Blogging Made Simple

Transcription

1 Blogging Made Simple Your Step-by-Step Guide For Creating High Quality Blogs MC Chowdury

2 Contents Why Blog?... 2 Determining the Right Topic... 4 Blogging: Best Practices... 5 Title... 5 Keywords... 6 Frequency... 7 Length... 8 Bolding... 8 Bullets and Numbers... 9 Images and Videos Link Out Categories / Tags About Candybox Marketing MC Chowdhury MC has worked with several clients across Canada to help them create an online presence using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Blogging. He has launched an initiative called Project Reinvention and acquired 2000 active subscribers within the first nine days of launch. MC has conducted a series of social media workshops in Mississauga and Toronto to help other businesses build and online presence and engage their target market. 1

3 Why Blog? Fact: The digital revolution has dramatically changed the way people interact with brands. Companies that are using their website like a brochure are facing the most challenges, and are finding it difficult to adapt to these changes. Customers want a valuable experience that makes them want to return to the company s website. Ironically (and fortunately), this strategy also happens to be the most cost-effective. In January 2012, HubSpot conducted a marketing research to determine the most efficient strategies to acquire customers. Approximately 1000 marketing professionals participated in this survey to share their experience. In order to determine their value, some of the factors considered include: cost, priorities, and customers acquired. Based on the research, 60% of respondents stated that their company blog was the most critical or important for their business; this is a 12% increase from The following diagram illustrates these results: 2

4 When comparing costs, blogs were cited as the least expensive lead source as 52% of respondents stated that their company blogs were below the average cost per lead. The following diagram illustrates these results: This isn t surprising since customers are researching before buying more than ever before. With several keyword-rich blogs showing up in search engine results, it is easy to see how businesses can utilize blogs to assist customers with their researching needs. Now that you see the value of having a company blog, it is important to understand that simply having a blog is not enough. Blogging is an art and science, and needs to be done the right way in order to gain the most value. In this ebook, you will learn the best practices to help you really boost the success of your company blog. Whether you are looking to acquire new buyers or strengthen your relationship with current customers, you will be provided with the right techniques to achieve results. Our social communications are always open! Send me an with any questions or comments, and I would be happy to continue the discussion. My address is: mc@candyboxmarketing.com 3

5 Determining the Right Topic The most important part of blogging is to determine the right topic. Selecting the wrong topic for your reader usually leads to them exiting your website, with plans to never return. For example: an internet security company teaching others how to grill hotdogs might not be very appealing to their readers, but would be a great choice for a company selling barbeque grills. Note the trend: it is all about your readers! Before writing blogs, think about your customers and what they want to read about. It is important to do your research to discover the right topic for your customers. If you select the wrong topic, all the other steps are irrelevant. Even the best customers do not want to connect with a company that constantly brags about their product features. This is the same as: walking into a store out of curiousity, and they give you a box full of promotional flyers to hand out to everyone you know. This happens more often than you think! Selecting the right topic means to select a relevant topic for your readers. Put yourself in your customers shoes and consider what they would type in the Google search bar in to gain more information. For example: companies that sell business ties might consider that some of their potential customers might search the internet to learn how to tie their ties. Another method to determining the right topic is to read other industry-related articles. Whether it is your competitors or an industry expert, this content available for you to examine and note how readers are responding. This will give you some topic ideas and also provide you with some written samples from different authors. Open a blank Word document and take notes on the most relevant topics to your industry. Overtime, this word document will be a goldmine of brilliant topics! 4

