I gave my 4sight on Blogging for Business another run out today – at 4N Reading-not-Henley, so called (by me) as it was the Reading meeting, but being held in Henley at the Town Hall! The meeting was held in a very grand room and I felt quite honoured to speak in front of about 25 people in such a salubrious setting!
I start my presentation by mentioning research by internet marketing company Hubspot, who found that websites that have a blog get around 55% more traffic than websites that don’t. I find that statistic quite staggering, especially when their research counted a blog as being as few as two posts … imagine how much traffic you could get if you blog every week!
During the presentation I give 7 tips on how to blog successfully. In brief the tips are:
- Work out what you want your blog to achieve – Attract new visitors? Engage with clients? SEO? Share your expertise? A personal record? Or all of the above!
- Choose your platform carefully – There are over 100,all with strengths and weaknesses, and it’s not so easy to change once you’ve started.
- Update your blog regularly – Let search engines and visitors know your business is alive and kicking!
- Be creative with content – Include case studies, news, guest bloggers, videos, tips and more
- Write for people – not for London Taxi drivers! – Focus on keywords – but don’t spam them! Use them in the title, URL, heading and 2-3 times in the body copy, no more.
- Attract an audience and make your message viral – Post exciting, entertaining content that people will want to share – and make it easy for them to do so!
- Follow the Bloggers Code of Conduct – Remember everything on your blog is a representation of you – so be authentic!
It seemed to go down really well with the people present and I had lots of interesting conversations with people afterwards about the benefits of blogging. It really is a hugely effective and relatively cheap (or even free!) marketing tool. Are you blogging yet? I’d love to hear your blogging tips!
