Even worse, do we invoke the R-word? 

Is blogging still relevant in a social marketplace of increasingly image-centric, highly mobile consumers, constantly juggling different tools and platforms and, perhaps most importantly, very short on time? 

When social media turned the tables on traditional media, leveraging low-cost blog frameworks to create alternative news vehicles, many proclaimed the press release dead. 

The press release is still alive and well, though most companies now realize news announcements aren’t going to generate instant headlines or immediate media response. 

Truth be told, they never really did. Press releases remain an important vehicle for freely and fairly delivering (read: no exclusives or insider advantage) official company news content, now with a potent SEO kick.  

Though the frequency and focus of blog posts may be adjusted and tweaked to accommodate evolving business objectives and consumer preferences, veterans concur that blogging is still a vital marketing strategy that can be integrated with other social media networks. 

It’s not an either-or business decision.  

10 key recommendations and points to consider for your business blogging roadmap

1. Reaffirm the objectives of your business blog

It’s a marketing tool and an SEO magnet. But how do you want your blog to contribute to your marketing plan?

• Is it driving traffic?
• Is it driving conversions?
• Is it helping brand awareness?

It could very easily be all of the above.

Too many businesses have blogs simply because their competitors do or because they heard they should. This results in stale blogs with no brand identity or voice.

Understanding your why’s will motivate your team and help you adjust your blogging strategy to what is important to your bottom line.

There’s no reason why you can’t integrate your content with major social networks, resulting in highly fluid digital partnerships.

2. Get feedback

Query business colleagues and fellow professionals.  You will be surprised by the input and generosity. 

The “pay it forward” philosophy has knocked down many traditional competitive barriers.  Blogger forums are perfect for getting professional feedback and ideas. 

Tap the knowledge base in LinkedIn business groups. When it comes to social media business tools and strategies, there aren’t many secrets.

But also ask your customers! What will they find helpful on your blog? Customer-centric blogging is the way to go. This is what Google has been telling us for years!

Keep an eye on your branded search too! Use your blog to rank for brand-driven queries and control that sentiment better!

3. Get help

If you don’t have time, hire a content consultant or a designer/coder to help with the writing, editing, site add-ons, or a complete makeover.  Even teen entrepreneurs offer amazingly cost-effective, high-quality, off-the-shelf solutions and services.

You don’t have to hire a team of CSS/PHP programmers.  Low-cost expertise nowadays is in your time zone. 

Plus, the future may be pointing to frictionless blog frameworks requiring no coding.

4. Your blog is what you own

Blogs are highly portable and customizable. Your blog is also your asset that will not be taken away from you regardless of changing social media posting rules or the political climate.

Making your blog the center of your content and social media marketing means solidifying your online presence.

If you are considering closing down your business blog and moving to Facebook, get a second opinion.

5. Focus your content better

Take a lesson from Journalism 101, where students are taught that the history of World War II can be written in three sentences.  The digital attention span is measured with micrometers. Keeping your articles shorter may be your blogging sweet spot.

Bloggers who are cutting back on output volume are suggesting focused content and niche audiences, i.e. market segmentation.

Make your articles focused, intent-driven, and helpful. No fluff.

It will also help you make business blogging more doable and budget-friendly. 

Organizing your upcoming topics also helps maintain an active and effective blog. Try building your calendar around upcoming holidays and observations:

6. It is – and will be – all about quality and authenticity

Blogs generate leads and increase company exposure, especially for smaller businesses looking to expand market awareness.

No matter how you slice it, quality content and a site demonstrating your company is a serious player trumps cold calling any day of the week.

7. Authenticity never fails

Quality is very subjective. You can create rubrics for your writers to follow, have high writing quality standards, and pay a lot of money for each article.

But it may still be not enough.

What many people don’t realize is that what works is authenticity.

Whether it is being authentic in your effort to be helpful or showing the true culture of your company – people love and follow authentic brands. In the AI world, where we often deal and communicate with machines, real human touch will win every time.

Whatever you do, be genuinely serious about being useful and helpful. You cannot fake authenticity. 

8. More control

When all is said and done, a blog reflects your company’s brand.  You control the text, the images, the audio, and the video.  

