251.405.2543
You may have noticed the blog trend that is ruling the cyber world from Google to social media. Whether it is fashion influencers or tech gurus and travel enthusiasts, blogging is a trend that continues to grow each year.
How does this relate to your business? Blogging is a way to share your expertise and knowledge with your target audience. In doing so, you are 1) helping to provide information needed by your potential customer and 2) demonstrating your expertise on the subject which in turn keeps the customer coming back to you for further assistance. You are building trust with your potential customers/clients and this results in more leads for your business. Having well-written and updated blog content on your website also strengthens your relationship with Google which boosts your rankings in search results.
Now that you know why you need a business blog, let’s talk about how you’ll find the time to add this task to your agenda.
It is common for small and medium sized businesses to outsource business functions like payroll, human resources, accounting and more to keep the organization lean and flexible. Outsourcing blog writing? This might seem more challenging – after all, your blog is the voice of your business and a critical part of your content marketing strategy.
It is definitely possible to outsource blog posts, and do it well. Below are two of the most common questions we get here at BIS Designs about blogging:
Writing is personal and every business feels like they have a unique tone or style they’re looking to capture in their blog. The very concept of outsourcing might feel like it will cause you to lose some of your business’s personality.
Solution: Take time to educate your writer. We’ve all heard it, “you get what you put in”, and in this case, it is definitely true. A good writer will research and educate themselves as much as possible but to keep your business personality/style/tone the same, you’ll need to give some details on what makes your business stand out from your competitor.
If you give your writer nothing to work with, you get nothing in return worth reading. It’s that simple. You are the subject matter expert for your business. A good outsourced writer will bring your expertise to light in a readable way. If you’ll provide more information and direction, you’ll get more of what you expect from your writer and overall blog content strategy.
Solution: Make a list of topics. Whether you do this once a month or once a quarter – take the time to send a few topics to your writer. Once your blog writer has a list of topics, he/she can now get started on the time-consuming part of the project - creating engaging content. The few minutes that you spend concentrating on topics will help to keep your business personality/tone/style alive on your website.
A big perk of outsourcing your business blog writing is that your new writer will bring fresh ideas to the table. This simply adds new insights that can make your blog better.
Fun Fact: The average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write and the most engaged blog content on the web now has 41% more words than it did 3 years ago.
If you have a blog on your website that you simply don’t have time to keep up or you would like to add a blog to your website but aren’t sure where to start, give us a call! Outsourcing to a local company who can meet with you face-to-face to discuss your marketing goals is a great way to start the new season.
RELATED:
5 Benefits of Business Blogging
Phillip Long - CISSP, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group
BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.
You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2527 Email: plong@askbis.com
Here’s a quick illustration of how SEO works…
Google has developed automatic algorithms that rank your website. They send out what are called “spiders” to “crawl” your site and check it for over 100 indicators that determine whether the website is valuable or useless. These indicators include things like backlinks, domain age, traffic, fresh content, etc.
SEO can be considered the art of making sure those crawling spiders are happy with what they find. It is a very complex field that is always changing but in all that chaos there are a few constants that have remained the same since the beginning.
1. You need your own domain and hosting.
One thing that beginners need to know is that you need your own domain and hosting. Free blog set ups don’t do any favors for your SEO efforts. Why?
People tend to speculate that if you were serious about your website you would get your own name and host it yourself. Google only wants to point to websites that are considered serious and trustworthy and so this is a basic signal.
Starting your own website, hosting and a business blog can seem intimidating but that’s why we’re here. We offer multiple packages to meet your needs, which saves you a lot of time.
2. Problem solving with original content.
Keep in mind that Google’s entire purpose is to provide their customers with relevant and useful search results. Everything they do is built around this goal.
To be realistic, the most important thing you can do for your SEO is create the most useful content that solves people’s problems. If you are solving problems that people are searching for then it is likely that you are going to get shared on social media and ranked higher in Google.
