Using Your Blog to Promote Your Brand
Blogs can be used for just about anything these days… to vent about your daily frustrations, describe your latest beach excursion and even promote a business and a brand!
Millions of blogs exist, but there are certain tips to ensure that your blog does not get overlooked with the rest of them. Here are seven tricks to help use your blog to the best of your ability and increase your visitor traffic:
Build a strong foundation.
Your URL is the first name people will see, so create your site wisely so consumers will recognize the name and be able to easily navigate to your site. Use a service where you can create your own URL because it will ensure that you can create your own name. After creating your site, link it to all your social media sites to immediately increase traffic!
Understand and Identify Your Audience.
It’s almost impossible to appeal to every type of consumer, but if you identify your target market, you will be able to write better for them. Once you understand who will be reading your blog, you can write in a way that attracts that certain audience and makes them want to continue using your site.
Create a Marketing Plan.
The first step to creating a marketing plan is to create a promotional calendar. “Start by planning your organization’s marketing events for the year and use public holidays where appropriate. The objective is to create hooks around which to develop your content.” Then, outline your major content offerings, such as conference talks or webinars. Next, decide if you will have ongoing posts and columns that can keep consumers coming back each week. After creating a plan, it’s important to stick to it and reassess your progress throughout each month.
Optimize, Optimize, Optimize.
Written pieces look incredibly different on the web than they do in print, so it’s crucial to incorporate colors, pictures, sounds, etc to attract users with visual aids. Also, focus each post on one main point so that your content can be searched for more easily. Finally, your information should flow in small portions. If you have pages of black and white text, users will more than likely be turned off and leave your site within seconds.
Plan Content Promotion.
Using blog delivery promos, such as emails that alert followers when your most recent post is published is key! You can also use social media to your advantage by sharing each post on sites such as Twitter. In addition, include “sharing” options with each post so users can easily promote your brand on their timelines and news feeds.
Allocate Resources to Your Blog.
These resources may be internal or external, but your brand will need resources to succeed. “You’ll want to consider a variety of resources. You’ll want to look at resources forcontent creation to develop the information; creative, including design, photography and formatting; editorial to ensure that the content conveys the appropriate ideas, as well as editing to ensure the grammar is correct; marketing to get your content distributed; and technology to facilitate uploading and other technical issues.
Track Results.
Using tracking resources is appropriate for ensuring that your blog is reaching your target audience and making strides in the right direction! “Used properly, a blog not only supports your social media, search optimization and sales processes, it acts as the hub for the rest of your content marketing.”
What other tips/ideas would you add? Keep us updated on your improvements and latest blog posts and ideas!
