List Building - Blogging for Traffic and List Building?

The hottest marketing technique today is blogging. Why? you may wonder. What does blogging have to do with list building?

Blogs are very search engine friendly because search engine spiders don't have to deal with java script or flash, or too many images, usually, and they don't get hung up on the crawl. And besides that, a blog is constantly updating with fresh content. That's what search engines love best.

So, what happens?

Your blog, which you've updated daily, winds up at the top of the search engines for a keyword you've used in every post you've made. That's great because what gets clicked when someone searches? Usually the first few links.

If you're one of those links, you'll have a ton of traffic just going to your blog, where you talk about your niche and send people to your list building squeeze page at the end of every post, right? You'll get all these people clicking to your blog, and if you set up your blog the right way, you're also collecting names for list building there, too.

Putting a list building opt-in box at the top of your squeeze page is enormous! You really should do that, if you can. It may not be possible with the managed blog sites, like Blogger, for instance, but you can surely do it, if you have a blog, like a WordPress blog, on your own server. It's pretty simple to do. You just get the list building form code from your autoresponder, and it plug it into the blog template.

This is probably hard for some of you, but if you don't know what you're doing with that kind of stuff, hire somebody to do it for you. It won't cost much to get a blog set-up and running, with your list building box at the top. Just don't let anything stop you from setting up your blog. It's a very good way to get list building traffic.

You may say, "I can't write. What would I put into a blog every day?"

Well... there are plenty of places to get content, too. You can go to the article directories---there are hundreds of them---and choose articles in your niche. Articles from free directories are all free to republish. Or, you can choose something in the news about your niche. Do a book review. Quote a couple of sentences from a magazine article and give your opinion on what was written. But content is all around you and most of it is free.

List building has many different facets, and what it all boils down to is getting people to come to your list building squeeze page and having them sign up for your list. Blogging is one great way to add people to your list, who like what you have to say. Set up a blog--anywhere, be it on your own server or at one of the services--and start blogging. Use keywords important to your niche, and watch your list grow!

Tellman Knudson is CEO of OvercomeEverything, Inc. and a master of list building. Build a massive responsive list at MyFirstList.com.