Many bloggers start blogging as a hobby or a passion and eventually start selling products or services.

Perhaps you went the other way around; you started by selling products and services and then started a blog on your website.

Either way, your blog is a great way to market your products/services and let your audience know about them.

If you are wondering how to market your business through blogging, here are my best 5 tips.

1. Solve A Problem

What is the problem or the need that your products or services solve?

Pick that up and turn it into a blog post. Start by describing the issue your audience is feeling and the emotions associated with it.

Let’s say you sell skin masks for people with acne. Describe what your audience feels when they’ve tried hundreds of things and the acne still doesn’t go away. Then describe how they would feel when it does.

Then you can talk about your product, right? Wrong.

Then you’re going to tell them 5 (or more) great tips for how to take care of their skin type and get rid of the acne—simple and effective tips you know will work because you’ve tried and tested them yourself.

For one of those tips, you’ll talk about your product, but in a way where people see the benefits of using it. Include before and after photos if you want.

This is a clever way of marketing your products, because you are not hard-selling anything; you are providing your readers with valuable tips that really work and that they’ll be grateful for, making them also want to try your products.

2. Talk About Your Business, But With Purpose

Make it clear that this is a blog post about a product or a service.

But you have a good reason for that: you are launching a new product line, a new updated service, you have some kind of milestone, or it’s the birthday of when you started your business, etc. Give it a purpose.

Then, besides telling the benefits of the product/service, tell your readers the story behind them. For example, tell them how you came up with the idea of selling baby products. Maybe you become a mom years or months ago and felt now is the perfect time to go for it.

Include photos and testimonials as well.

This is an especially great way to talk about your business and promote your stuff in a very compelling way, because you give people the opportunity to know more about who you are and why you do what you do.

Your audience relating to you is key to turning readers into clients.

3. Run A Competition/Contest

In short, write a blog post about a contest to win relevant prizes (your products, services, or samples of them), and promote it on social media.

People loooooove contests, especially if the prizes are yummy. And social media loves contests, especially Facebook and Pinterest.

This is a great way to use your blog to promote your stuff, but in a fun and engaging way.

You can even offer a discount on your products/services to people that participated but didn’t get the prize.

You can do this as a one-off, on certain key times of the year (like when launching a new program of course) or do it on a consistent basis. It’s really up to you and how it feels right to your business.

4. Create A Vlog

One of the great things nowadays to create exposure and reach is by using video and showing yourself—in other words, talking to your audience.

You can do this is many ways: do a video and upload it into your YouTube channel, do live videos on social media, do a training on a specific day/time where people have to subscribe, or just do them all.

You basically just talk to your audience about the same things you talk about in your blog posts.

I know many bloggers and online entrepreneurs that want to do videos but don’t know what to talk about. Well, just pick up your most popular blog posts and talk about those topics.

You’re an expert already, and your audience will love to know who you are and connect with you.

And you have a great opportunity in these videos to talk about your products/services.

Because you are providing so much value to the people watching by giving them great tips and advice, they actually want to know about your offers and how you can help them further.

5. Write A Guest Blog Post

Many bloggers accept guest blog posts from other bloggers in similar niches.

Find the ones that resonate with you and ask if you can write a post for their blog. Again, the key here is to provide great value by offering your expertise and advice.

And usually you can include a bio with a link to your own website or even links in the text to some of your products or services. Check with the owner of the blog on their guidelines about this.

It is a great way to increase your exposure and promote your business to a larger audience.

I do hope these tips are useful to you and provided more clarity on how to use blogging to promote your business.

 

Carla Gadyt is a Business, Blogging, and Pinterest Marketing Expert. She thrives in helping bloggers and online entrepreneurs up-level their online presence and have successful businesses.