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You probably blog without knowing it

I see a lot of websites who regularly publish news and information on their website to keep customers informed of what’s going on. This is essentially great blog content and can be the foundation for the blogging aspect of your website marketing campaign.

What can you blog about?

Think about the things that happen in your business every day that you naturally tell people about. New products, industry innovations, events and awards, PR, articles written about your business, new staff, old staff, great staff, customer testimonials, common problems customers face and how to solve them. Every week there is bound to be something in your business that you could write about.

Don’t be a sales person

Rather than push your products or services engage your customers by giving them an insight into your business, the people in it and your expertise in the industry. Entertain, educate and inform your readers. If you write about your products or services then try talking about how they solve a problem.

Research

Don’t be afraid to check other successful blogs in your industry including those overseas to get some ideas on how to promote your business. Analyse your keywords, see what your competitors are doing and do it better.

Know your audience

Who are your customers, what will they want to hear about and what will make them keep coming back to your website to read your blog? Blogging does take some effort so it is important not to waste it. Often finding a small niche within your industry can create a significant difference if you are in a highly competitive online arena.

Design less

Try not to get too bogged down with the design of your blog. Use your logo and brand colours with one of the pre designed templates. Put some thought into layout and make sure it looks good but remember blogs are about content, the look of your blog helps but your first focus should be on generating content.

Optimise

Use the right blogging platform so you can optimise each post with keywords and descriptions. Having a blog hosted on your domain rather than a free blog often provides better options for optimising your blog for search engines. Blogging to nobody soon becomes tedious so if you don’t get found it will be hard to stay motivated.

Promote

Marketing is about coverage and blogs are no different. Think of your blog as your own PR central. With all that valuable content, re distribute it across the web to places such as Twitter, Facebook, news and article sites and LinkedIn. If you post a PowerPoint presentation, pdf or Word document consider posting to SlideShare. 

Capture, Convert and Nurture

There’s generally one primary reason a business will start a blog; to make more sales. Give your readers something to do once they have read your blog. This could be as simple as subscribe to your blog feed, signup for your email newsletter, register to download something, register to receive specials via email and so on. The key here is to capture the reader to become a lead by inviting them to give you some contact details. It’s your job then to convert them into a customer and you will only do this if you nurture your leads through the process.