How to use blogging to grow your business and increase your search engine optimization.

1. Bridget Gibbons, Director of Digital, InspiriaMedia
Business Blogging October 2016

2. Topics
❖ What is a blog
❖ Why blogging is important
❖ Target markets for blogging
❖ What to write – content strategies
❖ How long should your blog posts be?
❖ Make a schedule
❖ Tips for increasing blog SEO
❖ Ideas for blog posts
❖ Great headlines
❖ Cross promoting your blog with Social Media
❖ ROI to measure blog success

3. What is a blog?
❖ Blog = ‘web log’
❖ A website or part of a website updated with new
content periodic basis.
❖ Usually maintained by an individual or individuals
with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of
events, or other material such as graphics or video.
❖ Can be setup within minutes online using WordPress or
other blogging software.

8. Why blogging is important
❖ Blogging should be an integral part of your
online content marketing
❖ Drive traffic to your website
❖ Increase your SEO/SERP
❖ Positing your brand as an industry leader
❖ Develop better customer relations

9. Drive traffic to your website
❖ Post links to your blog articles (with great images) on all
your social sites – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
❖ LinkedIn Long Form Published Posts
❖ Give your followers a reason to click through to your
website.
❖ Include links in your blog articles to other pages on
your website.

10. Long-Form Published Posts

11. Long-Form Published Posts
❖ LinkedIn members can publish long-form blog posts
❖ Publishing allows you to further establish your
professional identity.
❖ When you publish a long-form post on LinkedIn:
❖ Your original content becomes part of your
professional profile. It is displayed on the Posts
section of your LinkedIn profile.
❖ It's shared with your connections and followers.

12. Increase your SEO/SERP
❖ Blogs provide you the opportunity to add fresh content to
your website. This makes Google happy and you will be
rewarded.
❖ Identify the keywords that you want to be found for. Use
these keywords and related expressions in your posts.
❖ Blogging regularly about your business, industry, product
or customer lifestyle will help increase your search
results.

15. Position your brand as an industry leader
❖ Well written articles demonstrate your
company as an industry leader
❖ Post on topics that resonate with your target
market and show your knowledge.
❖ You’ll build trust.

18. Develop better customer relations
❖ Blogs provide another way to deepen your connections
with your customers.
❖ Clients will be able to get to know your business /
products from your website.
❖ Be sure to respond to comments and interact with your
customers.

20. Target market for blogging
❖ You need to know your target market.
❖ This gives you insight about what your customers want to
read.
❖ Ways to determine your target:
❖ Review your customer base
❖ Check out your competition
❖ Analyze your products / services
❖ List out demographics of your target
❖ Define market segments

21. Review your current customers
❖ Who is currently buying your product or service? Why
do they buy from you? Do they have similar interests or
characteristics? Are there other potential customers like
them?
❖ Analyze who your best customers are – what do they
want to know about?

22. Facebook Insights

23. LinkedIn Business Page

24. LinkedIn Follower Demographics

25. Twitter Analytics

26. Twitter Analytics

27. Check out your competition
❖ Look at who your competition is marketing to and what
is their approach.

28. Analyze your products / services
❖ Know your product! How is it used? Who would want
and need it?
❖ You can target some of your blog posts to new markets
by explaining the value of your product.

29. List out demographics
❖ Age
❖ Location
❖ Gender
❖ Income level
❖ Education
❖ Marital status
❖ Etc.

30. Define market segments
❖ Different products/services may have different
segments
❖ Segment out by geography, types of businesses

31. What to write?
❖ Determine themes that will support your goals
❖ Show industry leadership? Drive traffic to your website? Develop
better customer relations?
❖ General content themes:
❖ Solutions for common problems
❖ News updates
❖ Ways to make life better
❖ Points of view
❖ Relevant Videos
❖ Integrate these general themes with relevant topics

35. How long should blogs be?
❖ Typical blog posts are 300 – 800 words.
❖ Depends on how much you have to say.
❖ Typically businesses should blog 1 or 2 times per
month.
❖ It’s ok to keep them short but make sure to add value.
❖ Include eye catching images – pixabay.com

36. Make a schedule
❖ Consistency is key.
❖ Having a schedule increases readership and also keeps
you on task.
❖ Establish a routine – reinforces your trustworthiness.
❖ How you schedule will depend on who is doing your
writing. Many companies write themselves or
outsource.

