someone who hasn't formally trained in in this field or had much externel assistance. His traffic seems to be the result of frequently, well written, and interesting content. I only hope that I can achieve something similar with my chosen target audience!! The next day I desided that before the week was out I would launch my first blog and today is that day!
So to bring my first entry to a close. I am writing this blog to hopefully show my current and future clients how straight forward it is to set up and write a blog. How it can benefit them and their small businesses. I am also writing this blog to share my knowledge and experience of custom website design and internet marketing. How I think it is best to design, market websites and make money on-line. Oh, and of course drive additional and targetted traffic to my websites. I hope that you will share my journey!