6 Finally, one of the best methods to figuring out what your readers really want is to: ask them what they want! This is a method that is so obvious that it is also frequently forgotten. In Candybox Marketing, our focus is to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses. In order to provide them with relevant support, we often ask them questions. Here is an example: We received great responses, and it seemed like the majority was having challenges with timemanagement. Within 24 hours, we released a blog that provides them with time management tips and strategies. Not only did the blog get a large number of views, but the readers really appreciated that we took the time to listen. Blogging: Best Practices Once you have selected the right topic, you are ready to start writing the content for your blog post. In order to create a keyword-rich blog, here is a list of rule-of-thumbs that you can follow and use as a check-list: Title The title that says it all! Create a title that contains relevant keywords (your topic) but is also intriguing to the reader. For best practices: your blog title should not be longer than eight words. Remember, the title is usually the only thing the visitor sees before deciding to read the full blog. Here are some suggestions and examples for your blog title: Stat: YouTube users watch more than 3 billion hours of video per month. Here is why Funny: This planet has more mobile phones than toothbrushes! Challenging: Can You Complete This Weight Loss Challenge? Problem-Solving: 4 Steps to Overcoming Social Anxiety 5

7 Keywords There is a popular saying: the best songs are never heard and the best books are never read. This is referring to the idea that the content was never found by the right people. Using keywords the right way will help your well-written blog appear in search engine results. Earlier in this book, we ve discussed the importance on selecting the right (relevant) topic. Select a phrase to represent that topic as your keyword. For this example, the selected topic will be to teach people how to host a successful Facebook Contest. The keyword phrase that will be used is: successful facebook contest. The biggest mistake bloggers make is using the keywords incorrectly. Some may choose facebook and contest but these keywords will be competing against all blog articles that talk about Facebook, and also all blogs that discuss contests. This is a no-win battle. However, using successful facebook contest is much more targeted. These are called: longtail keywords. This will appear as search results for users that are typing in questions, such: how to create a successful facebook contest or examples or successful facebook contests. These are the readers that we are searching for. The selected keywords should be placed in the following places in your blog: Blog post title Within the first 200 characters of your blog post (note: keep the long-tail phrase together. Example: in this blog, we will show you how to create a successful Facebook contest. ) Several times throughout blog post and near the end of the post (note: avoid stuffing keywords simply to increase rankings on search engines. This will result in being penalized. Instead, use them naturally throughout your blog post) Images used in your blog post. This is explained further in the Images and Videos section of the book Tags this is explained further in the Categories / Tags section of the book 6

8 Frequency We ve looked at the value of company blogs, but we also can t ignore that it requires time and commitment. Blogging allows you to establish your company as an industry expert, be found by potential buyers, and strengthen relationships with current customers. This take times, but is time well spent. The amount of blogs created by companies varies based on time availability and commitment. Based on the HubSpot research mentioned previously, 70% of businesses blog at least once per week. The research has also stated that: an increase in blogging frequency results in an increase on customer acquisition. 66% of businesses who post blogs weekly have acquired a customer through their blogs, and 92% of businesses who post blogs multiple times a day have acquired a customer through their blog. The following diagram illustrates these results: Based on these results, it is easy to see the trend between blog post frequency and customer acquisition. Your company should decide how much time to invest in creating blogs and maintain consistency. 7

9 Length The best part about writing about your industry: you have a lot to say. This also happens to be the worst part about writing about your industry. When readers have the time to escape into a lengthy piece of writing they pick up a book. Blogs are expected to be short and to the point. As a rule-of-thumb: keep your blog posts within words. This allows the blog to be short enough for the reader to quickly enjoy, and long enough to get your thoughts out and allow Google to recognize it as a valuable blog article. Bolding The average reader may look through 12 different blog articles within one hour. They will Google Search for a solution to their problem, click on the first link they find, quickly skim through the article, and go back to the search engine if they haven t found what they were looking for. Your goal is to be found on top of the Google Search Engine and also capture the attention of the reader. Within the few seconds of skimming, the reader should be able to recognize your blog as the article they were looking for. The secret to doing this: bolding. Throughout this book, I have bolded specific words in order to put emphasis and eye-catching. These words are usually the main keywords or the answer that any reader will see as they quickly scroll down. Your blog should use the same strategy in order to quickly communicate with the reader and let them know that they are in the right place. Bolding certain keywords also help search engines recognize the purpose of your article and will make them more search-friendly for users to find. Google likes this! 8

