Blog are exploding online and A-listers are taking notice (positively and negatively). For awhile now, a select few controlled the linking structure of the internet. These were the geeks, the techno nerds, the avid content producers online. In a funny post at seomoz, rand (one of the authors) refers to them as the linkarati. It’s a funny title, but it’s true. Blogs and the explosion of content production aims to change all that. You have a say in the sites that rank and the sites you consider relevant. Your links matter and you can promote the articles, sites, content or whatever else you want yourself, without any permission. It’s a great way to get your voice heard and connect with an audience, which could include your peers, future customers or anybody else.

More importantly, blogging is a form self expression; just because some people may not have the ability to reach a large audience and contribute some amazingly new information doesn’t mean they should stop blogging (as Michael Grey suggested).

I think they should blog more.

Writing, organizing your thoughts and becoming more effective at broadcasting your passion takes a lot of practice. Many of the people that are “natural” bloggers spent years in other writing related professions / hobbies. Honing a distinct voice and building up an audience base does not happen overnight. Blogging is in its infancy (for most professions). A new blog or site can get traffic almost immediately and as you blog more and add more information you can build and grow your online presence, your audience, your influence, and your pocket book.

The feedback and interactive conversations that blogs spark are valuable to almost anyone. Blogging is also a great way to develop strong argumentative and debating skills.

Michael Grey’s stunt sparked an interesting war in the blogosphere and two creative ways of getting use out of the current conversation popped up that are worth noting. Marketing Pilgrim (another search marketing blogger syndicated by Webpronews) asked for any search marketing blogger to leave their feed in his comments with a promise that he’d subscribe for at least two weeks and then continue on if you had something valuable to say. Very cool, nice way to promote blogging and capitalize on a current blogosphere conversation (hey he got a link from me; see how simple this is?)

The other was a cool videocast response by search Anyway Keep Blogging — Why Michael Gray is Wrong

So keep on blogging !

I called it a secret for added sensationalism, but also to SPECIFICALLY market it to people that are looking for some secret, some quick fix, some blog marketing trick , because this article may be contain the information they actually need without all the snake oil.

The most important aspect of blog marketing is crafting the message your blog as whole (the blog title, the individual post title, the graphics, the name, the READERS ASSUMPTIONS OF WHAT SHOULD BE THERE) tell a first time visitor, before they even read past the first line.

Marketing has many steps, but the most important is determining what message to pitch. What is your story, what do your blog title, your post title and your graphics all say together when someone sees them for the very first time??? What does your blog’s marketing say to it’s reader?

I’m going to give some very specific examples, but before I go into some real life and hypothetical examples I’m going to clarify something. I’m not just talking about making your blog look pretty; in fact, you can have a very successful blog that’s ugly or plain and still have beautiful marketing, but that look will have to play into your message, and different looks, different ideas, and different trust factors can add strength or kill your ability to market your blog. Enough exposé; let’s illustrate this with some hard examples.

In my previous article I made the claim that if all the blogs could all contain the same article, which one gets read, gets put on the social networks, and gets all the attention online would depend on which has better marketing.

Now I’ll give you a specific example of that in context to encapsulate the overall connection between post, blog, and what or message the reader will put together from the combination of the two. Note that all the examples involve generalization; however, I think you’ll understand exactly what I’m taking about with these hypothetical situations.

Take a personal blog with plain / limited graphics, a marketing companies blog with slick commercial graphic design and lots of features and a blog devoted solely to a super niche topic with very creative graphics all centered around topic X .

Keeping to my original claim, say all three of the above blogs post an article giving detailed advice on topic X. They use the post title “The ultimate guide to topic X.” Now we have three blogs, all with same article and the same title, which one gets read? Well, which one has the better overall message to a first time reader when you look at all the elements? I would say the niche blog, then the commercial blog, and last the personal blog. The niche topic blog has the strongest message for this type of post, why?

