introducing

Strategic Blogging for Business

Presented at The South Carolina Womens’ Business Center

Why Blog?

Companies that blog have

434% more indexed pages. And companies with more

indexed pages get far more leads.

--Search Engine Strategies Conference, NYC 2013

Why Blog?

Blogging is an essentialmarketing component for

your business

Why Blog?

• Improve Search Rank• Build for Long-Tail Content• Community and Market Education• Communicate High Trust Content• Build Lists, Conversions and Reach• Build Brand Value and Equity

--Search Engine Watch

Control of Message

You are a self-publisherNew earned mediaGain share of voice

Blogging Steps

1. Platform Decision2. Platform Setup3. Research4. Plan5. Create6. Post7. Promote8. Evaluate/Adjust

Technology Required

Self-hosted blog on your domain, if you want to drive website traffic.

Don’t compete with your own siteby blogging on external platforms

Alternatives to Self-hosted

• WordPress.com• Blogger.com• Tumblr.com

Why strategy?

If you put effort into planning your

marketing and content strategy you

you’ll have a higher success rate and also continue to execute based on a strategy,

versus reacting to what is wrong due to lack of organization.

Strategy

Before you deep dive into planning and executing your strategy consider and answer these critical questions:– How do you make money as a company?– Why do you make money in those ways?– What are you biz development goals?– What questions can you answer, problems can

you solve, or understanding can you add?

Research

Blog Posts

Business Goals

What your customers care about

What you care about

What you blog about

What do you post about?

Let’s Plan-Getting Focused• Story: Human, real. Connects with people. What’s

yours? • Message Development: What will you say in what

formats. Must fit your customers (photos, videos, text)

• Tone & Voice: Company persona, “voice” of person writing the posts

• Planning: Content calendars, trends to deliver timely content when that topic or idea is in the top of mind.

4 Tips for the Planning PhaseMore planning = More success

• SERP Data: Get keywords from that that people are looking for. Find ideas for what people want to know.

• Build a long-term and regular content plan.– Long-Term Content Plan: Use Google Trends to compare products and primary searches.– Regular Content Plan: What trend terms are big the past days and figure out what is

trending right now that your company can take advantage of.• Create a publishing schedule so you can see what content is going live when. The

key is to plan your marketing according to your content.• Measure your efforts to see what was successful and learn to make more money.

--Search Engine Watch

Research

• Consumer Trends– Search the professional associations, Google

Trends, Web for reports, analysis, surveys about topics or services your customer needs

– Note what is important to consumers using your products and services

• Take Away Tip: It’s all about the customer!

Research

• Competitors– Keywords

• Google Keyword External Tool– SEO results– Point of Difference

• Take Away Tip: Know your competition.

Research Examples

Live, real sources• Digg :: Cupcake• Storify :: Cupcake• Google Trends :: Cupcake• Twitter Search :: Cupcake• Alexa :: Cupcakes

To find this, search for “Google Keyword External Tool”

Plan Blog Categories

Cupcakes

Chocolate Birthday Decorating

Parent Category Child or

Secondary Categories

Plan ‘Tags’- Micro Categories

DarkChocolate

WhiteChocolate

MilkChocolate

ChildCategoryChocolate

Tags

Content Development

• Photos• Videos• Text / written articles• Curated content

Create Editorial Calendar

Topic Mon Tues Wed Thurs Fri Sat SunCakes Birthday

CupcakesChocolate Cupcakes

Desserts How to decorate cupcakes with real flowers

Favorite Milk Chocolate Cupcake Recipes

Superhero Birthday Cupcakes

Checklists & Tools

• Our planning document.• Our list of what to do to make sure you’ve

optimized your blog posts.

Publicize Your Posts

Questions?