Blog – the word sounds much like a ‘magic password for entry to a secret club’. In ordinary parlance ‘blog’ is a simplified form of ‘web log’ which in reality means an online web or internet diary. It may be used for personal reasons or as a means of reaching and interacting with like minded people. A blog is like your personal internet space allowing you to share information with family, friends or other internet users. Since the initial stages blogging has evolved as a networking tool and as the visibility is extremely high blog posts are an extremely attractive proposition to exchange information, write comments and reviews and just about anything that involves networking of people.
Now since everyone understands what a blog is and the extent of its reach, blog advertising is a new form of marketing and promotional tool via the internet. Blog advertising is simply the least expensive way of online marketing. The advertiser does not have to fork out large amounts of money to create physical ads that may not reach a wide audience. Neither do they have to spend huge sums of money on recruiting people to design ads that take up a lot of space and will eventually be confined to a minor audience. By creating advertising banners and publicity material that are in the virtual world, people and organizations save themselves a lot of effort.
Since many sites allow users to set up blogs for free, blog advertising is the simplest and easiest way to promote yourself or a product you are endorsing without much fuss. Blog advertising simply refers to the advertisements that appear on the pages of a blog. The concept is very much like the advertisements you see in a newspaper for instance – texts and banners placed just about anywhere on the page – that instantly catch the eye of the reader, or in the case of a blog, the viewer. The more the number of viewers, the greater your chances of marketing success.
A blogger simply uses the space on the pages of his blog to display banners, links or text messages of any product, organization or profile. He or she may be personally endorsing the product and the blog may be owned by the advertiser. Most often blog owners display several ads on their pages. With the use of internet aided marketing strategies a blogger can create higher visibility or in the internet sense, “drive traffic” to his web page to ensure the ads he displays are seen and used.
There are several types of blog advertising that one can choose. It is important to know the kind of blogs you will be posting and choosing a product or organization that will go well with promoting the visibility of your blog. Using images, different text styles or simply placing the banners prominently – much like a hoarding or a billboard ad – can go a long way in promoting your blog and increasing the chances of profitability.
In the coming articles we will examine how to get maximum traffic to a website through blog advertising and what are the effective ways of advertising personal blogs.