MackCollier.com

by

Your Content Not Converting Has Nothing to Do With Your Content and Everything to Do With Your Customer

If you want to improve the ability of your blog to grow your business, you need to focus on creating content that converts. In simplest terms, a conversion is an action that the customer takes as a result of interacting with your content. There are many actions the reader can take when interacting with your content, and your content should be tailored so that they take the action (conversion) that you want.

This is where the trouble starts...

Raise Your Hand if Your Company is Blogging to 'Build Awareness'

This is the biggest conversion-killer of all. Think about that strategy; building awareness. Literally, that means you are trying to make people aware of your business, through your blogging efforts. So if you are trying to attract people that don't know who you are and don't know what you sell, what's the one thing your content can NOT do?

Sell to that customer.

Think about it: If I am unaware of who you are and what you do, why would you waste my time and yours selling your product to me? I don't know who you are, I don't know what you do, and I don't know why I should care. So clearly, selling to me is the worst thing you could do. It wastes your time, and mine.

And yet...this is precisely what most companies do that adopt a 'build awareness' content strategy, they create content that sells.

We're Not Like Those Guys, Our Content NEVER Sells!

This is the second biggest reason why your content never converts; Because when the customer actually IS ready to buy, your content doesn't move them closer to a sale! You've been beaten over the head with the 'social media is about relationships, not selling!' club so much that you go too far the other way and NEVER sell with your content. I don't blame you for this as much as I blame the 'social media purists' that push such nonsense. Of course your content can sell. You simply have to understand where the buyer is on their journey, and create the content they need today, with a bridge to the content they will need tomorrow.

This is the Four Stages of the Buyer's Journey. I'll be going into all four in much greater detail in a post later this month. But for now, let's focus on two things; the first and last stage, and the color of each.

First, note that the color of each stage is different. The color gets 'warmer' the further you move to the right, to signify that each stage moves the reader closer to being a buyer. It's also a visual reminder to you that when the reader is Unaware of who you are and what you do, they are also completely cold to your effort to sell to them. So don't even try. 

Second, note the first and last stages. As I said, there are two main reasons why most content doesn't convert. It's because you create content that sells when the customer isn't ready to buy, then when they are ready to buy, you don't sell to them. 

If your blog's goal is to 'build awareness' of your business, then don't blog about your business, blog about the customer you want to do business with! Sounds counter-intuitive, right? It isn't, this approach works because you're creating content that attracts the people you want to do business with! 

Let's say your company sells lawncare products. If you write a post titled "Five Pests That Are Keeping Your Lawn From Being Beautiful", that post would appeal to homeowners that want a beautiful lawn. A homeowner might read that post and think "Hey! My lawn has those brown spots, so THAT'S what causes them, I had no idea!" Then they will start to investigate your site and LEARN more about your products, but it all started by creating content that was focused on the customer, not your brand.

edit

Note About Content That 'Builds Awareness'

This content should only focus on the customer. Specifically, you focus on your customer's life, without selling your product. A good way to think of this content is creating content that teaches your customer the skills that also compliment your product. In the above example, you create content that helps the customer have a more beautiful lawn. Ultimately, this is the problem that your product solves, so create content that focuses on the problem, and that gives the customer advice on how to solve it. That gains their attention, and can eventually give you a way to promote your product to them! 

In general, the less interested the customer is in buying, the more your content should focus on the customer. The more interested the customer is in buying, the more you should create content that's technical and focused on the product. Just remember to give them a way to actually BUY the product! 

by

How to Republish Your Old Posts Like a Rock Star

Republishing old blog posts has become increasingly popular among bloggers over the last few years. I’ve been doing this for about a year now, and I’ve seen spectacular results. I use a specific system for republishing my old blog posts, and I wanted to share that system with you.

I’ve often talked about how you can greatly improve your content creation efforts by thinking like a rock star. In fact, one of the most popular posts I’ve ever written focuses on adopting a rock star’s mindset to your content creation and marketing efforts. So let’s further think like a rock star when it comes to republishing our old blog posts.

Find Your Greatest Hits

Every rock star who has been successful eventually has a ‘greatest hits’ album. Let’s say you are a fan of Soundgarden, and wanted to introduce your friend to the legendary Seattle band. You may decide to give them a greatest hits album from the band.

In much the same way, you as a blogger should have a collection of ‘Greatest Hits’ posts. If someone was new to your blog and wanted to learn what topics you write about and are known for, what 10 blog posts would you show them? These 10 blog posts are your blogging ‘Greatest Hits’. And if you haven’t been blogging very long, you can go with your best 3 posts or best 5 posts. The point is to focus on your BEST work, the posts that you want to be known for, the posts that advance the ideas, thoughts and beliefs that you want to be associated with and known for.

I started doing this last year with this blog. I went through my archives and found several posts that I thought represented my best work. I then whittled that list down to my 10 ‘best’ posts. These are the posts that I want to be known for and the ones that I want to promote and see be more successful.

