8 Common Mistakes in Blog Marketing
Blogs are one of the best tools I know for online marketing, serving as the centerpiece for inbound marketing campaigns. And it's no secret, either. Many companies have embraced blog marketing as an important part of their overall marketing mix.
Unfortunately, quite a few of these organizations are making simple mistakes, seriously undermining the effectiveness of their blog marketing campaigns.
By simply knowing what they are, these errors can be easily avoided. In that spirit, here are 8 ways to go wrong with your blog marketing.
Common Mistakes in Blog Marketing
- Setting up your blog on another domain. Free blogging services such as Wordpress, Tumblr and Blogger are terrific, with powerful features that make blogging a dream. For your company's blog, however, it's critical to host the blog on the same domain as your website. That's because a big goal of blog marketing is to drive traffic to your site, where visitors can become interested in your products and services.
- Burying your subscription options. One of the great advantages of blogs is they can automatically send posts to readers, either via email or RSS feed subscriptions. It's important, then, to make sure your subscription options can be easily found. Make them big and above the fold so visitors can subscribe without having to scroll and look for them.
- Ignoring keywords when choosing topics. Blogs are powerful search engine optimization (SEO) vehicles for many reasons. Thus, your blog posts should be optimized around the keywords you want to emphasize for your business. In this way, your blog posts become signposts for your company, found when users conduct Google searches relevant to your products and services. Keywords should drive your blog topics.
- Writing about yourself. Blog posts should be useful to your readers, helping them in their own endeavors. Posts that simply advertise your company's products or services are not similarly useful to readers and will not entice them to spend time with your content or share it with others. When you sit down to write, keep your readers' needs in mind.
- Drafting posts that are too long. Your posts don't need to be exhaustive explorations of the topics you are examining. They should simply give readers a taste for new ideas that can be useful to them. Readers should be able to consume your posts quickly and easily. In addition to keeping length short, use lots of bullets, numbers and headlines to make reading even easier.
- Underestimating the importance of images. Picures and graphics make blog posts more appealing and, therefore, should be included with each post you write. A great image can draw readers into a post in a way that text alone cannot. Just look at how newspapers and magazines use images. No reason why your blog can't do the same thing.
- Blogging without a schedule. Sticking to a rigid publication schedule is not the point of this exercise. Consistency is. If you are scheduled to post every Monday and Wednesday, the key is to make sure you get out posts twice a week. Readers will get used to hearing from you and the collective SEO value of all the posts you create will only grow over time.
- Forgetting about social media promotion. Once you've drafted and published your post, get the most out of it. Sharing it on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ will expose your work to new readers. Make sure to have social media sharing links available on each post to ease the process for your visitors.
Avoid these common mistakes and your blog marketing efforts will bear fruit, driving traffic to your site and allowing you to capture leads and generate new customers.
