Having a blog for your business’s website is guaranteed to help you find success online…so long as you keep using it. However, mistakes can happen and that includes the ones made when you have a blog for the purpose of content marketing.
If you’re making these five mistakes that we’ve outlined, you need to stop making them! Please, for your sake as well as for your fans, find out what mistakes you’re potentially making and then find out how best you can improve.
Mistake 1: You Haven’t Told Anyone About Your Blog
“If you build it, they will come,” is a common phrase, however it’s a poor one. No blog will be successful if you don’t tell anyone you have it in the first place!
If you’ve added a blog to your business’s website and then left it there thinking to yourself, “Well, there it is, now back to what I was doing before,” that’s a poor use of your blog. Bonus points if you’ve put up a blog but haven’t told anyone on social media…or even have accounts for that, either. The two go together like peanut butter and jelly in terms of content marketing, and they’re both a simple and effective way to get your current customers engaged with your business.
The solution is simple: tell people about it. It can be as easily done as adding the web address and a call to action onto your printed materials or by posting a new status about it on Facebook, or sharing an article with your audience via an e-mailed newsletter. It’s not that complicated.
Mistake 2: Your Content Stinks
We have to deal with content whenever we’re building websites for our clients at V3. Throughout our experience we’ve notice several, mind-boggling mistakes that people keep making over the years with their blogs as well as their entire websites!
These are the biggest culprits worth mentioning:
- Posts that are only a few sentences long.
- Poor spelling and grammar
- Pages made simply to create gateways and extra clicks—and that’s it
- Content that has nothing to do with the industry you’re involved with
- Content that looks copied and pasted from competitors—in fact, it is (or they’re near identical—this is called article spinning and it’s not a tactic we encourage you to do)
- Articles that tell you nothing about what you’re looking for exactly
- A blog section with only one to two posts—and that’s it
- Posts are big blocks of text with no sub-headings, pictures, bullet points, or any other formats to break the monotony
If this is your blog in any one of these points, please, for your sake as well as the Internet’s, get help. You can start by checking out our article on content that’s not simply blog posts. You should also stop believing in certain myths that apply to content, which you can read abou there if you’re interested.
Mistake 3: No SEO
SEO is an effective way to ensure you’re giving your blog the exposure it needs online. By optimizing your blog, as well as the rest of your website, you’re basically telling search engines, “Hey, I’ve just updated my website.”
Blogging for your business will indicate to search engines that you are, in fact, a trustworthy resource and worth ranking higher in SERPs (search engine page results). Without SEO, however, consider yourself as good as invisible online. You can also consider the hard work and effort you put into creating the perfect blog post wasted, all because you didn’t optimize or distribute it among several channels.
Mistake 4: You Don’t Tell People Why
What are you trying to get from your blog? Is it sales? A greater readership? If your answer is actually “Because this article told me to,” but you don’t have the heart to bother updating it or contributing to a conversation, then you’ve missed the whole point of owning a blog. A goal should always be kept in mind, with several branching mini goals that can benefit a business:
- To share your thoughts on a trend, subject, or idea that you have a lot of knowledge about
- To engage withyour customers, not just talk tothem (big difference!)
- To get sales…but with a human focus first
Your blog and the content you create and distribute should also align with your company’s brand. Transparency and honesty are also highly recommended traits amidst content as they can build trust towards your business and its brand.
Mistake 5: You Don’t Have One at All
Blogging for your website has a lot of benefits you may not even realize:
- It contributes to others’ conversations, whether it’s about the latest development in technology or how to help others
- It helps you separate your company from your competitors—and it shows by how engaged you are on your blog and the tone of voice you choose for your content
- Posting your blog’s content over multiple channels can help increase the likelihood of being discovered by a wider audience
- Like we said, it can boost your website’s rank on search engines and draw in more would-be customers
The bottom line: without a blog, you could be missing out on good business growth and sales.
If that’s what missing from your website—or your website doesn’t exist either—get one today! Call us at V3 Media and we can help you get started. If you’re stumped on your current content strategy or need help with a website in general, let us know during a one-on-one consultation. We’re always eager to help!