3 best blog marketing tips for 2012

3 best blog marketing tips, 2012

2012 has been a year of great change in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and Internet marketing worlds, and, while their are great challenges ahead for businesses and bloggers, there are also plenty of opportunities to market, drive traffic and make money blogging.

Here are my blog marketing tips that are genuinely effective in 2012...

1. Talk about other bloggers and influencers

Most small business blogs tend to focus on themselves. Better blogs look at the industry and talk about events, developments, and news. The best bloggers talk about "other people" in their niche.

Why talking about other bloggers works

Blogs that don't talk about other people are like holiday photos without anyone in them. They can be beautiful, but fundamentally you want to see people.

Mentioning thought leaders, industry experts, or just about anyone relevant to your blog's niche not only gives the content an extra dimension, it also attracts the attention of the people you talk about.

This can bring huge benefits.

Real-life example of how talking about others works

An article I posted on the sales of marketing books via the Amazon sales tracking service called RankTracer, showed that Guy Kawasaki's book was outselling all other marketers' books by some margin.

I tweeted the results of the sales analysis (as a link to the article), which he re-tweeted to 800 000 of his followers. Not bad exposure for 30 seconds worth of work.

2. Create interest around your blog with Pinterest

Images and visual content are becoming more and more popular for organic search. Now more than ever it is important for bloggers to choose highly relevant and appealing images to complement their blog posts.

If you're going to all the effort to choose great blog images and SEO them in order to ensure that they are picked up by Google image searches, then why not go the extra yard and use them to promote blog posts on Pinterest?

How to drive traffic with blog images and Pinterest

Success with Pinterest marketing for blogs lies in how interesting the image is and how appealing the blog post is.

In the same way that a META description tag is used to help people searching decide whether or not to click on a search result, Pinterest allows us to add a description to an image and backlink it to a blog post.

Note: When uploading an image to Pinterest, initially, there is no place to add a link back to your blog post. Add the description and save the image. Then click "edit" and add the link.

3. Reach new audiences with blog syndication

Sharing your blog posts with high traffic, high authority content curation sites can bring in highly engaged and relevant traffic to your blog. while there are many advantages, it is important that you only share your content with reputable websites, who will offer attribution (a backlink).

Remember that syndication is a double edged sword because Google might decide to show your syndicated blog post above the original post. The net effect is that you are out-competing yourself for organic Google search traffic.

Why selectively syndicating content is a great marketing strategy

Not every blog post is the same. Some blog posts show how to do things, other talk about events, still others might be arbitrary ramblings. Here are some tips that will help you to decide which articles to syndicate and which to keep for your own blog. Share articles that:

• include beneficial backlinks
• are intended for the audience of the syndicating site
• standalone - aren't potential organic search competitors for your other blog posts

The ultimate marketing objective of blog content syndication is to derive as much quality traffic from the syndicating site while losing as little SEO and PageRank in Google as possible.

If you can get the equation right, your blog will grow quickly.

More killer blog marketing tips & resources

Over the years, I've come across some great bloggers who have shared their blog marketing secrets, and it's only fair that we include a list of other blog marketing pearls of wisdom here.

I'll get the ball rolling with a few that I can remember, but you should feel free to offer more suggestions. If I like your tip, I'll include it here:

• Always add a "call to action" to increase reader engagement
• Tweet your blog posts, and target anyone you've mentioned
• 5 expert SEO tips to dominate Google search
• Guest blogging is critical to marketing and business
• How best to target new social, marketing, business or blogging connections

What are your favorite blogging tricks? Is there something you are going to change in 2012, to make better use of new technologies or evolving social media and marketing scenarios? Is anyone marketing their blogs via mobile? Share your blog marketing tips, advice and experiences in the comments or join me on Twitter and LinkedIn to continue the conversation.