Business Blogging: 5 Lessons Learned and Strategies DiscoveredJoe Pulizzi
May 12, 2008
In celebration of my 100th post on the Junta42, Content Marketing Revolution blog, I
thought I'd review a few observations and strategies I've discovered relevant to
blogging, and to delivering ongoing valuable business content to customers and
prospects.
- Focus on great content.
Before launching the blog, most
bloggers I talked with pressed the importance of frequency in blogging. "Post
as much as you can," they said. So, when I started, my goal was to post at least
once a day or more. I average about four posts per week. Although I still
believe in the importance of frequency, I now believe that "less
posting, more substance" is a much more effective way to build traffic
and loyalty. Make sure what you are writing is something important and not just
random musings. This may seem like common sense, but a lot of bloggers I've read
just ramble on, making no point on certain days between great posts (let me stop
here before I ramble). This "more content substance" strategy is something I've
noticed from Scott Karp on the Publishing2 blog and Brian Clark over at Copyblogger.
- Leverage social media sites.
After a few weeks/months,
traffic starts to come in from the search engines. SEO is extremely important,
but just as or more important is leveraging the social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Sphinn, etc. Also look into niche social media
sites like Small Business
Brief that are specific to your area of expertise. Depending on the content
of the day, social media sites can and will drive more traffic to your sites.
- Promote a call to action - Getting Names!
Whenever
possible, be sure you promote your RSS feed or email feed in and around your
blog. Some users may come to your site for the first time, enjoy your post, but
then leave. Your goal is to keep talking with them. Make sure they see your
feeds! Getting readers through RSS and email is MUCH MORE important in the long-run than search engine traffic. Look at it this way...if
you completely focus all your attention on search engine traffic or social media
sites, and then one day all that dried up or they changed their algorithms,
you'd be dead. If you have a loyal following of readers that willingly receive
your material every day, you never have to depend on outside traffic alone.
- Write at least one "pillar" article per week.
A pillar
article is a piece of evergreen content that is timeless, and also works to
teach your readers something about a product or industry. They tend to be
longer, and if written correctly, tend to generate a lot of links to your post.
I worked for 2-3 days on 42
Content Building Ways to Attract and Retain Customers. It was designed as a
key pillar article. I have about 15 now that generate the majority of my
traffic. If I made the time, I'd write two pillar articles per week.
- Identify the top 20 blogs in your space and get active.
Once you identify the sites, begin to comment on posts, as well as use
TrackBacks when you talk about their post in your blog. This is something I've
done a bit of, but haven't dedicated as much time as I should have. That said,
the little I have done has created great relationships with other bloggers, as
well as a good amount of traffic to my site. I'm now working with two other
bloggers on projects that resulted from my posting comments on their site. This
will be a key effort of mine over the next six months.
These are the key five that I have found important in my blogging. For more
exceptional blogging tips, check out ProBlogger's
Blogging Tips for Beginners (by the way, I used a TrackBack for this post).
For more tips on setting up a successful business blog, check
out this post from The Lonely Marketer.
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