Business Blogging 101by Erin Gagnon

Account Manager & Director of Strategythe Bradford Group

Agenda

• Why Blog?• Content

- The basics- Headlines- Visuals

• Keywords• Optimize• Promote

Why Blog?

• Blogging helps you attract new visitors to your website and convert those visitors into leads

• Companies that blog get 55% more website visitors than those who don’t

• BtoB companies that blog generate 67% more leads per month than those that don’t

Why Blog?

• 8 out of 10 people identify themselves as blog readers

• Blogs give websites 434% more indexed pages and 97% more indexed links

• 92% of companies that blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog

Content – the Basics• Use an editorial calendar to organize contributors, deadlines

and post topics - Your blog posts should all serve larger company goals

• Brainstorm a quarter’s worth of post topics as a team - Answer frequently asked questions – from prospects, networking, etc.- Create lists- How to guides- Pose questions to your social media networks- Focus on negative phrases heard from clients and respond- Create infographics- Create short videos, webinars or SlideShare presentations- Comment on trends or news- Bundle existing content (blog, website page, emails, etc.)- Transform internal presentations into external blogs- Tailor existing content to different target clients or verticals

Content – the Basics• Write like you talk• Don’t plagiarize• Edit x2• Use calls-to-action• Use bullets and numbered lists

- Make your posts easy to scan• Insert links (internal and external)• Blog posts should be as long as they need to be (search

engines prioritize longer content)

• The only part of a blog post your reader is guaranteed to see is the headline

• Give your readers an idea of what you will cover without giving too much away- Titles containing 60 characters received the most social shares- Titles that included a single question mark have 46.30% social shares, nearly

double that for titles without question marks

Content – Headlines

Content – Headlines

• Include a relevant image (picture, screenshot, embedded video or slideshow) with every post

• Pay attention to image copyrights- http://photopin.com/- http://www.freeimages.com/

Content – Visuals

• Focus on long-tail keywords instead of broad keywords- Specific to your firm- Lower search volume- Less competition

Keywords

• Focus on 1 or 2 keywords for each post (long-tail keywords) - Headline- First/second sentence- Sprinkle a few times in the post body- Meta description- Image alt-tags

Optimize for Search Engines

• Share your post on all your company and personal social channels • Email posts directly to personal, relevant connections

Promote Through Social Media

Thank You!