If you want to attract more traffic to your website, generate more leads and ultimately sell more, then you should be blogging. If you don’t have a blog you are likely losing sales to your competitors that do.
Posting articles to your blog and sharing the links on social media are important components of your overall content marketing strategy. Why?
- First, because each blog post is indexed by the search engines, giving you an opportunity to appear in search results and be found by your target audience.
- Second, when you share your blog post links on your social media sites, and a user clicks on your post to read it, they are linked back to your website to read the post. That’s what you want . . . traffic on your site.
- Third, if your blog post is especially interesting, others may share it with their connections, which will help you grow your influence and exposure.
Your goal is to attract, inform and engage your audience, endear them to your company, and convert them to a lead, or someone who will refer your services to their friends and family. A well-designed content marketing strategy will help you get in front of more people who can benefit from your services.
To achieve the best results from each blog post it’s important to embrace these 7 broad concepts:
- KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE. This is important! Who are your potential customers? All your content marketing should be geared to attract people you’ve identified as your target audience.
- KNOW YOUR PURPOSE. You are going to write a lot of blog posts, right? So stick with one clear topic for each post. Is your post going to describe how to solve a problem? . . . then stick with identifying the problem and then offering solutions. Is your post intended to educate the audience? . . . then give them the information they need in order to be informed. Try to stay on point and not introduce too many ideas. Save additional ideas for the next post.
- BE SINCERE AND TRY TO TRULY ADD VALUE. A reader should feel like they learned something when they finish reading your blog post. They should feel more educated, more knowledgeable and more informed than before they started reading your post. When you sincerely try to add value, and not just ‘create content’, you will usually succeed.
- INCLUDE A VISUAL ELEMENT. Every blog post should include at least one image, a photo, video, or illustration or some kind. Several studies of blog readership have concluded that blog posts with images are read upward of 80% more often than posts with no image . . . so always including a photo is a no-brainer.
- SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA. Always share every blog post with your social media accounts and groups.
- SEND TO YOUR EMAIL LIST. Every blog post should also be sent to your business email list, and you should ask your contacts to share your blog post with others. It’s a great way to get people who already know you, like you and trust you to get involved in promoting your blog posts.
- STICK TO A REASONABLE SCHEDULE. Most of our clients devote a specific number of hours per month to content creation, blogging and social media accounts. When you do this and keep track of the actual time and activities, it is clear what can be accomplished given a specific amount of time. You can use that knowledge to create your content marketing budget.
We are always happy to answer your questions, so please don’t hesitate to contact us any time.
