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Many people don’t associate blogging as a form of social media, but it is. In fact, blogging can do more then your average social media platform. It drives traffic to your website, creates content for you to share and can even position you as an expert or thought leader in your field. Companies, businesses and brands of all sizes are writing and sharing content using blogs – some are using them well and some aren’t even sure where to begin. Whatever level a brand or business is at, we’re often asked the same questions while helping to jump start a blog. Today, we’re exploring three of our most frequently blogging for business questions:
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1. What are some of the best tactics to drive traffic to your blog?
Creating a blog is easy, but building a blog following can be the most difficult part of the process. Quality content within your blog is the key element to drive traffic to your blog. Knowing your target audience, and creating content that they will want to read, respond to and share, will help keep your followers engaged and drive new traffic. Also, establishing yourself as an expert in your field through thought leadership would be another way to get your blogs name out into your industry. Making sure your blog is SEO friendly, as well as using links and keywords will help your blog rank higher and be more visible on Google and other search engines. Cross-promoting your blog on multiple Social Media platforms will also increase traffic to your blog – you could also use an app like NetworkBlogs on Facebook to have your site listed on a blog directory. Guest bloggers will also drive traffic to your blog – not only having guest bloggers provide posts on your blog, but you blogging for other sites. Cross promoting your blog, even outside of your industry, will open up a new wave of readers and followers.
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2. How much time per week should you allocate to maintaining your blog? If you’re your posting frequency can’t be daily – what’s the recommended amount of posting frequency?
This question can be answered with one phrase: quality over quantity. When you’re blogging, it’s more about what your writing then how much you’re posting. However, an inconsistently updated blog can cause readers to stray from reading your blog on a regular basis. The general consensus is 3-4 times per week would be suitable for updating a blog if you can’t post daily. It is important to have a consistent stream of content flowing through your blog – keeping your readers engaged and interested is the ultimate goal. Your posts don’t need to be lengthy – short, to-the-point and action-oriented blog posts are what will keep your readers engaged and coming back for more.
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3. How do you measure the success of your blog?
This is one of the hardest questions we receive about blogging as everyone measures success differently. Some measure by the amount of followers, other by web analytics and number of page views. We think that success doesn’t have to be measured just in numbers – a blog is about building a community of followers. We’d rather have 50 core followers then 150,000 followers that never give our blog a second look. If your core audience is engaged with your blog, we’d call that a success. If you’re looking for a way to measure your own success, aside from analytics and page clicks, start with the foolproof way we discussed in a previous blog post. Create an internal list of specific goals and measurable objectives that will help you to stay on target and measure your own success.
Do you have any questions you’d like to see answered on our blog? Leave us a comment below and we might make it a blog post!
~Allyson