Because before they ever read the post, they’ve somehow clicked to find an ultimate guide to topic X and immediately they see that the blog is completely devoted to topic X, thus giving the message that “hey this author writes a lot about topic X, in fact they’ve devoted an entire blog just to the topic, they must really love it and know something about it, that’s seems like a good place to read an ultimate guide to topic X.”

This will result in more people reading it on a first time visit. It’s an entire blog on topic X, so it’s easy for other people to link to it and I’d expect it to do better on the social media sites as well; it makes sense to a reader almost immediately why a blog devoted solely to topic X would have a post called “the ultimate guide to topic X.”

Now let’s change the titles and articles just a tiny bit and check out the marketing messages one more time.

Let’s take title “why you should never buy product Y in Industry X.” Same article same title, all three blogs, which one gets read? The personal blog, then the niche blog? The personal blog’s message is that this is an individual blog; its not full of “marketing” hype, but rather strong or controversial opinion pieces that will probably be accepted as more genuine (as opposed to being there for link bait) and thus, easier to market. The commercial blog would have the least strong message, because people don’t trust a commercial blog to be honest with that type of a title, especially if product Y was a competitor. The niche blog would fair somewhere in the middle.

Other examples of articles titles I believe would favor the commercial blog: “what I’ve learned from 15 years in Industry X,” “The future of Industry X,” “10 industry z tips that will save you money (niche would work here as well),” “what’s costing you money in industry X,” “branding in Industry X, the race is on.” With a commercial blog anything where the fact that you’re a company would strengthen the trust factors instead of hurting them or any news / industry business related items are the best way to go.

Being a company with a professional reputation, among other things, well chosen blog content can add to your trustworthiness when giving something like business advice to your readers. Now this might not work as we in a personal or niche topic blog because people tend to be more trusting of business advice or financial advice when it comes from a company with a reputation.

I’ve used a lot of generalizations here and there are many examples both ways. They say you can’t judge a book by it’s cover, but people do every day, and people judge your blog by it’s “virtual” cover. People are judging your blog by by it’s title, by it’s name, it’s graphics, how the blog title relates to the post title, by the way everything on it comes together. They’re judging it’s marketing, What message does it tell the reader apart from the individual post. Get that right and the rest is a whole lot easier!!

Pick any topic or industry and you’ll find at least one super “A” list blogger, who is most often a prolific poster who has devoted large portions of his or her life to developing their online presence. I read a post recently on problogger that claimed the top 10 bloggers on Technorati post an average of 20 times per day! Crazy stuff.

Why should you care?

Well, for one, they may be saying something interesting, if you need content ideas you can comment on what they write and use them as a source of inspiration when you experience writers block. Two, if you can get them to notice your blog or website and to it, that link will be extremely powerful, not only in bringing you traffic, but increasing your brand and trust factor.

Some A-list blogs have so much link power that just ONE link can result in many other bloggers also linking to you and your entire search engine rankings going up. Now you could wait for an A list blogger to happen upon your site, or you could try to strategize and be proactive.

Here are a few ideas and strategies to get an A-list blogger to link to your site; of course they involve a lot of hard work, but are worth it in the end.

1. Pick the specific A-list blog that you want to mention you, and then start serial commenting (not spamming, just leaving daily valuable comments). They’ll start responding and, over time, visit your blog. At first they’ll just respond to some of your comments, but if you keep it up, eventually the OTHER people on their blog will start mentioning you by name; when that happens, prepare for a link. Of course you can also just ask them: how do I get a link on your website? Keep in mind, though, that you have to write something worth commenting on, and worth being noticed for.

2. Get some posts syndicated by sites that get more traffic than your blog does and sites that can help your articles show up in news searches. Webpronews.com is a good one if you are in the SEO industry.

3. Write an on-topic post that makes it to the front page of Digg, or any of the other popular social media sites. It’s easy for them to link to that article (you can even e-mail them and ask them to), even if you’re completely unknown.

