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).
