Here is the forth and final post to this series of Blogging for Your Brand. In case you missed it here’s Part One, Two and Three. Here are 17 tips to promote your blog (after you’ve written 8-10 solid posts) that we use here at the G-Spot:

1. Share the URL with your friends and family through social networking sites and ask them to pass it along to their network.

2. Use Twitter and develop a following and find new readers.

3. Leave genuine and engaging comments on related blogs with a link to your blog as part of your signature. The emphasis is on leaving a relevant comment because this helps establish you as an expert in the field, suggesting that you would have knowledgeable insight to offer on your blog.

4. Find where your target readers are and engage with them there.

5. Submit your blog to blog directories such as Technorati.com (the biggest) and RSS directories.

6.

By now, you know what the benefits of blogging are (Part I), you’ve got your blog set up (Part II), you know all the blogging lingo (Part II) by heart now, and you contribute to the blogosphere articulately by writing a post or two. Great! You are good to go. Here’s some food for thought to make your journey more effective:

• Write, write, write and write some more. This is the most important thing about your blog, the content. Write about what you know and research what you don’t. Always cite your sources, and provide a link when possible.

• Examine popular blogs and see what they’re doing.

• Include a picture or video with every post as this makes it more eye-catching and serves as a more noticeable break between posts (I dare you to tell me that blue guy up there isn’t great eye-candy).

• Always tag your posts. This helps with search.

• Do not leave About page blank. If people aren’t going to be able to guess what your blog is about by reading just any one post than it’s in your best interest to have an About page.

• Link to your website and vice versa. This helps your search ranking.

• A blog requires

Now that you know the benefits of blogging from Blogging for Your Brand – Part I: Benefits, here’s part two, how to get started:

Create your brand’s blog on WordPress.com, Blogger.com or thoughts.com, among others, for free. However, it is highly recommended that you own the domain name, otherwise the host can delete your blog for any reason because technically, the host owns your blog. Owning the domain name also allows your URL to read www.yourblogname.com instead of www.blogspot.yourblogname.com, which is not very professional. There’s usually a small monthly or yearly fee, but well worth it as your blog name will be easier to remember and you’ll have complete control. Decide carefully on the name and URL, as it’ll represent your company and brand. When you’re registered, browse through the template designs and find one that best suits you (you can change it later if you like). Be mindful of settings, as there are a lot when it comes to blogs. Finally, start writing!

If you are a visual learner and need a more step-by-step tutorial then visit http://www.becomeablogger.com.

Here are terminologies that you should know pertaining to the world of bloggers:

If your brand doesn’t have a blog, then you are missing out on some great perks. There are numerous of reasons and benefits to have a blog, and below I’ve listed ten. But before that you should know what a blog is. The word “blog” is derived from the term “web log,” and is a type of website similar to an online journal containing dated entries in reverse chronological order (the most recent on top). A blog can serve as an informative or personal outlet to the Internet; thoughts, ideas, news, photos and videos can be a part of a blog post.

Now, the benefits:

Search Ranking – A blog can help increase your presence on search engines helping your company climb in rank, especially when it’s keyword-oriented, well-written and regularly updated. Search engines such as Google (the biggest) love blogs, and through their secret algorithm rank blogs very well.

Well Archived – Regardless of how old a blog post is if it’s well-written, relevant and optimized for search it can be found years down the road in search engines.

Brand Building – A blog serves as another platform to promote your product/service/brand.

Engage with Clients/Customers – Readers can leave comments on blog posts and you can respond, this leads to conversations and builds a relationship between brand and consumer. When a reader feels like he is cared for than the odds are he’ll buy what you’re selling when the time comes.

Low-Cost Alternative for Web Presence –

Watch a clip of an outspoken lad who has had enough and will take no more from ABC’s Wife Swap:

Holy. Crap. Is this real? I am in utter shock at the audacity shown here. I mean, wow. I can’t believe she took away his bacon. What, with all its nutrients and all. Uncool, Joy, very uncool. You want to come into the kingdom and play Queen? I’ll turn the other cheek. Treat everybody else like sorry people? I’ll humor you. Take away the cheese-in-a-can? I’ll grit my teeth and bear it. But my bacon?! You’ve crossed the line. And I assure you, you do not want to cross that line! That line of sizzling pig grease.

