the bradford group business blogging 101
DESCRIPTION
Back in July, we had a client that was looking to get into business blogging, and asked the Bradford Group to lead a lunch-n-learn that covered the basics of BtoB blogs. We covered a lot of important stuff in that presentation that I thought would be useful to share here.TRANSCRIPT
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!