Does this sound like you?
When developing the last incarnation of your website, your organization did so with the intention of the website’s blog being a key contributor to your inbound marketing efforts. Unfortunately, that’s not how things have played out. In your opinion, the company blog just isn’t delivering the return on investment (ROI) you had hoped for.
Don’t give up hope.
Here are a few tips to help your blog live up to the ROI expectations you first envisioned.
Write about What People Are Searching For
80% of the time people conduct searches on the Internet because they are seeking information. They are looking for answers to questions; for solutions to business pain points. Therefore it makes sense that one of the ways to get more people to visit your website is by publishing content that provides these answers and solutions.
How do you discover what people are searching for? By using tools like kwfinder.com or Wordtracker.com to conduct keyword research first.
Ensure Your Blog Posts are Findable
The Internet is like a giant recipe card box filled with hundreds and thousands of recipes. Now, imagine if none of those recipe cards were labeled and someone said, “Find me a recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies?” It would be virtually impossible.
Many times Google can’t find a company’s blog posts (which means neither can your customers) because they are not ‘labeled’ properly. How do you label a blog post? By following Google-recommended best practices for on-page SEO.
Every one of your blog posts should have a unique meta page title and meta page description written using researched keywords that encapsulate what your blog post is about. These same keywords should also be incorporated into your blog post’s page content i.e. headline, a few subheads, the text and the alternate image descriptions of any images found in your post.
Promote Your Content Fully
After they have published their blog post, the next thing most organizations do is promote it on their LinkedIn company page. The mistake they make, however, is that they don’t take it one step further by getting every employee in the company to promote the blog post too.
Do the math. Take a look at how many followers your LinkedIn company page has. Now, add up how many employees your company has and how many followers each of those employees have. Now imagine if every employee promoted your latest blog post too? Combined, that’s a lot of free exposure and potential website traffic.
Another promotional avenue that has become a little overlooked these days is the power of email.
Dust off the MailChimp or Constant Contact account and, depending on how frequently you’re blogging, put together a monthly or quarterly recap email of the blog posts you have added to the company website and send it out to your CASL-compliant list of client and potential client subscribers. You’ll remind them of your expertise, tease them about your blog post topics and drive a percentage of them to your website.
Produce Content on a Consistent Basis
One of the biggest reasons why blogs don’t deliver the ROI organizations are expecting is because posts don’t get produced on a consistent basis.
Why?
Usually it’s because the internal content contributors don’t have time; they’re too busy with the responsibilities and priorities of their ‘regular’ job. When they do have time they are under the gun, or they don’t know what to write about and they procrastinate.
These issues can be solved by scheduling a content planning session. Gather all of your internal content contributors in a room and brainstorm 3-month’s worth of blog post topics. Then put together a content calendar that includes who is writing which blog post and when it’s due.
If, after implementing this plan, your company is still having difficulty maintaining a consistent production of blog posts investigate the cost of outsourcing the management and writing of your blog.
A professional freelance marketing writer will be able to take the lead in developing your blogging calendar, reviewing and researching reference material, interviewing internal content experts, writing the blog posts and, most importantly, they’ll ensure your blogging initiative stays on strategy and on schedule each month.
Interested in outsourcing the writing of your blog posts? Contact Mike Friskney at Marketing.
Photo Credit: STS-108
