In Barrack Obama’s victory speech one week ago, he issued a sort of call to action, reminding listeners that in order to repair many of the problems we face, including, for example, our current economic woes, we need to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and get to work. What if, though, you could help to bolster the economy while boosting your business as well? Our previous discussion explored how email marketing can do just that; implementing a carefully designed blog management campaign can do the same, though in a different manner.

That’s not to say that blog marketing isn’t targeted; in fact it can often be more targeted than email marketing, especially when blogs are approached from an in-depth understanding of search engine marketing and optimization. First we’re going to look at how blogs are an inexpensive way to market your business, and then we’ll examine how blogs can be targeted to increase efficiency. Finally, we’ll consider what that means not only for your business, but for the economy as well.

Why are blogs inexpensive methods of internet marketing? For one, owning a blog can be very inexpensive, especially because you can have a free blog if cash is tight. What can you expect when it comes to free blogs as opposed to hosting your own blog? When you host your own blog, you can use your own URL as opposed to using the URL supplied by the blog website. For example, your own URL might be something like www.yourcompany.com/blog or blog.yourcompany.com. A free blog might have a URL similar to yourcompany.freeblogsite.com.

Another reason that a blog is an inexpensive method of internet marketing is that you can tailor its frequency to suit your needs and budget. You can have new posts every day, every week day, twice a week, once a week, twice a month…While the most successful blogs post more frequently, you can always increase your blog’s frequency and start at a level with which you’re comfortable. With blogs, you’re not locked in. Even if you decide to move to another brand of blog software, so to speak, most will allow for seamless transition by importing your old blog into your new blog. Blogging allows for flexibility, and you can see the results of your alterations almost immediately, in real time.

Blog marketing campaigns can be targeted if you apply SEM and SEO principles. For example, if you’re blogging about caramel apples, you would want to insert that keyword into the text of your blog post the proper amount of times so that the text would be optimized. Anyone searching for the keyword phrase “caramel apples” might be led to your blog. SEM practices that can drum up targeted visits for your blog include PPC campaigns, or pay-per-click campaigns, which might lead prospects to your blog if they search for keyword phrases which you set to your blog. Visitors might bookmark your blog or put it into their RSS feeds, and perhaps even forward your blog to others. In this way, your blog can spread much the same way your email marketing campaign can spread, except faster in cases where your readers make their RSS feeds public.

Any element of internet marketing could be inserted into the scenario described in our last discussion about how email marketing could help improve the economy. However, with blog marketing strategies, that cycle can work faster and for less money. If you apply the money you save with your blog toward an email marketing campaign, imagine the benefit of implementing both types of marketing strategies with the guidance of your internet marketing agency.