Inbound Blog Marketing Strategies
If you don’t know what a marketing blog is, or if you haven’t been writing one, then you need to start now. Why? One reason – it brings traffic to your website. And you do want more visitors to your site, don’t you?
Now, how do you suppose people find out about your product or service? Maybe they type your company’s name into their browser?
No, that’s not it. That’s how people who already know about you find you; it’s not how you get new traffic.
Thinking about buying an email list? Sorry, that’s not it either. The information on those lists is not always current, not specifically targeted, and can get you in a pile of trouble when people start accusing you of spamming. Also, the chances of anyone opening a spam email and clicking through to your website are pretty much non-existent.
So, is there a good way to drive traffic without spamming, wasting money or just hoping that people will somehow find you? There is – you need to blog.
Blogging Keeps You Current, and Keeps People Interested
Think about this – how often do you actually update your website? If you’re like most of us, it’s not all that often, because you already have pretty much all the information on your various pages that needs to be there. Unless you add a new product or service, things are pretty much etched in stone. So how do you keep people coming back? You blog. It adds new content, and every time you add a blog, it’s another indexed page on your site – meaning one more chances to show up in Google SERPs.
Blogging is also a great way to have other people do a lot of your promotional work for you. If you have great content, there’s a very good chance that a visitor to your site will say, “Hey, this is awesome; I think I’ll share it on LinkedIn!” Or Twitter, or Facebook, or wherever – you get the idea.
Convert Traffic to Leads
Once blogging and social media sharing increases your traffic, you have the opportunity of converting traffic to leads. Every single post gives you another opportunity, so make the most of it – include a CTA in each blog. Ask people for their information. You can close off each blog with something like “Want to know more? Sign up for our free ebook!” Or, “Fill out the form to get your free sample!” Anything that you offer in exchange for contact info can generate new leads and nurture existing leads.
Really, it’s just this easy – someone visits your website, reads your blog, sees a CTA button, clicks on it, provides information, and gets something of value. Now you have their information, and even if they’re not buying today, you can send them offers that they might pick up on later on.
Keep in mind, of course, that not every person who reads your blog is going to become a customer. That’s fine – if you have the secret of 100% conversion, I’d really like to know what it is. You can be sure, though, that blogging will improve your conversion rate. Just watch your conversion rate every time you blog (and you should do it at least once a month – once a week would be better), and if you have any doubts about the efficacy of blogging, they will be swiftly laid to rest.
Enhance Your Credibility
If you’re wondering what to blog about, this is easy. Just think about the most common questions your customers ask, and make it a blog topic. If it’s helpful to your existing customers, then it will likely also be useful to potential customers. Simply stated, if your existing customers, and potential customers, can find answers to questions they have by reading your blogs, they will see you as an expert. And once they do, they will trust you, and want to buy from you as opposed to someone with whom they have no relationship.
The Cumulative Effect
Let’s pretend that today, you sit down and take an hour to write a 400-word blog. A hundred people read it, and it gets you 10 leads. Then, a few people share your blog, and a few more share, and a few more – now, this isn’t going to go on forever, but the chances are pretty good that in a few days, a lot of people will have read and shared your blog. Then the momentum is likely to die down, but you will have had a lot of promotion that cost you nothing. And you’ll be ranking higher in the search engines. Even in years to come, people might feel motivated to go a bit further down in the SERPS, and you’ll still have people reading your blog, and you’ll still be getting traffic to your site because of it.
It’s a lot of publicity for just an hour’s worth of your time, isn’t it?
Conclusion
Now you know why you need to have a good blog marketing strategy in place. In the Internet Age, it’s an essential marketing tool. So if you haven’t started a business marketing blog, do it today.
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