A marketing plan is what you create to achieve your over financial business goals in terms of matching your products and services to you customer market groups. These them statements of intent then become your marketing strategies which you implement through your mix of marketing activities, one of which will be how you promote your products and services by communicating to the right customer audience at the right time. Which means your businesses can benefit a great deal from blogging.
Blogging is therefore, a communication tactic used in content marketing. You write a blog, and publish it online either onto your website, as a separate blog site or as a guest blogger on a market influencers blog. So you’re publishing a steady stream of fresh content online which draws visitor “traffic” to your blog pages and website, gets you new readers, and builds relationships with both potential customers as well as with the clients you already have.
Here are three ideas to help you develop your blog posts…
1. Blogging Isn’t difficult, but it is effective
Many business people don’t want to blog because it’s ‘writing’ and you’re not a ‘writer.’ You’re in business to sell your products and services. But blogging doesn’t have to be difficult to do and is easier to create than your think… Which is why it makes a perfect online activity for your marketing plan.
That’s because blog posts can be as short as 300 words or even less. And they can include images and videos. Each post can cover one business topic and the format doesn’t have to be academic grade. In fact the opposite is true because both Google algorithms and your readers are searching for copy that’s quick and easy to read in a conversational tone kind of like you’re talking to a friend. You do need to check though, that there aren’t any grammar or spelling mistakes.
The way to get blogs created is to schedule in some time each week and spend about an hour to write and then post online which is very easy to do. Even better, if you have a team members who can write well, delegate the task to them!
2. How to Get Ideas
Perhaps the big challenge when starting a blog is to think that you can’t come up with blog ideas. Here are some ways to help you get ideas for your blog posts:
- Answer questions customers often ask and turn these in frequently asked questions (FAQs)
- Write answers to questions that customers should ask but don’t (SAQs)
- Answer questions from your industry forums, social media platforms and Q&A sites like Yahoo Answers
- Teach your readers how to do something simple step-by-step such as your online checkout and purchase process
- Discuss your market and industry news, events, and trending topics
- Start by looking up popular Google keywords and write blog posts around them
- Spend some time brainstorming topics with others and keep an idea file that you can add to it whenever you get a blog light bulb moment.
3. Working a Blog into Your Marketing Plan
Decide what topics your blog will cover that match your audience participation. Work out how often you or your team will write and post and schedule this into your marketing activity calendar. The benefits are:
- Each time you add a blog to your website, you’re boosting your site’s search engine optimisation (SEO) which gives you authority and credibility
- You’re giving your visitors more reason to stay on your site which also boosts your search engine rankings
- And you can also use your blog’s analytics and your reader comments as great feedback to learn more about your target market audiences and their tastes and thoughts to improve your products and service in your market that you offer to your customer groups, hence…
- Improving your marketing plan!
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