And “original content” means so much more than just blog posts these days. You can expand into:
3. Make sure your theme is SEO optimized.
Think of SEO as having two components: the off-site stuff like social media and backlinks and the on-site stuff like optimizing your theme.
Optimizing your theme is important because it helps give Google indicators that you are a trustworthy site. It also helps Google find your content. Some of the things to keep in mind when optimizing are:
4. Build your social media profiles constantly.
You want to have a big focus on social media for SEO purposes as well as traffic building purposes.
Why?
Because Google is now looking to social media as a signal of an article’s authority and relevance. If people are sharing on Facebook or tweeting about it, you must have written something pretty good. The best way for this to happen is to build a strong following, keep them engaged and they’ll see your blog posts as they are shared.
Commenting and sharing other business blogs is always a great way to build a community and possible cross-promoting opportunities for the future as well.
Are you now ready to get a blog started and make sure your SEO is on the right track? Schedule a meeting and we’ll handle every detail from writing, optimizing your website and sharing to your social media!
Author: Stephanie May
12 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Content Marketing Strategy
The most common question from marketing clients is “How do I get more leads for my business?”
There are plenty of practical methods for generating quality leads. Blogging. Sharing and caring on social Media. Strategic landing pages. Event marketing. Email. Most marketers are using all of these channels and more. So why aren’t the majority of brands drowning in qualified leads?
Research shows that 65% of marketers are still struggling to figure out which content is effective. 60 percent are unable to produce engaging content. Only 23 percent of B2B marketers have moved to a customer-centric organizational structure. A lot of marketers are still missing the mark, using content to appeal to customers, rather than to provide value to customers.
If you want to get more quality leads, you need to do better quality marketing. The trick to doing that is to first step back, in order to move forward. Go back and refine your buyer personas. How can you better meet their preferences and expectations? Look at where you can improve your blog, email and social media content to better serve your audience.
No more bull running in a china shop approach and generating mediocre content and tossing it at your audience. No more throwing dollars at Facebook ads and waiting for the leads to roll in. Here are the hacks that will help you refine and improve your marketing and truly excel at lead generation.
UP YOUR CONTENT GAME
You should always be on the quest to enhance the type of content you are using. Content marketing goes far beyond blog posts. Consider investing more so you can deliver a premium level of content.
Your content should be engaging and “pretty”. All photos should be of great quality, captions should be short but interesting. Ever notice how television commercials use a short amount of time to catch your attention? The attention span of the average human is not very long, so you need to catch their attention with your graphics, photos and captions on social media within a glance. Blogs and email campaigns need to have clear and concise titles or subject lines.
SIMPLIFY YOUR WEBSITE DESIGN
Dynamic isn’t always a good thing when it comes to trying to get across a message. With website design, the more complex, the bigger disaster you may have on your hands.
Keep your website design clear and to the point. That doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. It does mean avoid excess text, confusing visuals and too many concepts. What you do what is a clear message and navigation bar. Lots of white space. Use website real estate for the essentials for getting leads, like forms and contact info.
You don’t want your design to scream when a prospect lands on your site.
BETTER PERSONALIZE YOUR EMAILS
How are your email open-rates? Small businesses get around a 2 to 3 percent open-rate percentage, and larger companies get closer to 10 percent or even more. Overall, the average hovers around 4 percent.
The goal should be to improve your email rates to help get more leads. How to do it? A simple trick is to use more personalized messaging. With the style and tone expectations of your target audience in mind, see if your emails make more of an impact with a more conversational tone. Try adding an image in the closing signature – a staff member whose name is on the emails. Use names and first person tone of voice in the subject line, greetings, and closings. Segment your emails with your marketing software to ensure the right people are getting the right messaging depending on where they are in the sales funnel.
Research has shown that personalization leads to six times higher email transaction rates. Worth a shot!
KEEP REFINING
You don’t necessarily need to revolutionize your marketing strategy to get more leads. You may see the results you’re after simply by making a few changes or trying new techniques. Try these hacks. Measure their impact. Then keep making them better. You’ll get more leads as long as you continually prime your marketing for the people you’re trying to reach. For more tips and to hire a team of marketing professionals to handle this part of your business for you – contact our office.