Your Greatest News, Now Remastered! 

Rock stars don’t just collect their greatest hits and resell them on a new album. They spice them up.  They remaster them to improve the sound quality, they repackage them with additional information on how the songs were writtten, etc. All of this improves the quality of the songs and makes them more interesting and appealing to fans.

In much the same way, you should ‘remaster’ your best blog posts. Here’s the checklist I went through with each of my greatest hits posts:

First, I selected my list of 10 posts that I would republish. Then, I scrubbed the posts for any outdated information. Are there broken links? Old videos from YouTube that are no longer hosted there? Next I see if there’s any outdated information or stats that need to be updated. Basically, I start with making sure that everything in the post as it stands now is still useful. Anything that isn’t, gets stripped out.

Then, I see what I can add. Are there any new studies or research that’s been done on this topic? Has my thinking evolved or have I learned something new that I could add to the post? By combining both these steps, I’m stripping out outdated information that no longer has value, and I’m adding in new information. The end result is that the overall quality of the post is improved.

Finally, I ask what is the ‘bigger idea’ behind this post? What’s it about? What core topic am I wanting to discuss, and am I doing this as well as I can? Remember, these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts are supposed to represent the core ideas, themes and beliefs that I hold dear. I also look at the post headline, and the post itself to make sure I am targeting the right keywords that are associated with the concepts I want to discuss. For example, if my post is about brand ambassador programs, then the keyword phrase ‘brand ambassador programs’ needs to be in the post headline if at all possible.

But Mack, Can’t I Just Change the Date and Call it a Day?

You can, but I wouldn’t advise it. Remember, these 10 posts are supposed to be examples of your best work. If all you can do is change the date of publication to today, is this really a topic you should be writing about? If I’ve written a post that covers a topic I am actually knowledgeable about, I can always find something new to add and a way to improve the post.

Having said that, changing the date of a post to make the post ‘newer’ will typically improve your search rankings alone. Google wants to serve the most relevant and RECENT content to its users. If I’ve written a post on creating an incredible content strategy from 2010 and you’ve written a similar post from 2015, your post will typically be higher in search results for terms related to ‘content strategy’. So it’s my job to improve and update my post, and make sure it has better content than yours.  Then I can update my post and give it a 2018 date, and guess what? My post will now show up higher in search results than yours. As it should, if my content is better and more recent than yours, it will and should be higher in search results.

And Here’s the Results….

Last year I used this process to update several of my older posts that I wanted to be known as some of my ‘best’ work.

One post I updated last Summer was this post on Red Bull’s content strategy and why it’s so successful. So to see how my efforts are working, let’s compare traffic to this post during 2018 so far, compared to Jan 1st-April 15th of 2017:

It’s a bit hard to see, but the blue lines represent pageviews this year, the orange lines represent pageviews for this same time period in 2017. That’s an increase in Pageviews of almost 400%, mostly from doing one update and refresh of this post, which was originally published in 2013. Not bad, right?

Here’s another example: this post: 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program. Like the Red Bull post, I updated this one last Summer. Here’s the traffic this year compared to the same period last year:

This post has ‘only’ had a 233% increase in pageviews, but notice that the increase was from 1,142 pageviews last year to 3,811 pageviews so far this year. But what I’m most proud about is that fact that this post now typically ranks on the first page of search results for the term ‘brand ambassador program’. For most of last year the post ranked in the Top 20 for that term, now it’s in the Top 10. This is huge for my business as helping companies launch brand ambassador programs is one of the key consulting services I offer.

And even though both these posts are doing great, when I do my next update on my ‘greatest hits’ blog posts, you better believe I am going to again update both these posts. Every time I do, the quality and comprehensiveness of the post is improved, which makes it more valuable to readers, and helps it rank higher in search engines.  Which drives even more traffic to the post.

 

So go through your blog’s archives today, and find your 10 posts that are your greatest hits. These are the 10 blog posts that you want to be known for, the posts that cover the topics you want to be associated with. Update these posts, don’t just give them a new date, scrub the posts, remove any errors, grammatical or fact-based. Then add any new information that you think improves the quality of the post. This can include new studies, new research, etc. Also, consider adding new visual elements, such as updating the pictures used, or adding videos.

The end result should be that you have improved the quality of your content, and that will increase traffic to your blog and to that content.  As a bonus tip: Regularly promote these 10 ‘greatest hits’ posts of yours on social media. I have my 10 greatest hits posts, and I am constantly sharing links to these posts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. The reason why is simple: I want to remind people that they should associate me with the topics of these posts.

Finally, check out ProBlogger’s recent post on republishing your old posts and why it’s a good idea.

 

by

The Secret to Getting More Engagement on Our Blogs That We’ve All Forgotten

From 2006-2011, I did a weekly ‘Top 25’ list of the best marketing blogs on my first blog The Viral Garden. Yesterday, I was doing some maintenance on The Viral Garden, and I found a Top 25 list I did back in December of 2007.

