ProBlogger: Offline Marketing: Great Ways to Promote Your Blog Without the Internet

Offline Marketing: Great Ways to Promote Your Blog Without the Internet

Posted: 08 Oct 2013 09:37 AM PDT

This is a guest contribution from Rohit M. @Adwisey.

Every blogger wants to promote their blog. Who doesn't want more traffic?

When it comes to promotion, many bloggers mostly use the online world as their main marketing vehicle. The online world is great though, social media helps your blog and your daily posts go viral. You can tweet about your next blog post or send an email to your subscribers. Online marketing is critical for promotion.

But what about that, "offline world" that we all live in? Just because you turned off your laptop does not mean you can't promote your blog anymore.

When it comes to marketing, offline promotion can be just as good as promoting your blog on the internet.

Did someone say, "mini guide?" Yes!

This blog post will be kind of like a mini guide full of different ways you can promote your blog offline.

The tips and strategies explained below are not in any specific order. This is because; every method could work differently for each blogger. The same techniques do not work for everyone. It all comes down to what you feel most comfortable with, and what brings you the best ROI (return on investment).

Let's get to the good stuff.

Branded Merchandise

What if you could do some blog marketing without even trying? Imagine all you had to do was just walk around and enjoy your day. By having branded merchandise about your blog, that is possible.

Let's take a look at a few examples below:

T-Shirt Marketing

Your blog url on a t-shirt is all you need to realize the effectiveness that t-shirt marketing can have. You can get customized t-shirts just about anywhere.

Try checking out your local custom clothing shop, or online at places like Zazzle. By wearing a branded t-shirt with your blog url you can promote your blog by just walking around and doing everyday tasks.

Hand these branded t-shirts out to your friends and family. You can even give them away for free to people! This will increase the amount of people walking around with your branded shirt, which in turn leads to a bigger audience reach.

Extra Tip: It doesn't always have to be a t-shirt. You can use other items such as branded hoodies, umbrellas, jackets, or even baseball caps!

Branding Your Everyday Accessories

Having accessories that are branded with your blog address can also bring benefits. For example, here are a few ideas on the different types of accessories that you could brand:

Coffee Mug
Phone Case
Pens
Binder
Water Bottles
Bags
and much more!

The point here is that you can turn your everyday accessories into effective marketing tools.

I'm always intrigued to check out a website or blog after noticing it through a branded item and I'm sure there are many others who are the same way. One great place online where you can get customised accessories is Cafepress. They have tons of different items that you can brand with your blog.

Extra Tip: Always try including your blog url. If you only have your tagline or blog name, it can sometimes be less effective and memorable compared to showing your url. By including a blog address you're providing potential visitors with a direct destination to your blog instead of having to search it up.

Sticker Marketing

Who doesn't love stickers? Branded stickers can be a great way to promote your blog.

You don't want to, "sticker spam" (placing stickers on everything you find). This can be really annoying at times. But stickers do send the message! Imagine just placing a large sticker on your rear bumper or rear window. Everywhere you would stop with your car could end up attracting a new visitor simply by just noticing your sticker. Include a catchy tagline along with your blog address that will make people want to visit your blog.

You can also place your branded stickers on busy places like a bus stop, or your college message board. Every time someone walks by, they could end up turning into your new blog reader! You can also provide stickers to an elementary school for kids interested in taking them home (have a cool design that kids will love). This way you're also getting your promotion across to all the family members!

Important Note: Make sure you have the permission to place your branded stickers in the areas you desire, because you do not want them getting removed!

Free Giveaways

Did someone say free stuff?

This method works well if you giveaway items that people actually have a daily use for. You want to give away items that can be used daily and have your blog branding on them.

Two ideas that I have come across and think could work well are car air fresheners and mouse pads (two totally random items) but can be very effective.

Car Air Fresheners

Everyone loves a great scent in their vehicles. The air freshener I'm talking about is the one you place on the rear view mirror of a car. If you gave away an air freshener, the use for it would be daily. Every time someone hops into the car as a driver or passenger, they could potentially come across your branded air freshener.

This is not something anyone would throw away after coming from a trade show. The promotion potential for a branded air freshener carries a lengthy life span.

Mouse Pads

Using a branded mouse pad as a giveaway item is actually something that carries lots of promotional potential. A mouse pad with your blog address would be an awesome idea because the only time anyone would be using a mouse pad is when their on the internet. They could end up visiting your blog very quickly!

Quick Note: This is also something you could give away to high schools or universities to use. Every time a student is in the library or computer lab they could get the message off the mouse pad and end up visiting your blog!

Extra Tip: Whenever you're doing branded giveaways for promotion, always try giving away items that could be used daily and don't have a, "short use" span. Giving away branded accessories that can be used daily ensures that your blog is also being promoted daily!

Networking And Socialisation Events

Networking with others in the same niche or industry is a great means of communication. Word of mouth is great when it comes to marketing. By attending networking events you can have one on one conversations with others and this is a very effective way to promote your blog. Networking with people is the best way to establish a connection between a reader and a blogger.

