If You Have a Blog That’s Not Getting You to Your Goals, You Need to Change Your Strategy
For most businesses, a blog is not primarily intended to entertain or inform existing customers, though it sure doesn’t hurt to have content that your current audience will benefit from. Its purpose is most often to bring in new interested parties through increased rank, social media posts, and backlinks.
Do You Have a Blog That’s Not Getting You to Your Goals?
Most companies these days have a blog, but if your blog isn’t getting you to your goals it’s a waste of time. This short guide will help you determine what your goals for reach your content marketing goals for your business.
Could you use a hand with your blog strategy? We can help!
Just Fill Out Our Contact Form or give us a call at (706) 425-1976.
What does a blog do for your business?
- It gets you better SEO rank. You’ll have a 434% better chance of being ranked highly on search engines.
- It gains trust. 81% of people view blogs as a trusted source of information and advice.
- It makes you money! 60% of businesses with a blog acquire more customers.
Those and only 3 reasons out of dozens. This article gives 52 amazing reasons to blog!
A blog won’t be very effective unless you have a strategy.
If you’re just winging it week by week or month by month, you’re not getting much bang for your buck (even if you’re not forking out cash, you’re spending time, which is basically the same as money.)
How to make your blog REALLY work for you
1. Determine your goals
Your entire blog should revolve around the answer(s) to this: What would you like people reading your blog to DO?
Examples include:
- Sign up for your email list
- Call to schedule an appointment
- Purchase a product online
2. Keyword research
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- If you don’t do your research, you won’t know what terms to include in your writing and which ones to stay away from.
- Read our article about keyword research tips to get you going.
3. Keyword groups and a content plan
Once you have your best keywords, you’ll need to:
- Group them so that you have articles you can write around each group.
- Layout a content plan which outlines each article title, the keywords that go into it and the main points to be covered.
- Create a posting schedule. Posting every day only to drop off for 3 weeks is not very effective.
4. Create templates
Keep your writing style and formatting consistent by structuring a few go-to templates. You can do this in Word or Google Docs and fill in each section with Lorum Ipsum text.
Here are some blog template starting points from HubSpot
5. Edit your snippet
Your snippet will serve as a summary of your article and appear under your URL in search results. An appealing snippet makes a big difference in whether you or the next guy gets the clicks, so take the time to make it stand out.
Here’s a great article that goes over exactly what this means and how to do it
6. Use tools
They can save you tons of time and allow you to do things that you just couldn’t or wouldn’t want to do manually. Think about automating things like:
- Check your SEO with tools like Yoast
- Add popups with tools like Sumo
- Schedule social media posts with tools like Buffer
- So many more, like the awesome tools in this article
7. Make it actionable
A post that is a bunch of fluff will turn people away. Think about the problem your audience is trying to solve and provide them with actionable steps toward a solution. Having a 3rd party read your draft to provide feedback can give you extra insight.
8. Quality beats quantity
You could post every day for a year, but if your articles are poor quality (ie. structured poorly, contain grammatical errors, or just don’t contain useful information) then they won’t do you much good.
**Bonus blog tips**
- Strive for a 750 + word count per article
- Keep your paragraphs short
- Include catchy headers
- Add alt text to your images
- Design snazzy featured images
These steps will get your blog on the path to success, but it won’t be a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor. Even with the help of awesome content management tools, maintaining a blog is a big job. Form a plan, stick with it, assess your progress, and make adjustments where your analytics show the need.
Could you use a hand with your blog strategy? We can help!
Just Fill Out Our Contact Form or give us a call at (706) 425-1976.