Investing time in writing a blog that doesn’t get read is not entirely wasted effort; it will get you Brownie points with the search engines, which like to see new content on your website to know that it is active, rather than dormant. Moving up search engine rankings makes it more likely that your target clients will find you.
But your effort will be even better rewarded if you successfully direct your target customers and influencers to your blog. Fortunately, blog content feeds naturally into social media and digital marketing:
Social media
Original blog material gives you something original to talk about on social media. If you create evergreen blogs (ones that don’t date), you can also promote them again in a few months.
It’s worth taking time to see how the different social media channels condense your blog, so you can write a post that sells it to optimum effect. My personal bugbear here is to make sure that your post doesn’t just repeat the blog headline; in most social media thumbnails, your audience can see the blog title – saying the same thing twice looks uninspired, and even lazy.
For example, if your blog title is ‘8 ways to save money on your business insurance’, your posts need to tease this, without duplicating it, e.g.:
- Think you’re paying too much for your business insurance? Read our tips on how to bring down your premium:
- Not sure if you’ve got a good deal on your business insurance? Read our expert guide:
- Did you know that tweaking your business operations could reduce your insurance premium? Our expert tips here:
Digital marketing
Fresh blog material also naturally generates content for you to talk about on your other marketing channels, such as e-newsletters. Ideally, your newsletter should have a few tasters of some great value-adding content that you have produced, with ‘read more’ links through to the full articles.
This gives you a double whammy: you get to showcase your expertise to your contacts as well as encouraging them to engage with your further by visiting your website.
Again, the tasters on your newsletter ideally shouldn’t replicate the introductions of your blogs; think of an alternative way to pitch the content of your blog to compel people to want to read more.
Promoting your blog to your established contacts and audiences will encourage more people to read them, so they deliver better returns on the time you invested in writing them.
Read the rest of our series on how to make your blogs work for your business:
Step 3 – Make sure you are found for the right things