You can blog 140 characters or 1,400 words.  You don’t have to be like everybody else or match your blueprint to the status quo. Your blog is your digital business card that you fully control, unlike any other marketing channel.

9. Make it your community-building tool

Your company blog can be a vehicle for nurturing loyal communities who opt-in to email lists and special content offerings. 

It’s a means of developing more personalized relationships with customers and followers via content that may not fit the framework of Facebook or X.

Spotlight your customers, share company news, and reward your most loyal brand ambassadors. You make your own rules here.

10. Blogging rules were meant to be broken

Has blogging lost its luster? In some way, yes. However, digital marketing has changed a lot throughout its short history. It’s more about changing the ways you do things than quitting.

Recommended Reading

How to Transform Visitors into Buyers through Holistic SEO

5 Proven Traffic Generation Steps Every Small Business Owner Should Take

What’s your take on business blogging?

Are you still blogging?

If so, more or less frequently?

Let’s chat in the comments!

Header Image: Pixabay

The post Do You Still Need a Business Blog? appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Blogging has evolved to become an instrumental method of conducting business as it can be used as the real-time way in which a business gets recent, relevant, and up-to-date information out to its target audience.

This is why law firms have found that using blogs to focus on and highlight key issues help retain clients and draw in new ones at the same time. 

One challenge in maintaining a successful blog is ensuring engaging interactions to keep the content dynamic.

The fact is, the web got much faster. No one has time anymore to pause and comment on your blog. Everyone has their own feeds where they would rather spend time commenting on friends’ and followers’ updates and interacting.

Getting readers to comment on your blog has become incredibly challenging.

Collaborate with Your Peers

One of the best ways to get more people to comment on your blog is to ask those past readers and peers with whom you have or had a good relationship. 

This can be done by sending DMs and emails and letting them know you’d appreciate some comments from friends about any issue relevant to them. 

This will get comments started, and then you will find that more people post as they tend to follow what others do on a blog.

Don’t just stop there: If your friends and fellows decide to visit your blog and comment, reach out again and invite them to set up a collaboration group (on Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, or Slack) where you can all comment on one another’s articles.

This will be useful for everyone involved and will keep interactions coming.

Trying to do everything alone is one of the biggest blogging mistakes. It is incredibly discouraging and limiting. Always look for micro-groups to join and set up your own. We are stronger when we are together!

Ask Questions

Creating content answering popular questions is a great way to invite more answers from readers.

Ask your question in the page title and H1 heading and answer it in the content. This will also likely improve your click-through from organic search results: I’ve found question-type titles are highly clickable.

Keyword research is a great way to find popular questions to answer in your content. Simply run your target keyword and filter your keyword list by a question word (“how,” “why,” “what”). SE Ranking keyword tool is my favorite way to find popular questions for blog content inspiration:

Invite Readers to Comment

One way to promote blog commenting is to pose questions and ask others to comment. Some may think this is a common sense approach; however, those easy-to-implement ideas often get overlooked even though they truly do work. 

Just ask for comments.

Create a clearly visible button, “Comment” to encourage discussions. Many blogs make it very hard to figure out if they even support comments. This will have a domino effect of sorts and trigger more people to chime in, and thus, the commenting per post will generate itself over a short period.

Offer a “Subscribe to New Comments” Option

Getting people to come back and reply to other people’s comments is a great way to keep those conversations going. It is also a huge incentive for readers to comment as they will want to participate in real conversations.

Therefore, make sure to offer your commenters an option to subscribe to new comments for them to get notified when new conversations are being posted. You can do that through a plugin that is easy to install and integrate with native WordPress comments.

Use Viral Content Bee

Viral Content Bee (a platform that I own) has just introduced a new feature allowing users to request comments on their blog posts.

It is a brand-new feature that allows you to easily generate discussions on your blog without reaching out to your friends and peers again. Also, it is free.

Cover Trending Topics

People seem to be much more willing to share their thoughts or reply to other people’s comments when something is trending (see this post about ChatGPT). Therefore covering trending and seasonal content can drive much more engagement (shares and comments).

