Should I be blogging for my business?

Once upon a time, blogging was just for journalists, fashionistas, foodies and other people who though the world needed to hear what they had to say. Though bloggers became very influential, they remained within the ‘bloggosphere’ and few large corporations jumped on the blogging bandwagon.

Fast forward a few years however and things are very different. Thanks to the impact of social media and the influence of Google’s updated algorithms, blogging is now very much a tool for business. In fact, blogging is now so effective your company can no longer afford to ignore its power.

Google

If you’re trying to improve your company’s SEO and boost your URL up the Google rankings, incorporating a regular blog into your website is an absolute must. For a while now, Google has been favouring sites that keep their content fresh. Adding a weekly or monthly blog to your site shows Google that you’re maintaining and updating it. A blog is also an excellent chance to add more keywords to your site and fill it with information rich links and images.

Social media

Social media is an incredibly powerful - and affordable - marketing tool. Used properly, social media helps you to connect with your clients, build a personality for your company and create a loyal customer base. If you add a blog to your site, you can promote it on social media and show your customers that you’re an active participant in the network.

If your blog is interesting and relevant enough, the members of your social network will like and share it, boosting brand awareness and giving your business high quality marketing for free.

Growing your business

As well as being good for your company image, blogging is also great for business. A whopping 60% of companies who blog acquire more customers, a statistic that even the most cautious business owners can’t afford to ignore.

Building a relationship with customers

A blog is a great way to create a dialogue with customers and to build a solid business relationship. Through a blog, customers can get to know your company, your products and your services, ensuring that you’ll be the first name they think of next time they’re looking for anything you offer.

A blog also shows that you’re an authority in your area, giving existing and potential customers confidence in your abilities.

If you’re one of the many businesses that hasn’t yet embraced the blog, now’s the time to begin

Creative And Low-Cost Online Marketing Strategies

With so many companies vying for attention on the online marketplace, it’s becoming harder and harder to get through to your target audience. This is particularly true if you don’t have the seemingly limitless marketing budget of some of the biggest players. But this needn’t be a handicap: if you want your online customers to take notice of you then all you have to do is think a bit more creatively.

Here are some low-cost marketing ideas you may not have considered:

Find Niche Blogs: It’s a good idea to use other media platforms to gain exposure, but of course many smaller companies couldn’t expect to get on the front cover of a big trade magazine. Instead, what you could do is seek out niche blogs that appear to be popular and well-respected. You can then suggest that you write a guest article for them focusing on some particular issue related to your sector. This is a good way to spread your company’s name (because you can usually include a link to your website) and set yourself up as someone clients could turn to for advice.

Create YouTube Videos: YouTube has hundreds of millions of unique visitors each month, which makes it a pretty powerful platform for business marketing. It’s also free to use, so you should make the best use of it by putting together a great video. Make sure the headline uses the right keywords and that it has a clear call to action (such as encouraging the viewer to visit your website or subscribe to your channel). Try to be original and make it either useful or entertaining – nobody wants to watch another dull corporate overview of a company.

Get Endorsement: Yes, if you’re a small business you can probably rule out finding a major Hollywood star to come on board. But have you thought about sounding out local celebrities to see if they would be willing to endorse your business? These don’t have to be actors, singers or TV personalities – it could simply be somebody who is well-known in the local area as a positive role model. You can then send them a free gift or trial of your products and follow this up later on to see if they would be willing to write you a testimonial. People are much more likely to buy something if somebody they recognise and trust has given it a positive review.

Start LinkedIn Group: Creating your own professional network can set you up as a useful information resources while increasing the number of visitors to your site and building up new contacts. Add to this to the fact that it’s free to do and there’s really no good reason no to. Just remember that this is a networking resource: at no point should you be attempting the hard sell.

What Are The Benefits Of Business Blogging?

Despite the number of successful bloggers out there, many people still aren’t convinced of its benefits for online marketing. After all, they say, all you are doing is writing articles – you are not actually ‘selling’ your product so how can this grow your business? The answer is that you are selling the image of your company – the idea of yourself as a brand. And in this oversaturated global marketplace, this is a crucial differentiating factor. If you’re still not convinced, here are just some of the many key benefits of business blogging: 

Increasing Client Base: It’s hard to attract new clients if your website isn’t regularly updated because your search engine rankings will fall. A regularly updated, well-written blog is a great way to keep your site fresh without having to spend a lot of time changing the graphics. Furthermore, if your blog addresses specific problems faced by your customer base then they will come to trust you as an expert in your field and are more likely to be converted into paying clients rather than casual visitors.