Starting Your Own Meet up

Networking events in your niche or industry might not happen that often. So if there are no social events for you to attend and meet others, you can just start your own.

You can start a meet up group with your friends and readers who are located in the same city. You could discuss the latest news, gossip, and trends in your niche. This is also a great way to promote your blog when you have new faces showing up and taking part in your meetups!

This method actually works great to promote the blogs of all those attending and could end up establishing great relationships leading to further collaborations.

Extra Tip: When attending networking events, you can register as an event sponsor. By becoming a sponsor you can attract not only the attention of those who attend but also the media covering the event. If you do become a sponsor, this would be a great time to do giveaways similar to the ones we discussed above.

Think Outside The Box

Creativity is important when it comes to promotion. Marketing companies are always looking for the most innovative ideas to use for promotion. You as a blogger have to think the same way in order to maximise your promotion potential.

Think outside the box. Try coming up with different and creative ideas that you could use to promote your blog. Here are a few promotional ideas I have come across and think are pretty cool!

Library – Bookmark Promotion

This idea is pretty sweet. The library bookmark promotion technique!

The two things you need for this to work are a branded bookmark and a library. You need to create a branded bookmark with your blog info and your web address. Then head over to a public library. This is where you can try and negotiate a deal that has the library include your bookmark with every book checked out for rent. Or just sneak them into random books!

Your library may provide book rentals for hundreds or even thousands of books per day. Just think about the promotion potential when every rental could end up turning the book reader into your blog reader!

Default Homepage Method

The way this promotional strategy works is by turning the default homepage of a web browser into your blog homepage or recent posts page.

You want to scale up the amount of default homepages you change to your blog homepage so try finding a place where the computers are being used daily for internet purposes.

Some places you can try visiting to arrange a deal for this method (by deal I mean your payment, negotiation or proposal) are high schools, universities, libraries, or internet cafes. The internet browsers mentioned in the locations above are used a lot on a daily basis. Every time someone opens up the internet browser, your blog will be the first thing to load. If interested, the person using the computer will read on.

Just think about how many times each computer is occupied on a daily basis by different people. This method gives you a high reach in promotion!

Time To Get Marketing

I hope you find something that works well for you in terms of promotion and helps take your blog to the next level!

Just remember, when it comes to promoting your blog, be creative and innovative. Just because no one else is doing it, doesn't mean it won't work. There's a first for everything!

I would love to get your feedback and a discussion going on so leave a reply on what works best for you when promoting your blog without the internet, and any other creative ideas you think could help bloggers when it comes to offline promotion?

Rohit is the leader of the editorial staff at Adwisey.com - An Online Guide for Internet Entrepreneurs and Bloggers. In addition to working on Adwisey, he also enjoys sports, travel, and keeping up with the latest tech trends!

Originally at: Blog Tips at ProBlogger

Offline Marketing: Great Ways to Promote Your Blog Without the Internet

Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

Should webmasters be concerned about Google’s heavy-handed whitewashing of search results?

Posted: 08 Oct 2013 06:35 AM PDT

News broke on Saturday about how Google specifically targeted mugshot compilation sites, effectively removing the profitability of those sites from the site owners. Essentially these sites just curate mugshots from all over the US, slap some ads on them, and then have a high-priced "mugshot removal" service which is really their bread-and-butter, because people who've had their mugshots featured – even if they were never charged with a crime – end up seeing their mugshots live on in infamy. And because of the great SEO, those websites usually dominate the entire front page of Google results when searching for a specific person who happens to have been arrested at some point in their life. Once Google removes the sites, or de-ranks them – and the fact that those site’s ranked for a ton of individual’s anmes – there is no reason for people to pay them for removal and their main source of traffic is gone.

Now, I'm sure we can all agree that these types of mugshot blackmail sites are pretty scummy So yes, pretty scummy, but pretty profitable, especially with the speculation that many of the sites are interconnected - when someone pays for removal on one sites, the jack the price up on the rest because they know someone is willing to pay for removal.

But, the important piece of this is the fact that Google decided it didn't like a specific vertical and obliterated it from the search results. And it raises a lot of questions that should cause webmasters to have some sleepless nights. Because Google found this morally offensive, they decided to alter their search algorithm specifically so these types of sites would be whitewashed in the eyes of Google.

Now, we have seen this happen multiple times before, most recently where they whitewashed payday loans so that only the big national payday loan results were still listed. They also whitewashed "pirate" results, even ones are not true pirate sites, because they offer downloads that are considered illegal in the US.

But it's definitely for the area when Google decides to make changes to their algorithm simply because they find something distasteful. What's to say they won't find something you're involved in as distasteful, and change their algorithm for that. There are plenty of decidedly unethical market areas that many SEOs play around – and there's no doubt in my mind, some of you were behind the mugshots thing to – so what is Google decides to whitewash those market areas too?

I can see all the reasons why Google decides take action against mugshots sites, and I can't even begin to imagine the impact it had on those who do have mugshots and were finding it difficult to find jobs or rental housing. But it's a slippery slope when Google decides what is ethical and unethical and whitewash their search results accordingly.

Trying to increase your Google rank that is like no other?