To make seasonality and trends part of your editorial calendar, keep an eye on Twitter and popular blogs in your niche to be able to create content whenever anything goes hot. Additionally, include seasonality in your editorial calendar. Check with Google Trends to be able to find yearly recurring trends and to be able to time your content better:

Build up Your Email List

Focus on building your email list. Email subscribers tend to be more involved because they already know you and your site, so they are more likely to post comments and foster further interactions with readers.

Email marketing is a wonderful way to stay in touch with your readers for later conversions. Including forms on your blog’s sidebar or below new posts will prompt visitors to subscribe. There are quite a few email marketing platforms allowing you to set up automation and send emails any time you publish a new blog post.

Remember, you need to provide enough value and quality that readers would feel like they’re missing out if they weren’t receiving your regular emails. A standard way to increase subscribers is to provide something of value in exchange like a free guide users can download after they sign up. The most important part about your email list is that you own it.

Conclusion

The key to a great blog is conversation. No wonder a well-commented article is a true blogging triumph for many people. You need people to participate in your blog’s life, contribute fresh ideas, ask and answer questions, etc. It is also highly motivational and will help you never feel a burnout. 

Blog comments motivate writers, help them better understand their audience (and for businesses, help create reader and customer personas), inspire with more content ideas, make your blog pages fresher and encourage search engines to reindex them…

An important note to make here is that you must moderate comments carefully to ensure your readers are not shocked by spam.

Blogging is a truly real-time method of generating interest in your business, building a community and driving traffic and conversions. It is less effective if you use it only for broadcasting your thoughts. Blogging is much more effective when it is an on-going conversation with your target audience!

Get More Engagement from All Your Content Marketing When You Join the Marketing Trailblazers Community

Blog Cover Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

The post Join the Conversation – How to Attract More Comments on Your Blog Posts appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

Time to sit back, relax, and wait for the views. Right? Um, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but your work isn’t done.

All of those fancy auto-post social tools can lull us into a false sense of confidence.

In fact, publishing your article is just the first step. Once it’s done, there will be more and more work marketing it, exploring new channels, scaling what you have already found effective, delegating what you think can be delegated, etc.

In a nutshell, here are general tasks you may have to complete once you publish your content:

• Email those who helped you write it (If you were using any expert quotes)
• Share on Facebook and Linkedin making sure you tag every person or company you mentioned in the article
• Schedule a series of tweets tagging all people and companies you mentioned in the article
• Reply to all the comments both on your own blog and around social media sites!

To help you with these and more tasks, here are essential tools that will help you get more exposure to your content. These tools could be the difference between content that goes unseen, and content that goes viral.

Content Quality Tools

1. Grammarly

I know we do our best to proofread prior to publication but somehow I still find errors once the content is live.

To ensure the article is error-free, consider running a quick check right after it goes live. Grammarly has a handy Chrome extension that works great for this task.

2. WebCEO

How well is your article optimized for your target query? This is another task you may have been working on while still writing your article but now that it is live, don’t forget to do one more check.

WebCEO’s content assistant tool scans your page, identifies your competitors, and comes up with a quick optimization plan:

3. Text Optimizer

Another tool to quickly check whether your article is well optimized is Text Optimizer.

Text Optimizer is another tool that offers a Chrome extension that makes this final check a quick and easy task:

Social Media Scheduling Tools

4. Agorapulse

Agorapulse is a large-scale platform that can manage multiple profiles while monitoring progress and helping you make better decisions for future marketing campaigns. 

It also supports visual campaigns which are great: You can share on your social media channels immediately and then schedule to share the same URL in a couple of weeks again using a unique image.

Unlike other platforms that are more about the social aspect, this one is about actually managing your content. Through unique analytics, you will be able to see in real-time how your content is measuring up, so it ends up informing back on the posts you create in the future. 

This is a must-have insight for any blog owner, especially one that is trying to grow their brand, rather than just spread brand awareness.

5. Drumup

Twitter is obviously going to be one of the primary platforms for you to share content. Drumup lets you schedule your URL to run on Twitter for a week ahead using your best times to post. That is based on when your audience (followers) are online which will have a huge impact on how much engagement you see.

After all, Twitter is a live-updating feed that is shifting too frequently for everyone to see it. Drumup will tell you when to schedule for the greatest impact, and you can try it for free.

