How to Make your Blog a Key Element of your Inbound Marketing

So you?re thinking about starting an Inbound Marketing Blog for your business and you?re wondering if it?s a good idea.? Check out some of these statistics:

• Nearly 40% of us companies use blogs for marketing purposes.
  

  Regular publishing is the key to Inbound Marketing Blog Success

• Companies that blog have 55% more website visitors.
• B2C companies that blog get 88% more leads/month than those who don?t.
• B2B companies that blog get 67% more leads/month than those who don?t.

Content is an asset.

So why again haven?t you started that blog? Without a doubt, blogging must be a critical part of any inbound marketing strategy.

Blogging is a long term marketing asset that will bring new prospects to your business.? It establishes you as an authority and a thought leader in your space, allowing you to earn trust.

But just slapping up a few articles here and there when you get time is just not going to hack it.? Your blog needs to be well-optimized.? You must promote it.? Most of all, it must be rich with relevant content. You must publish often

Businesses that blog 16 to 20 times per month get over 2X more traffic than those who blog less than four times per month!

Inbound Marketing Blog Rule #1-Post Articles Often

More blog posts mean more indexed pages for search engines to display in their results.? The more pages displayed, the higher your site is ranked for organic search and obviously the more likely it is someone will choose to visit your site.

By developing an Inbound Marketing blog publishing schedule and sticking to it, you can get ahead of the curve and get some great results.? Blog posts don?t need to be novels.

In fact the most effective are between 400 to 600 words.? A good practice is to write more articles per week than you plan on posting, banking the rest for those times when you just can?t find the time to write.? If your goal is to post three articles per week, try to write one per business day and keep that bank account growing. Make sure you write to the 4 “E’s of Content Marketing.?

Inbound Marketing Blog?Rule #2-Optimize for Better Traffic

earning how to optimize your Inbound Marketing blog posts is essential to attracting more traffic through organic search.? Your blog titles must include industry keywords that people enter when doing internet research.? Restate that keyword or phrase early in the article, in the first line if possible.? But don?t overdo it.

Search engine spiders are becoming more intelligent every day.? If it appears you are trying to stack the deck with unnecessary repetition of keywords, your ranking will drop.? If you state your keyword search phrase in the title, the first or second line, then just naturally several times in the article, you will get optimum ranking.

Takeaway: Write for your prospective customers first and SEO second.

Inbound Marketing Blog Rule #3= Use CTA?s that Work

Every blog article should include a Call-To-Action or CTA.? This?doesn’t?have to be a hard sell, ?Buy Now? message.

Your CTA can simply be a request to download additional information in the form of a pdf or ebrochure, or a short survey that?s pertinent to the content of the article.? Perhaps it is a link to an e-commerce location.? There?s nothing wrong with that if your article has informed and armed the reader with the information they need to make a decision to buy.

Be careful though.? Asking for too much information too soon is equivalent to asking for marriage on the first date. That tends to really turn people off!? For professional services businesses and manufacturing companies it?s usually better to nurture that relationship into a more confident trusted position before bending a knee and pulling out the engagement ring box.

Build this trust by creating meaningful, engaging, useful content and publishing it often? at least two times per week.

Your CTA?s can be placed within the article itself, in the beginning, middle or end, but remember to create contextual calls-to-action.? You can enlist the help of a professional to design a CTA map. Use hyperlinks and CTA buttons to guide readers to appropriate offers. For instance, to measure how your website rates, including your blogging efforts, use our free website grader and we?ll include a full report back to you with no further obligation. In our opinion, that?s a pretty darn good CTA!

Inbound Marketing Blog Rule #4- Start with Strategy

Enlist the help of an Inbound Marketing Consultant to help craft an effective Content Strategy and CTA strategy. A professional helps bring objectivity to your Goals & Objectives and should help you achieve a better ROI.