Anyone who has a blog, website or brand will tell you how important it is to have a marketing plan.With there being a massive number of online business, blogs and websites finding our website without having a marketing plan is almost impossible. However, knowing where to start can be one of the most challenging things to do especially when don’t have an immense amount of money to spend. The old saying “you have to spend money to make money” doesn’t necessarily apply to marketing nowadays. With having access to the internet and a variety of different apps and social media platforms, we don’t need a huge marketing budget to build our audience.
Solidify Your Brand
Before we start a marketing campaign, it is imperative to have a solid idea about what our blog main focus is I.e. why it exists and what we hope to accomplish. One of the first steps in the marketing process is making sure you know “who you are”. Knowing this will help you figure out how to position your efforts in the best way possible. Every business or brand should have a mission statement that defines what it is all about and the core values of the company. Once this is established we can start the process of solidifying our efforts.
Define Your Goals & Metrics
The smaller our marketing budget, the more imperative it is to be clear and specific about our goals. A question we should all ask ourselves is “What does success look like for you”? Though we all want to make money, but not every marketing effort is going to bring in dollars. Some of our efforts are simply to build our audience, to hopefully help us to make money in the future. Focus on the specific goals you’ve set for yourself whether that would be more visits to your website, more subscribers to your email list or more interaction from your audience. All these things mean more exposure for your startup and can lead to making money.
Here are three methods to market a blog or website with spending a dollar
- Word of Mouth Marketing:
This may seem a little outdated, but word of mouth marketing is still one of the best “free” ways to market anything. We start by just going to places where potential readers or customers are located. For example, if you had a blog and wanted more readers go to a local book store or coffee where a lot of people are always reading and are probably active readers. Start up a conversation with them and bring up your blog and what benefit they can get out of reading it. Another example would be if you have a small business you can offer some sort of discount to your current customers if they refer someone to your business.
- Networking:
This method is often times overlooked when it comes to marketing, because we many of us think of networking we think meeting people to help get us a job or to ask them advice. Which are all great things, but when it comes to building your brand attending networking events in your area it imperative to your success.
- Develop a Social Media Strategy:
For many of us our social media strategy consists of just sharing our latest article and maybe a couple of pictures we’ve created. Doing this strategy will not fully take advantage of all the benefits social media has to offer. A key to developing a social media plan it to focus on the top platforms for your niche i.e. if you’re a blogger the top three platforms to focus would be Pinterest, Facebook and Twitter. Also make sure you constantly post updates, and regularly recycle old articles on social media; simply sharing your article once, or once in a while, won’t cut it. Posting frequency should vary depending on the social media site; research shows that it is optimal to post twice daily on Facebook, thrice daily on Twitter and Google+ and 5 times daily on Pinterest.
Final Thoughts
Ultimately, you don’t have to spend thousands of dollars on marketing for your business. With a little bit of time and focused effort, you can absolutely grow your blog, business or website without spending a dime by networking with other business owners, optimizing your website, and learning social media strategies to grow your business.
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Jay Colby 
love this!!!! I’m new to this and I appreciate the insight. Happy New Year!!!
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Thank you & Happy New Year!
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Jay, you have great information. Thank you very much. Happy New Year! 🙂
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Thank you for reading!
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Hey Jay and Happy New Year! Thanks for the helpful reminders above. I find that I love Instagram better than FB, Twitter and Pinterest but I actually have all of those social media platforms. Posting three times on Twitter? Posting what? Haha. I’m still new to Twitter so I haven’t fully figured out how to leverage it as a form of marketing. With IG you have hashtags, is the same true with Twitter? FB seems to be more limited as well. Would love to see a blog where you can share how to effectively leverage these networks as a marketing tool?
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Happy New Year to you as well. I’ve actually written a couple of articles about this you check them out under the tab “Business” I would recommend reading “Increase Social Media Shares”. Let me know if this helps.
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Post twice daily on Facebook. I had not thought to do that. I thought too many posts would be bothersome to the followers that I have. Any further advice on how to find the proper balance for types of posts, messages, news, etc. for a twice daily reach-out to followers?
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It’s not if your posting quality content, but some added advice try to post relevant content that might not necessarily pertain to your blog but things like pictures, videos and information that can be beneficial to your audience. Hope this helps thanks for reading!
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Very insightful, great read.
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Thank you!
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This is a useful post and I hope others who need it will get to see it, thanks Jay.
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Thanks for reading
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Awesome tips Jay
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Thank you
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I love this! So many of us think that the only way to really market a blog is through expensive advertising!
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Thanks for reading!
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artikel yang sangat menarik!
Terimakasih informasinya
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Thanks for reading!
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Great advice and reminders. Thanks for sharing!
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Thanks for reading!
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Great information, quite helpful 🙂
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Thank you!
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Great post with lots of helpful tips here. Thanks for sharing 🙂
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Thank you for reading!
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I love this! Especially word of mouth marketing. Most people think that its past due, but I have realized connect with people and they will want to connect with you. Sometimes, regular marketing seems so empty that to get followers to stick is talk to them. I even tell my gardener, mailman, and everyone I know! haha Thank you! 😀
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Thanks for these tips. I’ll try to set aside more time for social media posts.
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Very important information especially for new bloggers like me.
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