Social Media Promotion Tools

6. Viral Content Bee

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get people to share your content on their social networks? Now you can, guaranteed. Viral Content Bee brings your URL to active social media users who are there exactly for that: To share interesting content.

It is a great way to get traffic, find new readers, and improve your visibility on sites like Twitter and Facebook. With the right exchange, you can get thousands of views, social shares, and mentions in a matter of hours.

Knowem Social Media Optimization Tool

Is your post properly optimized for social media sharing? If you are 90% of people, the answer to that question is probably ‘no’. Even when we think we are doing everything right, we could be betrayed by the most obscure source: our page HTML.

Your coding could be throwing off your social media marketing success. Get past that particular hurdle by checking URLs for landing page best practices. It is a quick and easy way to give yourself a better shot at viral status.

Run the new URL through this tool to make sure all the essential on-page SEO elements (meta description and title) are in place and that the URL returns a proper 200 OK code (I’ve seen many bloggers blocking search engines from following links or indexing the site without being aware of that). But it’s not required to do that for each article you publish: Maybe once in a while run the tool and keep it in mind.

Email Marketing Tools

7. Mailchimp or Alternatives

I know you can automate this part to send an email blast every time there is a new entry in your blog RSS feed. And certainly, if you have no time, it’s better than nothing.

But if you want to do it right, create a custom campaign for each of your articles to customize your tone and, most importantly, your call-to-action inviting your readers to go ahead and engage with your content.

There are quite a few email marketing options and I have been recently sticking to Mailchimp. It gives you all the tools you need to create a solid email or newsletter campaign while providing data on how those campaigns are faring. You can get information in real-time.

It integrates with WordPress, Facebook, PayPal, Salesforce, Shopify, and many more platforms. There are also lots of Mailchimp templates to use.

That makes it a versatile tool better suited for blogs with a monetized aspect, rather than just a content-based one. They have a 30-day free trial, so it is worth a try. 

Take the time to create a crafted campaign using these tools, and you will be amazed at the results. I certainly was.

What tools do you use in your content publishing stack? Post them in the comments! I’ll share mine, too. ~Denise

The post Seven Tools to Use Immediately After You Hit “Publish” appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

And it doesn’t make sense.

You see, marketing is supposed to be highly pragmatic: It has a lot to do with numbers.

And yet, writing (i.e. creating relevant content) which is all about creativity is one of the most essential parts of marketing.

And that’s where finding focus is what we are all struggling with. And while marketing and SEO are my primary focus, I do blog a lot!

I am easily distracted, tend to multitask and my work suffers for it. In fact, I usually have to download tools that force me to remain focused. Even those are often not enough to keep me from finding ways around them.

The worst part of this is how long it can take me to finish an article that might have only taken a few hours had I just worked on it from the beginning. Because so much of my work involves the internet – my main distraction – it is a hard hurdle to overcome.

This lack of focus has led me to seek out every blogging productivity tool and tip I could find. In the end, I have managed to come up with a small list of things that have helped me fight off my procrastination. Luckily, they seem to also be tips that help many others.

1. Pick The Right Background Noise

This is a big one for me. I love to have music playing in the background, but if I choose the wrong kind it will distract me as badly as anything else. Inevitably, it leads to YouTube searches, playlist creation, and other non-productive activities. Putting together something that helps keep you relaxed and attentive is best. 

Anything instrumental, such as classical or even movie orchestral soundtracks, is great. Studies have shown that lyrics are horrible for focusing on tasks. You can find many great playlists with instrumental music anywhere from YouTube to Soundcloud.

2. Put Things Aside

I will always manage to come across something I want to read. Some might be helpful articles, but writing is not the time to immerse myself in them. This is why I have found great tools like Pocket to be helpful. 

That way you can bookmark it for when you have time, and move on with what you are doing.

3. Remove The Distractions

Sometimes staying focused can be as simple as keeping yourself from looking at anything else. There are tools that will hide other windows and icons, to keep you from looking away from what you are currently working on. 

My favorite is definitely Isolator. Nice and customizable, it gives you several options for hiding any other content on your screen. This includes blacking it out entirely, or only blurring it. This lets you remain visually focused on a single window. There’s also a great simple extension for Google Chrome users.