These days, having a company website is no longer enough to stand out among the thousands of competitors you compete with in the digital space. Blogging isn’t just a place to host your company press releases, it’s about providing valuable content to your future customers.
What is business blogging? Blogging is a marketing tactic that uses articles to get your business more online visibility. A business blog is a marketing channel (just like social media, email campaigns, etc.) that helps support business growth.
No matter what kind of business you have, whether you’re a local mom and pop shop, or giant corporation, there are some serious benefits are seemingly endless.
Here are 5 benefits of business blogging:
1. Creates Brand Authority
Consistently updating an active blog for your business allows you to personify your business by giving it a voice. Your blog is a space to discuss industry related topics, market trends and upcoming products. Focusing on these topics actively builds brand-trust. Trust generates leads. Leads grow sales. Can you see where this is all going?
When you utilize your blog effectively, you are creating a two-way conversion between you and your customers, prospects and other industry professionals which can be very helpful for gathering insights for future business development.
Having an active blog helps you stay ahead of the curve when it comes to industry news and competitors. By staying ahead of the curve, you are positioning your company as a leader as opposed to a follower. Your blog also serves the purpose of having a place to share your brand story, although it should be noted that it’s not advised that you blog only about yourself as a company.
2. Business Blogging Fuels Your SEO
There are some pretty obvious SEO benefits blogs can offer, such as viewers spending longer amounts of time on your website, increasing page views and lowering bounce rates. However, it’s also important to mention that search engines love valuable content and reward it with higher search result placements.
As more people are putting out content to capture the attention of search engines, the algorithms are getting smarter. Your business blogging content should focus on having frequent high-quality content as opposed to having constant poor-quality content. Opt for longer blog posts because Google actually favors in-depth blog articles but a regularly updated blog, no matter the length of the articles, ranks higher in search engines than websites with no blog at all.
3. Supports Your Social Media Advertising Efforts
Using blog articles as part of your content strategy on both Facebook and LinkedIn platforms has been proven to be very effective. Depending on the nature of the industry, boosted blog posts typically generate more engagements as opposed to generic click campaigns. This increased engagement impacts your overall organic reach for the post, which essentially means you are getting more viewers and spending less money as you’re running your ad campaigns.
Aside from using blog content for your ads, leveraging your blog posts throughout your social media content also increases the chances of gaining extra exposure. When you can write a blog article that is so interesting that others will want to share it, you are ultimately gaining free exposure.
4. Generates a Great ROI
Business blogs are cost-effective marketing investments. Many business owners choose to outsource their blogging efforts entirely because it can be a time-consuming task when you are already wearing multiple hats for your business. According to Hubspot research, B2B marketers who use blogs as part of their content marketing mix get 67% more leads than those who don’t.
5. Blogs Serve as a Lead Generation Tool
Blogging is an integral part of your digital sales funnel. In addition to driving traffic to your website, business blogging offers a great opportunity for capturing leads. By using non-intrusive lead capturing tools such as lead capture forms and call-to-action buttons, you can gather valuable data on the quality of the leads your blog posts are generating.
How many times have you read a blog post and downloaded a free e-book because you were interested in gaining more insightful information about the topic you were reading? If you recall a moment where you have personally done this, congratulations! You were successfully moved from the inbound marketing stage of attraction to the stage of conversion.
Each blog post you create is an additional page that can be indexed by Google, which can be used with a combination of lead generating call-to-action buttons such as free webinars, fact sheets and e-books. Asking for emails isn’t an easy task but when you offer valuable data in exchange for emails, you can leverage it for better prospecting.
Although it can be difficult to find the time to keep up a business blog, you don’t want to neglect the benefits blogging has to offer. By utilizing a local outsourced marketing company, like BIS Designs, your blogs can serve as a central piece for all your other marketing efforts which can include social media, SEO, email marketing and much more.
When business blogging is done properly, it creates an opportunity that will have lifelong benefits to boosting your business marketing efforts.