Realize the Amazing Power of Your Blog:
Blogging and Social Media
Digital marketing,
it’s pretty simple, right? Draft up 500+ words of amazingly educational and
entertaining content, upload it onto your blog, maybe sprinkle on a little
SEO magic and you’re good…right? Well, let’s just put it this way: if you
have teenagers, they’re rolling their eyes at you. If you have dogs,
they’re staring at you with that head-cocked-to-the-side look they give you
when you’re missing the obvious.
Ok, maybe it’s not as obvious as pick up ball…throw ball, but if you spend
any time reading about online marketing, you’ve got to know how important
of a role your blog can play in growing your client base. Don’t worry,
though, you’re not alone. It’s surprising how many established and emerging
businesses underestimate the power of their blog. With a few added steps,
you too can realize the amazing power of your blog.
Active Content Distribution
When you were planning your wedding or "Sweet 16" party, you
didn’t spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on gorgeous invitations just
to leave them in the box, did you? Of course not! You sent them out into
the world so they could tell the world the exciting news.
The same concept rings true for your blog content. They key is to actively
push your content out into the world so people can line up to dance with
you, money in hand. You want to get your content out on as many channels as
you can. So this means:
• Tweet out your headlines and grabbers with a link to your content
• Post a summary of your content to Facebook
• Add your blog to your Google+ and LinkedIn Feeds
• Upload the cool images you post with your blog article to Pinterest and
Instagram
• Turn your blog into a podcast or video and upload to YouTube
• Find out where your clients are hanging out and get your content out
there!
It may sound a little daunting, but most of that can be done in one step
using online tools that will help you to schedule your releases to touch
your prospects and clients on a daily basis. Aim for 2-3 releases per day.
Sales Funnels
Depending on your business, your sales funnel can look much different than
the business next door. So, without getting into too much detail, let’s
take a high-level look at what a sales funnel is and how your blog and
other web content plays a role.
Typically, your blog articles will have one or more links to other pages of
your website. You can be strategic about this and push (“funnel”) them to
where you want them to go. The page(s) that you’re pushing your readers to
may have a certain call to action that encourages them to give you their
email address in exchange for something they find valuable. This could be a
free white paper, free trial, webinar or other free consideration to obtain
that valuable email address.
Once you have the prospect’s email address, you can now trickle out
relevant content (likely from your blog) into their brains via email.
You’ll have additional links to free content or additional sales pages that
your prospects can click to when they’re ready to make their purchase.
The sales funnel is all about grabbing that email address and using it to
establish yourself as an expert in the field so that people will trust you
enough or like you enough to buy what you’re selling.
Strategic Alliances
Too many business owners think they have to do everything alone. This is
not only sad, but also a dangerous fallacy that may be choking off your
business revenues. One of the big keys to building your business is teaming
up with other complementary (not competing) businesses to expand your
reach.
According to Andrew Davis, author of “Brandscaping: Unleashing the Power of
Partnership” businesses that partner usually experience rapid success with
their content. The key is to make your content noteworthy, so when you
reach out to potential partners, they’ll be impressed and want to work with
you.
There are a host of ways to initiate strategic alliances. They all start
with recognizing those businesses that complement your product or service
and share your audience. From there, consider reading their blogs to see
what they’re writing about. Send them an email proposing a guest blog
article that would be of interest to their audience and a link to your
site. That opens a dialogue that can lead to tremendous collective success.
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