A little over four years ago I asked a local social media consultant, who I quite accidentally met through LinkedIn, “Just exactly what do I need to do to get on board this train before it gets away?” She told me …
- Sign up for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and get active on all three
- Engage with others via comments on posts and articles
- Start a blog
A what? While I may have heard this term mentioned in conversation, I honestly had no idea of what a blog was. I mean … no idea. Well, we talked about it and off I went. Having been married for over 30 years, I do know how to take direction. Looking back at this now, this might have been her best advice of all!
Like most writers, my blog is an integral part of my website and since I am no SEO guru, I count on the fresh content that it provides to enhance my placement in search. But, from the standpoint of social media marketing, your blog is so much more! You do not have to rely on search engines in order to be successful. In fact, your blog should be the central piece of your social media marketing ecosystem …
Your blog establishes your expertise – Your LinkedIn profile can do much for this area but it cannot come even close in comparison to a relevant blog. Nor can comments on Facebook or 140 character updates on Twitter. Mind you, these social networks are the critical support mechanisms that will make your blog a success! On your blog, you can write as often as you wish, and as long as you want, about those areas in which you have experience and credibility. Not only are you establishing your expertise, you are providing value by sharing your knowledge with others and the ability to provide this value will be critical to your marketing efforts. In return, your blog will …
- Attract readers to your blog and to your website where you will have further opportunities to share your story, provide even more value, and then convert your visitors from readers to customers.
- Provide the content for social sharing which directs folks back to your site – Herein lies the essence of the ecosystem. You create an article on your blog which you then share via your social networks. Your social networks then share this information with each other and each, in turn, directs readers back to the article source. Then, the whole process starts over again. Even better, this activity has no end point. Literally, the cycle has the potential to repeat itself, with the same content, an infinite number of times.
- Extend your reach – The real power of blogging and social media marketing comes by way of reach. Every time someone in one of your networks shares one of your updates, the reach of your article has expanded almost exponentially. If you know how to dance funny and can put that on a video, it might even go viral. Let’s look at a simple example of the power of reach for LinkedIn. Next take this power and add in your social networks and particularly Twitter. The potential is mind boggling!
- Attracts followers & connections – What makes these people special? It’s pretty simple. They have opted in to your messages because they like what they read. This also means that they have a huge potential to become brand ambassadors. Reach out and say “thanks”. Start a conversation and then nurture that into a relationship by making a little effort to engage.
- Will support your site’s landing pages, ecommerce areas, etc. – Keep in mind that your blog content can easily direct readers to other pages on your site. Links within your content can, and should be, to both internal and external pages.
- Helps to build your mailing list – Some companies report that as high as 95% of sales can be tied back to these! Subscribers have willingly opted-in to your messages!!
According to HubSpot, companies who blog get …
- 55% more website visitors than companies who do not blog
- 97% more inbound links than companies who do not blog
- 434% more indexed pages than companies who do not blog
- B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/mo than those that don’t
- B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/mo than those that don’t
So, the question becomes, are you interested in results? I can’t speak for you but, for myself, I don’t do anything without expecting some sort of measurable return. The good news is, blogging has exceeded my expectations in this regard and it will do the same for you!
Here are just a few tips for getting the most out of your blogging efforts …
- Develop and overall content strategy
- Write the articles on a frequency (at least once per week but, if you can do more than that, even better) and be sure to include good keywords and back-links to other quality article sources
- Share your blog via social media along with your other updates from other sources
- Consider using some automated article sharing. Twitterfeed, HootSuite, Networked Blogs, & dlvr.it are all excellent free tools to assist you
- Use your articles to drive folks to your landing page and your offer
- Have a “call to action” and/or request comments at the end of each blog post. This can be as simple as “Please sign up to receive our monthly newsletter”. By offering something in return, for example an eBook, you will greatly increase your results
- Offer to write for other quality sites and vice versa
Consider sharing the writing duties. This has a number of advantages …
- Reduce your overall writing load while increasing the frequency of your articles
- Each individual writer will provide fresh new ideas
- Different writing styles attract different readers
- Team members likely bring different areas of expertise
- An editorial calendar and other tools can make it easy to manage!
Get your whole team involved …
- Have team members share your blog articles via social media
- Consider using tools like Buffer or HootSuite to pre-program a sharing schedule
- Applications like GaggleAmp will automatically alert team members to new posts and will also allow for pre-scheduling their updates
And finally, measure your results and adjust your message(s) as needed …
- Google Analytics (or any other good analytics program) to measure page views, unique visitors, etc.
- URL Shorteners with reporting (bit.ly, ow.ly, and others)
- Social Activity – Tweets/Retweets, Likes, Comments, Shares, +1’s, etc.
- Conversions from visitor to somebody who requests info to somebody who buys!
Now, what about if you personally recognize the value of blogging but you work for a company that does not share your enthusiasm? As long as it will not be in violation of your employment agreement, there is nothing to prevent you from blogging on your own and working on brand “you”. Grab yourself an account on WordPress or Tumblr and call it freddrew.com. Lot of folks are doing it and they are using this method to increase their effectiveness in their current positions while at the same time they are building long-term job security or maybe even moving up!
By far, the largest percentage of my practice is working with SMB B2B companies. I would guess that better than 90% of them have websites. Maybe 30% to 35% of them are active at least to some extent on social media. Less than 10% either have a blog or, if they do have one, they write so infrequently that just having it sit there on their site probably does them more harm than good. If you are an enterprise level company, or maybe even a firm that relies heavily on eCommerce and are successful at that, you can probably afford to expend $1,000.00’s a month for professional SEO services. That would not be me and it would not be the majority of my clients.
Please share with us how blogging has helped you in your social marketing efforts or, please tell us what is holding you back!
This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet. I’ve been compensated to contribute to this program, but the opinions expressed in this post are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.
Craig M. Jamieson
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