We simply love blogs and believe that in these days of post-Google algorithmic change, they most certainly add value to your business.
In our opinion, it most certainly is worth the slog to blog!
But, as with all things these days, you need to be certain. Historically, we marketers had a tough challenge proving that our efforts did add value and were of benefit – it was all so speculative and intangible (but hey, I have been doing this for a long time and we are talking about measuring ROI in the dim and distant past before we even had t’interweb!).
Now, with all of the digital technology we use and the great online systems we have to assist us with our efforts, we can do analysis and here at Thrive, we think that’s a great thing – by analysing your efforts you can make measured, informed decisions – you can see what’s working (and do more) and what’s not (and ditch it!).
This applies to ALL elements of your marketing communications and blogging is no exception. Many are intimidated by the thought of blogging and skilfully use the art of procrastination to dally before diving in!
How do you decide what to blog about? Will anyone read them? What type of blog? How often should I blog? How do I promote them?
All valid questions and exactly what you ought to be considering when devising your blogging strategy. And, because we are lovely, this blog of ours should help you to shortcut some of the pain and cut straight to blogging success! Yippee!
By analysing some of your best performing (to date) blogs, you ought to be able to have a better understanding of exactly what it is your buyer personas (audience) are looking for and ‘tweak’ your approach accordingly – more of what works remember!
That’s great I hear you say but how do I know which of my blogs are the best performers?
Good question! I’ll tell you…
3 Ways To Improve Your Blogging Strategy
1. Run a report!
How easy is that? If you don’t have whizzy marketing software (like what we do!) don’t worry – you can use your Google Analytics reports to give you some valuable insights into your visitors’ behaviour.
2. Make a list of your top 10 posts
They will fall into one of four categories:
A) Low traffic, high conversion rate.
Downside – you aren’t getting a high volume of visits to your blog. Upside – the conversion rate would indicate that they are, at least, the ‘right’ visitors – high quality.
If you would like to learn how you could increase your traffic, we’d love to help – just get in touch!
B) High traffic, high conversion rate.
Woo hoo! Great news! So, for you, the challenge going forward isn’t one of acquisition, it’s one of maintenance.
If you’d like some help with this, get in touch, we’d love to help you to extend your success.
C) High traffic, low conversion rate.
Brilliant – you are a big ‘magnet’ and are attracting people like billy-o! Your challenge is to get them to engage and convert.
If you feel that some added insight into improving your magnetism would help, give us a shout – we can help!
D) Low traffic, low conversion rate.
The great news here is that ‘the only way is up baby!’
We’d love to help you to improve your metrics and add value – why not take advantage of our offer to ‘pick our brains’?
This blog analysis is a great starting point – knowing what performance type your blog is producing provides you with a level of understanding that you can use to create an actionable plan for your blog going forward.
3. Create an actionable plan
Points to consider when starting to re-evaluate (or build for the first time) your plan…
- Why are you blogging? What is its purpose?
- Who are you blogging for? Who are your target audience?
- What is your competition doing? Do a competitive content audit.
- What are the crucial ‘keywords’ that you are targeting? What do you want to get found for?
- How will you ‘spread the word’? Where will you distribute your content?
- How will it be found? How are you going to promote your blog?
- Resources – who is actually going to ‘do the do’?
- Regular and reliable? What schedule can you reasonably commit to?
- Data, data, data… What are your goals and how will you measure them?
Find more like this via Blogging.
