5 Ways to Improve Your Blogging Effectiveness
Here are five tips to help you get the most out of your blogging efforts:
1. Understand why blogging is key...
... This will motivate you to blog more. Most people who don't blog cite lack of time as a major excuse. But blogs have a big impact on traffic and online visibility. First off, blog posts influence SEO because the frequency of content changes is important to search engines. Then they promote the fact that your organization is keeping up with new technologies and is using it to reach out and communicate with its audiences (communication is more key than ever). Finally, blogs have a training benefit because they force marketers to think harder about positioning and key messages.
2. Target the right frequency and length
Many people also imagine they need to blog every day and output a full-blown white paper each time. This just isn't true. Blogging twice a week and targeting about 300-400 words per blog is adequate. This should relieve some pressure and make the task easier to fit in a calendar.
3. Set up individual blogs
Mid to large companies wonder whether to set up a corporate blog or rely on individual blogs. Yet most customers are yearning for a one-on-one discussion with an individual, not a corporation. We, at Six Feet Up, set up our company blog to be a collection of individual voices and we think this structure resonates much better than a soul-less corporate message. Which is why we also ask our team members to redistribute our blog posts. This is also the strategy embraced by one of our clients: the Indiana Historical Society.
4. Turn to your clients for inspiration
Marketers sometimes wonder what to blog about. An endless supply list is simply your clients' questions. Just identify the most comment topics and address them in your blog posts. Another great way to leverage blog posts is to use them as a follow-up to an event where you presented. Simply prompt your audience to opt-in a mailing list by offering "6 Tips You May Have Missed From Today's Presentation Emailed to You Tomorrow. Just Opt In Here".
5. Include a call-to-action
Remember to use a very effective technique to boost your blog's effectiveness: always end your post with a powerful call-to-action. State who you are, what benefits your clients enjoy by working with you, and what your readers can easily do to get something for free. The key is to make it easy for people to connect with you easily and passively.
Gabrielle Hendryx-Parker is the CEO and co-founder of Six Feet Up, a company that helps universities, non-profits and life sciences organizations implement sophisticated websites. To see how we helped Indiana Historical Society roll-out their blog, please visit http://bit.ly/sCkxUS
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