When you run an search engine marketing agency for small businesses like I do, you focus a lot of time on content marketing, specifically blog marketing. In this post, I want to share with you my list of 8 deadly blog marketing sins to avoid at all times when posting blogs for your business.
#1. Not having a blogging strategy. You don’t have a strategy. Enough said.
#2. No consistency. If you’re not blogging on a consistent basis – say like once a week or twice a month – then this strategy probably won’t be worth your while. You may as well take your marketing energy and dollars and use them elsewhere. You really need to be consistent for this type of strategy to work. If you are able to blog more than twice a month, that’s awesome. You’re only going to enhance your credibility with the search engines and with your readers. It’s just going to take a little bit more time.
#3. Weak on-page search engine optimization for each blog post. Every one of your blog posts needs to be treated just like a website page. This means each one of your blog posts needs to be pointed in the right direction by targeting the appropriate keyword phrases that you or your marketing team discovered during the research phase of your marketing campaign. It’s incredibly important to make sure you have proper on-page SEO for each blog post. In addition, you want to make sure you assign the proper blog category(s) and tags determined for your blog post. If you’re confused about what blog categories and tags for your blog are, the best way I can explain it that blog categories are like the chapters in a book and the tags work like the index of a book. Hope that makes sense.
#4. Having unrealistic expectations about what blog marketing will bring your business. If you’re looking for blog marketing to be an instant lead generation strategy where your phone’s just going to start blowing up, think again. This is really more about relationship building, list building and caring. Your overall goal is to become an authentic, credible, expert resource. Create a solid connection with your readers helping to build trust in your business so they want to join your company’s email list and get your VIP discounts and other important information you have for them.
#5. Your blog posts are too short. The rule of thumb that we go by in our marketing firm is to write blog posts over 500 words because you want to please the search engines. This is more of a search engine optimization strategy than anything else. Use this opportunity to drive depth into topics that you cover on your blog and to provide great value and solutions to your target market. You will be thanked for it by your readers all over the web.
#6. Not having a clear, direct call-to-action that makes sense at the end of each blog post. Not having a clear, concise call-to-action at the end of your posts is a big problem we see all over the web. Typically you’re not going to insert a “Call 888-888-8888 if you need service.” It may be more along the lines of giving them a link to check out more pages on your website or to subscribe to your VIP email subscriber list. That’s the type of call-to-action you want. Or “if you like this blog post, go share it on your social media page.” That’s the type of call-to-action that you’re looking to use when it comes to your blog marketing strategy.
#7. Not having an aesthetically pleasing blog post layout. Remember, we want to appeal to both the person who reads every word on the page, and also the person that skims through your blog post. You can do this by adding sub-headlines, bullet points, numbered lists, bold and italics, images, etc. so readers can grasp at a glimpse the purpose of your blog post.
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