Today we’re talking about how to ensure you have content posted on your website on a regular basis through blogging. There are a few things you should keep in mind. One is coming up with a process to hold yourself accountable to getting things done. The other involves tracking the status of a piece of content that you’re writing. At Orion we like to use a Google Spreadsheet to track our clients’ blogging progress from month to month.
If you don’t have a blog on your website it’s going to make it a little more difficult to continually be adding new content to your site on a regular basis. The search engines love fresh content. The great thing about a blog is that you are not constrained to the same format of content and formal writing style that is usually found on the regular pages of your website. Blogs can be written in different voices and tone of voice and they can be about any topic –whether it’s timely or just informational, or thought provoking. You can use your blog to announce upcoming events or to summarize past events. The great thing about blogs is that they are versatile.
The success of your website in the search engines is going to depend a lot on how bought-in you and your company are to the idea that blogging will benefit your company. So, a little bit of education and encouragement might be required to get your team excited. Perhaps you don’t like writing or maybe you don’t have a lot of time to write. Many of our clients find it more enjoyable to just be out in the field doing the work they do best. Writing doesn’t come as naturally to some people as it does with others. But, blogging is not just about writing, it’s about communicating ideas. There are many types of content and many ways to communicate on the web, such as short videos, infographics, white papers, curating other people’s content and so on.
And, blogging is not as hard as you’d think!
Here is a process you can keep in mind when planning your next blog post:
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Determine Your Topic – We will talk about an editorial calendar in another blog post. However it is a good idea to already have a few topics in mind that you would like to communicate throughout the next three months, six months, or year. At the very least, start with an idea of the concept that you would like to communicate.
When thinking about topics ideas you should always keep in mind who your best clients or best prospects are. This will ensure you are focused and creating content that is relevant and that either educates your website visitors or drives them further through your sales funnel.
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Get the Blog Post Written – Once you’ve determined your topic you should determine if you are really the right person to be writing the content. Sometimes people think that they have to do things themselves if they want to get it done right. But there are many ways to get what you need in the world of blogging and website content.
If you are not comfortable writing something yourself, at least you are able to come up with a concept. If you have to hire a professional writer to help refine your concepts and to add the proper marketing lingo that is a perfectly fine way to go. But, hopefully there is at least one other person in your company who can help you with the actual execution of content writing.
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Submit a Draft For Review – It is always wise to pass an idea on to somebody else for proofreading. Even if that person is not a professional copywriter, it’s good to have a second set of eyes to check grammar or just to make sure the article is on topic and completes a thought.
Earlier I mentioned how, at Orion, we love using Google Spreadsheets for tracking the status of our clients blog posts. Another reason we like using Google docs is because it makes it easy to collaborate. You can easily share a link to the document you are working on without having to send multiple versions back and forth via e-mail. The revision tracking inside of Google Docs is amazing as well. You can always revert back to an older version if you don’t like where things are heading. You can also see if a change was made by you or by another collaborator.
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Publish Your Blog Post – Some websites make it easier to publish content than others. Depending on the platform your website is running on, it might have built in blogging capabilities. One of the reasons Orion Group uses WordPress as our publishing platform is because it makes it very simple for our clients to login, write their content, and get it published with just a few clicks of a button.
There’s not much more to say about the actual process of publishing your blog post except that it is not the last step. Now that your content is online for people to find, you should go about helping people find it! Just because you put something on your website, doesn’t mean that people are going to start flocking to it.
Pro Tip: Hopefully when you published your blog post you should put at least one graphic in it. This comes in handy when sharing your post via social media. Usually the social media platform will try to pull in an image from the blog post. Having an image in your social media update will help to get your readers’ attention.
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Share Your Blog Post – There are many ways to share your new blog posts with the public. First, at the very least, you should let the other people in your company know about what you’ve written. You can send an e-mail to your team or you can tell people in the lunch room. A great way to get people to read your blog is to ask them for their opinion on what you wrote or ask them for feedback in the “comments area” at the end of the blog post. Second, try sharing your blog post via social media venues. For example, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are all great places to share the link to your blog.
Finally, don’t forget to e-mail your clients at least once every quarter to tell them about the new content you have published!
I hope my blog post inspires you to write more blog posts of your own. If you follow this proven process, I’m sure you will be on your way to realizing a successful online presence for your company. What would you add to this list? Do you have suggestions that you can share that have been helpful in the past? Please leave a comment below to share your thoughts.