10 Bullets and Numbers As mentioned with bolding, readers will often skim through blog articles in order to gain the most information in seconds. With the use of bullets and numbers, you will make it easier for the readers to obtain quick information. Having an organized structure makes it easy to see your key points within 7 seconds and will result in more time spent on the blog if the key points are strong. The headings are read first; then the explanations if the headings are intriguing enough to make the reader want to learn more. Here is a great example: This snapshot is a blog article from StuckAtHomeMom, who wrote about: Reasons to sleep with your phone. The numbered headings very quickly give you the 7 reasons, and the reasons are intriguing enough to read the explanations. Short and sweet! Bottom line: give the readers what they want by making it relevant, short, and sweet. You will find yourself being rewarded by the reader and your fellow search engines! 9

11 Images and Videos One of the amazing things about social blogging is the ability to communicate through many mediums. Not only are companies able to communicate with customers through text and captions, but also through images and videos. People tend to engage more with images and videos rather than text. Given the opportunity to utilize all 3, feel free to mix it up and create enjoyable posts for all readers. Embedding images and videos with similar keywords as your blog topic will provide better search engine results and will also be a great eye-pleaser. If the image gives you the option of adding an alternative text (Alt-tags), add your keyword as the text. Using videos also allow you to reach out to a larger audience through social networks and can help you drive more traffic to your website. For example: posting a video of a recent conference/event on YouTube will gain views from the site, and then a link can be provided in the video description stating: click here for my summary about the event. Link Out Search Engines are dedicated towards eliminating spam and rewarding quality websites. One of the ways they rank quality is through the number of people that link to your website, and also through the number of links you send out. Include a few links in your blog posts to direct readers to another location. Some links may be used to share your other blogs or a featured product, but many should be used to direct readers to another relevant website for more information. This practice will establish your credibility as a valuable resource and not a all about me website. As social media marketers, we often credit websites such as: Mashable, TechCrunch, and Social Media Examiner. Find articles related to your industry and you will be impressed to how linking out incentivizes links in. 10

12 Categories / Tags The final steps are to categorize your blog and tag your selected keywords. Categories are the general list of topics that you will post in. It is like a filing cabinet where you decide which section it belongs to. Some of Candybox Marketing s categories include: News, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, and Facebook. When a website visitor reads one of your blogs, it is most likely in their field of interest. The category will provide more of your blog articles in the same field in order to encourage the visitor to continue reading. This is a great way to allow website visitors to get to know more about your company and learn from your knowledge. Tags are keywords that are specific to each blog post. Based on the keywords that you have used for your blog post, you can now indicate them as tags. This is a direct way to communicate your selected keywords to search engines. Use approximately 3 to 5 keywords in each blog article to achieve maximum results. Your first keyword should be the primary (selected) keyword; the others should be the supporting keywords. For this example, the blog topic will be about helping readers handle their fear of public speaking: Primary keyword: Overcoming fear of public speaking Other keywords: fear of public speaking, public speaking, overcoming fear If the content in your blog is relevant to the tagged keywords, your blog posts will be found on search engines, and more importantly, found by the right people. 11

13 About Candybox Marketing We are an online agency that helps businesses acquire, engage, and convert prospects into customers. In a nutshell: We specialize in Inbound Marketing. Inbound Marketing means customers find you! We achieve this through: Building a breathing web presence (not a heartless website) Launching online campaigns (advertise only to qualified prospects) Managing social media accounts (customer relationship is a must) Providing social media training (monthly workshops and private training) With our experience in Marketing and IT, we have been able to produce successful results for our clients, including: Double website traffic within the first month Gaining 15,000+ Facebook fans in three months Securing Google Top Positions for their industry Increasing conversation ration from 0.5% to 20% Generating 6-7 qualified leads per day (500x increase) Creating 500+ regular order-placing Facebook fans Our success is no secret. Take a look at our work and learn how we achieved these numbers. 12