These days, every business needs a blog – but getting ROI from your blog can be tougher than it looks. To start with, you need a clear idea what a blog is intended to do for you. Are blog readers supposed to join your mailing list? Contact sales reps? Download content?
Once you understand your blog’s place in your marketing efforts, you’re ready to retool it so it can provide the results you want. Three simple techniques can help you increase your blog ROI with tweaks on, around, and outside your blog.
Let’s take a look:
1) On Your Blog, Optimize and Interconnect
Look at your recent blog posts. Are they providing value for the intended reader? Do they help your prospects answer burning questions or take a step closer to reaching their goals? Make sure each blog post is interesting, informative, and above all, focused on prospect needs.
Then, take a good look at your posts. Do they use keywords effectively while still reading well? Are things like blog titles, metadata, and headers optimized? Optimizing each post can help search engines connect the right readers with your message at the right time.
Last, but not least, are your blogs interconnected? Is it easy for readers to find other posts that might be of interest to them? Does each post end with a clear call to action so users know what step to take next? Even if it’s simple, most people won’t do it unless told.
2) Around Your Blog, Promote and Build Trust
Outside your blog, social promotion is an important way to find and activate the prospects who are most likely to take action on your blog – and deliver the ROI you need. Make sure your business has a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn and a daily sharing strategy.
Sharing is important, but how can you motivate high-value prospects to engage? Build trust by proactively engaging users in conversation about the topics around your brand. Develop online communities that allow your readers to get immediate value before you make a sale.
3) Outside Your Blog, Analyze and Iterate
One of the biggest parts of blog ROI is figuring out what works and what doesn’t. That requires analytics, software to show you how users get to your blog and how they interact with it once they’re there. This helps you zero in on the content users are most interested in.
From there, it gets easier and easier to focus your efforts on the things that really work. Use tools like A/B split testing to enhance the impact of your blog’s headlines and your product landing pages. Soon, you’ll see the increase in your blog ROI that you’ve been craving.