How do you start blogging for your business?
An active blog is the cornerstone of your digital marketing presence. If done correctly it can build the SEO of your website, connect with your ideal clients, add to your social media presence, enhance your ads and newsletter…the list goes on and one.
January is National Get Organized Month and as such it is a great time of year to focus attention on many out-of-control aspects of your life. And since adding new content is one the cornerstones of your digital marketing plan, it is a great area to focus on. But, if you don’t plan, write to your ideal clients and regularly publish, you will not see any results, get frustrated and stop blogging. My guess is that you have been here before.
The trick to starting a blog is to get organized but also start moving. As you put the right pieces in place also start writing. Open up a Google Document and write the 5 questions your ideal clients ask when they call your office. You have your first five blog topics already. Outline each with three paragraphs and then get writing.
However, to move forward with an effective strategy you will need to put some research and organizing in place. Remember, it is critical to get moving (which is why I told you to start writing already. After all, you can spend way too much time getting organized to get blogging and not produce anything. That will annoy you. It is best to be productive while also putting in the time to plan.
So there are two important pieces as you start to build your blog:
- Getting organized and developing a strategy to reach your ideal clients.
- Regularly publishing.
To develop your strategy you are going to need:
- Keyword research
- Editorial Calendar – this should be 12 months long and should include the many different ways your ideal clients move through the year (and carry their issues with them).
- One document to write blogs in (I recommend Google Drive).
At this stage, you may already be overwhelmed. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt it if you were just overwhelmed by the idea of keyword research. That is why I ALWAYS recommend that you start writing and publishing as you plan and organize. Your first blogs won’t win Pulitzers (but they might!) but just going through the process will teach you a lot.
Now – there are many pieces to add into your plan…which, we will take care of in the coming months. You want to work keywords into each post (naturally of course), you also want to ensure that you take care of the technical SEO bells and whistles including keyword placement, internal and external linking, and also writing about 500 -1000 words. But again, all of this will come in time. Right now, let’s start moving!
Oh, before we do move on, make sure that you have a few versions of a closing paragraph. For instance…I can say “book a call with me” and I could say “If you have questions I am available to talk.” Both same the same thing (sort of). The important part here is to ensure that you don’t make your blogs “salesy.” Google doesn’t like that.