Ten years ago! When I saw the list, I was immediately curious to see how many of the blogs were still around and active, ten years later.  Most of them had either ‘died’ years ago, or had moved to a new URL, a couple had apparently let the hosting for the domain lapse and someone else had taken it over. BTW, props to Valeria, her blog Conversation Agent is still going strong, looks to be even more prolific today than it was 10 years ago!

I spent probably two hours clicking the links and reading the blogs, several of which I hadn’t visited in years. It was a very interesting digital trip down memory lane. Putting my Content Strategist hat on, I immediately noticed several differences in the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago versus today:

  • Shorter posts. There weren’t a lot of 1,500-word posts floating around in 2007. In fact most where a few hundred words, if that.  Short, and to the point.
  • There were few ‘How-To’ posts. There was little, if any teaching and instructive content. I have a theory on why this is the case, and I’ll get to it in a minute.
  • No ‘Listicle’ posts. You know, “Ten Steps to Building a Better Blog” or “Five Ways to Improve Your Digital Presence Today!”

But what really struck me about the content being created on these blogs 10 years ago was the tone. Most of these blogs were written as if the blogger was talking to no more than 30 people. Because they probably weren’t! I think back to my own experiences blogging around this time, and there were many days when I wouldn’t crack 100 visitors. But the flipside was, I knew most of the people who visited my blog, because they were commenting on my blog!

And when you are writing for people that you know, and people who know you, you write differently. Remember I said that most bloggers in 2007 didn’t write ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ type posts.  Instead, they mostly wrote ‘Here’s what happened to me today’ type posts, with a business slant or moral behind the post. But when you write in that way, it’s much more ‘folksy’, and it makes you much more relateable.

One of the constant complaints I hear from bloggers in #Blogchat, from clients who blog, is “No one ever comments on my blog anymore!” We know why some of this happens; Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social sites are fragmenting conversations. Most bloggers and their readers weren’t using these sites in 2007, so as a result, social conversations were still mostly happening on blogs. Over the years, as these sites grew, we started to spend more time off our blogs, which meant our social interactions followed us.

Sidenote: Back in those days I had a ‘trick’ I would use to get more blogging readers. A decade ago, Technorati would list all the blogs (or it tried to) by their number of links. And you could sort them so that the list would be ascending or descending. I would sort the list of blogs so that it was ascending, meaning that it showed me the blogs that had few or no links, first. My thinking was that the blogs with few or no links were probably brand new bloggers, so I wanted to check them out and comment as often as I could, to help them get going and also to get on their radars so they would start reading and commenting on my blog! One day, I found a particular business blog with few or no links, and I clicked over and started reading the blog. It had about 5 or 6 posts, the first five were strictly business focused, on a particular topic, all written in a very textbooky tone. None of them them got any comments. Then the ‘newest’ post was simply the blogger asking “Why in the world isn’t anyone commenting?!?  I keep writing posts, putting a lot of effort into them and no one comments!”  That was the last post on that blog, the post was about 3-4 months old by the time I saw it, and I remember thinking “I just saw this blog die”. That’s always stuck with me, for whatever reason.

But looking back at these ‘old’ blogs from 2007 and such, I’m reminded of the role that the tone of our blog posts plays in driving engagement. Or, how the tone used can stifle engagement. Remember I said that I saw few ‘How-To’ or ‘Listicle’ posts on these blogs from 2007 years ago. Now, these are all the rage on blogs, but think about why that is. These types of posts are written to EXPAND your audience. They are written to help more people, many of which you don’t know. So you write in a tone that’s more formulaic and impersonal. This makes your message more accessible to a larger audience, but it also makes your message less engaging, in a way.

I want to illustrate how this applies to one of my favorite blogs from 10 years ago, Kathy Sierra’s Creating Passionate Users. Kathy’s blog was always brain candy to me, but even though she had a massive audience, her blog always felt welcoming and engaging in a way that I never really understood. As I was reading these old blog posts from 2007, I noticed that one of the blogs had Creating Passionate Users on their blogroll (remember those?), so I clicked over and started reading Kathy’s blog. I was immediately struck by the tone! She wrote in a way that made it seem like she knew all her readers and was just chatting with us at a bookstore and having a casual conversation just with us. It made her content much more interesting, and engaging, even if I didn’t realize why at the time.

So if you want to write to expand your audience and to establish your expertise, the ‘How-To’ posts and really any content that teaches a skill is a good idea.

But if you want to increase engagement, if you want to get more comments and interaction, do like we used to do in the ‘old days’ of blogging; Write like you only have 30 readers, and you know who each of them are.

Try it! It really does change the way you write, doesn’t it?

by

How Often Should You Blog If You Have a Business Blog?

One of the biggest questions bloggers of all stripes face is how often they should blog. For personal bloggers, the answer is simple; whenever you want. But for business bloggers who use blogging as a way to drive new sales and for building awareness, a posting strategy is far more important.

