I have come across hundreds of small business owners in my 6 years stint as an online marketer and I have seen some remarkable similarities in them. Almost, all of them have their websites (not-so-perfect, yet good enough), business blogs, a passion for excellence, but despite all these, their marketing effort is going nowhere. And the reason could be the unfocused content marketing strategy that they have adopted. In majority of cases, their blogs are in bad shape and it is because they fail to see their content strategically. But as it has become quite obvious that without proper content marketing strategy your online marketing campaign will come to a grinding halt, here we are going to share you some tips that you may give a go if you wish to take your small business to the next level:
Define the objective: I have personally asked some small business owners what they think about their blog but I always drew blank look. It seems that majority of small business owners create a blog just because they think it is a kind of custom. However, this should not have been the case. Each blog has its purpose, and believe me, by defining the purpose of the blog in simple English you will be able to see remarkable difference in the overall online marketing campaign. First, you need to figure out what you want to do with your blog. Do you want to generate leads from your blog or do you want to educate your readers? Depend on that, your next move will be decided.
Find What Your Readers Looking for: Unless you are aware of what you readers are looking for, your content marketing strategy is not going to get succeeded. You need to figure out which posts are gaining popularity by looking at the metrics like Bounce rate, Average Time Spent on a Page etc. Once you have the idea of what people are looking for, you need to shift your attention to that and then come up with engaging posts that people will love to read.
Create Great Content: So, now you know what your readers want and therefore, it is your duty to come up with great posts that they would voluntarily share with their friends. Churning out poor quality content is not going to help your blog in one way or the others. Some even believe that slapping keywords and call to actions with a poor quality post is going to do the trick. But believe me this is not going to add any value to your website. Articles have to be well researched and there should be no attempt to game the search engines by stuffing keywords in the body content. As the blog is going to represent the brand name of your organization, you should not make the posts look like spam.
Share Great Images: Statistics show that blogs that do not publish image along with the posts fail to make it big. To make your blog succeed in this fierce competitive field, you need to get some high quality photos posted along with the article. Apart from gracing your blog, it will really help your blog build a great relation with the targeted audience.
Be Consistent: Study has revealed that sites that get updated regularly get five time more traffic than those websites that get updated weekly or twice a week. So, that means, if you wish to draw maximum traffic to your website, you need to post on your blog on regular basis but the quality of the post should not be compromised for the same purpose.