Every business blog has the potential to become a marketing powerhouse, but achieving that goal takes a solid strategy, a bit of creativity and astute manipulation of search engine optimization techniques. When effectively produced and managed, business blogging can become a key element in your -Internet Marketing Strategy. Blogging has proven to be an effective way to build brand recognition, drive motivated customers to your website, generate sales leads and nurture positive customer relations.
Effective business blogs use a marketing strategy:
Interesting and useful content. Consumers return to blogs that provide information they can use. To attract potential customers, your blog should inform and be relevant to your particular business. Industry news, product updates, interviews with industry experts, developing trends, the impact of current events, and personals insights into topics important to your target audience are all potential blog topics.
Regular content updates. Blogs should be updated regularly to encourage readers to return frequently in search of new content. Publishing new blog posts three times per week, spaced every other day, is optimal. While regular additions of new content to your blog help build reader anticipation, encouraging them to return, posting new content also gives Internet spiders new material to crawl, boosting your search engine rank.
Create a distinctive voice. Blogging is an informal medium. Approach blogging as a conversation with your readers. When you write a blog post, avoid insider acronyms and corporate gobbledygook. A blog shouldn't sound like a formal journal article or a memo to employees. This is an opportunity to humanize your business, to show potential customers that behind your website are real people waiting to take care of their needs. Most bloggers find it most comfortable to blog in their own voice, and it's okay to be chatty and humorous.
Optimize your posts. Make sure that every post has strategic keywords in the title, headings, url, link text, body text and alt tags on images. Your blog content should be relevant to those keywords (and vice versa), i.e. make it a coherent keyword-rich post that conveys a message.
Spread the word. Promote every blog post on social networks, social bookmarking sites and e-mail newsletters. Tell people what your post is about and why they should be interested. Use url shorteners to preserve as much descriptive text as possible in social networks like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Leverage hashtags in Twitter to spread the word beyond your personal network of followers. Target groups, memes or audiences that should be interested in your post. Include social media sharing buttons and subscription forms on every post to encourage people to spread the word and come back for more.
Potential customers will return repeatedly to a blog that is informative and entertaining to read. Include a call to action in every blog post that is relevant to the topic at hand. This creates an opportunity to capture leads from your blog readers.
Content and voice are just the visible face of blogging. Underneath the words is a structure of search engine optimization elements that, when properly incorporated into the structure of your business blog, help to promote your brand in the search engines and bring in qualified leads.
With over 30 years of business and marketing experience, John loves to blog about ideas and trends that challenge inbound marketers and sales and marketing executives. John has a unique way of blending truth with sarcasm and passion with wit. You can connect with John via LinkedIn and Twitter.