Business bloggers face many restrictions that personal bloggers don’t have to worry with.  Probably the two biggest restrictions are a lack of time, and oversight from bosses and having to work within the confines of your company’s larger digital and content strategies.

 

If You Had All the Time In the World…

So in an effort to decide how often you should blog for your business, let’s start with removing the time restriction.  Let’s assume you had all the time in the world to write whatever you wanted.  If time were no longer an issue, how often should you blog?

The answer, of course, is “it depends…”  In general, publishing more content (assuming it has value to its audience) is better than publishing less.  If your blog is itself a business, meaning you will be selling advertising or sponsorships on it, then you will likely need a pretty aggressive posting schedule.  Likely one new post each weekday.  At least. The idea is that your advertising and sponsorship rates are set in great part based on your blog’s traffic, which is why you need to post more often in order to raise traffic levels.

But most businesses attempt to leverage their blogs as a way to generate new business leads or customers. So for these blogging businesses, a slightly less ‘ambitious’ posting schedule is more prudent.

If your business wants to use its blog to build awareness or generate leads, then ideally one post each weekday, Monday through Friday, would be perfect.  In addition, one of these posts, likely in the middle of the week, should be a longer, more in-depth post on a topic that’s core to your business.  Think of it as a White Paper used as a blog post. So every week, ideally, you would write four shorter posts, with one longer, more in-depth post published in the middle of the week.

So in a perfect world where you had all the time in the world…you would want to blog once a day during the week, with four shorter posts, and one longer, more in-depth post.

 

Now, Back to the Real World

Unfortunately, you don’t have all the time in the world. Your limited time means you have to prioritize your content creation efforts. If your primary goal for your blog is raising awareness for your company, then you need to create more content, plain and simple.  The more you post, on average, means more traffic for your blog, more exposure, higher search rankings, etc.

This means you need to balance your available time with posting once a day during the week, if possible. Posting more often helps your blog get more traffic and exposure. I’ve been very inconsistent in my posting the last few months, but just this week so far I’ve posted twice, and traffic is already up 10% versus last week.

What you need to do is balance your available time with making sure that you connect with your audience.  In other words, you want to make sure that your posts are going to be seen by your audience. If your audience only reads blogs on the weekend, then you only want to publish content on the weekend.  If they only read during the week, then that’s when you want to post.  If you aren’t sure, in general, most blogs see highest traffic levels in the middle of the week and during the middle of the day.  So if I know I can only write say 2 posts a week, I will publish those posts on Tuesday and Thursday.  If I can write three, then they will run one a day from Tuesday through Thursday.

Also, consider if your audience is seasonal. My audience is primarily managers and directors who work at companies and who have control of digital budgets and allocations. Basically, the people that can write the checks and sign off on hiring consultants like me to help them improve their marketing strategies. As such, I take into account the likely schedules of this audience.  For instance, most of this audience takes its annual vacations in July and August. As a result, I don’t blog as much during the Summer.  On the other hand, in late Fall and early Winter is typically when this group is planning budgets for the following year. They are doing research to see who they should hire which is why I ramp up my blogging efforts the first 2 months of the year, and the last 2. I want to be on the radar for decision makers when they are looking and researching their consulting options.

 

How Do You Decide How Often to Blog?

You start in the middle, and work your way out. Start by writing one new blog post a week, and start in the middle of the week.  If you can only write one post a week, publish it on Wednesday.  If you can write two, publish them on Tuesday and Thursday.  If you can publish three, publish them from Tuesday through Thursday.

If you reach a point where you can publish a new post Monday through Friday, congratulations! If you find that you have enough time to create even more content, I would advise that you instead focus on improving your current content creation efforts before expanding further. If the main goal of your blog is to build awareness for your company, then in most cases you will never need to publish more than one post every weekday. If you find that you have time to create even more content, then focus on other content channels such as your email newletter or webinars.

If you blog for your business, how many new posts do you publish a week, and how did you decide on that number?

by

How Do You Blog Every Day For 1,000 Straight Days?

UPDATE! Here’s the transcript for this #Blogchat!

One of the biggest challenges bloggers face is creating content on a regular basis. In fact, an inability to create content regularly is probably the biggest reason why most blogs fail.  Creating content regularly is very difficult, even for seasoned bloggers.  I’ve been blogging ever since 2005, and I still struggle with creating content regularly.

So in February of 2015, Helen started her blog, Anchored Scraps. Her blog is all about encouraging letter writing, old-style correspondence. She uses technology to connect with other kindred letter writing enthusiasts. On Tuesday, she will hit an incredible milestone: She will have published a daily blog post for 1,000 straight days! Writing 1,000 blog posts is a fantastic accomplishment for any blogger, but to do so daily for almost 3 years is incredible.  Helen is a longtime participant in #Blogchat, so I invited her to share her advice on how to write a blog post for 1,000 straight days.

Helen will join us tonight at 8pm Central at #Blogchat. Please follow her on Twitter.

Here’s our topic: How Do You Blog Every Day For 1,000 Straight Days?

