Blogging Is The Most Efficient Way To Dominate Your Market
Employing the brightest mathematical minds on the planet, building an algorithm that filters out the weak from the strong, the wheat from the chaff, the Google search engine determines what the best search results are for your query. It displays them sandwiched between the paid-for adverts top and bottom of the page.
There are alternatives to Google, but few people use them, and if they were a better tool for finding the information you need, they would be Google!
In every iteration of the Google algorithm, there have been casualties who have fallen by the wayside. Hurricanes, Penguins and Panda updates have all exacted their terrible toll.
You can obliterate a business by excluding it from search results, and some of the biggest and most successful websites have had their traffic reduced to a trickle overnight. Look at the recent plummeting figures for the dailymail.co.uk as an example.
Of all the digital marketing techniques available to a small business owner, starting a blog to attract search engine traffic is one of the best investments of your time.
It is the least expensive digital marketing route to getting your brand or small business heard above all the noise.
However, creating a business blog is not "free". You have to put some time and effort into creating the articles that go together to make a successful blog and get great results.
The payback is that your blog has a long shelf life in return for an investment of your time and will continue to attract search engine traffic for a long time, perhaps several years, after writing the original blog post.
In addition to the search engine traffic that a successful small business blog attracts, you can also use the "content pillars" you create as the foundation of your social media marketing campaign.
People will tell you that you shouldn't base your business model on search engine traffic alone and that it's wrong to rely on just one form of traffic to your site. But if Google didn't exist, then whatever replaced it would surely come to the same conclusion and rank the results in the same order?
Search exists to find the best answer to the question, and making your website highly visible in those results is the holy grail of search engine optimisation.
Create A Useful, Information-Rich Site
Creating an information-rich site is your goal. Whatever your target market is, the written word makes up a large percentage of the way your website gets ranked in search results.
Blogging is the way to feed the search engine more information. Keep writing quality content about your core subject, and eventually, you will gain recognition for being an authority in your field.
Building a recognised body of work gives you valuable search engine traffic and a good reason to promote your site on social media.
Many social media "experts" clamour for your business on Twitter, but most of them are missing the point. Being present on Twitter does not mean that you will be famous. Your blog and content is the surfboard on which you ride the social media wave. Without it, you will flounder in the water and drown.
Content Marketing Is A Tortoise And Hare Combination
Building a blog worthy of the name is hard work. There are no shortcuts. There is no growth hacking your way to the top. It is the meat and potatoes of promoting your company on the Internet.
It will take six months of consistent effort to produce any meaningful results from a blogging campaign, and for those who persist, the rewards eventually far outweigh the effort involved in creating the content in the first place. Evergreen content, the kind that is always useful and doesn't become dated, repeatedly pays for itself.
Imagine what you could produce from two years of consistent blogging? That is the scale of the job ahead of you, but by doing the work, you are giving yourself the best possible chance of being found in organic search for years to come.
A Manifesto For New Bloggers
A good blog post takes around four or five hours to write and add at least an hour or two for research and image selection. Content pillars that form the backbone of your blog can be two or three days in the making.
Being in a settled environment and having an established routine are essential ingredients for writing your blog posts, it gives your brain and your subconscious mind the ability to be able to concentrate on the task you set. If you have a million and one things going on in the background, then you are never going to produce your best work.
Publishing regularly is better than writing great content once in a blue moon. Being consistent and showing up is what will make the difference between a blog that is updated haphazardly or one thoughtfully constructed around a regular publishing schedule.
Schedule Blogging Time With No Distractions.
I like to write my stuff early in the morning before I start dealing with emails and other distractions. Start with just an hour a day and build up slowly to a couple of hours. As you improve, you'll find you can get an increasing amount done in this "sacred" time.
Make Blogging Your Priority
Website owners who pay for inexpensive blog articles don't give their website the respect it deserves. Being serious about your blog content is a required step to making it a success.
If you are going to write a blog, then write it with heart and soul. Research your subject correctly and produce something that your audience will love reading.
Here are my top five tips to help you, the small business owner, get your blog up and running in 2022 and start generating organic search traffic for your online business.
1. Develop a Mission Statement
Develop a blog mission statement that is short, sweet, and to the point. The mission statement should tell your potential customers why you decided to start your blog in 2022.
Print out your mission statement and keep it front and center of your office space so that it both inspires you to produce more content and keeps you on track with your business blogging.
Think about why you want to start a blog
"I am a strong believer in reaching for your dreams by creating a blog that helps small business owners increase their revenue and gain more customers. I love the idea of helping other people reach their goals, and ultimately help them live a happier, healthier life."
Keep your goal in mind while writing posts - this will keep you focused on your blog topics when writing time comes around and is the foundation of a great blog. Setting some simple goals for your blog is the best way to start building some great content. make sure you have Google analytics installed so that you can measure progress.
2. Become An Authority In Your Niche
You can't become an authority by publishing nothing, everyone has to start somewhere.
