Hopefully you’ve gotten to the point where you’ve accepted the fact that blogging is critical to your digital strategy, and most importantly, to attracting strangers to your website. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed how difficult it is to determine which blog posts will be a “hit” and which posts will attract little to no attention.
There have been many times where I’ve excitedly published a blog post and sat by my computer anxiously awaiting the views to start rolling in, and I’ve heard nothing but crickets. This can be very frustrating considering how much energy and excitement I invested into the post, and yet it just didn’t seem to be enough.
If you’ve found yourself in a similar position, I’d like to encourage you to take a deep breath and not take it personally. It’s important to remember the main strategic initiative of your blogging efforts is to position yourself, and your organization, as a thought leader to the personas you serve so they begin to view your website as a valuable resource they can turn to in times of need. Keeping this in mind, there are a few things you can do to help position your blog posts so they are more likely to gain the level of exposure you’d like them to.
1. Go for Quality Over Quantity
Although it’s important to consistently create new blog content, it’s even more important to ensure that you’re creating quality posts. There are more companies being introduced to Inbound Marketing every single day, and although there may not be many in your market that have bought into the concept yet, there will be soon. I’d encourage you to embrace this opportunity and invest the time in creating high quality content on your blog so you can begin to position your organization as the “go-to source” within your market segment for the personas you serve.
If you happen to be in an industry which has a higher adoption rate of Inbound Marketing, it’ll be even more important for you to focus on quality, as it’ll be required for you to stand out among the competition. Fortunately for you, in the digital world it’s not about “first to market”. It’s more about who serves the market best.
2. Choose Correct Language
Once you’re satisfied that you’ve created a high quality post, it’ll be important that you use the same language that your personas use to ensure they can find it when they’re conducting a search. One of the biggest problems I see with companies is the heavy use of industry jargon and acronyms. This type of industry speak may make you look like the “smartest person in the room” when you’re with your colleagues, but this type of language won’t impress your personas because it’s highly likely they won’t find your content.
For instance, if you own a lawn irrigation company and you want to connect with homeowners, you’ll be far more successful including terminology which includes the term “sprinkler” instead of “irrigation.” If you do your research you’ll find that there are 300% more searches on keywords related to sprinkler systems than there are for irrigation systems. Sure, you may still get traffic for the term “irrigation,” but chances are those visitors aren’t the personas you’re looking to reach.
3. Promote, Promote, Promote
The saying, “build it and they will come” may have been appropriate in the movie “Field of Dreams,” but it doesn’t apply to blogging. Just because you’ve created a quality piece of content and utilized the exact words that your personas are typing into the search engines doesn’t mean your job is finished. It’s important to develop a consistent promotion strategy to reach your personas where they are, and where they conduct their research along their buyer journey. Depending on your specific personas, this will typically begin with social media and move into forums, industry publications, association websites, and other influencers of the personas you serve.
Your promotion strategy should focus on continuing to promote the content you’ve created as long as it’s relevant and valuable. If you posted an article on a topic 3 years ago that received a lot of traction, and the circumstances haven’t changed much, you should be posting about it on your social channels from time to time to get more value from the work you invested 3 years ago. If you’re constantly focused on creating quality posts that include the exact language your personas are using, you’ll continue to reap the rewards from these long-term, dividend producing assets…as long as you continue to promote them along the way.
If you’d like to spend some time getting to know your personas, download our “Target Persona Worksheet.” This tool will help you gain a deeper understanding of the “buyer journey” each of your personas goes through prior to reaching out to you. You can then utilize this information to ensure you’re winning with your blogging efforts.