Probably the most popular way to increase blogging productivity is through a site blocker. These are simple plugins that work by having you fill in the sites that distract you the most, and times when you can or cannot access them. 

They also have an option to block them for a certain amount of time, such as a few hours, so you can work without distraction. StayFocusd and LeechBlock are both great (and free).

There are many more productivity tools helping you to focus on your work and ignore distractions.

4. Make Lists To Follow

Take control of your day and reprioritize your to-do list. 

Place the most daunting task at the top and tackle it head-on. When you’ve completed it – or made as much progress as possible – you’ll feel satisfied and your other tasks for the day will seem like easily surmountable items. 

You’ll feel a weight lifted by getting your big scary item out of the way, and then the rest of your day will fly by as you check everything else off your list. 

Sometimes it helps just to organize a nice list that gives you everything you have to do and the priority in which you have to do it. It can be a simple sticky note on your desktop. Or you can use this checklist which you can download to complete every time you are writing anything or use it digitally by copying it to your Google Drive:

If you tend to type your content directly into WordPress, there’s a way to create a to-do list inside your WordPress dashboard to turn your blog backend into your productivity tool.

5. Use Writing Tools

Tools always make me productive and motivate me to get down to writing. Sometimes all it takes is opening my favorite tool and finding a cool content idea for me to get down to writing.

Text Optimizer is a writing tool that has never failed to turn my productivity mode on: It provides an unlimited list of ideas based on your target search query and then encourages you to keep writing by giving you a list of topics you failed to cover:

Another cool keyword research tactic that works well for writing productivity is called keyword clustering which always helps structure my mind and organize content ideas.

6. Remain Motivated Through Success

Another great idea is to remind yourself of how well you have done at working on what needs to be done. My favorite tool for this is the rather simple Don’tBreakTheChain.

When you meet your goal, you simply sign in and check off the day with a red box on the calendar. The longer you go, the longer the red chain becomes. Very basic, but super effective.

7. Start Something New!

Now, this may seem counterproductive but it has always worked for me. When I feel a burn-out, I start a new project!

It may be a new ebook, a micro-tool that has been at the back of my mind for months, a new micro-site, etc. I love starting something new, even if I don’t have a clear monetization plan yet. Even choosing a new name will get me excited, especially since I discovered Namify which I find truly addictive.

In fact, I feel I have too many domains due to that tool. If you don’t believe me, check out their business names in the Marketing category:

I have to admit that 80% of my projects go nowhere. But those 20% are priceless! I am a big believer that you won’t achieve anything unless you keep trying new things!

Conclusion

Staying on track is possible for even the most easily distracted person. It just takes a bit of willpower and some helpful tools. Try the ones above, and watch how much your focus and your writing productivity improve.

Before you go…what are your favorite blogging productivity tools? Share in the comments with a link (if you have one). Let’s add to the list!

Blog cover image: by Catherine Hughes on Unsplash

The post How to Maximize Your Blogging Productivity appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.

User experience is an important part of running a successful blog. 

It can also be overwhelming, as so many different parts make up the whole.

From the content you present, to the design, to the speed of your loading, there is a ton to take into account.

Start by Defining Your Brand

These days of content overproduction, it seems online readers have seen everything. It is getting harder and harder to create a piece of content that would interest your target audience well enough for them to keep engaging with your site or following your conversion funnel.

People love brands, they skim content.

Maxwell Hertan of Megaphone Marketing said it best:

Way back in 2008, at-the-time Google CEO Eric Schmidt hit the nail on the head when he said “brands are the solution, not the problem.” What he meant was, in the vast, murky ocean of information and disinformation that is the internet, a strong brand represents trust.

Branding is the first thing you need to start working on. Define your brand’s visual identity (your logo and your color palette) and create a consistent visual identity everywhere – from your site to your social media channels and guest columns.

If you haven’t yet found your brand name, spend some time brainstorming something memorable. Your brand name is what will help your readers recognize you from the crowd of your competitors and associate you with what it is you are doing or writing about. 

I love using this brand name generator to get some ideas on how to name my next project. It generates really awesome ideas and even helps with creating your brand visual identity. Plus it is completely free:

Don’t Underestimate The Power Of Good Content

Nothing quite beats the power of amazing content. It can inform, inspire, and draw in a lot of attention. It can boost your site through a single viral hit, or cause controversy that can be hard to recover from.