Questions (These will start at 8:00 with a new one asked every 10 mins:

Q1 – Why did you decide you wanted to write a new blog post every day?
Q2 – How do you find enough ideas for posts to blog every day?
Q3 – What tool (digital or analog) has helped you the most in creating daily content for your blog?
Q4 – How has blogging every day impacted your blog’s engagement and traffic?
Q5 – What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had about blogging everyday that you didn’t realize when you started?
Q6 – If someone wanted to start blogging every day like you have, what would be your best piece of advice for them?

 

Also, here’s a talk Helen gave earlier this year on blogging every day for 900 days! Life comes at you fast!

I hope you’ll join us tonight at 8PM as this is a wonderful chance to learn from Helen how to blog every single day!  Please follow Helen on Twitter, and also check out her blog, Anchored Scraps.  If you’ve never joined #Blogchat, here’s what it’s all about.

by

How to Make Your Blog Relevant

When you start blogging, whether it’s for yourself or your employer, you want the blog to be relevant.  You want it to stand out and be recognized by readers as a valuable source of information.  Last night at #Blogchat we discussed this topic, and I wanted to share some thoughts here.  If I was starting a new blog in 2017 and wanted to make it relevant, these are the steps I would take:

1 – Define your desired audience.  Know who it is you want to reach, and why you are trying to reach them.

2 – Understand where this group is CURRENTLY getting its information from. What blogs and sites are they reading? What type of content are they looking for? In short, what is relevant to them?

3 – Start reading the sites they read, and start writing about the same content.  Once you know what is relevant to your audience, then you can create it for them.

4 – Start reading the sites your audience reads, and start commenting on those sites. This gets your readers familiar with seeing you and your thoughts on the sites they view as being credible. This not only drives traffic to your blog, it also helps make you credible and relevant in the eyes of your desired audience.  When I started blogging in 2005, I wrote every day. I figured the quickest way to get readers was to blog more. So I was a sponge, I wrote every day, and every day I read marketing and advertising blogs to get ideas for posts and to stay up to date on the space. As I would read these blogs, I would occasionally find an article I liked, and I would comment on it.

I kept writing every day on my blog, and nothing was happening. No traffic, no comments, nothing. Then one day, the floodgates opened.  My traffic started growing, and I started getting comments! On every post! I was thrilled, but at the same time, I was confused; Why was I suddenly getting traffic AND comments? I had no idea, till one day, someone left a comment and said “Hey Mack, coming here to leave you a comment since you left a comment on my blog!”  That’s when the light bulb went off…I went and checked and everyone that had started leaving comments on my blog were bloggers that *I* had commented on their blog first! It worked in 2005, it still works today, so get out there and be social!

5 – Take a stand, share your voice. Readers want to read blogs that are written in a passionate voice. We are drawn to passionate writing, it’s more interesting to us. Obviously, if you are writing for an employer, you want to be mindful of your company’s blogging or social media policy, but you can still share your opinions in a passionate and constructive way.

6 – Put in the work and don’t be afraid to ‘act’ bigger than you are. I started blogging in 2005, and one of the first posts I wrote as a series on how female rock stars were marketing themselves. I thought that a great companion piece to the posts would be if I could convince someone in marketing at a major record label to let me interview them.  Again, I was a new blogger so I thought what the hell. I emailed every record label I could find. None of them even answered me, except for Nettwerk, and eventually I got an interview with Terry McBride, who at the time was the manager for both Avril Lavigne and Sarah MacLachlan. Not bad, eh? But if I had thought ‘well I’m just a lowly blogger that no one knows, I can’t email record labels!’, I would have never gotten that interview. You never know till you ask.

7 – Ignore anyone that tells you that you can’t be a big-shot. One thing I learned the hard way is that social media can be just like high school. If you start doing well, you’ll start to draw criticism. Almost always, this criticism will come from people that are afraid you are getting ‘bigger’ than they are, and they are jealous. When I announced I was writing Think Like a Rock Star in 2013, a few people lashed out. They said I didn’t deserve a book, that it was a dumb topic, that I wasn’t an ‘expert’ on the topic. These few people had one thing in common: None of them had written a book yet, and all of them wanted to. Take criticism as a sign that you are being successful and growing. No one criticizes the unknown blogger!

8 – Act like your blog is relevant, because it is. Cover the space that’s interesting to your audience. Talk about where your industry is headed, don’t just react to existing opinions, share your own. This is also how you become a thought leader. The truth about thought leader is that it’s not about the people that walk the same road as everyone else, it’s about the people that clear a path for the rest of us.

 

So there’s some tips on how to make your blog relevant. If you want to review the transcript from last night’s #Blogchat, here it is.

by

I’m Letting You Off the Hook; You Don’t Have to Blog As Much Anymore

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from this #Blogchat.

If you’re a business and you’re blogging every day, then you’re doing it wrong. I know, I know, for years the conventional wisdom was that in order to build readership for a blog, especially if it’s a business blog, you needed to blog as often as possible.

