Blogs are a fantastic way to showcase your expertise to customers and potential customers. Sitting on your website, they are a valuable SEO tool as search engines love fresh and unique content.
But to get extra value from them why not issue a newsletter (not my favourite term but one with which we’re all familiar) to your database that highlights just the first paragraph of the blog and then provides a link for readers to visit your website to read the rest?
And don’t forget to incorporate your posts into your social media activity. Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are excellent places to engage followers with useful and relevant content by providing a link to your latest post.
So, we’re all clear that blogs are a good and useful marketing tool? Yet when I suggest them to clients I get one of two reactions – either that they don’t have the time to write them or they have nothing to say!
But there’s always something to write! And here are just a few ideas:
- Hijack the news agenda – do you have a perspective on a current news story? It could be anything from financial or political news to the latest development on a popular TV show
- Name and shame common mistakes – nobody wants to get it wrong in business. So, ‘three mistakes that business owners often make with *insert your area of expertise*’ will always get people clicking through
- The human touch – you can tell your customers that you’re a great company but much better to show them. Blog about how your team baked cakes, jumped out of planes or completed other feats of strength and endurance to raise money/awareness for a local charity
- Tips and tricks – we all like to know how to do something better, faster or cheaper. So, if you’re a Personal Coach with time management strategies, an IT Trainer with useful shortcuts or an Accountant with tips for providing better visibility of your clients’ finances, then please share!
- Let people see your finger on the pulse – remind your audience that you’re the expert in your field. So be a speedy sharer of industry developments. And add value by explaining how the news will affect your readers in practical terms.
So that’s your content sorted. But what about this issue of not having the time? Well, unless you do actually know a Personal Coach with strategies for managing time then perhaps you should consider outsourcing? Far be it for me to blow the Semaphore trumpet but we produce regular blogs for several clients who have said very kind things about how we take the stress out of the process, come up with plenty of ideas and suggestions for content and manage to capture their unique tone of voice in our writing. Click here to find out more about our blog service.
