Blogging is the best thing I ever could have done for my business. Why? Because when new clients contact me for my marketing consulting services, we do not ever discuss if I can solve their problem, we only discuss my availability and the fee. My expertise is so well demonstrated online through blogging, that I attract my best target customer to my business, and they already see me as their best resource. How would you like to create a new sales funnel? I hope that I have convinced you in Part 1 of this series that blogging is essential to your marketing strategy. If you are ready to get started, now let’s look at how to actually start and launch a blog.
Don’t worry; it’s easier than you think.
Step 1: Choose a Platform
The most popular blogging platform is Wordpress. It makes blogging easy and offers a variety of templates to make your blog pretty. Alternately, you can use your existing website and incorporate your blog into it so you maintain consistency across the design.
Step 2: Decide on Your Strategy
You need to know who you want to reach with your blog (probably your target audience that you sell to) and what you’ll blog about. If you want to reach working mothers, for example, you’ll need to come up with content that appeals to them. That might include:
- How-to posts (how to find a nanny, for example!)
- Product or service demos
- Informative or educational posts
Plan to diversify your types of content so you keep readers coming back for more.
Step 3: Determine Your Content Strategy
There are all types of ways to communicate on a blog; you can write articles, post pictures, develop videos or post podcast interviews. Pick one you can do 2-3 times a week. You’ll find it easiest if you map out what content you want to develop in advance. That way, you’re not scrambling to come up with a topic at the last minute.
Start a spreadsheet and throw topic ideas in there. It’s best to focus on your customer’s pain points. You may come up with dozens now; you can use these for the coming months. And as you think of other ideas, put them in there as well so you don’t forget.
And remember those holidays! Apply seasons and holiday themes to your content ideas to leverage what’s already on people’s minds. For example, in Q3, you can write about planning for holiday sales. Or before Tax Day, you can offer tax tips to small business owners.
Step 4: Start Developing Content
Don’t second-guess yourself; just get started. You can always go back and edit your work later. And if you don’t have the time or skills to do the writing yourself, you can assign the task to another employee or hire an outside firm, virtual assistant or freelancer to help you. Be sure to let someone else read your work before your post it. Don’t hurt your brand by posting something littered with typos. Invest in a copy editor.
Many bloggers write several posts at once and schedule them for future publication. Since you never know what’s coming up on your calendar, it’s a wise idea to frontload your content when you have time to write, then have posts ready to go when you need them.
Step 5: Don’t Forget Your Images
People are more likely to read your content if you have a quality image in it. But don’t just take any old picture online. Use royalty-free image sites that give you permission to post pictures on your blog. Just be sure to link to the page you downloaded the image.
There are free and for-a-fee image sites, so see which works better for you.
Step 6: Start Sharing
Your blog is only as good as the number of people reading it. You’ll pick up most of your readers when you share each blog post through your social networks. Use automated tools that instantly publish a link to your content on social, or custom write your updates to better entice people to click to read.
And make it easy for your readers to share your content, too. Be sure to include social sharing icons (there’s a widget you can install in WordPress) so readers can share your content with just a click of a button.
Step 7: Keep it Up
Blogging is an ongoing, never-ending tool you’ve got to continue to nurture. Grow your readers by providing an RSS feed to allow people to subscribe to your blog. That will help people get instant access to your content via email. Pay attention to which posts people click the most, and write more of that.
If you monitor the traffic on your blog, you can get fantastic data about what your audience likes, which is an invaluable tool when it comes to marketing.
“Blog Screen Shows International Or Worldwide Blogging” courtesy of Stuart Miles / www.freedigitalphotos.net
Next in this 3-part series, we’ll talk about how to monetize your blog.
Awesome story on how your blog has worked for you, Melinda! We have started a blog focusing on helping small businesses getting paid by their customers. We have leveraged our social media network to get viewers as you suggest. Do you have any tips for expanding out of just your social network?
Thanks! Eric
This article of yours Melinda was great. It helped me to put structure and organiztion into what I have been blogging about. Thank you so much for being there for all of us! Chuck