Content marketing remains to be the top priority for online marketers. This means you need to do more blogging! An increasing number of businesses, including Fortune 500 companies, are engaging in blogging due to the numerous benefits it offers. Apart from driving traffic, it also improves the brand’s awareness and visibility. In fact, according to ClickZ, “Blog posts continue to drive traffic and generate impressions up to 700 days after they go live.” Moreover, businesses that do blogging receive 67 percent more leads compared to those that do not.
By 2020, the majority of customers will maintain 85 percent of their relationships without talking to any human, which clearly indicates that customers will do their own research about products/services before making a purchase decision. A great blog can influence this decision favorably. The best thing about blogging: it only costs your time and nothing else.
The above statistics show the kind of impact blogging can have on marketing campaigns. But, marketers and business owners often take blogging lightly, which is a mistake. If you want your blog to work for you, you need to avoid the following pitfalls:
- Irregular Blogging
Creating a blog post everyday can be cumbersome, but you need to maintain consistency. It is, therefore, important that you maintain an editorial calendar. An editorial calendar helps you plan the content strategy – choose topics that you want to cover, decide when you need to post on the blog, and do a lot more.
The obvious question that arises is: how often should you blog? The bad news is there is no definite answer to this question; the good news is you can determine it yourself. The frequency of blogging depends upon your niche and how frequently your readers want to read something new. For instance, if you own a real estate business similar to Arivify, posting about 10 to 11 blogs per month can be enough. The secret is not to overwhelm your readers with too many fresh posts, but not keep them waiting either.
- Being Too Boring (or Promotional)
While the ultimate aim of blogging is to improve your business, avoid making this too obvious. Blogging is not meant for direct marketing, there are other platforms to do so. Blogging should be done with the aim to educate the audience (about the kinds of products and services you offer) and offer value. The audience should be able to find solutions to their problems.
Create interesting posts that give your readers a reason to come back again. Write ‘How-to’ blogs or posts offering helpful tips. Remember, you must choose an attractive headline to attract more clicks. You can write a post titled, ‘Make a Million Dollar in a Month,’ but make sure to offer interesting and unique information that makes your post stand out among other posts with similar titles. If the readers click on your post and find the same content being repeated, they may never return to your blog again.
- Not Prioritizing Influencer Marketing
Think influencer marketing is just a marketing buzzword? Businesses generate $6.50 for every $1 invested in influencer marketing, as per Convince and Convert. A recent survey reveals, “84 percent of marketers plan on executing at least one influencer marketing campaign during the next 12 months.”
Influencers in your niche can make a big impact on your blogging efforts. You can either request a popular influencer from your niche to write a guest post for your blog, link to your blog, or mention your blog in one of his/her blogs/posts. This increases the credibility of your business and puts your brand under the relevant audiences’ radar.
Research the top influencers in your niche and engage with them. But remember influencers will never be willing to link to blogs with thin content, so it is important to maintain the quality of your posts. Create high-quality and valuable posts before approaching influencers.
- Ignoring Visual Content
Another big mistake that marketers make is focus on creating textual content (only) for their business blogs. Content in any format can be great and this includes videos, infographics, images, and white papers, among others. In fact, visual content has more impact on readers than plain text.
Visual data has been the most important form of content, according to 37 percent of marketers. In fact, video content will be the biggest driver of traffic in 2017 and beyond. Moreover, “4 times as many consumers would rather watch a video about a product than read about it,” according to Animoto.
Therefore, you are making a big mistake and losing out readers if you are not focusing on creating visual content. People consume content in various ways, so it is best to re-purpose content into different formats such as PDFs, infographics, videos, slideshows, etc. This will also help you circulate the content on various platforms that support the specific type of content.
- Failing to Promote Content
So, you have written a great piece of content, but what good will it do if it does not reach the right audience?
Experts recommend engaging in aggressive promotion of the blog in order to increase its visibility and expand its reach. Make sure the content is SEO-friendly as well. Blend the targeted keywords naturally into the content and include appropriate links. Interlinking pages (from the blog) also helps. Add appropriate call-to-actions wherever necessary.
Make sure everything you do increases the value of the post and make it more interesting.
Conclusion
Your business can benefit immensely from blogging, but only if you can avoid the above blogging sins. Create meaningful posts for your audience and offer high levels of engagement and you’ll see the performance graph go up. Whether you have built a brand new blog or have been running one for years, avoiding the sins mentioned above will help you achieve your marketing goals quickly.
If you’d like to add a few more things, we’d love to know about them in the comments section!
Author Bio: Mansi Dhorda works at E2M – A Digital Marketing Agency. A social media enthusiast, she is well-versed in content marketing and other internet marketing niches. You can interact with her on Twitter. Her Twitter ha