With so many of our clients blogging now (and asking lots of good questions) the subject of blogs comes up often in our “how-to” conversations. Obviously I’m a big fan of blogs. I love to write and I love search marketing.
Blogging is a wonderful pastime and satisfying personal endeavor that can pay returns on a number of levels.
Three critical components any blogger should consider when working to build readership include content, frequency and distribution. Content must be interesting and useful to your readers. Develop your unique voice and don’t be afraid to post things others will not agree with if it is your truth. Be responsible and change your mind in public if you are wrong.
First, by way of background, here is a post from earlier this where we covered the historic progression of blogging (from the early BBS days) to the SEO enabled heat seeking content management projectile that applications like WordPress and Movable Type have become today.
15 Time-Tested Blogging Tips (Believe me we’ve made mistakes in learning some of these) come from various sources, including our own experience. I hope they prove useful.
Frequency of posts is important. There is a direct relationship between to blog popularity and how often valuable new content is posted. Build site authority and study bloggers who have authority and striving to be that good.
In 2005 Marketing Sherpa did a case study on “7 Practical Tactics to Turn Your Blog Into a Sales Machine.” The article was open to the public until March of that year. What strikes me 2 years later is the ubiquitous relevancy some of the tactics have now 2 years later. They represent #11-15 of the tips in this post. I’ve added comments to the bullet points that came from the public post.
Seed your blog posts with keywords. Practice classic SEO values including keyword research and optimized content and structure. Make sure your blog software is optimized. Hire a blog consultant to help.
Report exclusive news and insights. Keep abreast of developments in your fields of endeavor and passion. Report what you learn to others first. Provide value added commentary. Comment on your reader’s comments and participate in community you create. Make sourcing your content a priority and schedule it. Keep the promises you make to yourself about the schedule.
You don’t need to blog daily.
Well…that was 2005. In 2007 you need to blog daily. Ok, at least every 3 days…
Jump on incoming leads super-swiftly. Customer service often sucks in this world. Be the exception. It pays. Measure success by qualified prospects or sales you harvest, not total traffic. (This was relevant for the 2005 case study but purveyors of AdSense want quantity AND quality traffic.)
Blog elsewhere. Another way of stating this (again for 2007) is to participate in other communities. Forums, social media sites, and other peoples’ blogs all count in the big networking game.
That’s 15 for now. If you’ve read this far please consider signing up to receive our RSS feed in your favorite reader . Otherwise at the top of this page on the right hand sidebar you can subscribe to AIMCLEAR Search Marketing Blog by email.
