Many business owners struggle to maintain and run a systemised blog on their website. Many feel it is very time-consuming with very little return on investment (ROI).
We too have neglected our blog for the last year or so as the majority of the traffic to our website was via pay-per-click advertising i.e Google Adwords. However, for 2017, we are now adding content marketing or inbound marketing to our marketing mix to attract more visitors to our website, convert them and delight so they become our raving fans.
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Another addition to our marketing mix this year is Video Marketing. Video is increasingly becoming crucial for any company of any size to use for their marketing. As you can see on our website, we have used a video on pretty much every page on our website and I’d recommend you do the same.
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Get my plan →Coming back to inbound marketing and blogging, I’ve created a system which will help you create a simple and a very sophisticated blogging system.
We start with a mind map. You can create your own for follow this one.
I’ve colour coded it so you can see the various stages of the blogging content creation and marketing. Let’s look at it a bit closer and start with the blue section
First, start off with your light bulb moment or an idea. Then go to BuzzSumo and enter that keyword or key phrase and you’ll get a list of URLs which have been the most popular pieces of content on the internet.
You don’t have to sign up for a paid plan on Buzzsumo, the free plan is fine for what we need to do. I’ve used a phrase ’email marketing tips’ to get the results.
You see the list of the most popular content on the internet and then create your own content with the ideas you see here. Once you’ve got an idea/s, create a Google Sheets and enter it in. Reason I love Google Sheets is that it’s in the cloud and I can use it from any device.
You can either create your own template or download the one I’ve created by clicking ‘The Ultimate Blogging Blueprint’ below.
The next step is to write the blog post. You can either write it yourself or outsource it to a copywriter.
Whilst the copy is being written, you need to start sourcing the images / graphics. For stock images, we use 123RF and they are very affordable. Prices start from only $1 per image. If you need custom graphics, then you’ll need to hire a graphic designer.
No matter how interesting your blog post is, you need eye-catching graphics or images to enhance the blog post and make it more interesting.
Once the blog post is written and the images / graphics are sourced, it is time to upload the content to your WordPress website and either publish or schedule the blog post.
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Get Traffic
This is where most blog owners stop. They publish the blog post and wait for the visitors to arrive. Traffic (or visitors) to your blog won’t come on its own if you don’t spread the word.
Here’s what to do. First, spread the post on all your social media channels. To get more click throughs from your social media channels, accompany the post / tweet, etc with a graphic card. If you are uploading to multiple channels, then you’ll need different size cards as each social media channel has different dimensions for uploading images.
Here’s an example of a graphic card, this follows our branding house style for colours, fonts, etc.
The above image is for Twitter. To upload the same to other channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, etc, I’ll need to resize the image above. Below are the image dimensions for the various social media channels:
Facebook: 1200 x 628
Twitter: 1024 x 512
LinkedIn: 700 x 400
Google+: 800 x 1200
Pinterest: 735 x 1102
Instagram: 1080 x 1080
According to Buffer, posts & tweets with images receive 150% more shares than those without!
Another way to get traffic to your blog post is via pay-per-click. This is the most targeted, the fastest and the cheapest way to get traffic to your blog. Before you run any paid traffic to your blog, you must ‘monetize’ it and have conversion tracking set up for your offer/s. This is via ‘Lead Magnets’ to capture emails for visitors to your blog so you can build your email list. If you would like to learn more, please contact us.
Schedule Your Posts
Using an app like Buffer or HootSuite, schedule your posts. Use hashtags and keywords to get noticed.
Email Marketing
Next, email your subscribers to inform them about the new blog post. This brings in traffic back to your blog and as these subscribers are what we call ‘warm traffic’, they are likely to take action on any ‘Call To Actions’ on your blog post.
Social Media Group Postings
Find groups on LinkedIn, Facebook or any other social media which is relevant to your niche and post your blog on there to drive traffic. I must stress not to ‘spam’ these groups as it will infuriate the community and probably get you kicked out of the group for breaking the community guidelines. You must add value to the group/s. Join the conversions and if someone is requesting help, then you can add your answer to it and state that you’ve put up a detailed post regarding this problem/subject on your blog.
Adding value to these groups will slowly & eventually perceive you as an expert in your niche and you will build up trust with other members.
Web 2.0 Properties
This is an advanced technique which will get you tons of traffic to your website. It is time-consuming but very rewarding and you may need the help of a virtual assistant. What you need to do is create backlinks from high page ranking Web 2.0 properties like Tumblr, Reddit, StumbleUpon, etc.
Video Marketing
Lastly, on the mind map is Video Marketing. Upload the video to YouTube the right way will get your video indexed in YouTube & Google searches very quickly. To get more views, do share your video with the top video sharing websites depending on your niche.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post and please feel free to share this on your social media network. I would love to hear your comments below and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Written by Uzair Kharawala
Partner at SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.
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