Whatever the result, you should be focusing plenty of effort on making sure yours is the very best it can be. Failing that will quickly render the need for other tricks useless.

To create more in-depth content, use Text Optimizer, a semantic analysis tool that gives you a deeper understanding of any topic:

Stop Thinking Numbers, Start Thinking Value

“Each post has to be exactly 750 words, and have a 3% keyword density based on these keywords that we found in this marketing study, and it has to be posted every week on Wednesday at precisely 7:32 AM EST, and have this many images featuring these elements, as found effective by this case study on the most heavily pinned blog posts on Pinterest in 2013!” 

Look, data is useful. But there is no perfect number combination that will ensure your website’s success.

Calm down, take a deep breath, and write naturally and enjoyably. Aim to offer something of value, not something that reaches a certain value. While a post of 350 words without any major keyword saturation might not have the SEO oomph of a 1,000 word article, it could be more useful and have a higher rate of sharing on social media, for example.

Get Rid Of The Clutter

One of the most annoying common sights on blogs these days is the sale popup. You are trying to read a post, and a box shows up over that post telling you about the latest ebook available for free, or a seminar with spots left for eager learners. Meanwhile, that same information is right in the sidebar, where I can see it at my leisure.

These little extras clutter your layout, annoy users, and don’t offer much by way of conversion anymore. There is a reason that minimalism has remained the only consistent design and UI trend, every year. Your readers want simplicity, and don’t want to have to fight through popups and invasive ads to see what you have posted.

Using tools like Finteza to identify on-page elements that seems to scare people away or otherwise encourage them to follow your conversion channel:

Formatting Is Everything

How is it possible that we have gotten this far into the blogging revolution, and yet are still seeing so many formatting mistakes? It boggles my mind, every time you witness a post that is an endless blog of text with minimal spacing. 

Do you see how this particular post is formatted? It is made to be easy to read on a screen, whether that is mobile or desktop. Never write a blog post in the way a book would be. 

You want plenty of headers, bullet points and numbers when necessary, a clear font, and anything needed to make viewing easier on the eyes. Structure your content well using <h2> and <h3> headers and providing useful and clear answers underneath each one:

There’s a helpful writing checklist which would help you format your content well.

Images Ain’t Just For The Header

If you have ever read Cracked, you will know a big part of their gimmick is images through the text with witty captions. 

You don’t have to do the same (it may not fit your particular site), but you can spare a couple more visuals in your blog posts. 

It breaks up the text, adds context, and redraws the reader’s attention. It also stops skimmers long enough to focus on the next bit of text, so they don’t miss anything.

Here’s a cool tool for you to generate memes to make your content more shareable.

There’s also a nice collection of free photos over at Smart Photostock that gives away pictures to bloggers.

Diversify Your Lead Generating Tactics

There are some brands lately that have been using in depth questionnaires as an alternative to payment for their premium services. Some blogs have been asking for surveys in order to get free copies of books, or special content for VIP readers only.

This is such a great tactic, as it provides a feeling of exclusivity, maintains a free business model, or provides marketing data that can be crucial for growth. There are many plugins that allow you to create forms of any kind, long or short, thorough or basic, for whatever reason you may have. That includes multi-page layout forms, and a whole lot more.

You may want to try conversational forms that help generate more engagement by providing interactive form layout.

Another content engagement strategy that is quickly making its way into the marketing world is using web push notifications. Once enabled, your readers will receive browser alerts whenever you have an update. You can even segment your audience to better target those notifications:

Speed Up Your Site!

Living in a digital age, we are pretty impatient nowadays. So when a website won’t load quickly, or properly, we are prone to just forgetting about it and finding another one to replace it. You don’t want this to happen with your readers. 

So get this plugin, which optimizes performance and makes your site run smoothly. This is great for people who are hosting media that requires downloads, as well. It is also a good idea to pick a fast-loading theme as this would minimize the speed issues you will have to fix.

Do you have any tips or plugins for improving user experience on your blog? Let us know in the comments!

The post How to Improve Your Blog Readers’ Experience appeared first on Adventures in Visibility.