Do This Not That Marketing

Marketing Advice, Grow Your Business

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WordPress Plugins You Should Consider

If you’re using WordPress (and you should probably be), you might be wondering about which plugins to use. I know there are a zillion choices and each one seems to offer something a little different. As I was researching for my own blog, I came across this article: 14 Essential WordPress Plugins for Content Creators.

I’ve used Google Analytics and Yoast SEO for quite awhile and recommend them both highly. If you haven’t installed them both, I would recommend you start there. I am installing several others, including iControlWP and EditFlow Calendar, and I will check back in and let you know what I learn along the way.

If you have blogging questions or tips, please feel free to comment below or email me.

Happy blogging!

 

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Create a Blog Publication Calendar

Blogging is a great way to educate your audience, promote your business, and establish/demonstrate your expertise. One way to keep up with blogging is to create a blog publication calendar. A blog publication calendar will take into consideration important upcoming events, product launches, and other issues, helping you work in advance to keep your blog full of interesting and relevant content.

All successful bloggers have three things in common:

1) They post blogs regularly

2) They post unique content

3) They post audience-focused content

If you do at least these three things, you can have a super successful blog. You can have a blog that attracts an audience who wants to read what you have to say and take your advice, and who comes back for more on a regular basis.

In order to make a blog publication calendar, you need to first make a few determinations such as:

* How Often You Will Blog – First determine how often you plan to publish a blog post. This could be daily, weekly or whatever your choice. This helps you know how often you’ll need to write blog posts, and when you’ll need to publish them or schedule them. I am committed to blogging three times a week, at least for the foreseeable future.

* Who You’re Blogging For – Write down a few different personas for your audience so that you can know to whom you’re writing the blog posts. It can help you keep focused better if you can look at these personas when you are ready to write. I write for small business owners that are busy running their businesses, people that aren’t marketing experts but realize how important marketing is to their bottom line. That’s because that’s who I was when I started my business.

* Which Blogging Categories You’ll Use – Depending upon your niche, you’ll need to choose some categories that a post will go under when you blog. Spreading out the categories can help you come up with more interesting content. For example, if you have a blog about Labrador Retrievers, some categories might be Rescued Labs, Feeding, Exercising, Training, Chocolate Labs and so forth. It’s important that you don’t try to squeeze a bunch of categories into every blog. It will make it difficult for Google to know what to make of your content.

* Upcoming Events or Product Launches – On the calendar you may want to list any upcoming events related to your niche. For example, is there a conference coming up, or are you launching (or someone else) a new product that is perfect for your niche? Keeping up with these dates can help you create content that will entice readers to buy the item at launch.

* When Industry News Is Released – You’ll want to keep up with the industry news, too, so it will help you to know when the different online magazines or blogs release new information for you to use. For example, if the state of your industry is released every quarter, keep that in mind as you create the publication calendar so you can include important information.

Once you have determined this information, start brainstorming content ideas to match upcoming events, product launches, and industry news. In between those types of blog posts, you can put other types of posts up such as educational, informational, interesting and fun blog posts. Put these ideas on your calendar so that you can then use the calendar to generate a list of timely titles and subject matter for your blog posts. I have used several blog publication calendars but currently I use my Google calendar to keep everything organized.

If you have questions about a blog publication calendar, or blogging generally, please comment below or email me.

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Eight Reasons to Keep Blogging

Blogging Matters.

OK. I admit it. I get busy. I run two businesses.  I volunteer. And sometimes I struggle with blogging. It falls into what Stephen Covey referred to as Quadrant II activities: Important but Not Urgent. (By the way, you can read more about Stephen Covey’s Time Management Matrix here.). The fact remains, though, blogging is a very important tool for marketing any business today. Not only can blogging build a business, it can also become a business. Blogging is essentially writing articles about a particular topic of interest based on the subject or niche of the website where the blog resides. But it does so much more and there are so many reasons to keep blogging.

1. To Tell Your Brand’s Story – Blogging is a simple way to tell the story of your brand through case studies, historical information, and by sharing data. People love reading about how you got started and why.

2. To Establish Expertise – If you want people to realize that you’re an expert in your niche, blogging regularly about the topic is an excellent way to do so. If you can blog three to five times a week about a niche, you’re obviously an expert.

3. To Attract New Clients – Blogging about what you do, why you do it, and how you do it will go far in creating new opportunities for getting more clients. Even if you feel as if you’re giving away all the information free on your blog, people who need the work done will still hire you.

4. To Improve Your SEO – Search engine optimization involves many factors, but one is on-page keywords that help search engines find your blog in order to send people to it who use those words to find information.

5. To Find Your Business’s Voice – As you talk about new products, services, or other issues within your niche, you are also creating a voice for your company that will carry it forth to new customers. If you’re excited about a product, your audience will be too. If you’re serious about it, your audience will be too. It’s all in word choice.

6. To Interact with Your Audience – Many people do not think of a blog as social media, but it really is. When you open up comments to your blog, it gives you a chance to interact with your audience based on the topic you want to discuss. Use that opportunity to get feedback and even for new product ideas.

7. To Use Resources Wisely – Most businesses have limited marketing budgets, and blogging uses that budget very wisely due to the amount of return you can expect on your investment. Blogging is the long game, and the blogs you post today will still be working for you a year from now if you plan appropriately. It’s all about momentum.

8. To Educate Your Audience – Blogs are an excellent way to educate your audience about problems and issues that affect them. Plus, it’s a simple way to get out news regarding solutions that you want to offer them.

Blogging will build your business faster than almost any other activity, especially if your business is an online business. If you’ve studied your audience enough to understand what they want to read, and blog as often as possible, you’ll create a lot of momentum in your business and your blog.

If you have any tips you’d like to share about how you keep blogging, please comment below.