How much can one man take? How long can a gentleman bite his tongue before he rightfully lets it lash? How much injustice must one suffer through before he is forced to take a stand? And taking a stand our young protagonist did; packing his bag and vanishing from that vile woman. Joy? More like, Kill Joy.

Twitter is fast becoming the most ridiculous form of communication ever. Everyone is crazy, daffy, bonkers obsessed with being followed with little regard to who is actually doing the following. For a personal account, It’s fun, it’s free, it’s hip, it’s cool. Awesome! For business or brand, however, this can be a little trickier resulting in lost hours of learning curve, mindless following and meaningless banter with little or no return on investment. No doubt, Twitter can be a very powerful tool for business but some thought should be put into the right approach. Determine why you are following and why you want to be followed.

Picture a “networking” cocktail party in which dozens of guests are casually chatting. Soft music is playing in the background. The only apparent difference between this and any other cocktail party is that everybody is walking around following each other in little circles.

“Social Media Expert Gets Trashed” is a tongue-in-cheek poke at all of the “Social Media Experts” and “Gurus” there are out there. For added fun, the video was made by typing the characters’ words into stock animated avatars on SitePal.

Truth is: There are

While Google continues to find ways to monetize their popular video site, YouTube, with its user-generated content Carl’s Jr. will be banking on those same UGC from popular YouTube faces for their new Portobello Mushroom Six-Dollar Burger ad campaign.

No strangers to risky ad campaigns (think Paris Hilton car wash) Carl’s Jr. used nine YouTube celebrities who combine for 3.8 million YouTube subscribers, 590,000 followers on Twitter and 25,000 Facebook fans according to Adweek (that’s a whole lot of targeted eye-balls) for this campaign. Only a handful of advertisers have used YouTube personalities to endorse their product.

This is a great move by Carl’s Jr. whose creative brief to the YouTube stars was to mention the burger, tell viewers how they eat their burgers, and then pose the question to the viewers. What’s great about this approach is it allows the YouTube stars to do the video in their fashion to reach their audience, while encouraging viewers to take part in the fun with a video response of their own truly making this a social campaign. The beauty behind this method is that viewers are willingly watching these video ads, and I suspect the viewers to be inclined to watch the other YouTube celebs’ videos to compare and discuss. That’s nine watched Carl’s Jr. ads per user, how’s that for promoting brand awareness?

Many agencies are eager to see the results of this campaign (including us) because if successful it proves UGC can be profitable, online video is a medium not to be ignored and social media deserves all the hype and praises it’s received as a marketing tool. Not to mention this is a much cheaper way to endorse a product and will cost a fraction of a TV-based ad.

I’ve embedded all nine videos below. Each video possesses it’s own charm and flair by being either humorous, provocative, goofy or crooned. Check to see if your favorite YouTube celeb made a video for the new mushroom-burger.

By now you’ve probably seen the ShamWow infomercial with that one guy, you know, that guy that couldn’t keep his hands off his new lady friend. Here’s a parody — of the ShamWow infomercial, not the faithful Miami evening:

This video from Magic Hugs is downright hilarious. I probably laughed harder than I should’ve, but the flow of the video, demonstration of versatility, the conviction of his performance and lackluster enthusiasm countering the original is simply phenomenal, or maybe it’s just the way he says “paypah taulz”. Being in the advertising business I’ve developed a keen eye for great ads, and if this doesn’t persuade you to buy paper towels then maybe you don’t want a crap load of squares and a million friends. Think about it. Paper towels.

Here’s a video of a young lad from across the pond covering Supercool Creative’s Dave’s Super Funny Valentine’s Day Song. He doesn’t really get into it until half-way through and you can really hear his enthusiasm by the 1:38 mark – that’s when he makes the song his own.

Below is a video of someone dedicating Dave’s SFVDS to an ex-girlfriend it seems. Vengeance and vindication shall be his!! That’s just a little bit of what we do here at Supercool Creative: inspire, bring out the best in people and transcend unspoken emotions through song and video. Now, imagine what we can do for you.