Your business blog is an essential tool for your inbound marketing efforts in terms of SEO, generating social proof, credibility, creating a community, becoming known as a thought leader and generating visits, leads, and conversion to customers and brand ambassadors. It has to the opportunity to spin gold as if you have the Midas Touch.
It is THE most valuable piece of company real estate you own. With a little caressing and foreplay, it should resonate with your prospective buyers, meeting their needs, pain points and answering their questions. Whatever they may be.
“Companies that blog have 55% more visitors and generate 70% more leads than companies who don’t. Hubspot
Organizations are pumping up their online efforts to write compelling content and devour a piece of the market share, the hungry consumer. If you are not part of this bandwidth, churning out and feeding the insatiable, then you miss the train. It is a strong leader in your social media channels.
You write for them.
Not yourself.
Not the search engines.
They are the ones inputting the string of keywords to find YOU! Help them.
Laboring over content and strategy can present a challenge for many. Think about what you want to say to your readers.
Did you ever consider how much time and effort it takes to write, maintain and promote a blog? It is so overwhelming. Sometimes just coming up with the theme can be a challenge.
“Do not underestimate how vital it is to allot time to writing a post or creating an image specifically designed for each particular community. It could make the difference between comments and crickets.” Rebekah Radice.
While there are many helpful and educational posts regarding content, titles, SEO, buyer personas, best practices, tips, tools and other recommended suggestions, it can be a very large undertaking to sustain and not go insane in the process. We can also get buried in the learning process. You open one site and suddenly realize hours have gone by while you only began to research a simple topic but you sunk in the abyss of data and links.
Anatomy of a Blog Post
Begin by understanding your goals, strategy and tactics for your blog and content. Write them down and use an editorial calendar to help visualize and plan your content schedule. It is much simpler and easier when you see it “on paper.” It will also help to keep you accountable as well as organized with your writing, posting, sharing and analyzing of your metrics. This is just the bare bones, the skeleton for your writing and posting process. Read and research some of the best practices, save articles to refer back to you and put in your best effort. Guest author, Adam Connell shared some great tips and insight to help you enhance your writing and pique the interest of your audience, enticing them to share your post.
Blog
Write compelling and thought provoking content to reach your readers, answer their deepest questions and offer real solutions. That’s why you’re in business right? Not to push a product or a widget but to offer outcomes and resolutions to problems. Great content captures interest and engagement.
“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.” Brian Clark
Why Should Your Business Blog?
Do You Make These 13 Content Marketing Mistakes?
The Benefits of Blogging: Why Businesses Do It, and You Should Too
Foolproof Formula to Incredibly Catchy Blog Titles
Keywords to Concepts: The Lazy Web Marketer’s Guide to Smart Keyword Research
Content Curation: 10 FREE Tools to Save You Time
3 Steps to Identify Blog Topics that are Relevant to Your Audience
HubSpot’s Blog Topic Generator
WP Plugins
The WordPress plugins you choose should solve a specific “problem” or add key functionality and ease of use, for yourself as well as your audience. There are thousands of WordPress plugins to enhance your SEO, website speed, social sharing, curation and function of your site. Investigate and test the ones you feel will add the most benefits and features; not just because it seems like a shiny new toy.
Top 10 Social Media Plugins for WordPress
40 Experts Share Their Favorite WordPress Plugins
Content curation is now push button simple on WordPress
8 Top Free WordPress Plugins To Speed Up Your Websites Loading Time
10 Essential WordPress Plugins to Improve SEO & Usability – Search Engine Watch
Distribution
Once you written a fabulous post, you need a strategic plan to share your content and ideas. It isn’t enough just to write a post and push it to your social platforms. Use a variety of tools and platforms to broaden your reach and your message.
“The biggest mistake that I see bloggers and marketers make is spending an incredible amount of time creating a really great piece of content but don’t put the time into promoting it.” Adam Connell
32 Experts Share Their Best Blog Post Promotion Tips
25 Smart Ways to Promote Your Latest Blog Post
Conversations
Social Media isn’t a hit it and quit it mentality. If you think like this and don’t engage or only self-promote, you will not experience the value and global reach of social media. Your blog and your voice will be lost amongst those who build their relationship and give back to their communities.
“You can’t just smash blast anymore.” Instead, you have to give them what they want and then strive to aggregate with yourself so you can control your own marketing.” Jay Leopardi.
13 Tips to Humanize Your Brand
Customer Relationships – Engage Your Audience: From Profile to Preference
3 C’s of Effective Relationship Marketing
Relationship Marketing for a Digital World
What about you? How do you manage your blog, content and communications?
‘Excellent!’ That’s my cryptic comment on G+ yesterday for this post.
It deserves more than a one-word review.
The Title. It grabs your attention, okay. It lets the reader know that ‘here’s something that promises to be different, but smart and smartly written.’ You set the bar pretty high with that title. Had you not delivered on its implied promise you would be accused of pimping your post with salacious and false headlines. But you didn’t and no one did.
The Organization. One thing I always admire about you is your commitment to organization which has helped me immensely in working with you. You show that commitment and expertise in you organize the tremendous amount and quality of content in this post.
Writing. Your writing is readable. It flows without being breezy. It takes you quickly through the pertinent points and drops you off at the next one. Concise and crisp for a purpose: the client’s time.
Actionable. Your tips and resources and suggestions are actionable for today. Not file away and think about or forget. Click on ’em, learn more about ’em, use ’em. Efficiency and effectiveness. Gotta love a vendor who offers their client these values.
Length. Long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep you interested. Bam. A topic like this is one that can easily overwhelm a writer. There is so-o-o-o much out there, but how much is valuable. You distilled all that into what is valuable. Another sign of your value-add as a service provider for your clients. They come to you to distill all that they need but have no time to learn and then for you to use on their behalf. And here you’ve given a glimpse of what’s possible when they work with you.
Awesomeness.
WOW Zane!!
I am truly honored and humbled by your comments. Thank you so very much for your kindness and outstanding review. You have made my week. I wish I could “plaster” this everywhere for all to see.
Have a fabulous Friday!
Suzie
This is a great post! It’s so important to understand blogging because it can be so helpful for businesses and also people’s personal aspirations. Thanks for sharing!
Hi Suzie, I just wanted to say thank you for this article and with your permission I would like to send a link to it out to my network. The post is not only well written but the format is fantastic for those who are currently sitting on the fence and not quite getting around to blogging. Yes it does take up time and it can be easy to ignore but you have expertly explained in your article why it is a must and have done it much better than I could have. Thanks again, Liz
Thank you Liz! I appreciate it very much.
Please feel free to share the link to my post. I hope your network finds it helpful and informative.
Enjoy your day and thank you for asking permission.
Suzie