Measure Your Blogging Success
“If
you’re blogging for business, rather than blogging about your cat,
baby, fashion addiction, or crush on Taylor Swift, you need to
set some success metrics,” says Jay Baer, founder of
Convince and Convert.
Without
a statistical measure of your blogging progress, adding content to your
blog on a regular basis can be an incredibly lonely proposition. Is
anyone out there? Does anyone care?
However, within the business
blogging arena there are a wide variety of potential metrics to gauge
your momentum. It’s imperative that you
select the most relevant ones that match with your blog’s purpose.
The first step in that process of course is to
know why you’re blogging.
This sounds simple, but it’s shocking how many bloggers aren’t clear on
the core business rationale behind their blog initiative.
As I see it, you have 3 options:
- Blogging for Content
This is the scenario where you are writing a blog with considerable
emphasis on search optimization, attempting to drive traffic to the blog
via strategic content creation and keyword inclusion. Your metric is search traffic.
- Blogging for Commerce
Related to the first, but commerce-oriented blogs are more interested
in conversion events than in traffic generation. Funneling traffic from
the blog to some other web destination (typically a corporate site or
lead form) is the primary objective. Here, your metrics are leads and conversions.
- Blogging for Community
These blogs seek to build a consistent readership that interacts with the blogger(s) and advocates on behalf of the content on other social outposts.
Determine the main reason why your business has a blog and pick success metrics to match.
#2: Pursue Guest Blogging Opportunities
One of the best ways to
get exposure for your blog is to blog for other people. Rich Brooks, president of Flyte New Media, offers some great advice to start building relationships for potential guest blogging opportunities.
“Find
the influential bloggers in your related industries,” says Brooks, “and
read their blogs. As appropriate, leave intelligent, thoughtful
comments that further the conversation. This can drive traffic to your
blog and may open up opportunities for guest blogging at their blog as
they become aware of you through your brilliant insights. However, this
must be a win-win for it to work.
If you leave comments for completely selfish reasons, you can expect limited results.”
#3: Reframe How You Look at Business Blogging
“I
often hear people complain that they don’t have time to write on their
business blog or they don’t know what to write about,” says Denise
Wakeman, founder of The Blog Squad. “Yet a blog is one of the best tools you can use to
distribute your message across the web.”
One way to move away from this mode of thinking is to reframe how you look at blogging. It’s not about writing on a blog;
it’s about taking advantage of a powerful marketing tool that works for you 24/7/365. Then, schedule writing time so it doesn’t slip through the cracks in the course of a busy day or week.
Here’s a 4-step process to get you started:
1.
Block out your writing time on a calendar.
2.
Plan your content in advance. Create an
editorial calendar and plug in your topics 1 to 3 months in advance.
3. For each of your blog categories,
list a minimum of 5 topics you can cover related to your company, products and the solutions you provide.
4. Pop them into your editorial calendar as prompts so you’re never at a loss for ideas when it’s time to create content.
#4: Add Keywords to Your Blog Titles and Posts
Rob Birgfeld of SmartBrief says keywords are the secret sauce to a successful business blog.
“It’s
easy,” Birgfeld says, “to write blog posts on whatever topic springs to
mind. But chances are your blog was created to help achieve business
goals. In order to reach those goals,
take data from your search engine marketing efforts and develop an editorial plan around your top-producing keywords.”
Gather
your top 10-15 keywords or phrases and write blog posts specific to
each one. Keep the content compelling, but be sure to sprinkle the
selected keyword (and synonyms) throughout the post.
Most importantly,
be sure to include those all-important keywords in the blog title and in the tags that you select.
Not only will a keyword-driven blogging strategy help you build and
plan out your editorial calendar, it will help you reach company goals
via proven search engine marketing data. Thus providing you with
something that’s hard to come by in social media: An easier sell to your
CFO.
