Blog Marketing Information A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on the Web, a kind of hybrid diary/guide site, although there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people.
People maintained blogs long before the term was coined, but the trend gained momentum with the introduction of automated published systems, most notably Blogger at blogger.com. Thousands of people use services such as Blogger to simplify and accelerate the publishing process
Key Blog Consulting and Marketing Tasks
Consult on blog strategy
Establish top level messaging - This message will be used in the Title tag, Meta tags, On page title, internal linking and external linking
Select and setup blogging software and hosting service
Setup blog template, preferences, categorization
Identify source content for blog postings and provide blog system training to company staff
Automate notification of blog/RSS search engines and news aggregation sites of updates to the blog
Optimize blog for search engines - Modify blog template for search engine friendliness and keyword relevance
Implement web site visitor statistics program for tracking blog visitor activity
Establish RSS subscriber tracking metrics
Initiate blog linking and blog search engine directory submission campaign - Contact other blogs for links
Submit blog to major blog directories and traditional search engine directories.
Make RSS feed of blog available for syndication - Submit blog RSS feed to RSS search engines and news aggregator directories
Some paid directory submissions or paid sponsorship opportunities may be worth considering. These will be presented on a case by case basis.
Provide monthly reporting on blog visibility and usage along with ongoing support and technical assistance
Social marketing
What is Social Marketing?
The health communications field has been rapidly changing over the past two decades. It has evolved from a one-dimensional reliance on public service announcements to a more sophisticated approach which draws from successful techniques used by commercial marketers, termed "social marketing." Rather than dictating the way that information is to be conveyed from the top-down, public health professionals are learning to listen to the needs and desires of the target audience themselves, and building the program from there. This focus on the "consumer" involves in-depth research and constant re-evaluation of every aspect of the program. In fact, research and evaluation together form the very cornerstone of the social marketing process
While social marketing initially developed from a desire to capitalize on commercial marketing techniques it has in the last decade matured into a much more integrative and inclusive discipline that draws on the full range of social sciences and social policy approaches as well as marketing. Increasingly social marketing is being described as having 'two parents' - a 'social parent' = social sciences and social policy, and a 'marketing parent' = commercial and public sector marketing approaches.
Social Marketing Social marketing is the planning and implementation of programs designed to bring about social change using concepts from commercial marketing. Among the important marketing concepts are:
The ultimate objective of marketing is to influence action;
Action is undertaken whenever target audiences believe that the benefits they receive will be greater than the costs they incur;
Programs to influence action will be more effective if they are based on an understanding of the target audience's own perceptions of the proposed exchange;
Target audiences are seldom uniform in their perceptions and/or likely responses to marketing efforts and so should be partitioned into segments;
Marketing efforts must incorporate all of the "4 Ps," i.e.:
Create an enticing Product (i.e., the package of benefits associated with the desired action);
Minimize the Price the target audience believes it must pay in the exchange;
Make the exchange and its opportunities available in Places that reach the audience and fit its lifestyles;
Promote the exchange opportunity with creativity and through channels and tactics that maximize desired responses;
Recommended behaviors always have competition which must be understood and addressed;
The marketplace is constantly changing and so program effects must be regularly monitored and management must be prepared to rapidly alter strategies and tactics.
