A corporate blog can be an incredibly powerful sales tool and many people begin this practice simply to sell more products. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that, but before you start, it is vital to learn the art of product placement. Blogging is similar in many ways to television and other media, but when it comes to product placement, there a few very big differences.

Have you ever stayed up late and watched an annoying infomercial? Most have, and even if you are vaguely interested in the product, it’s still pretty tough to get past the hype. Now, let’s put this in terms of a blog. If your blog is one long infomercial with no actual content of any value, chances are your efforts will be in vain. No one likes to read an infomercial – especially one that stretches on ad infinitum.

So, how do you still sell products on your blog, but avoid this trap? The answer is actually pretty simple. You need to develop a ratio of informative posts versus posts that contain product placement. You also need to work on inventive ways to integrate product placement into informative posts. Let’s cover the first one and then move to the second.

A good ratio to have to avoid sounding like the world’s longest infomercial is three informative posts for every post that contains a product placement. Yes, this only gives you about one chance a week to sell a specific product if you only blog once a day. However, the chances of that one post being effective are much higher than if you post nothing but product spam all week.

The key is to give your readers what they want. That would be informative content that they can use, enjoy, or relate to. No one can really relate to a commercial. Most blog readers are savvy enough to know that companies need to promote their products, and they are okay with the fact that occasionally there may be a post about a specific product. They are not okay with endless promotional posts that offer no value to them as a reader.

Now, let’s cover inventive ways to handle product placement. These are not overt sales pitches, but they can be even more powerful than a direct product placement post. The key here is to find a way to incorporate your product into your informative post that:

1. The flow of the post is not disturbed.
2. The product provides an answer to a problem.
3. The reader is interested in learning more about the product.

This is not as hard as it sounds. A simple well placed link to one of your products and a brief sentence about how the reader will benefit from it can be incredibly powerful. Test out a few techniques to see how well your audience responds to different variants of this technique until you find the one that is right for your blog.

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Originally posted 2008-10-31 05:45:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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