ByBlogging can be a great way to promote your business. A blog can help display your expertise, attract traffic and generate leads. But sometimes blogging can seem expensive if your company’s budget is low and you’re completely new to it, as you will need to set up your account, hire a designer, hire a writer, promote it with SEO and social media, etc. But the good thing about blogging is that it is inexpensive. You should be able to run a successful blog on a small budget.
It’s one of the least expensive, and one of the most powerful, marketing methods.
By following the steps below you should be able to setup a successful blog on a small budget:-
1. Set it up for free: You can set up your blog for free. All you need to do, is install a free content management system like blogger or wordpress and look for the right templates that suit your company and your style. There are many good templates available for free. You can also install many plugins which can make blogging easier. Setting up a blog from scratch is extremely easy. You should be able to set it up and create all the pages by yourself.
2. Writing Good Content: One of the keys to a successful blog is good content. You need to make sure you produce easy to read, well punctuated and powerful content, day after day. If you’re too busy or if your company hasn’t got a good writer, you will normally need to hire a freelance writer to do your writing work. A good freelance writer would normally charge anywhere between $50 and $100 (sometimes more) for every good 300 to 500 word article.
If you can’t afford this you will need to make the time to write your content. After you finish writing it you could hire an editor/proof-reader who can correct your content and can help you get rid of any mistakes in the writing. A good proof editor would normally cost you $10 to $20 an hour and they will make sure that your writing is free of all the mistakes. In an hour you can get a few articles edited. This way you can be sure of having quality content for a very low price.
I have seen some good blogs, get away with content which have a lot of mistakes and typos. It seems to work for them as they are providing content which is helping the reader. You could try this if you want to. But I wouldn’t advice it.
Another method you can try is guest posting. This will help you get a lot of quality content for free. But you will need to spend time editing the post by yourself or hiring someone to give you a hand. While you edit it you should use one of the best plagarism checkers to ensure the post is original. Another tool that can help you with the editing is Hemingway.
3. Promoting your content:
The best way to promote your content is through social media and SEO. Promoting through social media is usually free. All you need to do is set up your profile on twitter, facebook, Linkedin and Google +. If you want your marketing to work properly you will need to set up company or personal pages on facebook, Google + and Linkedin. It might seem hard to do this, but with a little effort you should be able to set it up by your self – you can learn how to set up a facebook page and a facebook landing page from these two posts.
After you have everything set up all you need to do is share good content and communicate with different people you come across and build relationships with them and generate leads.
Normally getting some SEO done could cost you a lot of money, as you will need to get your content search engine optimized and get links built. However, with a little effort you should be able to write SEO content and build links for free. You can learn more about how to SEO your content from this post and you can build free links through guest posts, commenting, link baiting, etc. For more information on how to get backlinks for free, read this post.
If you follow the above steps you should be able to build a lead generating and successful blog on a small budget.
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Hope you find the tips helpful. Have you had any success building successful blogs on a small budget? Would you like to share your tips and advice with us? Please leave your comments in the comments box below.
Mitt Ray is the CEO and Director of Social Marketing Writing and Imittcopy. He is also the author of the book Living With Ogres. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Linkedin.
