{To read Part 1 of this series, CLICK HERE.}
Last time, we discussed ads, reviews and giveaways, and conference sponsorships. Today, let’s dig a little deeper…
4. Affiliates – While bloggers often do quite well through affiliate sales, they do tend to be a more passive form of advertising. In order to make affiliate sales really work, you will need to offer regular sales and promotions to your affiliates to keep them promoting your product. Also, an added plus of having an affiliate program is that many bloggers “backfill” their empty ad slots with their affiliate button ads. But again, button ads rarely sell themselves and bloggers need incentive to promote.
5. Sponsoring a series – These are often top ad space on a blog and do not come cheap. However, you will find them to be some of the best advertising you can buy.
Some examples of this are sponsoring link ups hosted by the blog, suggesting a series of posts that would incorporate your products or include an ad at the bottom of each post in the series, or simply sponsoring individual posts that would feature your ad somewhere in the post.
When sponsoring posts, ALWAYS keep integrity at the forefront. Never ask a blogger to place hidden links to your site in their post or mislead their readers in any way. Bloggers get emails daily from schysters looking to gain search engine traffic from their blog posts in underhanded ways. You do not want to come off as one of these types.
6. Hiring bloggers as employees – There is a new trend in homeschool companies that is very exciting and very effective! More and more companies are hiring homeschool bloggers to run everything from their social media to their advertising and promotions. Because homeschool bloggers are both the producers and the consumers, they often know exactly what a company needs in order to succeed. They also know how social media works and the phenomenal benefit of working with bloggers. Having a blogger on staff can be such a blessing and benefit to your company. It is definitely worth considering.
7. Blog Blitzes, Twitter Parties, and Facebook Parties – As mentioned above, bloggers know their social media, so if your eyes glassed over just now, never fear! There are individual bloggers and groups of bloggers out there able to whip together one of these enormous product campaigns that will drive significant traffic to your site, potentially generating hundreds of dollars in sales.
Here’s how they work:
Blog Blitzes: A group of bloggers get together and post about your products, often hosting a joint giveaway of products from your site.
Twitter Party: Typically a 1 hour “party” featuring free prizes from your site (may also include extra prizes like Amazon gift cards, etc) on a specific hashtag on a specific date. Blogger/s in charge will promote prior to the party in order to drum up interest. Twitter parties are usually in a Question/Answer format, with winners chosen randomly from those who tweet answers.
Facebook Party: A Facebook Party works much the same way as a Twitter Party except the giveaways must be held off-site. The party is hosted on your company’s Facebook page with questions and answers and links to giveaways that are often posted on your company blog. Giveaways typically stay open until midnight of party night and winners are announced the next day. No two Facebook parties look alike, so there is plenty of room for experimentation.
8. Be creative! In the last two posts, we have just scratched the surface of how bloggers can help to grow your homeschool business. Now it is up to you to experiment, try new-to-you things, and be creative in your dealings with bloggers.
Never forget bloggers are the pulse of the homeschooling community. Read their blogs, learn about their audience and ultimately, your potential buyers. Look for ways to bring bloggers on board to take your homeschool business to a new level and don’t be afraid to try something new and different!
We would love to hear feedback from homeschool companies about what has been working for them. Consider submitting a guest post to Homeschool Blogging about your experiences!
