By guest author Lana Richardson, blog editor at NIParcels.com
Content is king. Anyone with even the slightest interest in digital marketing has probably heard that phrase close to 1,000 times already.
Content marketing or blogging has long been a digital marketing buzzword, and for good reason too. Online businesses can benefit significantly from it. Content is a great traffic driver — it helps increase engagement in your product or service, it builds loyalty and positions you as a thought leader in your industry.
The power of content marketing for businesses shows no signs of slowing. The influence it has over consumer behavior is steadily increasing, so those neglecting or ignoring what they can do in terms of content run the risk of getting left behind.
If you find that your content marketing efforts have gone stale or plateaued, here are some blogging tips and strategies that you can immediately implement to work toward positive results and eventually make money from your company blog.
1. Have a Strategy
Like with any marketing activity, your content needs to have direction. You need to have an effective strategy that works toward one particular goal — whether that’s acquiring new leads or increasing retention rates with already existing customers. You’re not going to see positive results if you don’t identify your goals first.
Begin creating your strategy by outlining a few key objectives and then establish how they can be achieved. From there, create a content calendar, and make sure your blog posts are planned and scheduled.
2. Have a Very Targeted Audience in Mind
Tens of thousands of blog posts are published on a daily basis, and only a small handful of these receive any sort of traction. If you want your blog post to be successful in terms of website hits, it is important to have a highly targeted audience in mind and write your content for them — as if you’re speaking directly to them.
This is a technique made hugely popular by websites like BuzzFeed that publishes “listicle” articles with specifically targeted titles like, “Ten things that only owners of French bulldogs will understand.”
You don’t necessarily have to write a listicle. Simply writing for a small, select group of people will make your content more likely to gain a viral level of engagement. This works especially well if your product or service is geared toward a very targeted demographic. Become the thought leader or the online voice of this group of people, and they will soon become loyal customers.
3. Attribute Social Spend
Many businesses can be reluctant to participate in Facebook advertising. Some resent paying for a channel that used to be free, and others are just overwhelmed and don’t really know where to start.
Facebook advertising, however, can be very useful when it comes to increasing the reach of your content and putting it directly in front of potential customers.
Facebook’s advertising tool has some excellent targeting features and allows you to tailor your ads for people based on many factors, as broad as gender, age and location, and as specific as their jobs, where they vacation and how old their children are. Facebook advertising allows you to filter through your audience and target only the people who are most likely to convert on your website.
4. Promote!
Writing an amazing blog post is one thing, but actually getting people to find it is another. Just because you build it, does not mean they will come. If your SEO skills are up to scratch, people and potential customers may stumble upon your blog post, but the best way to get that rush of traffic to your website is to promote your content as best you can. It’s a basic tip, but is often forgotten.
Post your content on all of your social media channels. Get your employees to share it if they wish. Post it in forums, where appropriate, and send it to influencers, celebrities or bloggers within your industry.
5. Be Consistent
As mentioned previously, content marketing is a long game, so consistency is crucial. Ensure that you stick to your content calendar, because there is nothing more off-putting than landing on a company blog that has not been updated in months.
Trust and loyalty convert readers to customers; they need to be built over time. If you are consistently putting out great content on a regular basis, customers will begin to turn to your online business when they need a product or service. Your company name will be the one on their lips.
6. Remarket
Remarketing or retargeting is a great way to see revenue quickly. Using Facebook advertising, you can target people who have been on your site. You can even specify exactly which page visitors have clicked on.
If people have visited the blog section of your website, they are now familiar with your company, so they will be more likely to click, engage or convert when you place a retargeted ad in front of them. Making your company more recognizable with a few retargeted ads can have long-term benefits too.
7. Have a Clear Call to Action
If you do manage to strike it lucky and publish an incredible blog post that goes viral and attracts millions of people to your website, the last thing you want is for them to read the post and bounce straight off the site. Your hard work is wasted, and you’ve lost an incredible opportunity to turn millions of people into potential customers.
To prevent the dreaded bounce, ensure that your blog post contains a clear, strong call to action.
This CTA can be a big “BOOK NOW” button or an intriguing “learn more” link. It could be an email data capture form or a link to follow you on social media.
Whatever your CTA is, just make sure that it leads the viewer slightly further down the sales funnel.
The above blogging tips are great strategies for adding life back into your company blog or kick-starting an entirely new content platform for your online business.
About the Author:
Lana Richardson is a journalist and content marketing specialist. She writes about small business and digital marketing for a range of online and print publications and is the current blog editor of NIParcels.com.