38. Increasing blog SEO
❖ Blogging strategically – use your keywords naturally in
your writing.
❖ Boost your blog SEO:
❖ Target your content
❖ Google Keyword Planner
❖ Link to other sites
❖ Link to internal pages on your website
❖ Use alt text

39. Target your content
❖ Using your content themes and knowledge of your
target market, you’ll be using the keywords your
customers are searching on.

40. Google Keyword Planner
❖ https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner
❖ Enter a list of keywords and Google will give you the
number of local searches per month on that term.
Google can also make suggestions of related keywords.

42. Link to other sites
❖ Referencing other blog posts is great for SEO.
❖ Can also help create networking opportunities and can
develop into guest blogging opportunities.

43. Guest Blogging

45. Link to internal pages on your site
❖ Link to other landing pages on your site. If you readers
are interested in your posts they’ll likely be interested in
your products.
❖ Makes it easy to navigate through.

46. Use alt text
❖ Alt text allows the search engines to read your images.
❖ This can be added in your blog’s media library.

48. Themes for posts
❖ Be Useful
❖ Be Human
❖ Be Generous
❖ Be Promotional
❖ Be Controversial
❖ Be Entertaining
❖ Be Timely
❖ Be Engaging

49. Be Useful
❖ List Post
❖ How-To Post
❖ Case Study
❖ Problem / Solution Post
❖ SAQ Post – Questions customers don’t ask but should
● Checklist Post
● Ultimate Guide Post
● Definition Post
● Series Post
● Definition Posts
● FAQ Post

50. Be Human
❖ Inspirational Post
❖ Holiday Post
❖ Personal Experience Post
❖ Behind the Scenes Post
❖ Off-Topic Post
❖ Rant Post – not for everyone

51. Be Generous❖ Profile Post
❖ Interview Post
❖ Link Round Up Post – gather links your customers will
find useful
❖ Quote Post – gather quotes from influencers across a
specific topic
● Best of the Web Post – links to
content, tools, and other resources
● Pick of the Week - single piece of
content, tool or other resource that
you link to and describe
● People to Follow Post

52. Be Promotional
❖ Comparison Post – you to your competitor
❖ Project Showcase Post
❖ Company Update Post
❖ Presentation Post
❖ Product Update Post
❖ Product Tip Post

53. Be Controversial – make sure it works for your brand
❖ What If Post – what would happen if…
❖ Debate Post – write about your opinion on an issue, or
write with someone to show both sides of an issue
❖ Attack Post – be careful
❖ Prediction Post
❖ Reaction Post – react to content created by someone else
❖ Embed Reactor – embed video, presentation or other
content that is already popular and add your reaction

54. Be Entertaining
❖ Story Post – create content that tells a story
❖ Satire Post – be humorous through irony or extreme
exaggeration
❖ Cartoon Post – create weekly or monthly cartoons
❖ Meme Post - create your own meme or pull together a
curated set

55. Be Timely
❖ Review Post – review product, event or anything as long as
it’s newsworthy
❖ Survey Post – survey your audience about a trending topic
❖ News Post – create content on events as they are happening
❖ Trends Post – predict a trend
❖ Issue Post – create content about issues that affect your
audience

56. Be Engaging
❖ Question Post – answer questions your audience asks
❖ Answer Post – ask a question and allow your audience to
answer
❖ Challenge Post – pose a challenge to your audience
❖ Customer Showcase Post
❖ Feebie Post – allow your audience to get access to a relevant
giveaway
❖ Contest Post

58. How to make successful headlines
❖ Writing a catchy headline is key
❖ Write a headline and then rewrite it a few times –
practice makes perfect
❖ Use numbers – people love headlines with number
❖ Keep it short – under 75 characters, easy to skim
❖ Ask a question – pique readers interest
❖ Make it a how-to – readers like to learn

59. Cross-promote your blog
❖ Leverage your blog posts by promoting them on your social media
sites
❖ Facebook – post a link to your blog on your FB page.
❖ Twitter – tweet about you blog post. Keep the title interesting, be sure
to use haashtags
❖ LinkedIn – write a short up to your contacts and post your blog, post
to groups you belong to also
❖ Email – weekly or monthly e-newsletters consisting of your best posts
❖ Share buttons – make sure to have social sharing buttons

60. ROI of Blogging
❖ You need to measure your ROI
❖ Numbers of subscribers – easy to track
❖ Number of shares – helps you know what’s of interest to your
readers
❖ Number of comments – encourage readers to comment. More
comments the better.
❖ Increase traffic to blog or website – set-up google analytics –
Referrals, etc.
❖ Increased leads through email

61. Thank you!
bgibbons@inspiriamedia.com
Inspiriamedia.com
914-318-0348