What can bloogers teach us about online marketing?

Despite being armed with advanced technology and tools, marketers are often frustrated that their results don’t match the time and effort they expend online. In contrast, bloggers appear to achieve a great deal with very little. So what there is to learn from the success of our blogging comrades?

According to urban legend, when the boffins at NASA discovered that astronauts’ pens did not work in the zero gravity during the Apollo space flights in the 1960s, they regarded it as a ‘mission critical’ hindrance and instituted a massive research program to solve the problem.

The team of enthusiastic NASA scientists and engineers then spent over ten years and US$12 million developing a pen that could write, not only in zero gravity conditions, but upside down, on just about any surface, underwater, and at either extremely hot or cold temperatures.

The legend has it that, when confronted with the same problem, the Russian Federal Space Agency simply used a pencil.

This famous ‘Space Pen’ story circulated widely on the Web several years ago, and has proved to be an enduringly entertaining fable since then. Although the myth isn’t true, its continued popularity suggests that many people can relate to its message about not overcomplicating technology or tools.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the insight captured so brilliantly in the ‘Space Pen’ story is also extremely pertinent for any marketers who are tackling the challenges associated with creating sales-orientated websites.

Even though they usually have access to some very sophisticated, ‘high-tech’ technology and tools, they are often frustrated that the results of their efforts do not match the time and effort they have put in.

There are numerous reasons for this, and it’s a common enough occurrence to suggest that it is not so much what technology you have that counts, but what you do with it. This is further backed up by evidence from a great (if seldom examined) source of potential answers: the blogging community.

Much like the Russians in the ‘Space Pen’ anecdote, bloggers rarely have as sophisticated a toolbox as online marketers, yet they often achieve better results using the simple tools they have at their disposal. So what are they doing that we could learn from?

Clue: it’s about content.

The first understanding that bloggers have is that the simple key to achieving a good search engine ranking is to frequently change a site’s content. The immediacy of the medium is one of blogging’s great strengths, and the majority of bloggers post at least daily and, sometimes, more than once per day.

On the subject of content, bloggers also tend to write short, ‘punchy’ copy focused on being direct and presenting an individual idea or concept, rather than drafting long-winded articles that deal with several ideas all at once, or develop a particular idea comprehensively.

Breaking topics or ideas up like this offers several advantages, not only does it help online readers scan their articles and digest the information presented easily, it enables them to keep their sites dynamic by posting several articles over a short period, instead of one, and it can help improve the perception of how topical their site is, which is also better from an SEO point of view.

Bloggers also tend to focus on presenting good content, rather than graphics. Design definitely helps of course, and should never be overlooked, but it is worth remembering that it doesn’t mean anything to search engines, and only plays a role once a visitor has been attracted to a site.

It’s also a great idea to tag content. Most bloggers use tags to describe their content very effectively, making it easier to both locate and associate with other relevant content, within the site, and externally.

Link popularity is another important way of boosting a site’s prominence and effectiveness. Many SEO experts argue that it is the single most influential factor when it comes to determining how well a site performs in search engine rankings, yet it is also something that is beyond even the most advanced tools or technology (well, legally, at least).

Put simply, a site’s link popularity is based on the number, and quality, of links it has pointing to it. Most search engines reason that, the more independent sites that voluntarily link to your content, the better it must be.

Aside of joining lots of directories and promoting themselves to other sites, many marketers don’t believe there is much else they can do about this kind of external ‘off site’ activity.

Nevertheless, our bloggers once again, have seemingly mastered the art of encouraging numbers of other bloggers and sites to link to them, and offer us the very useful clue – it’s all about content.

The easiest way to attract inbound, one-way links is to offer great content that other sites want to link to. This is far more effective than joining large numbers of directories and, as every good blogger knows, the best part is that it doesn’t require time consuming or expensive promotional efforts – it actually happens quite easily and naturally.

All this is very straightforward and simple, yet it’s surprising how commonly online marketers – much like the legendary NASA boffins – forget how effective the most obvious and ‘low-tech’ solutions can sometimes be.