Have you started a business blog and don’t know what to do with it? Are you unclear on who is reading your blog? Are you blogging but not noticing an increase in business?
You’re smart enough to know that a blog is crucial to your business website. After all, businesses that blog garner 97 percent more inbound links than those with static sites. The problem is that you don’t have a detailed game plan on how to use your blog to increase business in the door. This business blogging cheat sheet will show you exactly what you need to do so that your blog leads directly to increased revenue.
Get Clear on Your Ideal Customer
If you aim your business blog at everyone on the planet, that’s a sure waste of time and energy. Only a certain percentage of people will ever be interested in your product or services. Once you determine who these ideal customers are, your main goal will be to figure out what they want. What do they need to know to make their lives better? Provide that information to them in your blog.
Create a Lead Magnet
With your customer’s information needs in mind, create a lead magnet – a piece of premium content that offers information to help them solve their problem. This is free information you’ll give to prospective customers in exchange for their contact information.
Show your expertise in the subject, and write knowledgeably with an insider’s viewpoint. This will demonstrate your value to them and compel them to want to come back to your site for more information as they move through the sales process.
Write Out an Editorial Calendar
Plan out a series of blog posts relating to the lead magnet, with each one covering a portion of the solution. If your lead magnet is about a certain nutritional supplement, your blog posts could cover the benefits of exercising with that supplement, the role of individual ingredients, how the government regulates supplement manufacturing facilities, and so on. Break down the topic into 8 to 10 smaller questions, and answer each question in one blog post.
[Our content calendar] allowed us to go from zero visitors to our Real Estate Marketing Academy with over 50,000 unique visitors per month. – SethPrice for @InmanNext
Publish Your Blog Regularly
You don’t have to frantically post on your blog every single day, although the more often the better. The idea is to make a schedule,twice a week or more, and stick with it religiously. It’s not that your readers will expect a new installment of your blog on certain days, but that the more content you produce, the more traffic and leads you will generate.
Keep the topics organized according to your editorial calendar, and use the same writing style (friendly, informative, formal, etc) in each one. End each blog post with a call-to-action, a sentence or paragraph encouraging the reader to sign up for the lead magnet.
Promote Your Blog Content
Simply writing your content and putting it on your blog isn’t enough to gather huge number of readers. In order to increase your Google ranking and your visibility to people searching for your niche online, you’ve got to do some promotion. There are many ways to promote your blog, including:
- Share each post on all your social media accounts
- Make interesting memes, add your URL, and post them on Pinterest
- Post or tweet facts about your current topic on Facebook and Twitter
- Writing guest posts on high-ranking blogs in your industry, with a link to your site
Build a Sales Funnel
Set up an automated system that moves your customers along from traffic to lead to customer. At Groove, we have an entire process that systematically moves our leads along this sales process.
The main idea is that you provide your leads with useful information, and give them the opportunity to gather additional information if that’s what they’re interested in. Monitoring what they’re visiting and downloading (done via marketing automation) will let you know when they’re ready to become a customer.
Measure Your ROI
Set up a way to measure your ROI (Return on Investment) for your content marketing. Is what you’re doing paying off? Is one part paying off hugely while the other is not? This valuable information should guide you when planning your next steps in your content marketing.
Next Steps
Turn your business blogging into actual customers – click the image below to download the free report 8 Ways to Leverage New Online Marketing to Attract Customers.
What business blogging tips can you add?
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