If you are the type of person that suffers from self doubt or feelings of unworthiness then this could be the major hurdle you need to get over when starting your blog.
it doesn't matter so much about the words in the beginning, the most important part is getting started. You only get better at writing and publishing by doing the work which is true of any creative practice. Over time you will build up a body of work that shows you are the expert and there's no denying it.
Position yourself as an expert in your niche market by publishing a new blog post about current trends and related topics in your industry. Opinion pieces on current events are often the most popular on social media but these are also the hardest to write.
Republish content from your blog platform through social media sites like Twitter and Facebook so that people who follow you online will find out immediately when you publish new posts. If you use WordPress or another content management system, learn how to customise it to manage feeds from other sites automatically into your blog page, Twitter feed and Facebook page.
Extend your blogging efforts beyond the Web to print materials, submit articles or opinion pieces about current trends in your industry for publication in magazines, newsletters or other offline media where you can share ideas with people who might not normally seek out blogging resources.
As with blogging, it is important to understand the needs of the people you are trying to reach through these means so that you can target content appropriately.
3. Create Content Pillars
Create content pillars by compiling the most interesting articles on your topic into one document.
These articles can be used not only as seed for new posts, but they will also help you "link up" with key bloggers within the communities where they were originally published because other bloggers may want to share your work via Twitter or Facebook.
A good example I can give you of creating a content pillar is Pay Monthly Websites where I have consolidated three or four posts into one content pillar.
Learn to effectively distribute content through your target platforms and your blog will develop a big enough audience to drive traffic back to it for more of the same. There are two main types of marketing: push strategy and pull strategy
A push strategy involves using marketing techniques, media relations and advertising to make your company or products known to consumers. While this is important for businesses that are new to the market, it doesn't create loyal customers.
A pull strategy focuses on various relationships with members of your target market through social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as other media outlets.
For example, if your company is a new restaurant, you can create content pillars to use for blog posts about the cuisine your restaurant offers, competitor profiles or news items or trends in your industry that are worth sharing with others so they will want to follow you online.
Create a blog that is updated frequently with information about the people you have hired to work for your company, recent menu additions or new items on your catering menu.
The objective of any marketing plan is to create a demand for an item or service so that consumers will seek it out rather than wait passively for it to be thrust upon them through push marketing.
4. Frequency Of Blog Posting
Write one article every week. You can write more if you have the time and inclination, but once a week is a good starting place, and it will ease you into solid writing practice, and consistent blogging gets the best results. Blogging consistency is vital to improving your search engine rankings and reaching your target audience.
Blog consistency helps build trust with your readers, which in turn leads to repeat visitors, loyal customers, and more business opportunities down the road.
Publishing one article each Friday (it's best to choose a specific publishing deadline day) means that Google sees a new page indexed in its system every week. This blogging strategy also helps your audience remember your site and come back to check out your latest blogging content. Blog as often as you can without sacrificing the quality of your blog posts. it's much better to make one wonderful post than several low quality pieces.
If you blog less frequently, say once a month or every other week, readers won't be as familiar with your blog's tone and style. They might have trouble finding your older blog posts to return to if they missed them when they first got posted. A lack of familiarity with your blog will result in fewer loyal readers sticking around for future blog posts, which means little traffic coming back to your site regularly.
Becoming part of someone's daily routine takes time. You need to consistently post new blog content for at least five months before most people begin adding you to their feed reader or checking out your latest articles each day instead of every couple of weeks. It can take several years for blog traffic to build up to your desired numbers.
Keep your blog relevant and consistent with blog post themes, which will help readers understand what they can expect from a blog that covers a specific niche or topic. This blog post consistency, in turn, enables Google to find your blog easier because it gives the search engine a better idea of what content to display for a given search query.
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Publishing blog posts more often could help your blog get indexed faster in the search engine results pages, but this isn't an instant ticket to increased traffic.
New blog articles appear after the web crawlers have updated their databases. It takes time for blog articles to get crawled and indexed so they'll show up in search engine results. However, blog articles that blog more frequently will be crawled and indexed more quickly than blog articles that blog less often.
5. Share Your Posts On Social Media
Don't be afraid to ask for social media shares from your audience when they finish reading an article you wrote. This is important because search engines like Google give preference in their algorithms to pages that are highly cited by other websites, or shared on social media networks such as Facebook or Twitter by individuals in your subject matter niche market community.
You can do this with an 'ask' in the conclusion of your post or via a pop-up on your website (which will be closed if the user doesn't want to read it) which includes a call-to-action.
Writing blog posts is essential for your blogging authority, but it's just as important to be able to tell people to share them – especially if they've enjoyed the article and learned something from it. In addition, blogging authorities who don't ask their audience for anything are missing out on a great opportunity to grow their blogging authority using social media marketing.
Remember to use a blogging tool to schedule your asks for social shares on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. This way you can time these asks with an upcoming holiday or event so they have a better chance of being noticed.
You should also consider becoming part of forums where your target audience is active – users from these communities are likely to engage in your blogging authority content and share it on their networks, helping you reach new people.
Would you like some help starting your small business blog? Contact us and put our team to work on your next blog post idea!
