Blogging for your business is an excellent way to demonstrate the following:
When writing a blog you have to understand who you are targeting this particular one for. You may well have budget beating clients and budget busting clients, you however, can't "sell" them the same material so you have to create content that fits your audience.
Make sure that you have initially got a content plan, this ensures you create material for each type of your audience and know that every time you blog you are essentially providing them a solution. The only reason why somebody looks elsewhere for something is because they can't fix it themselves, so you need to be the one with the solution!
There are tonnes of free plugins on Wordpress and the one I use which is compatible for my theme is Yoast SEO. When selecting a plugin you need to make sure:
The beauty with this particular plugin is it has a simple traffic light system telling you how good or bad the SEO is on the post and suggests ways to improve it.To fully benefit from this plugin make sure you check the Analysis section at the bottom and adhere to the suggestions they put forward to improve your SEO.
Everybody loves a good image, as they say a picture tells a story of a thousand words and if you can find one that supports the topic you are discussing and its one of yours more importantly (if not, then please credit the image) then even better.
Select or create an image in Canva and then save to your computer. Upload this image as media on your website and ensure you have correct dimensions for the page. Fill in sections pertaining to the image as follows:
A Caption is your opportunity to publicly credit someone for their link or image.
A Description is where your picture can be seen in more detail when someone hovers over the image.
Finally, Alt Text is your SEO tool that you need to leave in a clear term or sentence that can be picked up by the bots.
Make sure to brand all of your images with your logo, this way it creates propriety and brand awareness.
This is another way to get your SEO search terms out there. However, its best to adhere to the recommendations of the plugin and make sure the length of the slug is right.
If you can link to other areas or blogs that maybe of interest to your reader this is the time to do it. That way they can sample more of your work and thus improve the amount of time they stay on the site.It is however well worth linking other peoples work to save your audience looking around for their answers. Just make sure that when they click the link it opens up in another screen. This means they have a route back to your website at all times.
This is a little bit of a misnomer as it can be either a Focus keyword or phrase. As long as there is a word or phrase said several times that may also be a keyword or phrase. The more words you use the better. Best to pick a keyword that is a search term but it is not the end of the world if you don't.
Finally you have your branded images, SEO and focus keyword. You can schedule your post to go out at the optimum date and time for your audience and then go along and share it from the blog to all of your channels at the time it is released or you can get a copy of the URL and pop it into bit.ly.com and personalise/customise it.
However, I would recommend sharing your content onto different channels at the optimum time for each of them. You may use a scheduling platform already but if you don't then I can recommend the versatility of Hootsuite.
You don't need to sign up or pay for Hootsuite but you do need to login using a social profile. First make sure you have opened and signed into one of the following social platforms: Twitter, Facebook of Google+ then go to the Hootsuite website and use the Login button and select the appropriate login channel. Once you have authorised it manually through the social platform it will be accessible for you at any time, you need to physically logout to close it.
Now you have opened the Hootsuite platform you need to add channels/streams. I prefer to have Home, Mentions, Scheduled and My Tweets. You can have as many or as less of these as you want but these would be the minimum I would recommend. Then you need to add your platforms, this is the way you share your content to each platform.I would recommend creating a draft in Hootsuite with all of your evergreen content. (Save drafts can be found next to the send now button, click Save and a drop down menu will show and then hit draft). Once you have saved your posts, then you need to schedule them to go out.
If you are not familiar with Hootsuite then you will find your drafts in "Publisher". This can be found in the left hand menu bar which moves in and out as you hover over it. The icon for Publisher is the paper aeroplane. Click on this and then select Drafts. You will then see a screen with all of your saved drafts. Click the edit button on the right hand side of the screen and make sure you retain the draft in the bottom of the post otherwise it will disappear the minute you schedule it.
I would recommend posting your new content up several times the first week on each channel and then a couple of times the following week and then weekly for another couple of weeks and then once every couple of months.
Using SEO is an obvious and free way to promote your post but these days paying for promotion through each of your channels is a better, more surer option of reaching your audience. Paying for Facebook advertising and LinkedIn ads using their targeting tools and analytics is well worthwhile and makes all of your efforts measurable which in turn gives you your ROI.You may also find these blog posts of interest. How to Share a Blog, BLOGGERCONF Takeaways for the Blogger
Working with clients Nationwide from base in Mullingar.