And that advice worked well, 10 years ago. Unfortunately, now every social media site had become a content stream. The News or Home feed on most major sites like Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn, are a constant stream of links being shared.

Here’s the problem: If your writing team is hustling to write multiple posts a week, you’re probably creating a lot of mediocre content simply due to time constraints.  That mediocre content is then competing against a sea of equally mediocre content in a sea of link-sharing on those social sites.

Nothing gets lost on social media sites faster than mediocre content. What IS getting shared these days is long-form content. More specifically, long-form content that does a deep-dive on a particular topic.  And research shows that the longer your content is, the more social shares it generates:

Average Shares by Content Length

Yesterday, the goal was to get out 2-3 posts every week, each one fairly short, 300-500 words. Today, the goal is to get out 1-2 posts a month, each one 1,000-2,000 words.  Think about the time you spend each month writing 3-4 posts. What if you spent that time on writing one comprehensive post?  How much better would that content be if you had more time for research, editing and production? How many more pageviews and social shares would it get? Let me tell you, nothing is more frustrating for a blogger to write post after post and never see the needle move.

I’ve seen this with my own blog. A couple of years ago I started occasionally writing longer posts, and these posts almost always did better as far as traffic and social shares than the shorter posts I would sometimes write.  Now, if I write a post that isn’t at least 1,000 words, I wonder if there wasn’t something that I left out or additional information that I could have included.

Now this isn’t to say that you should stop writing multiple posts every week.  If that approach is working for you, then by all means stick with it.  NEVER change what you are doing if it is working for you. I don’t care how many ‘experts’ tell you otherwise.  It’s fine to experiment and be open to new ideas, but never change what’s working for you just because it’s ‘conventional wisdom’ of the moment. But if your current efforts to write 2-3 posts a week aren’t working, then I would suggest you consider spending that time on writing fewer, more comprehensive posts.

But wait, there’s more!

Now it’s not enough to simply write fewer posts, that are longer. What we’re talking about is shifting your content strategy. You want to transition from writing many posts that give a quick, superficial coverage of a general topic, to long-form deep dives of fewer topics that are the cornerstone of your business. I’ve written before about planting your content flag and finding the 2-3 things that you want to be known for. The great thing about longer content is that it helps you really drill down into topics that are core to your business. This helps you establish your expertise around these topics, and makes it easier for your readers to associate those topics with your business.

In addition to writing longer, more comprehensive posts, you also want to beef up your promotional efforts for those posts. You want to invest more time in custom graphics for those posts, or even custom videos. For example, I used Lumen5 to create a custom video for my last post on using millennials in your brand ambassador program. That allows me to also post the video on YouTube, and there link back to the post. Check out how UnBounce even created a custom pop-up graphic for one of its more popular posts.

But I don’t like promoting my posts, it feels so….icky!

Here’s the deal: If you are creating truly great content that is USEFUL to your readers than you OWE it to them to share that content. It’s not about helping you, it’s about helping THEM. Share the content and tell your network why it will help them. One of the great ironies of social media is that it seems like bad content gets promoted too much, and great content isn’t promoted enough.

Also, despite what social sites tell you, very few people actually ‘follow’ you. I have around 46k people currently ‘following’ me on Twitter, and each time I share this post, I will be lucky if 1% of that number actually sees each share. Which is why I don’t mind repeatedly sharing my best posts on social media, because I know that most people following my updates won’t see the post being shared more than once.

So if your current blogging strategy is to write multiple posts and week, and that approach is NOT working, then try this:

1 – Write fewer posts, that are longer, deeper dives into topics.

2 – Pick topics that are core to your business. What do you want to be known for? Blog about these topics, and related ones.

3 – Don’t think of it as writing blog posts, think of it as writing a comprehensive ‘guide’ to that topic.

4 – Work on custom graphics for the posts. In general, more visual elements equals more social shares.

5 – Feel free to promote your posts.  You’ve created amazing content, you will be doing your audience a dis-service if you aren’t sharing it with them.

 

Want more ideas? We’ll be discussing this very topic this Sunday night (7-16-2017) at #Blogchat on Twitter.  For now, here’s the custom infographic I created for this post on The Rock Star’s Guide to Content Creation, Content Marketing and Promotion.

by

Kerry Gorgone Joins #Blogchat to Answer Your Legal Questions About Blogging!

Kerry Gorgone Legal Blogging

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript from an AMAZING and insightful #Blogchat on the legal issues of blogging with Kerry Gorgone!

I’m very excited to welcome my great friend Kerry O’Shea Gorgone back to #Blogchat this Sunday (5-21-17) to answer your legal blogging questions! Kerry is an attorney and also one of the most decorated business podcasters on the planet! Her Marketing Smarts podcast is acknowledged by all as one of the best podcasts on the internet.

The topic we’ll discuss is The Legalities of Blogging: Protecting Yourself and Your Content, starting at 8pm Central on Sunday, May 21st!

