With the right strategy in place, blogs can serve as
critical engines for a marketing organization. As a starting point, blogs are great
tools for generating inbound traffic, a significantly cheaper channel than outbound
lead-generation programs. Eighty-two
percent
of companies that blog see a positive ROI for their inbound
marketing programs. Outcomes organizations typically see as a result of blogs
include more leads and opportunities, better prospect and customer engagement,
and higher revenue.
And compared to companies that do not have blogs, those
with blogs see better business outcomes:
· Produce 67%
more leads
· 13x
more likely to
enjoy positive ROI
· Generate 97%
more links to their website
The level of success your blog generates is contingent on a
number of factors. The following are 15 recommendations that will help ensure
that your blog is successful. For organizations just launching a blog, these
serve as a critical checklist of things to do. For organizations with a blog,
they provide you with the means to evaluate your blog strategy and execution
and ascertain if changes are needed.
1. Design.
How
your blog site is designed makes a big difference when it comes to readership
engagement. Critical factors you need to consider include the colors
used
(keep them simple), placement of the sidebar on the right side (readership
decreases 15
to 25 percent
when it is on the left side), utilization of a larger font
size (at least 11 pt.), among others.
2. Brand Voice.
Your blog is a critical part of your company’s brand
voice. It needs to be consistent with your brand messaging and style
guides. The following are some of the things that you need to consider: 1)
vernacular (e.g., acronyms, use of conjunctions), 2) formal or casual—or somewhere
between, 3) use of emoticons, 4) use of humor, 5) types of visuals used, and 6)
overall tone.
3. SEO.
Since one
of the primary reasons for blogging is for inbound SEO traffic, making sure
your website—or online community—as well as your posts are optimized for SEO is
a critical requirement. There are a number of things that you need to remember
here: 1) make sure your blog pages have appropriate title tags (viz., contain
relevant and informative keywords) as well as meta descriptions (search results
that appear below title tag), 2) always use ALT image tags in your blog posts,
3) use keywords found in the body of the blog post in your title, 4) pinpoint
keywords (and associated topics) with the lowest competition and highest search
volume, and 5) use titles no longer than 55 to 60 characters (as they get cut off
in Google Search.
4. Curation.
Curation
can provide you with ideation for blog posts, as well as other content assets
and even demand-gen campaigns. For blogs, curation
generates measurable results
such as 1) an increase in the number of
posts, 2) higher inbound SEO traffic, 3) improved social engagement, 4) build
your audience and leads, and 5) more time spent on your website. If you are
curating content, there are a couple of things to remember. First, you need to
ensure that you include your take on the curated asset; these need to be approximately
300 words in length. Second, in addition to short-form curated blog posts, you
need to ensure that you follow a 60/40 rule and include a significant number of
long-form posts with those curated short-form posts.
5. Long-Form Posts.
Just a few years ago, we were talking about the optimal length of blog posts
between 600 and 700 words. But ongoing search changes by Google have completely
changed this landscape. The average length of time spent reading a post today
is seven
minutes; this equates to about 1,600 words. Some are arguing for even
longer posts—between 2,250
and 2,500 words. These long-form posts not only generate a higher SEO
ranking, but they elicit much better engagement (social shares, etc.).
6. Cross-Links.
Building cross-links
into your blog posts increases the stickiness of your website while allowing
you to direct readers to demand-gen content that requires registration (for
lead capture). One strategy that many marketers forget to do is adding
cross-links into previously written blog posts (e.g., as new posts are added). What’s
nice about cross-linking is that it is not only helpful to the reader (by
supplying additional information or resources), but it is helpful to your SEO.
7. Interactive
Engagement.
Including the ability for readers to comment and even have
interactive discussions on your blog posts drives higher engagement. One of the
most effective ways to get readers to comment on the blog post is to employ
pathos or ethos—make them feel something (inspirational, sadness, happiness,
etc.). And if you want readers to comment, then you’d better respond to them
when they do so. You can even make it fun by adding a top commentator widget to
your blog navigation sidebar, a move that could increase commenting by 50
percent
or more.