Increasing Your Writing Prospects: If you are already running a business but want to become a published author in your field of expertise to boost your personal brand then a blog is a great way to start. For one thing, it’s a regular discipline that helps you to become a better, more fluent writer. If you engage with customers by encouraging comments it will also help you to discover what people like to read and what they don’t. By the time you come to write your book you will have gained a lot of knowledge of your customer base and hopefully also built up a ready-made audience to buy your book. A large number of online followers always sits well with potential publishers.

Building A Network: If your blog is well written then hopefully you will start to build up your own online network to engage with through both your website and social media platforms. Not only will this hopefully increase your client base, it also gives you access to other experts with whom you can share advice and information. It’s good to have this kind of mutual support in today’s competitive market environment.

Improving SEO: Contrary to what many believe, search engine rankings are still important. After all, search engines are still there to deliver results that will be useful and relevant to their users. If you write valuable articles around a particular topic to a consistently high standard then search engines will recognise this and your search engine rankings will rise accordingly.

How To Make Article Marketing Work For You

When it comes to article marketing, it’s important to have high quality, unique content.  Simply submitting content to article sites will not do you any favours unless it offers a new viewpoint, addresses a genuine issue or offers useful advice.

There may be links to your website from poor quality articles, but this is no good if nobody bothers to read till the end. In fact they can do you more harm than good: if the article is very badly written it will tend to reflect badly on your company. Here, then, is what to do to ensure that your article marketing has the effect you intended:

Writing Quality Articles: This is the most important rule to remember: before you start posting your content onto articles sites, test it out on your own website first and see how customers respond. If you are writing pieces that are useful to your website visitors then you can be fairly confident that potential customers who have not yet seen your website will also find them helpful. And don’t just hide them away in your ‘blog’ section (many customers won’t bother clicking on that), display them prominently on your home or product pages with catchy titles that will get people reading.

Getting Article Ideas: If you are struggling with the above because you simply can’t come up with any strong article ideas, don’t panic: this is a skill that can take a while to master. A good way of generating ideas is to do a search using the most relevant product or service keywords for you and seeing what kinds of information people are looking for. You could also look in forums related to your industry sector and find out what the big topics are at the moment or what kinds of problems people are struggling with: you can then base your article around this.

Make It A Collaboration: You may find that you don’t have the time to write all the articles yourself, and this is not a problem either. In fact, it’s good to get another perspective from time to time if you’re running low on ideas. You can encourage your employees to contribute their own articles. If they are heavily involved in marketing and selling your products then they will probably have plenty to say. You could even ask your customers if they would like to contribute content, along the lines of ‘tips on how to use these products’. Finally, if you’re really struggling to produce enough content, you can hire writers in to create it for you. Just make sure they have knowledge of the subject and can create engaging content.

Top Tips For A Strong SEO Strategy

We’ve all read the articles telling us that SEO is dead and we should be looking at other ways to promote our businesses online. The truth lies somewhere in the middle: yes, it’s becoming increasingly important to create high-quality content rather than playing the keywords numbers game.
But SEO is still an important part of your online marketing strategy – you just have to think about it in new ways.

Here, to give you some idea of what this might involve, are some of keys to successful SEO in today’s marketplace:

Headlines: You may have a well-written post, but it’s useless if the headline doesn’t make people click through to it. It has to strike the right balance between being interesting and truthful at the same time: people are getting more savvy about click-bait headlines these days so if they go through to a link and the article isn’t actually about what the headline suggests it is they will quickly navigate away from the page. So pick the most salient points, make the headline snappy, clever if possible and ensure the phrase appeals to your target audience.

Original Content: SEO is no longer just about getting any content at all up there as long as it contains your keywords: the aim is to create original, engaging and entertaining content. Remember that to build your brand you want people to share your posts and they won’t do this is if they’re read it all a thousand times before. Thinks of new ways to present your information, use images and present answers to common problems your target audience may have. That’s the way to get a post to go viral.

