Techno or Tango: Does Your Content Match Your Client’s Rhythm?
If you have something interesting to say, a blog is a great way to make a name and to prove your worth in a certain sphere. In business, blogging is a great way for a brand to communicate with their customers.
Imagine. A blog is the dancefloor upon which you and your customers can dance. The content is music, setting the tempo for sumptuous slow dancing or fanatic fist-pumping. If you"ve got the moves, your customer won"t dream of dancing with anybody else.
However, it"s easy to gauge a mood wrong, to queue the wrong music, and find that your customers simply aren"t in the mood to dance. You"re playing techno but your partner has brought their ballet pumps; you"ve started spinning Aretha Franklin but the crowd is baying for Megadeth.
Your customers aren"t worried, there"s plenty of other dancers out there.
Alas, here a four of the most common mistakes that businesses with two left feet are making in the blogiverse, sending them home alone at the end of the night.
Read. Remember. But never repeat.
Don"t give your partner to another dancer
Tip #1: Welcome your readers with a landing page
Blog posts are not adverts for a product. A blog shouldn"t be presented as a storefront for your online store. Instead, content should help users solve their problems before they make the purchase. However, a blog should sell. If it doesn"t sell, then you are simply spending time, money, and energy.
There are countless ways to optimise content that will help convert readers into buyers. For example, your business could create a landing page for their readers. This increases user engagement, and eventually, conversion. Here are some tips to help you design the perfect landing page:
1. Make the page as targeted as possible. Welcome and wave goodbye to readers with words chosen to specifically suit your buyer persona.
2. Engage a reader with interactive blog materials. For example, show them where to go next with a link to a similar post.
3. Describe the product or service you offer. Outline the problems that it promises to solve.
4. Give blog readers special offers. For example, offer a free trial period for one of your services.
Don"t kill the mood with awkward silences
Tip #2: Put your content out at regular intervals
A good blog obviously requires quality content. However, quality content only happen when a lot of time and effort has been put into its creation. It is said that 95% of blog time should be spent on content creation, and only 5% of it should be spent on promotion through newsletters, social media, or through whatever other platform your business chooses.
But, these days it can be argued that distribution is just as important as content. We advise that you spend a similar amount of time on both creation and distribution. Sending your blog up the right alleys doesn"t just have to be on your shoulders, either. You can use opinion leaders to promote content. The following process will help you get your business" message across through opinion leaders.
1. Make a list of opinion leaders. Opinion leaders are the experts that your target audience look to for advice.
2. Maintain a healthy relationship with these opinion leaders. Scratch their back and they will scratch yours; comment on their content and support healthy discussion that benefits the narrative of your business.
3. Ask opinion leaders to give their opinion on an article. Who knows, their edits might be useless, even wrong… but it"s always good to have an expert cast their independent eye over an article before it is posted.
4. Ask opinion leaders to help distribute your blog. These days, this can be done through shares, retweets, and likes. Odds are that if they have spent time helping you with an article, then they are likely to want to see it succeed.
Networking with opinion leaders in this way allows you to tap into their resource potential for absolutely free. Eventually, their subscribers, followers, and customers become yours as well.
Ask your partner for another dance
Tip #3: Make the process of blog subscription as simple as possible
At its simplest, subscribing to a blog should be as thoughtless as clicking a button. At its most complicated, users should have to fill out their email address… and then click a button. They don"t have time to waste by filling out personal details; they don"t want to give their personal details to you, faceless internet anonymity.
Noah Kagan, founder of AppSumo, wanted to increase the subscribers to his blog OkDork and did so successfully. He put the success down to a large CTA "subscribe" icon on the website"s home page. Reader — subscriber conversion swung from 3% to 5% and this was achieved thanks to one small change on his website.
We advise testing different methods of subscription and experimenting with the size and location of CTA icons on your website"s homepage. You never know, your lack of subscribers might simply be down to readers not knowing how to do it.
Often a significant conversion increase can be achieved by the simplest changes.
When the dancing stops, the party isn"t over
Tip #4: Be within reach of your users
Regularly updating blog content and constantly promoting it through email newsletters allows brands to maintain a stable level of subscriber engagement. Lack of a clear content plan or divergence from your regular subject field is likely to annoy subscribers, rather than inspire them.
There is no universal blog frequency formula that every successful business follows. Derek Halpern, "blog conversion specialist", explains that a few posts a month is probably enough. On the other hand, Neil Patel posts eight times a week on his blog and is a self-proclaimed "traffic attraction specialist".
The only way for your business to understand the correct approach is to try different ones and see what works.
Whichever approach you choose, it"s important that subscribers receive reliable and timely content from your brand. Eventually, you will attract an audience of loyal readers who consider your brand a trustworthy source of information within a certain sphere.
Like anything in marketing, successful blog creation requires a lot of focussed time and effort. Creation and distribution of content needs to be learned through trial and error.
So, try it. Make mistakes. But most importantly, learn from those mistakes. Only then will you develop the experience your business needs to be a prominent content marketer.