Self Promotion: Clever or Just Annoying?
Nowadays, it seems like everyone and their mother has a “blog”. And in many ways, these blogs can function like mini-web sites. Almost anyone can get one for no cost at all from blog service providers such as WordPress, Blogger and Typepad. And most times you can tell who the newbies are from those who are actually using their blogs to try to gain revenue.
Separating the Newbies from the Business People
Typically, the newer the blog user is, the more focused they are on expressing themselves and trying to find their own personality via blogging. Often, these blogs will have personal anecdotes, pictures of family and friends, short stories and links to pages as well as other bloggers they like. These bloggers tend to have more fun with writing, as they feel no restraints in what kinds of topics they can write about.
On the other hand, there are those bloggers who (increasingly so) are out to market themselves in an effort to bring attention to an issue; but more often than not, it is to make some sort of revenue from the blog. These blogs are peppered with AdSense ads, and other nonsensical things, which tend to cloud the reader’s ability to focus on what should be the most important part of the blog: the content. Now, don’t get me wrong; there are some decent, high-quality blogs out there that do a really great job with providing quality content while making some money on the side. However, this brings up the whole notion of self promotion.
There are many schemes for earning revenue for all of the blogging that a person can stand to do in any given week, month or year. A lot of times, bloggers will promote their blogs or other blogs that they are earning revenue off of by promoting it on other sites. This is where the whole “do follow” and anti-spam rules come into play. Recently, for example, I have noticed that there are a lot of people who have been sending me messages on MyBlogLog.com. The thing is, though; they’re not actual personal messages. Instead, they appear to be mass messages sent out to hundreds of viewers simply saying something like, “Please check out my site at www.—-.com and leave a comment”. Would most readers consider this form of self-promotion to be spammy? While it may seem clever to spread the word about your blog (because admittedly, sometimes I will click on a link out of sheer curiosity), more often than not I just find self-promotion annoying half the time.
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I think the message needs to be personal, and one more important thing, it’s not all about you, it’s all about the other.
Sometimes, the sentence structure can be helpful. One example, instead of saying, “please visit my blog”, you can say “hope to see you at my blog” that sounds better, I guess =)
Yeah,
Spamming your network is really frustrating. I’m already a member of more networks than I’d care to be, and each one has different rules for how email is handled. I end up not participating, cuz it’s all just junk…
I’ve found that the direct email to a few people, is a much better tool than hitting “send all”. Selecting 20 or so people and sending a personal “Just wrote this up, and thought it would be up your alley” gets me a much higher quality traffic, and has helped with comments and link backs.
i read your article. it is true that now people are using their blog like a site and sometimes also using the content of other site in their blog. Also people do same type of messages to other people but in my view it is ok unless they are mentioning that site also whom the content they refer.
@Robert….that’s true; it does need to be more personal…
@SomeAudioGuy…Spamming is really annoying..I have often wondered about sending personal emails but had my doubts as to whether or not people would a) open up the email and b) take it seriously…but if you’re having success with it, then perhaps it’s worth a shot…
@Sandra…Thanks for the comment…I agree. I also think that if you leave a comment that is of high quality, people will genuinely be interested to hear more of what you have to say and will try to find links to other things that you have written..
I prefer not to put any ads on my blog.
I also prefer to provide more content than pitch.
Although I do sell things on my blog from time to time.
I’ve found my readers don’t mind an occasional promotion if I’m consistently providing high quality content.
Likewise, you don’t have to promote in obvious ways like, “Come visit my site!”
You can simply offer helpful advice or feedback and demonstrate your knowledge or expertise instead.
Often, providing a sample is a better sales tool than blatant selling.