A very good blog marketing strategy is always to use tactics that keep forums active. Forums are not always the best platforms to monetize and regular posters often are not interested in your products. But the activity and sharing of interesting threads gets the brand to be seen, so the indirect marketing aspect can carry a business to unlimited heights.
So how do you give your visitors specific feedback when they are not providing any directly?
If you write a blog and want more commenting, you need to get your visitors what they are likely interested in and a good way to get the flow going is by looking what type of traffic you already have while working on broadening your keyterm based reach in the search engines.
Check your stats for interesting keyphrases to get ideas!
What my stats have taught me is how some people connect the different topics I am writing about.
Two completely unrelated articles can easily be combined into something new xploring a field nobody has written about before after seeing a search term in form of a question a visitor might have bringing up an area that you yourself may have never thought about getting into.
Here is a simple example:
You advertise hotels worldwide and write about several travel destinations.
One article is about Phuket, Thailand and another about Sydney, Australia.
Because of the keyterms used in both articles, people start finding you by typing in
“Flights from Sydney to Phuket” which you have not advertised and not blogged about either
So the obvious idea would be to either partner with an airline ticket company or join an affiliate program to supplement your income. You can also blog about great deals in order to give your visitors what they are looking for.
When blogging, it is often advised to simply put into your own words what can help readers connect with your business and makes them feel comfortable with you as a company. And when Google recognizes you for certain terms, it is not a bad idea to further get into subject matters your blog is already ranked for.
Let´s say you are not really too keen about blogging, but want certain topics to rank for that you may or may not easily be able to get Google to recognize you for. A good way to work on that is by exploring avenues that get you there combining easier keyterms.
Steady growth is something Google likes and when you are showing up for something like “cheap hotels in Phuket”, link popularity and increase in traffic will help push you towards hotels in Thailand” and whatever other hotels you may advertise.
As long as you are also working on your social media campaign alerting “voluntary followers” of new articles of the same nature that made them follow or like you to begin with, you are getting the flow going.
The more your traffic increases through Google, the more feedback you will be able to sort through and choose from. And then it will become a lot easier for you to just host the platform where likeminded people return for replies.
A blog is not a forum. You and your team dictate the tone. The upside: You decide what gets posted. The downside: You need ideas.
But as long as you are reading your stats, the downside should be eliminated. You can pick and choose the feedback you want to reply to without anybody realizing that you are selecting your way closer and closer to the keyterms you desire the most.
So keep on finding what helps you become an authority in your field.
Once stats are high and thousands of phrases show in the results, simply ctrl F and type in something you would write about that you are looking for good ideas on.
And then pick from what pops up.