We’ll have a slightly different format for this #Blogchat. Since I know many of you will have specific legal questions in regards to blogging, we’ll split the conversation into two 3-minute blocks:

8:00-8:30 PM – We’ll cover Protecting Your Content. This will include how to copyright your content, what to do if someone steals your content, etc.  Kerry has already written a great post on this here.

8:30-9:00 PM – We’ll cover Protecting Yourself. This will include discussing proper disclosure of sponsors and ads around your content, etc.  Kerry has also written a great post about this on her site.

 

And remember, #Blogchat is sponsored this month and next by Marketing Writing Bootcamp from Marketing Profs. Click here to learn more about the 13-class course AND get a special $200 discount just for #Blogchat participants!

Hope to see everyone at #Blogchat Sunday night at 8pm Central! Make sure you are following Kerry on Twitter and bring your legal questions about blogging!

by

The Complete Guide to Writing Useful Business Blog Content

How many times have you heard that as a business all you need to do is write ‘useful’ content for your customers?  Probably about as many times as you’ve heard that all you need to do is write ‘awesome’ posts.

The problem is that all the ‘experts’ tell you to write useful content, but don’t tell you what constitutes content that is ‘useful’.  I’ve already addressed the issue of how to write an awesome blog post, now let’s talk about how to create ‘useful’ content on your business blog.

What Exactly Is ‘Useful’ Content?

First, we need to tighten our definition of ‘useful’ content.  For the purposes of this post, useful content on a business blog is any content that creates value for both the reader AND for the content creator.  Too often, blogging businesses focus on creating useful content for itself, or its customers, but rarely does a business create content that nails both.  In short, with each post you publish on your business blog, you should be able to point to the value being created for your reader, and for your business.

An easy way to do this is to ask and answer three simple questions before you write every post:

1 – Who am I writing this post for?

2 – Why will they care?

3 – What do I want to happen after they read the post?

Answering these three questions ensures that your content will be useful for your reader (#1 and #2) and useful for your business as well (#1 and #3).

Creating Customer-Centric Content

Now let’s talk about the content-creation process.  You want to create content that is focused on the needs of your customer, not your brand.  This is one of the most basic, and misunderstood, rules of online content creation.  Many businesses believe that their blog should effectively be a dynamic website, ergo another way to promote the business.  In other words, many businesses believe a blog should basically be brochureware.  Instead, customers are used to reading blogs in order to get valuable information, which is exactly what your business should be creating via its blog.

So how do you create useful content for your customers?  Start by writing content that teaches them a skill that’s associated with the products you sell.  Instead of writing content that focuses on the product, you want to write content that focuses on how (and why) your customers use your product!  If you sell lawncare products, don’t blog about your products, blog about maintaining a beautiful lawn.  If you sell high-end audio components, don’t blog about your tweeters or woofers, blog about how to properly position speakers in your living room to create perfect acoustics.  It’s not about your products, it’s about how your customers are using your products.

So what if you sell services instead of products?  Then you want to create content that teaches your customers how to do the same services you sell.  This sounds counter-intuitive at first (Why would I want to teach my customers how to do what I do?  I’ll just lose business!), but it works because you are creating content that establishes your expertise, and makes it easier for customers to trust you.

For example, here’s a recent blog post that appeared on Sucuri’s blog:

Sucuri Blog

This blog post is designed to teach me a skill.  It’s going to teach me how to read my blog’s code and recognize when hackers have inserted malicious code that’s added malware to my blog.  Instead, all this post is going to teach me is that I have no clue how to read my blog’s code, and I need to hire an expert like Sucuri to handle that for me.  And I did, Sucuri handles security for this blog, and they are fabulous.  As I wrote about last week, good content is the best commercial for your business.  Posts like this that ‘give away’ Sucuri’s secrets are actually leading to new customers for the company.  Why?  Because this content is helping to establish Sucuri’s expertise, and validate to people like me why I should hire them to handle stuff that  I can’t do, like protect my site against malware attacks.

But How Do I Make Content That’s Useful For My Customers As Well As My Business? 

The goal for your content should be that it is consistently creating value for both your customers, and your business.  That’s a win-win, and as long as that’s happening, your customers are motivated to keep reading your posts, and your business is motivated to keep writing them.

So how do you create useful content from a business perspective?  Scroll back up and long again at the three questions I said you should ask before writing every post.  The third question is important here: What do you want to happen after someone reads your post?  What action do you want them to take?

That action is how your customers create value for you, and your content is the channel to make this possible.  For example, going back of the previous example of the post from Sucuri’s blog.  Note the banner running alongside the post to the right:

Sucuri Blog2This banner is working along with the post to help drive leads.  You’re going to read the post on spotting malicious code, you’re going to realize that Sucuri knows its stuff when it comes to Malware detection, then you’re going to see the above banner giving you a chance to learn more about Sucuri’s Malware detection and removal services.  This works because as long as you have created valuable content for your readers you have earned the right to ask for the sale.  Too many businesses want to ask for the sale without having created any value for their customers.  That rarely works, but what does work is to first create value for your customers, then ask them for their attention in presenting a relevant sales pitch.  Relevant is the key, in the above example, Sucuri created content that was valuable to its readers, then married a relevant call to action to that content.  A banner about malware-removal services makes sense next to an informative post about spotting malicious code that’s been inserted into a blog’s code.  A banner ad for an automotive salvage yard, does not.

