Ensuring your blog stands out amongst all the others blogs on the web is difficult. After all, according to Pingdom, there are currently 70 million WordPress blogs, 39 million Tumblr blogs and 555 million total websites. This means that there are a staggering amount of blogs and websites which you have to compete for readers, followers, customers and potential clients.
Thankfully, there are many marketing platforms you can utilise to ensure your blog stands out among the crowd, which will lead to an increase in revenue:
Buzzsumo
Use Buzzsumo to find what type of content related to your business is receiving the most attention. This awesome tool has an easy-to-use interface that allows you to see what content influencers in your niche are talking about. The end result is that you will have great insight on what content create a buzz.
Focus booster
If you need some help with your productivity, the Focus Booster app could be just the ticket. This free desktop timer has been developed using the principles of the Pomodoro Technique and will help you with your time management. Once you have configured this app, all you have to do is choose your task, hit play and ensure you do take your break at the end of end session.
Hemingway App
Spruce up your articles by using the Hemingway app. Paste your text into this great little app it will then highlight the text with different colours, showing you where you should make edits. The different colours point out things like, hard-to-read sentences, words and phrases that could be simpler. A great tool which can be useful to those who are new to blogging.
Utilise retargeting
Retargeting technology such as AdRoll works by keeping track of those individuals who visit your site. This technology will target site visitors based on their actions on your site. When they visit other sites, they will see various ads, which will encourage them to revisit your site. Ultimately, this will lead to repeat visits and a good chance of increased sales.
Retargeting is most efficient when you segment your customer base. You can then target each segment with certain advertisements that then relate to the customer in that segment. To find which ads are going to be effective, you could split test or multivariate test individual ads to really optimise conversions.
Google AdSense
Google’s AdSense completes several marketing elements, which make it a valuable addition to your site. Utilising AdSense correctly will help to significantly increase your blogs revenue. It gives you as the site owner protection for your brand, has targeting technology, has reporting tools that provide extensive data to help you better understand how your ads are doing and gives you access to high-quality ads that are reviewed by professionals and are guaranteed to account for your target audience.
You begin utilising AdSense by making ad space available on your site via a code snippet. Advertisers will then bid on your ad space in an auction, and the highest paying ad will be placed on your site. Finally, you will get paid by advertisers and networks for the ads on your site.
Atosho
Astosho is a company that created a digital way for publishers to sell products on their websites without users having to leave the site. The technology works by allowing publishers to give users the ability to buy a product within their editorial content. For example, an article on your site could be talking about a certain book that you as the blog or site owner authored, and Atosho will give your reader the ability to purchase said book within the article they are reading.
Skimlinks
Skimlinks is yet another program that will help you earn money through your blog. It works by linking various products onto your blog content. If one of your readers follows the link to the product and makes a purchase, you will earn commission on the sale. Currently, publishers can try out SkimLinks for free.
Trello
Help keep track of all your projects and deadlines in one place. with Trello The drag-and-drop interface allows you to track and organise your workload into four categories: ideas, to do, doing and done. Team projects are where Trello really shines as it can improve communication, eliminate email traffic and get everyone on the same page.
Click to Tweet
Another great Twitter tool, Click to Tweet is designed to makes it easy to promote links to your content to a wider audience. Just write the message you want to share. Click the ‘generate new link’ button to create a custom link. When you tweet the post, whoever clicks on the link will have the message added to their status box automatically.
IFTTT
With IFTTT you can trigger your blog posts to automatically update your Facebook page with a link. The aim is to create different ‘recipes’ that will make social media applications, email accounts and WordPress interact with each other when triggered by an event.
Earning an income from your blog and generating repeat readers or customers is not as hard as it used to be. This is thanks largely to the abundance of companies that help even those who are not familiar with marketing, properly promote their blog and products. The programs listed above are just a few of the best available.