Important Content Marketing Tips for Those Who Manage Commercial Blogs

Whether you run an established organization or are a small business owner who is just now considering starting a company blog, you might be feeling a little lost. With so many blogs on the Internet as well as the dominance of the major social networks, it can feel like there’s no way to get noticed against all of the background noise. With just a little careful planning and following content marketing tips, you can overcome these factors and start to drive traffic toward your site. If you’re running an eCommerce operation, then you might even be able to generate new leads with your blog that you wouldn’t have otherwise even come into contact with. In spite of the fact that the two platforms seem very different, there’s no reason you can’t integrate your blogging efforts with social media marketing as well.

Content Marketing Tips – Starting & Growing Your Own Company Blog

At one point, you would have had to slog through a lot of material in order to code HTML sheets from scratch before you were even able to post a single article to your new blog. Fortunately, those days are long behind us, and there’s probably a blogging platform that would work perfectly for you with a minimum amount of work. Consider using a simple website builder tool that will help to reduce the amount of workload involved, and therefore the overall barrier to entry.

Anyone who wants to learn how to start a blog might also want to ask around and see if there are any thought leaders in their own personal circle. You might be surprised to find out that there are some very trustworthy individuals close to you who are willing to give you a few pointers. Once it comes time to start writing, however, the major decisions are still going to be up to you.

Inspiration for Writing

You might have a lot of motivation to get started and then suddenly draw a blank when you first start writing. Take a few breaths and try opening your blog with a few short introduction posts. Company blogs don’t normally attract long-term readers, as disappointing as that might sound. Therefore, your goal should be to try and establish your blog in such a way that search engines will want to catch onto it and index whatever you write.

That doesn’t mean you want to start stuffing things with more keywords than are reasonable, however. Too many keywords can actually be harmful, so it’s best to just tell the world who you are and what sort of things you’re going to be writing about. Future posts should normally just stem from this. That being said, there are a few tips that can help to gain at least a few regular readers, who might end up turning into real leads.

Cultivating a Sense of Community with Your Blog

More than likely, you’ve probably never thought that punk musicians and giant tech companies have very much in common. However, they both have a tendency to build brands that connect with their fans, and that’s why they’re able to cultivate such rabid followings. People go out of their way to interact with them because they feel a sense of authenticity from these groups.

Establish yourself as a genuine expert who stands out from the rest. Focus on creating goal-focused content that includes information that your audience is going to find genuinely valuable. Always put a call to action in your posts, but don’t make it sound like you’re being inauthentic when doing so.

Whenever you’re writing for a specific audience, make sure that you do research on their pain points as well as their interests. Get a good understanding of the demographics of the audience that you’re trying to reach. That’ll make you sound like you’re more of a helpful friend who understands their problems and wants to offer solutions. If you never make good on the promises made by your headlines, then there’s a good chance that people will start to think of you like a lot of talk with little action. Eventually, you’ll want to branch out and focus on integrating other platforms with your blog.

A Multichannel Content Marketing Approach

Blog posts are great and they’re still very important in spite of all of the various platforms online. The fact that they bring search engine traffic back to your site is probably the biggest reason you’d invest in one, but this doesn’t help you to reach out and get different audiences. Explore a variety of content marketing tactics and post materials to as many services as you possibly can. You might want to consider posting product videos on something like YouTube or Vimeo. Perhaps you could reach out and get a popular influencer to unbox one of your products. Some small businesses will send influencers a free sample in exchange for an honest review, and there are people who watch these videos purely for pleasure.

That can help you reach an audience who might never think to even visit your blog. Naturally, you’ll want to always add links pointing back to it. If you ever get a chance to be a guest on a podcast, then you might be allowed to give out the address to your blog during the show. As soon as you find out which channels work best, you can focus on building a social media presence on them. Over time, you might get lucky and have some people share your materials independently. When they do, you may have to start posting things more regularly.

Content Marketing Tips – Managing Content Effectively Over Time

It isn’t enough to create material and post it. You want to be able to provide a useful service and give something back to the community that follows you. Consider using a content management system that helps you maintain posts across several different platforms. The most sophisticated tools will give you the ability to see your current social position on a single dashboard. Don’t feel that you have to upgrade everything faster than you feel comfortable, however, because jumping around from solution to solution is just counterproductive. No matter how motivated you are, building a blog and a following from scratch is quite hard. Never give up, follow content marketing tips, and you’ll be able to generate new sales leads on a regular basis.