You have a blog right? But when was the last time you updated it? Can you even remember??
If the answer is not ‘yesterday’ or ‘last week’, you are missing out on a MASSIVE opportunity to engage with new and existing customers.
Research from content marketing platform HubSpot shows that companies that blog just 1 or 2 times a month generate a staggering 70% more leads than companies that don’t. That is a hard statistic to ignore!
I’m going to show you how, with a little effort, you can get the most out of your blog—it’s a lot easier than you think!
1. Open the floor to guest posters
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By far the biggest challenge facing most bloggers is finding the time and inspiration to actually write something. But never fear, help is at hand! By opening up the floor to guest posters, you could find yourself with all manner of great content provided for free. Better still, the person creating that post will usually go out of their way to promote it through their social media profiles, so it will also drive traffic and raise the profile of your brand. It’s a win-win situation!
How to get guest posters: Take a few minutes to create a style guide for guest posters and then create a page on your website called ‘Submit a guest blog post’ and watch the enquiries come flooding in.
2. Newsjacking
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Newsjacking is the process of creating content around trending news stories or events. Let’s say, for example, that you run an internet marketing agency—when Twitter or Facebook make an announcement about a new feature you could comment on this and how it is likely to effect your clients.
How to Newsjack: Search on Google News for keywords that are relevant to your products and services and find relevant stories to put your own slant on.
3. Be a copycat
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Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it is also a great way to get ideas for blog posts! Buzzsumo is a great tool for finding the most shared content, either by searching for a keyword or a competitor site.
How to be a copycat: Find the content that is being shared on social media and produce similar posts for your blog.
4. Target searchers
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By targeting users who are in the research phase of the customer journey, you can ensure that you are at the front of their mind when they finally reach the buying stage.
Rank Tank Infinite Suggest is a keyword tool that allows you to find queries that people are searching for on Google simply by adding one of the following to a keyword ‘who/what/why/where/when’
How to target searchers: Create useful, engaging and non-biased content that answers typical queries people have around your products and services. Install the Yoast SEO plugin and follow its recommendations to ensure that your posts have the best chance possible of being found in search results.
5. Prediction/comment posts
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Prediction/comment posts are a great way of gathering content for free, and like guest posts, most participants will go out of their way to share the post through their own social channels. You could combine this with newsjacking to gather a list of industry experts opinions on the latest news stories.
How to gather prediction/comment posts: Services such as Help a Reporter Out (HARO) can you to find people who are willing to comment on particular subjects.
6. Engage your social media audience
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Many bloggers make the mistake of publishing content without actively promoting it. This is usually a pretty futile exercise, as it means that nobody will actually be able to see your posts.
Studies have shown that it may be only after several shares on social media that a post will actually gain any traction so it’s worth persisting.
How to make sure your posts are shared on social media: Use tools such as a Buffer and Hootsuite to automate your sharing across Twitter, Facebook and other social media. Be sure to include relevant hashtags in your posts and make sure that social sharing options are visible on all posts
7. Be sycophantic
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Everyone likes to have their ego massaged once in a while, and referencing/linking to key players within your industry could be a great way to get traction on your blog posts. Use Followerwonk to find Twitter users with the most followers for maximum impact.
How to be sycophantic: make sure that anyone’s work you mention in your post is referenced with an @ to their Twitter handle and if you have their address, send them an email to tell them that you have linked out to them.
8. Sensationalize!
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You know those ridiculous clickbait pieces with titles like: ‘You won’t believe how this mom makes $47 billion a year!’ or ‘Like this post to win an xBox!’ you see being shared and liked by your most gullible Facebook buddies—well I’m not suggesting you go that far but there are lessons you can learn in terms of sexing up your own titles.
How to sensationalize your posts: Use words that are likely to draw attention, such as ‘outrageous’ or ‘awesome.’ Run your title through the Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer—this will show you how emotive your title is and hence how likely it is to attract attention from readers.
9. Be consistent
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The way to build an audience and a successful blog is to be consistent. Even if it is just producing one post each month, it is important to make sure that you are producing content on a regular basis.
How to be consistent: Draw up an editorial calendar and commit some time every week or so to writing a new post.
10. Don’t give up!
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Blogging takes time, effort and patience, and it’s unlikely that you will see results overnight. You will need to stick to it, and if you follow some of the tips above, you will be off to a great start!
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Martin Harrison is co-founder of the blogging service Copify. You can connect with him on LinkedIn.
