“Every business owner who’s ever hosted a blog has experienced the frustration of trying to gain readership. Though we’d all like it if readers just magically came to us, the reality is, it takes some work to build an audience.” Stephanie Chandler, Author, Own Your Niche
We’ve all seen it. You pour your time and knowledge into a damn good, content rich blog and hit post to your business site. You brace for the positive response. You know you’ve created something that will answer client questions and serve as a value-add. This is going to be good.
And then nothing.
Sure, a few people read the post. Maybe a comment or two after you erase the spam but nothing nearly like what you were expecting.
What happened?
You were screaming into the void – exposing yourself without closing the loop.
Close the Loop: Talk to The People Who Are Listening
“Every business needs new customers, but don’t ever forget that your easiest and most predictable source of new revenue is right under your nose: It comes from the loyal customers who already know your company. Acquiring new customers is expensive (five to ten times the cost of retaining an existing one), and the average spend of a repeat customer is a whopping 67 percent more than a new one.” Donna Fenn, contributing editor, Inc.com
Here’s how to turn those blog posts into cold, hard, capital-building, revenue-increasing, profit-machines without reinventing the wheel:
Focus on your current customers and clients.
That’s it.
Cross-promoting your blog through direct email campaigns to current customers will keep your company top-of-mind, increase their awareness of your services, and increase revenue by reaching the people who matter.
Direct email campaigns that link to your blog increase conversations and can increase your current customer spending by turning your blog posts from simple information pages into clear calls to action. “Our company can do more for you, here’s how, now let’s work together!”
Additionally, when leveraging your contact list with the optimized content X27 Marketing helps you achieve, you stand to reengage customers who may have strayed or fallen off. Without having to re-explain who you are and what you do, you keep the communication loop small, concise, and direct.
Basically, your blog can help reduce your churn rate. More about that in this blog post: How to Reduce Churn Rate: 3 Step-By-Step Strategies Backed Up By The Experts
Make it Excellent
“In very few cases, the primary purpose or goal of a corporate blog is to directly sell more products. In most cases, the blog is seen rather as a valuable tool that can indirectly assist the company to achieve more sales,” Stephen Snell, Smashing Magazine
Your blog is the best quality ad you can produce, but only if it’s reaching an audience that is listening. There’s no reason to produce a corporate blog if it isn’t increasing your revenue. Simple as that. Get the right content to the right people. Your customers are the right people. They want to know what you have to offer and email is a great way to open the door to increasing interaction, conversations, and exposure.
Create great content that is relevant to your customers.
Make it simple, digestible, and streamlined. How-To’s, lists, and cheat sheets are all easy to read, retain, and chock-full of value for clients. We can help you churn out top-quality and optimized content, then get it into the right hands. For more help on writing a blog of real value you can see my post here: How to Write A Professional Blog: 3 Tips from Blogging Experts on Corporate Writing
Make it Simple
Let’s face it; life is easier with fewer choices. Our attention spans are decreasing and information is increasing. Making your clients know you are available, expert in the industry, and willing to hustle makes it easier for them to keep choosing your services.
We used to talk about ‘The Rule of 3’ in advertising – increasing your exposure. The rules are changing, and as Jacob Morgan, Keynote speaker and best-selling author of The Future of Work says, “The rule of 3 will switch from a metric of quantity to a metric of quality and relevancy. Instead of concentrating on how many times marketers need to advertise to someone to get their attention, marketers need to focus on the relevancy and the quality of those ads.”
Make it Work for You
“Creating relevant and useful content is one of the best ways to build inbound links. Blog posts, white papers, eGuides and Tip Sheets are all easy ways to generate useful content. Just make sure that your content is targeted and focused around the topics that will be most useful to your prospects. If your content it great, it will get shared.” Tim Niziak, Paradot
Finally, load up that blog post with inbound links (links to your own great blog posts and your website) and a clear call to action. Always tell them who you are and how to contact you. Make it easy to find your information at any time.
Now you can sit back and wait for the real results.
X27 Marketing can optimize your blog by helping you send better emails that drive action and increase traffic. We offer this service because it works, plain and simple.
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