Full disclosure; I'm bad at blogging. It's not that I struggle with the technical aspects of optimizing one, or placing opt-in forms in the proper place or even with writing content. I'm good at all of that. It's just that I'm a tinkerer and perfectionist by nature; any of my college professors can tell you that I am fully capable of finding fifty things wrong with a paper that they gave a perfect grade. However, that is quite enough about the trials of being me.
If you intend to gain any type of traction and be taken seriously as an Internet marketer, you need to start and maintain a blog. There's simply no getting around that fact. Blogs, you see, are the perfect venue for building a long-term following and driving traffic to your money sites. They are naturally built to engage in a torrid love affair with search engine bots, and if you take good care of your blog, it will take good care of you.
I cannot stress the following point enough: when trying to build a following, you must remember that people follow people, not products or companies. Everyone that you are promoting too is promoting something, and 97% of them are failing at it, and failing rather spectacularly. They will follow anyone that they believe will lead them where they want to go, and this is where you and your blog come in.
In The Land of the Blind...
Enter any keyword related to Internet marketing, and somewhere near the top of the rankings, you will find someone's blog. In fact, you are likely to find several of them (go ahead, try it now). Several factors explain this phenomenon, not least of which is the fact that blogs are SEO magnets. Search engines look for fresh content, and a well-maintained and structured blog has plenty of it. The content is only part of the equation.
Because blogs are, to a large degree, self-contained miniature social networks through their commenting feature, master bloggers' sites are likely to contain many backlinks, or websites pointing back to it. In the eyes of Google, Yahoo and Bing, this gives them an air of authority. However, this is not an article of blog SEO.
By posting relevant content on your blog on a regular basis, coupled with a working knowledge of the aforementioned SEO, you reap the benefit of being an authority in the eyes of the search engines. This means that your site will receive many visits. If your posts are well-written, informative and timely, you become an expert not only in the eyes of Google, but also in the eyes of your readers. As such, they will return to your site, comment (providing even more backlinks), post your articles on social networks, bookmark them (more backlinks and traffic), and even link them to their blogs, if they have them.
Most importantly, you have begun to develop a relationship and a feeling of trust with potential prospects. Opt-in boxes in your blog's sidebar and RSS subscriptions provide you with an avenue to have some form of personal communication with your blog's readers - with their permission! So long as you do not abuse this awesome privilege, you now have a steady and targeted flow of potential buyers to market to, and potential signups for your affiliate products (if you sell your own products) and/or network marketing programs.
You do not have to be an expert of everything Internet marketing related, or anything, for that matter. A little research, or a well-done rewrite of an article you have acquired the rights to will set you well on your way. A side benefit is the fact that as you begin to regularly maintain your blog and add content, you actually will start to become an expert. Until then, even the little bit more than your readers that you know makes you someone to follow. In the land of the blind, the 3% that have a clue are the kings.