8. Subscription.
Include
the ability for visitors to subscribe to your posts. Email is the preferred
over RSS, as the engagement of readers who subscribe to email is about four
times higher than those who subscribe to RSS feeds. (I realize that we don’t
have an email subscription on our blog. I remain hopeful that DudaOne.com adds
the feature shortly.)
9. Visuals.
You’ve
probably heard the saying, “a picture is worth a 1,000 words”? Make it 60,000,
and you would be closer to the truth. Ninety
percent
of the information the human brain processes are visual images, and
these are processed at a rate of 60,000 faster than words. Retention of visual
images is dramatically better as well: 10 to 20 percent of written or spoken information
is retained after three days, while 65 percent of visuals can still be culled
after that same timeframe.
10. Social
Integration.
Including your social buttons on your blog makes your posts
more viral and ultimately drives more inbound SEO traffic to your blog (and
website). Scrolling social buttons on the left-hand side make it much easier
for readers to promote and/or comment about the post on their social channels,
as much as 27
percent
in some cases. (This is another feature I hope DudaOne.com will add
to their platform.) Beyond promoting each blog post on different social
networks, you should also post them to popular social bookmarking sites (e.g.,
Digg, StumbleUpon, etc.). These give you backlinks and help drive inbound SEO
traffic.
11. Demand-Gen
Integration.
Two-thirds
of buyers list blog posts as one of the content assets they leverage to
research their solution options. Almost the same percentage indicate they share
blog posts with colleagues and peers—a number that went up significantly this
year. This makes sense considering that blog posts are a great way to distill
prescriptive recommendations (prescriptive content is listed as the top
content preference
by buyers). With buyers listing web search and vendor
websites as the
top two ways
they are informed about a solution, quality blog content that
is integrated with your demand-gen strategy should be a top priority. Specifically,
each of your campaigns need to have blog posts dedicated to driving awareness
and ultimately traffic to content assets requiring lead-generation capture. But
it is broader than above-the-funnel or top-of-the funnel activities, blog posts—either
individually or aggregated in groups—can be used for middle-of-the-funnel
activities as well (from email, to account-based marketing, to social, to ad
retargeting).
12. Guest and
Influencer Blog Posts.
The well-known saying, “the more, the merrier,” certainly
applies to blog posting. Companies with lower ROI
call on
fewer guest bloggers and staff writers, using only one author or a small
handful of executives (some companies even make the egregious mistake of
posting anonymously). Tapping guest bloggers—partners, influencers, and
customers—builds your audience when they promote their posts on their own
social and marketing channels. This also gives your advocates a
chance to shine
by showcasing their prowess while blogging about topics
that are important to you and them.
13. BIOs.
Building
a connection with readers is an important part of a blog strategy. In fact, they
actually are less likely to comment on blog posts unless they know something
about the author. They also need to see the author in addition to reading about
her or him; make sure to include a photo
of the author
along with her or his BIO.
14. Analytics and
Reporting.
There are a lot of different data points that you can measure when
it comes to blogging. The Content Marketing Institute spells out 21 potential
blog metrics
that should be tracked. These can be consolidated into three
primary buckets: 1) activities (blog posts published, threaded comment
discussions, etc.), 2) brand awareness and engagement (blog audience and
subscribers, inbound SEO traffic, social and email shares, etc.), and 3)
business outcomes (leads generated, leads and opportunities influenced, etc.).
15. Frequency.
The
frequency of your blog posts directly determine your success. Sporadic blog
posts don’t cut it, as you cannot build audience and thought leadership unless
you post on a consistent and regular basis. For companies
that do so, their blogs generate 55 percent more site visits, 97 percent
more links to their websites, and a 434 percent higher page-indexing rate than
those that fail to do so.
While the above isn’t a comprehensive list, it is a darn
good start. You certainly have a much better chance of being in the 82 percent
of companies with positive marketing ROI if you adhere to these.
