A Blog About... Blogging: 7 Tips For Businesses and Bloggers
Sven Scheuermeier Via Unsplash
The Harsh Truth About Blogging
Blogging! More than just the millennial’s way to rant about their favorite sandwich shop (guilty). A blog can bring a lot of clicks and sales leads to a business, and for a blogger, it can drive traffic where you want it to bring you profit. In this post, we’ll go over some quick tips, tricks, and raw data that can help your business or blog succeed.
People are only spending about 37 seconds on a blog post. They’re skimming through to find the most relevant content.
The first fact (and most ironic as I’m writing a blog post) is that an average of 37 seconds is spent skimming a blog for what the reader is looking for (looking at you cooking blogs, 99% of the time I just want the damn recipe). This seems harsh, but isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If your blog’s site and content is well structured, a reader SHOULD be able to find what they need quickly and easily. Using proper headers to highlight page sections, using images to break up a sea of text, a bulleted list or infographic (instead of one never-ending long paragraph) are all ways to help guide someone to the information they’re looking for. Same goes for any web page *cough contact us now for a new website cough*. Then they’re pinning, bookmarking, saving that page for more views later, or to share with their friends and colleagues.
Blogs with images receive 94% more views than blogs that are text-only. Blogs with videos can increase organic search results by up to 157%.
Chances are, most people didn’t make it this far into blog or, most likely, they saw that first bullet points above and will skip to the next headlines or bullet points below. Thats ok! That’s the information they’re looking for. They’re happy that they could easily find the information thanks to a decent structure and some pretty, semi-relevant images. Meanwhile, I’m happy that I can ramble about it here to bulk up this blog post. It’s a win-win really. If you did stick with me through all of this… I’m sincerely sorry. Moving on!
Blogging For Businesses
Business owners, I want you to think of blogging as another way to get your brand seen and not just a place for vegan cookie recipes (yum though). A company blog can be an invaluable tool to rack up extra traffic to your website. Not only are you getting the word out about your products/services, but your blog can help boost your website in an organic search (when Joe tries to find the thing you’re selling on google). Simply put, what better place to use your brands related keywords in a blog or case study?
Posting daily on a blog can net a business 5x more traffic than one that does not.
Wouldn’t you like 5 times more traffic on your website? Then start a blog, research your keywords (or hire us, we’ll do it for you), and start writing relevant content. Never write garbage just for the sake of having it. Those 37 seconds we talked about earlier will be spent saying, “What is this? Not what I was looking for,” and leaving with your company reputation tarnished. In addition to improving search rankings, a blog helps your company look more legitimate and credible.
Companies who blog receive 97% more links to their website.
Now you’ve got multiple blogs talking about your business and product, you surely know your stuff. Customers aren’t they only ones who will take take notice either. Other companies will see you as a credible source for information. This is where a lot of that “5x more traffic” is coming from. Other websites, bloggers, and maybe even some competitors, are linking to your website because, with quality content, you’ve proven to know your business. “Credibility + Visibility = Sales” and you’ve just created both for yourself through a blog.
Maybe you’re thinking you don’t have time or staff to write a blog. I encourage you to at least try, you may be better at it than you you think or even end up enjoying it. If not, look into hiring an intern or a freelancer to research and write for you. There are tons of extremely talented writers out there that need work for their portfolios. Just, for God’s sake, please pay them. Unless you’re the New York Times, working for exposure is not fair compensation for their time and skills. They’re potentially bringing you 5 times the traffic after all.
Blogging for Bloggers
I love a well-written blog. My morning routine includes cycling through a handful of my favorites to catch up on the niche news I’m interested in. If you’re reading this to learn how to be a better writer… I’m sorry? I’m no professional writer. I am a designer, web and social media expert, small business owner, husband, dog dad, amateur art critic, and whiskey enthusiast, but I am NOT a writer. Welcome. We do have a professional writer on staff. If I can convince her to post a writing tips blog, I will. I can, however, help you figure out how to best use your blog for monetary gain. We’ll definitely be expanding on that in a future post but, today we’ll be sticking to the basics. In my previous blog I talked about writing what you know (finding your niche), and above we briefly talked about how to structure your blog for better readability. Knowing those two things, you’re well on your way to a successful blog.
81% of internet users agree that blog posts are trusted sources for information or advice.
This is why people are reading your entries! They’re looking for information they can trust, a recipe that looks delicious, a review for a product they’re thinking of buying. You’re their trusted source of information, so try to use that power for good, not evil. Again, this comes back to having relevant, quality information in a well-structured site with quality photos and/or videos. You may be the most thorough reviewer ever, but if your page is bare with text-only or looks like a Craigslist page, no one will stick around long enough to find out how awesome you are. You can also use this to begin working in affiliate marketing (basically recommending products then getting a portion of the profit). We’ll get more into affiliate marketing later, but that brings us to the next point.
Updating an old blog with new information can increase the effectiveness of your search results by 74%. Yet only 55% of marketers will use this strategy.
I will 100% be coming back to this post in the near future and updating it with links to my future posts. Your blogs are essentially house plants; with a little attention here and there, they’ll grow. Remember, just because you’ve written 10 more posts doesn’t mean people aren’t still searching for and reading the one you wrote last month or last year. Go back, clean them up, update dead links or add new ones if needed.
About one in ten posts are compounding, meaning their traffic increases over time. These compounding posts will generate up to 38% of all blog traffic.
Following these tips will help boost your blogs and websites traffic and hopefully help it grow, but keep in mind that growth does take time. Gary Vaynerchuck of Vayner Media often says it takes an average of 3 years of consistent work to gain traction or become an “overnight success.” So, keep consistent, keep relevant, and keep putting out quality blogs. I wish you all the success in the world.