Inbound Links: Creating your own content is important, but you should also have plenty of other tools in your online marketing arsenal. Bear in mind that there are plenty of other ways to get inbound links to your site and you should be exploring these. Guest blogging has been a popular thing to do in recent years, although you need to be picky and find someone who adds value to your brand. You can also try using content delivery networks such as Taboola, which can also be instrumental in bringing in more traffic. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, this is a kind of automated service that places your content on sites that reach your target audience. Some companies like to share content with links to their site on community platforms such as Reddit.

How To Save Time In Online Marketing

There is only so much time in the working day and most companies – especially smaller ones – have limited resources to spend on online marketing. But nobody could deny that it’s a vital part of business development today so the most logical thing to do is employ some time-saving methods. You don’t have to spend hours and hours a day to implement an effective marketing strategy.

Here are some things to bear in mind:

Automate: You may think it’s cheaper to try to do everything manually rather than invest in software, but you may be pleasantly surprised to find out how affordable it can actually be – particularly when you factor in the savings to your manpower. To give just one example, if you invest in software for essential weekly and monthly market reports to be generated you will soon notice the difference. Many software programmes can even compile lead generation reports and carry out competitor analysis.

Hold Onto Customers: It’s no secret that it takes far less time to develop ways of building up long-term customer relationships than to start from scratch every time. There are many ways you can ensure clients don’t stray: for example, send them regular emails with special offers tailored to their individual needs, or surprise them now and then with free gifts. Also, make sure your website is always easy to navigate and works perfectly so customers have a positive experience every time they come back to buy something.

Organise: When you’re running a business there are so many different balls to be kept in the air that sometimes communication between your marketing department and other areas can break down. This is a problem, because in order for your online marketing strategy to be effective, everyone in the company has to know what is going on so they can promote your key objectives. The best way to keep things organised today is to use Google Drive, which allows documents to be viewed and edited from multiple devices. Even if you are on the move you can keep an eye on what’s going on and everybody else can stay up-to-date too.

Updating Content: To keep your online marketing strategy fresh it is essential that you keep updating the content of your website on a regular basis. But sourcing content can be time-consuming so you need to come up with a workable system. There are platforms available, such as Buzzsumo, with tools to help you find the most popular content and highlight influencers on social media sites. Well worth investing in if you want to stay ahead of the trends when it comes to content generation but don’t have much time to invest in it.

How To Generate New Leads Online

Have you tried all the traditional marketing routes but still can’t seem to generate the volume of new leads necessary to take your business to the next step?

If so, you may not have spent enough time looking into all the possibilities the Internet has to offer when it comes to winning new business. Luckily for you, there are literally hundreds of methods at your disposal. To help you get started, here are just some of the simplest and most effective:

Newsletter: Releasing a regular newsletter is a great way of staying in touch with customers – but it’s also a way to reach new ones. If you make sure to include a newsletter sign-up link in several places on your website then your number of new leads is sure to increase. Once people have signed up you will have their details and a captive audience. All you have to do then is make sure the newsletters are packed full of useful information, special offers and so on – they shouldn’t just be a tedious brag-fest about how wonderful your company is.

Social Media: If used the right way, Facebook, Twitter and so on can be a constant source of new leads. After all, any existing followers can share your posts with all their followers so if your content is fresh and exciting the potential market is huge. Think different with your posts, making them witty and thought-provoking. And of course, it’s not just about your own posts. You can seek out your own leads by following potential customers and getting into conversations with them. Just remember not to be too pushy – this is a big no-no for social media.

Blog: This is another one of the simplest and best lead-generating tools out there because it gives you a chance to establish credibility. You have complete control over the content of your blog posts, so if they are well-written and address genuine issues or problems within your sector in an informative way then you can quickly build up more interested customers. And of course, there should always be a newsletter sign-up link located close to your blog.

Webinars: More and more companies are recognising the benefits of hosting their own webinars – and it doesn’t have to be too much of a hassle. Having cottoned on to this, there are now many providers that will allow you to broadcast your webinar quickly and surprisingly cheaply.  Just make sure you ask around first to find out which are the most reliable. All you have to do then is come up with a great idea that is going to generate a bit of buzz and promote it using social media and your newsletter. Encourage your followers to share it with their followers and you have a valuable new source of leads.