Truth Bomb: Businesses must have a social media presence to be relevant and connected with the people they mean to serve. If you don't, you are DEFINITELY in the minority. To be honest, not having at least a Facebook page for your business is kind of weird and out of touch if you think about it. And yet….even with the social media games, selfies, fun and overall decreasing attention span from nearly every person online, blogging is still very much relevant.
When you know the reasons behind the relevance of blogging, you'll want to breathe life into your blog starting YESTERDAY!
1. Be In The Right Place
If you're not up to chasing your prospects and knocking door to door looking for them (and at YDF I definitely don't recommend this 🙂 ), then you'll have to simply accept where your audience already resides—social media—specifically (and likely) Facebook . The New York Times reports that the average person spends 1/6 of their time on Facebook .
Now…writing blogs is one thing…but getting it front of your prospective audience is another. Understand social media and where your market resides and then put yourself (by way of your blog) in the right place.
2. Repurpose With Purpose
If you know you must have a social media presence, then the next questions is… what will I post and share to keep my social media channel active? Short answer: BLOG. Long Answer: Blog and repurposed blogs by way of pulling shorter snippets from your blog and creating inspirational and informational branded image quotes. Create Tweetables and link back to your blog. Blogs have the topic already built in for you to reference during a Facebook LIVE stream (or any other live stream you choose to use) and you can redirect your audience back to your blog. All of this becomes valuable and SHAREABLE content (naturally attracting and building your audience).
Social media craves CONTENT…what better way to fulfill this positively than with your blog and repurposing your blog.
3. Branding
What is your brand? How can you get that brand in front of your audience? How will you become familiar and recognizable? Bottom line…traffic to your website, service, product, or message is non-existent without your help. Blogging is one of the BEST ways to get your brand in front of your prospective audience (go back and read #1).
Blogging is content marketing and it provides VALUE . That's huge and it offers a genuine opportunity for exchange (their time to read and you get to share value). The more you blog the more you become relied upon for content and rise as the expert. Converting readers to clients because YOU are familiar and trustworthy.
It's important to build a personal brand because it's the only thing you're going to have. Your reputation online, and in the new business world is pretty much the game, so you've got to be a good person. You can't hide anything, and more importantly, you've got to be out there at some level. ~Gary Vaynerchuk
4. Bigger Picture and Better Understanding
You can use your blog to gather A LOT more information giving you a bigger picture about your business that is supporting you. With a blog you can offer a way to exchange and communicate with your readers through the comments. The comments can help you understand what they're responding to, helping you create more of the content they want.
Keeping a steady blogging schedule will enable you to collect and compare data in your analytics. You'll see which blogs are preferred (helping you understand what they want to read). Analytics will help you better identify the pain points from your readers and answer their need helping you define your niche with more precision.
5. Consider Your Competitors
If your competitors are writing blogs, why aren't you?
If your competitor are notwriting blogs, why don't you?
Either way, writing a blog will ALWAYS give you an edge (competitor or not). The key here is to set a blogging schedule and to blog regularly. Suffice it to say, nearly EVERY MAJOR PURCHASE starts with a search on Google, first. Blogging will take you far by way of SEO ranking, making you more SEARCHABLE.
By no means is that an excuse or reason to inject your blog with keywords to help with searches. First and foremost (ALWAYS) is QUALITY and VALUE in each blog you write. Your readers will come to recognize, appreciate and rely on you for it.
Create content that teaches. You can't give up. You need to be consistently awesome. ~Neil Patel
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