Blogs can be a very powerful marketing tool - but one that many businesses do not take advantage of, even in 2021. We're here to help you get the most out of your blog page...
What are blogs used for?
- To expand on a subject you want your target market to know about, but do not need an extra page on your website for.
- To inform your target market about the uses of a particular product or service.
- To share news about your business including staff training, an event or your community activities such as sponsorships.
- To attract your target market through the use of keywords, especially long-tail keywords.
- To drive traffic to your website.
- To improve internal linking and direct potential customers to the part of your website you want them to be on.
- To help your business climb to the top of Google search with organic content.
- To help your business get social exposure on platforms.
How do I use a blog page effectively?
To use your blog page effectively you need to create new content on a regular basis. The content you create needs to be informative and interesting - not a sales pitch.
Create your content on a subject of your choice, this can be reacting to existing news of the day, announcing something new about the business such as a staff member, new qualifications, a new product you are launching or to share your knowledge and expertise about your industry.
Think about what your target market will be searching for online and answer their questions in your content, using the language that they will be using to search for it.
Post your content on your blog page but also share the link to it across all of your social channels so you can bring people to your website.
ANALYSE the reaction.
This is really important - you can be creating all sorts of good content but you need to know if that content is attracting the customers you want, and you need to know which of your blogs is making the most impact so that you can use this to plan content for the future.
Can a blog bring me direct customers or clients?
Yes they can, in a number of ways, one of which we have explained below:
One of our clients offers Autism Assessments so we produced a blog called ‘Does my child show symptoms of Autism?’
This is a share of expertise blog so we worked closely with the psychologists to find out what symptoms do appear in a child that is later diagnosed as autistic - one of those was that the children can use unusual tone, rate or volume of speech, including speaking in an American accent.
We included this in the blog and when we analysed the impact we realised that the information about the American accent was a very popular long-tail keyword for organic search.
Since its publication the blog had attracted nearly the same amount of views as the homepage in the same period - and that users spent an average of over four minutes on the page.
The blog post was also being recognised on Google’s Featured snippets as one of the best answers to the questions “Does my child show symptoms of Autism?’ - a question the target market regularly asked online.
The blog was written at the end of 2019 and is still bringing in a large proportion of the visitors to the website - many of whom then book in for an assessment.
How do I start a blog on my website?
Our advice would be to prepare in advance. Before you add a blog or news tab to your website, look at what information you can share and how that information will inform your target audience.
Ensure you have two or three blogs already written and ready to go so that you can hit the ground running. We would recommend a blog plan so you know what you are going to be writing about and when - and then move these around should you have new blog topics that arise.
Plan the blog publication into your social media schedule so that it can attract your social audience to your website - and ANALYSE the impact.
Getting help to launch your blog
We work with clients to create useful and informative blog content designed to attract target markets, and we also provide two-hour online training sessions for those businesses looking to launch, or improve, their blogs.
If you would like support or assistance please do get in touch with us on info@jandpr.com
