Yes. I remember it to my extreme perfection that I never invited you to read this blog. Nor did I spend a single penny in advertising about this blog. But, if you are still reading this blog then YES! The job is done. And now, do I still need to try too hard to convince you as to why blogging should be a part of your marketing strategy?
People come to internet only for two reasons. To find a solution or to relax and entertain themselves. Rest all reasons fall under these two prime categories. Period. And in today’s online world, content is the king.
As part of your Outbound Marketing (Push Marketing), you reach out to a mass who may or may not be looking for your services. Outdoor banners, Email & SMS marketing, TV commercials, Cold calling. They all are part of your outbound marketing efforts and they all come with a recurring cost, month on month. Blogging or Content marketing plays a vital role as part of your Inbound Marketing (Pull Marketing). It attracts that chunk of people who is in a look out, 24 x 7, for the kind of services or products you are offering. This is the chunk of potential customers whom your outbound marketing campaigns might fail, at times, to identify and shake a hand with.
Every time you post a blog, the new-content-hungry search engines gulp it up, carefully places them in to their index and put them across to all your potential customers when they search for information which relates to the kind of content your blog delivers. Your content is available 24 x 7 for users to access. Create your content once. Post it to your blog once. And serve it to people who is in search of it, 365 days a year, 24?--7.
However, not every time your content may give you the results you are expecting. There are few things you may always take care of while creating your content.
1. Quality of your content: Just like not every cricketer is Sachin Tendulkar, same way, not every content is a valuable content. You should put across your expertise, a point of view that is unique or at least not easily found in every second blog of others. Let’s understand this through an example. If you are offering Search Engine Optimization services to your customers, then writing a blog about “What is SEO� does not actually add any creditability or value. Every business owner, in today’s time know what is SEO. What they look for is what are the different steps one need to take for a successful SEO implementation. Clarity on one or any particular SEO option, say Headline Tags, as to why and how Headline Tags are important and what they should know and do about proper Headline Tag implementation. Do not worry about losing your business by educating your customers. Business owners do not have time to sit down and do SEO by themselves. They will eventually knock your door for the service, at least once, to help them with SEO implementation. For, you have already created your credibility over them by showing your authority on the topic. You have convinced them already that you know your business. They already started trusting you. And people look for solutions only from people they trust. You have hit the Bulls-Eye already.
2. Engage your customer: Create a story around the topic. Everything we do via technology is always comparable to one or the other thing we do in our daily lives. Connect your users to their daily lives via the topic your talking about. For example, while describing the importance of Headline Tags tags from SEO point of view, if you keep on saying H1, H2, H3 tags and the HTML code to write these tags through out your content, a user may fail to connect with it and may get more confused. Rather explain that H1 tags are like the sign board you see out side a hotel that has the hotel name written on it. They have have largest size among all the sign boards in the hotel. It means this is the hotel you are looking for. It’s an identifier to something most important. Once you get inside a hotel, you might see many directional boards like Lounge (towards left), Bar (go straight), cafe (go right) etc. Consider them as H2, H3, Hx tags on your site. That means these tags identifies the other important areas in the hotel or the other important content on the site which you want to highlight or attract the user’s attention. Always write for the human mind to read and explore. Do not write for search engine algorithms. They have no emotions and feelings and they keep on changing. Write for a living soul who can relish reading your content. Do not worry about page traffic, key words etc. Everything will fall in to place if you have quality content. Search engines do not Like or Share your content. Only humans do.
3. Crisp and Crunchy Headlines: The headlines should be clear, to-the-point and should draw people’s attention. It should urge the reader to click and sail through your beautifully crafted content. Your headline is a promise to your readers about what they are going to read further in your content. A misleading headline will get you only a one-time user and they will never come back to your blog. For content that explains how to implement SEO, a headline like “Be a Millionaire in Four Easy Steps� might break your credibility and instead leave you pondering about “How Do I Earn My Next Dollar Now?“
It’s never too late to have a blog for your business. Go. Start one today. Reach out to your customers. Grow as they grow. Good Luck.
Syed spent around 10 years of his 14+ year's career playing with data as Quality Analyst and Lead Consultant - Business Intelligence (Data Warehouse) with HCL and Saksoft Ltd. respectively. With a dream and passion, bigger than his pocket, he started his adventurous journey as a first generation entrepreneur and started QubiqSquare (http://www.qubiqsquare.com/). Refusing to surrender to the odds, he now explores the world of Online Marketing. He also devotes his time as an independent Social Media Marketing Consultant with small to medium sized companies across the globe. He is passionate about writing & reading, traveling, movies, a foodie by birth and loves to cook in his spare time for his beautiful family. Aspires to be a Bollywood hero as part of his Out-Of-The-Box think tank:)
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