“How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate” plus 1 more

How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 02:25 PM PST

This post is by Clare Lancaster, of WomenInBusiness.com.au.

As a blog business owner, your brand needs to reach beyond your blog.

Your presence on social media is a valuable one. In some ways, it's the ultimate opt-in. When someone follows you on Twitter, subscribes to your YouTube channel or likes your Facebook page they're making a choice to connect with you—and are receptive to your message.

These communication channels become assets for you to cultivate loyalty, relationships, and importantly, influence.

These assets are valuable not only for you, but for advertisers also. More and more, my advertising leads are inquiring about social media reach. They don't just want a banner ad on my website—they want their brand exposed to my social networks.

There are creative ways to add more value for advertisers (in exchange for higher rates) without being spammy. You don't want to sell your soul and lose the trust that you've built, but there's no reason why you can't monetize the attention of your audience beyond your blog.

Ways to use social media to offer more value to advertisers

Publish a blog post to welcome a new sponsor and tweet about it.
Publish a monthly “Editor's picks” post including from your advertiser's products/service range.
Continue this by linking to a page within an advertiser’s products/service range from Facebook.
Add a page to your Facebook account detailing monthly special offers that you've negotiated with your advertisers.

Make sure in all cases that the line between all advertising/editorial is clearly drawn and appropriately marked.

Add your social media statistics to your media kit and include any extras that advertisers will receive when they choose to book a campaign with you. You'll get extra dollars for minimal extra work, and your advertisers will receive extra value.

Haven't separated your personal social media accounts from your blog's yet? Next week I'll explore the pros and cons of doing just that.

Clare Lancaster offers blog reviews to help improve the business performance of your blog. She is passionate about helping people make their own path in work and life and can be found on Twitter most days (@clarelancaster).

Post from: ProBlogger Blog Tips

How to Use Social Media to Attract a Higher Advertiser Rate

How to Create Killer Content for Your Blog: New Course Starting Soon

Posted: 24 Nov 2010 05:03 AM PST

While great content doesn’t guarantee success, it sure does help! Yet so many bloggers struggle to produce content that engages with and meets the needs of readers.

As a result, Chris Garrett and I have put together a brand new short course—Create Killer Content for your Blog—to help set you on the right track.

The course is presented over five modules (in five days):

Planning your content: coming up with ideas, finding your voice, types of posts to try
Structuring your content: writing your content in a way that works
Polishing your content: taking good content and making it great
Killer multimedia content: podcasts, interviews, slide shows, and video
Live webinar: a Q&A call with myself and Chris at the end of the week.

This course starts Monday, 6 December and it costs just $29.95 (or $99 if you bundle it with the other 3 upcoming Pillars of ProBlogger courses).

If you can’t do it all in the week in which the course is scheduled, don’t worry: you’ll have access to all the course materials for 12 months, so you can take it at your own pace.