So before you write a blog post, ask and answer these three questions:

1 – Who am I writing this post for?  Current customers?  Potential customers?  New donors?  New partners?  Current partners?  Each audience is different and has different needs.  Tailor your content for the audience you are writing for.

2 – Why will they care?  This is where you really address whether or not your post will be useful to your readers.  Think about what value this post will create for your readers.  Will it teach them a new skill?  Will it solve a problem for them?  By putting yourself in your reader’s shoes, you are creating content that creates value for them.  Which leads to…

3 – What do you want to happen after they read the post?  This is where you really address whether or not your post will be useful to your business.  What action do you want your readers to take after reading your post?  Do you want them to contact you?  Do you want them to sign up for an email newsletter?  Do you want them to request a custom services quote?  Remember if you have created valuable content for your customers, then you have earned the right to ask for the sale.

 

The quick n dirty version is this: How do we create content that’s valuable to our readers and at the same time valuable to our business?  In a perfect world, those goals will play off each other, as they did in the above Sucuri blog post with the post and the relevant banner alongside.  Always be able to explain how the content will benefit the reader, and how it will benefit your business.  Both need to be present.

 

by

The Biggest Blogging Mistake I’ve Ever Made and Why All Engagement is Not Created Equally

2872583288_8127958300_zLast week I got an email from someone that was interested in learning more about creating a brand ambassador program for their company.  I called them and during our conversation they told me they had been doing research on brand ambassador programs and came across my blog post 10 Things to Remember When Creating a Brand Ambassador Program.  They came across this post because it’s (currently) the top Google result for the term “Brand Ambassador Program“.

The Great Blogging Lie

One of the great ‘blogging rules’ we are told is that we must always write useful content for our readers.  This is also one of the biggest blogging lies we are told.  We should absolutely create useful content for our readers, but we should also create useful content for ourselves.  Both parties have to benefit.  If I am writing useful content for you that doesn’t benefit me, then I can’t afford to keep writing that useful content.  If I am writing content that only benefits me, then you won’t stick around to read it.  The content you write has to create value for both you and your readers.

A personal example: A few years ago I was talking to a friend about my blogging and my business.  She said “I’m confused. If your target audience is companies that need help creating programs to connect with their loyal customers, why was your last blog post about how individual bloggers can make money on their blogs?”

I looked at my blog and my jaw dropped.  She was exactly right, I was so focused on writing USEFUL content for readers, but not for the readers I wanted.  Which meant that content wasn’t useful to ME because it wasn’t helping me connect with the audience that I wanted to do business with.  From that point forward I have been extremely mindful of the content I create here and making sure that it is useful, but useful for the audience *I* want to connect with.  That ensures that it is also useful to ME.

And it’s working.  Up until this year, the majority of the emails I got requesting information about working with me came from small businesses wanting to know if I could help them manage their Facebook page or Twitter account.  This is NOT the type of work I typically do, but my content was often more focused on how small businesses could better use social media.  Over the last year or so I shifted my content to focus on more brand advocacy, brand ambassadors and creating programs and structures that help companies reach their biggest fans.  Now, 90% of the email inquiries I get are from companies that want to learn more about creating similar programs within their companies.  So if you are using your blog as a tool to drive business growth, make sure you occasionally spot-check the content you are creating to make sure that it is useful to the audience you want to reach.

What Type of Engagement is Best?

The default answer that most bloggers will give you is that comments are best.  They want readers to come to their blog and comment.  And that’s fine if you are running a personal blog and want to make friends and meet like-minded individuals.  But if your blog is part of your social media marketing strategy, you need to track engagement that matters to your business. In the above example, a marketing director did a Google search for ‘brand ambassador program’ and found a post I had written on the subject.  She read the post, and instead of leaving a comment, she emailed me asking about setting up a brand ambassador program for her company.  For me, that’s the type of engagement that has value for my business.   A comment still would have value for me, as her comment would have made the post itself more interesting and it still would have given me a way to connect with her, but her contacting me directly about us working together is what I want.

Always do this simple test with your blog:  If I were to visit your blog right now for the very first time, what action would you want me to take?  Would you want me to leave a comment?  Would you want me to signup for your newsletter?  Would you want me to buy your product?  Think about what type of engagement is most important to YOU, then craft your content and experience on your blog so it encourages me to engage in that type of behavior.

So that’s my biggest business blogging mistake, what’s yours?  And if you want feel free to change names to protect the guilty!

Pic via Flickr user Peter Lindberg