SEO

July
25 2017

The Power of Compound Content

How to Use #ContentMarketing to Grow Your Business

As an entrepreneur, business owner, coach or consultant, who runs a service-based business, one of the best ways to get your ideal clients to happily pay you the money that you are worth is to be known as an expert and authority in your field, and one of the best ways to become an expert or authority in your field is to produce content online.

Content comes in many forms articles, blogs, videos, pictures, and audio.  When you produce your own original content, it shows that you care about your audience enough to create useful information that they can freely consume.  Original content solidifies you as an expert and authority in your field.

So why would you want to be known as an expert or authority in your field?  Well, when you take this position in your industry, you get more opportunities, you’re able to reach more people, and you get paid more money, so if you want to make an impact, your goal should be to become known as a leader, expert, and authority in your field.

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Posted by Nadine Mullings  |  Comments Off on The Power of Compound Content  |  in Blog
May
12 2015

The Secret to a Successful Business Blog

BloggingI have seen it over, and over, and over again.  Independent business owners, coaches, or consultants who decide to start a business blog because they have heard that it is important to have a blog for your business.  They usually have all intention to keep up with the blog, but after a few weeks or months, the blog ends up in the blog grave yard.  Why does this happen so often?  Because most people start blogging without a plan.

It’s true that there are many benefits of blogging, I wrote a blog post about how blogging can help you gain the know, like, and trust factor, which is so important when growing your business, but other factors include helping to identify you as an authority or expert in your field, or making it easier for people to find you and your business due to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) benefits that occur from blogging.

However, without a real blogging plan, you can easily be doomed to head to the blog grave yard.  Here are 5 things for you to consider when starting a business blog:  [Tweet “Without a real blogging plan, you can easily be doomed to head to the blog grave yard. #Blogging #MarketingEssentials”]

  1. Why do you want to start a business blog?  Basically, what is the goal of your blog, this could vary from:
    1. Building your expertise in your field
    2. Becoming known as a thought leader in your field
    3. Becoming known as an authority in your field
    4. Providing valuable information to your current customers/clients
    5. Attracting new customers/clients
    6. Building your SEO so you can be found in online searches
  2. Who is your target audience?  Who are you trying to reach with your blog posts? You can answer this question by deciding the following:
    1. Are you talking to your peers in your industry?
    2. Are you talking to your current customers/clients?
    3. Are you talking to potential customers/clients?
  3. What do you want to talk about?  Pick a particular topic or several topics that will be relevant to your business and your target audience, and decide to consistently blog about that topic or topics.  When you have a business blog, you want to stay on topic and not venture off on to topics that do not relate to your business or can’t tie back to your business in some way.  You also want to make sure that the information that you are sharing is relevant and will resonate with your target audience.  What do they want to hear about?  What are their struggles or concerns?
  4. How often do you want to publish your blog posts?  Decide how often you are going to publish your blog posts and stick with it.  The biggest problem I see when it comes to business blogs, is a company will decide to blog, but then they don’t stay consistent in publishing to the blog, because they get busy and the blog is secondary.  If you decide to select a day and time to publish your blog posts then stick with it.  If you decide the frequency to publish (daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc.), then stick with it.
  5. How will you measure success?  Now this is a touchy subject, because you could be blogging for months, even years and have no way to really measure the success of your blog.  Some people measure success by traffic, how many people have visited the blog posts.  Some people measure by shares, how many people have shared the post on social media.  Others measure by blog comments, how many people actually comment on a blog post.  Others measure based how many individuals have taken action based on the blog post (i.e. visited a sales page, visited a landing page, signed up for their email list, etc.).  Depending on what your goal is from #1, that will determine how you need to decide what you will use to measure the success of your business blog.

Do you have a business blog?  Do you feel like your business blog is successful?  Share your comments and/or links to your blog below.

If you have a business blog and you would like to take it to the next level, or you are thinking about starting a business blog, we can help, contact us to schedule a free blogging success strategy session.

Posted by Nadine Mullings  |  2 Comments  |  in Blog, Business, Business Development, Marketing for Coaches, Marketing for Consultants
June
10 2014

The best way for people to know, like and trust you online!

The best way to get people to know, like, and trust your online!We’ve all heard the saying, “People do business with people who they know, like, and trust“.  I find that one of the best ways for people to get to know you, like you, and trust you ONLINE is by BLOGGING.

So what exactly is blogging some may ask, according to dictionary.com, a blog is a website containing a writer’s or group of writers’ own experiences, observations, opinions, etc., and often having images and links to other websites.  I will also add that a blog allows others to communicate with those writers by commenting on what they have posted!

First let’s take a look at a brief history of blogging.  The first “blog” started in 1994 and was known as Links.net, and the term “weblog” was coined in 1997, a few short years later “weblog” was  simplified to just “blog” in 1999.*

So how can blogging help your business?  Well, the fact that a blog allows you as a business owner to write about your experiences, observations, and opinions,  helps people to know more about you, your business, your business style, and the culture of your company.  Therefore, helping you to build on the “know” factor in the know, like, and trust formula.

In addition, the content that you post on your blog helps people to figure out if they “like” your style, your information, your point of view.  This helps with the “like” part of the know, like, and trust formula.

And thirdly, how consistently you post, how much you care about providing valuable information to your readers, and how knowledgable you are about your topic helps to build the “trust” part of the know, like, and trust formula.

In addition to helping you build your know, like, and trust factor online, blogging also helps you to become known as an expert in your field, which can lead to more business for you.

There are also technical reasons to blog for you business which includes Search Engine Optimization.  Now I am no SEO expert, but the basics of how blogging helps with your SEO is:

  1. It allows your website to stay current.  Search engines prefer to share up to date information with the people searching for a particular topic, and if your blog is posting current information about a particular topic this could help you to rank higher in the search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
  2. The use of keywords in your blog can also help with your SEO.   If someone is searching for a particular keyword and your website ranks high for the use of the keyword organically (existing on the page), then this can help you rank higher in the search engines.
  3. When people find the information on your blog useful and link to it from their websites, this creates backlinks to your website, which is great for SEO.

This is a short and simple list of how blogging helps with SEO, as SEO is a whole other topic that could be a whole blog itself (and as I mentioned, I am not an expert on SEO).

So what do you think?  Do you think blogging is one of the best ways for people to get to know, like, and trust you online?  Are you using blogging in your business?

*  Source-  New York Magazine

Posted by Nadine Mullings  |  Comments Off on The best way for people to know, like and trust you online!  |  in Blog, Business, Business Development, Marketing, Uncategorized