4. Publish posts that directly comment on topics and posts in the A-list blogs you want to gain links from. If they blog a lot I guarantee they check their referrers/ track backs and will see that you’re writing about them. Don’t be afraid to disagree with them or strongly add your two cents. Be innovative, be bold, just don’t be boring or another me too; there’s too much competition for that.

Technorati

Influencing The Blog Market

In marketing, there are as many psychological factors as monetary. A car salesman knows a family’s decision maker is often not the one signing the loan papers. She (yes, she, ask any dealership) holds more sway than the celebrity endorser. While the pro football player has popularity, the wife has influence.

It stands to reason then, that identifying Web-based agenda setters (those who influence) may become a weightier task than measuring buzz. Google recognizes this concept, as Andy Beal recently noted, weighting link quality (reputation of referrers) far above link quantity.

Flemming Madsen, founder of Onalytica, compares the process of measuring influence against popularity to the way academic journals and universities are measured. “It typically means more to any of us to receive the endorsement of someone we regard as an authority in the field than from someone we know hasn’t got a clue,” writes Madsen.

With that mind, Madsen describes his company as one that measures who has influence on issues, markets, and brands. In the past, Onalytica has measured who on the Web has the most influence on company image and brand; who are the most influential authorities on business blogging; as well as other topics like stem cell research.

The most recent report measures influence versus popularity to illustrate the principle that the two measures don’t always go hand in hand. News sources and blogs are assigned a score in both categories.

The Top 20 most influential authorities on the topic “blog marketing,” according to Onalytica:

1. New York Times (the most popular as well)
2. Hyku (the 3rd least popular)
3. Seth Godin
4. Micropersuasion
5. Businessweek
6. ClickZ
7. Wired News
8. Next Level Biz Tips
9. WebProNews
10. Search Engine Watch
11. Fast Company
12. Top Rank Results
13. Marketing Sherpa
14. ProBlogger
15. AllBusiness
16. Gaping Void
17. Buzzmachine
18. Church of the Customer Blog
19. Twist Image
20. Adrants

The analysis also took into account the 20 most popular authorities on blog marketing and to illustrate how the influence level changes the ranking of some publications:

1. NY Times
2. Micropersuasion
3. Businessweek
4. Seth Godin
5. ClickZ
6. Wired News
7. WebProNews
8. CNN
9. Search Engine Watch
10. Wall Street Journal
11. ProBlogger
12. Adrants
13. ZDnet
14. Marketing Sherpa
15. Buzzmachine
16. Scobelizer
17. BBC
18. Top Rank Results
19. Forbes
20. Marketing Profs

Note how the less popular but influential sources on the topic at hand are eliminated from the top 20 list if popularity is measured alone. The Wall Street Journal, ZDNet, BBC, and Forbes, all famous and established business sources are absent from the first list where influence is stressed above popularity.

It is also interesting to note how the Internet can level the playing field in the information industry, putting bloggers and recently established Web-sources on a par with traditional media powerhouses. Measuring popularity and influence is a valuable test for online advertisers and brand managers seeking to maximize their campaigns.

In early 2005, frequent WebProNews contributor and author of the weblog Micropersuasion (nos. 4 and 2 above) Steve Rubel wrote of pegging bloggers for product endorsement deals:

Sports marketers have been doing this for years. They identify a personality who they feel resonates with their audience and then pay him or her a nice hunk of change to use their product on the field or court. You could easily do the same thing with a blogger.

The keyword there is “resonates.” It matters more to a certain audience what former Microsoft employee and celebrity blogger Robert Scoble says than, say, Paris Hilton. And Paris’ crowd is less likely to care about what Scoble is talking about.

As with all marketing channels, this is about effectively using a medium to build relationships, whether it is a seller-buyer relationship, an image-audience relationship, or job hunter-employer relationship.

Nurturing that relationship has the same basis as career networking: getting your name out to the right people. While buzz can be effective, it is also fickle and unpredictable, and can turn against you. But the right endorser has words that resonate.

Here’s a great tip-list for blog marketing, contributed last summer by Lee Odden (TopRank Results nos. 12 and 18 above).

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