Blog posts are an excellent way for SMB’s to promote their brand. We know that companies that blog get far more traffic than those that don’t. Presuming that your website is half decent, a portion of that traffic will convert into paying customers.
Unfortunately, many SMB’s are still leaving money on the table. Blog posts shouldn’t be a corporate ‘checkbox.’ You don’t just ‘do’ them and leave it at that.
You should be using them as a tool and getting the most from each one as is physically possible.
Use them for outreach
If you’re using your blog posts as a way to create amazing content, then you should be able to promote it.
One of the easiest ways to publicize your content is through outreach. You can search on Google for bloggers, influencers, and websites that are likely to be interested in the type of content that you’re writing.
If you send all of those people an email letting them know that your content exists, there’s a good chance that a couple will write about it on their websites.
We can take that a step further, maybe you have something that you can offer them to convince them to write about it.
Create a graphic or video
One thing that we know performs particularly well is graphics and video. Most people are comfortable writing, but they might not know how to create a video or design a graphic.
Creating custom graphics for you blog post adds a lot of extra value to it. It also makes it more likely that others will want to share it and link to it on their websites.
Even if you created a basic list post that is relevant to your industry, jumping in front of a camera and speaking it out adds a lot of extra value. Many people prefer to watch and listen rather than read. It’s also much easier for other websites to include a video in their next content piece than it is for them to quote your article.
You can make Infographics with programs like Canva. It’s not particularly difficult, and you don’t have to have any design experience.
They have templates that you can use to create your infographics and website headers. Then, you can share these in your outreach as a little extra value. These graphics will help to convince other sites to share your content.
You could even go a step further and create a unique graphic or infographic for a particular site that you want to publicize your business. Make sure to include the companies logo and URL on the graphic and this should boost your conversion rate on your outreach.
Offer to guest post
If you don’t want to create graphics or a video, you could simply offer to guest post. Most marketers cold email bloggers and ask to guest post. This tactic can be useful, but opening with a content share is much softer and might help.
All you need to do is email the blogger or website to show them your content. If they like it, you can ask them if you could write a post on their website about a similar topic.
In this post, you’ll be able to include a link back to your content and possibly include a bio at the end. That website will go on and share the post on social media, sending hundreds or thousands of people to a page with your URL and brand included.
Leverage non-competing industries
Some industries can be tough to market. They might be obscure and not have a lot of bloggers or websites, making it tough to get your content in front of others.
In these cases, it’s best to lean on other industries and try to find crossovers.
For example; if your company sells allergy medication then you might find it difficult to find any websites that will let you talk about allergies and your product.
However, if you created a post about defeating your allergies when you’re gardening, you might find it easier to get publicity on gardening websites.
Similarly, construction workers deal with allergies from all of the dust on building sites. You could write a post about the dangers of dust and how they can fight it with allergy medications.
Conclusion
Blogging is a must for any business that wants to generate any serious amount of traffic to their website. However, you must commit to it. That means that you need to leverage your blog posts to create marketing opportunities. It’s not enough to only publish the content and forget about it.
Content marketing is the best technique for securing online publicity and backlinks to your website. Using it to spice up your blog posts and get them in front of the right people is a sure way to increase your traffic and therefore your sales.