Blogs

One of the most effective types of content marketing is blogging. Setting up your own business blog gives visitors to your website answers to questions they have, and it establishes your thought leadership in your industry.

Guest blogging on other well-respected websites helps you expand your reach, and introduces you and your brand to people who wouldn’t otherwise have found you.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a great writer, the tips here can help you find your voice, create readable content, and proofread your content like a pro.

If you still find yourself shaky on the idea of blogging regularly, consider hiring Egg Marketing to make your brand shine through content. We have deep experience writing for industries like technology, mobile, SaaS, small business, and startups.

[Post Roundup] Everything You Need to Know About Guest Blogging Strategy

I’m a huge fan of having a guest blogging strategy, as any reader of my work around the Internet knows. There are so many reasons why you should guest blog on other blogs that target to your industry. It expands your reach. Lets you show you know your stuff. Gets you new business. That’s my favorite!

[Post Roundup] Everything You Need to Know About Guest Blogging

I wanted to share some of the best posts we’ve got here on Marketing Eggspert about guest blogging so you’ve got one big resource for it.

First, Understand Why You’re Doing It

A few years ago, Matt Cutts, the guy at Google who tells us what Google does and doesn’t like in terms of SEO, said that guest blogging wouldn’t give brands an SEO boost. I  don’t completely agree with him, but wrote this post to help you really figure out your strategy in guest blogging.

Succeed by Answering Your Target Market’s Questions

People are searching for information online. They want to know how to do something. Whether they should buy a particular product. How one solution stacks up against another. Whatever they want to know, you can provide answers in an informative guest post. By answering those questions and solving those problems, people begin to trust you, putting you one step closer to the sale.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Guest Post - Part 2: Content and Sharing

In the first part of this two part series on the perfect guest post, we looked at the SEO and linking elements of guest blogging. In this part, I now want to turn our attention to the actual content itself and uncover exactly what type of content makes for a good guest post. We’ll end by taking a look at the importance of social sharing and responding to comments.

The Anatomy of the Perfect Guest Post - Part 1: SEO and Linking

It would be remiss to start any article about guest blogging without mentioning Matt Cutts’ now infamous blog post on the subject back in January of 2014. Cutts, who is Google’s Head of Webspam, warned digital marketers and SEOs everywhere to ‘stick a fork in it: guest blogging is done; it’s just gotten too spammy.’

Unsurprisingly the article caused waves of panic to spread throughout the SEO community. Such was the resulting consternation and storm of plaintive and often confused commentary (657 comments on Cutts’ post alone, not to mention the innumerable articles written on third party sites) that Google’s penalty-enforcer-in-chief chief was compelled to write an addendum to the post stating that he was ‘not trying to throw the baby out with the bath water’ and that there were still ‘many good reasons to do guest posting.’

6 Ideas for Creating Blog Content to Gain New Business

So you’re sold on the fact that blogs are a fantastic way to build traffic to your site and convert visitors to customers. You’ve written two or three posts, but now…well, let’s say you’re lacking inspiration for creating blog content.

It can be daunting, having to continually come up with engaging topics that will attract readers to your blog. But take it from me, someone who has written hundreds of blog posts (seriously), it is entirely possible, with a little help. Here are some tips that will inspire you to come up with more blog post ideas than you know what to do with.

Idea 1: Read Your Competitors’ Blogs

There’s nothing wrong with seeing what your competition is blogging about. In fact, it can help you come up with even better content. Just don’t copy their posts. Instead, use them for inspiration.

Pay attention to the popular posts on their blogs, and consider how you might write an even more engaging post on a related topic to drive traffic to your blog.

Your Guide to Business Blogging

No matter where you are in your blogging journey, whether you’re only now considering whether you should blog or you’ve been blogging for a while and need fresh ideas, this post will serve as your guide to business blogging to help you move forward.

First, Why Blogging Rocks

If you’re not blogging yet, why is that? Do you think it’s more trouble than it’s worth? Not so. In fact, 46% of people read blogs, most reading 5-10 blogs. One of those blogs could be yours, and could help potential customers find you. Blogging helps you show off your industry expertise, which can help people begin to trust you. And that’s the first step in getting them to buy from you!

It’s important to find the right voice for your blog so that you appeal to the audience you are trying to reach.

The Tools of the Trade

I use (and recommend) WordPress for blogging because it’s simple to use, and can grow with you as your technical understanding of things like widgets and plugins increases. But there are alternatives to WordPress if you’re looking for something else.

SEO is a necessary component to help your blog be found in search results. Here are some great SEO tools to incorporate.

Business Blog Writing: Essential or Expendable?

Business blog writing should be an integral part of every business’s content marketing strategy. A good blog may seem like a lot of effort, and truth be told, it is. A ‘good’ blog requires time and dedication. Between creating quality content, building a following of readers, driving traffic, monitoring, promoting, and engaging… It can feel like a full-time job. But, you could argue that running your own business also requires a lot of effort and hard work, so why do so many entrepreneurs do it? There’s a simple reason why:

The reward you get from running a small business should be equal to or greater than the effort put in. That reward can be in terms of financial benefit, the flexibility of being your own boss, or whatever it may be that you get out of being a business owner. If the reward was not greater, then there would be no point in doing it – it would be easier to go back to working for someone else.

Business Blogging: Essential or Expendable?

Why No One Is Reading Your Blog

You started your blog, you’re faithful to your posting schedule, your copy is free of grammatical errors, your content is strong and no one is reading your blog. Waaaaaaaaaaah. Don’t cry. Look at what you can do to ensure your blog is getting the eyeballs it deserves.

Are you promoting it effectively?

Take the time to promote your blog by sharing your posts on social media. Remember to use a powerful pull quote or a “gripping, but relevant title” to engage readers. Use sites like BizSugar to share your tips and tricks and see how your content fares against other writing. The important thing is to keep sharing your URL in an appropriate and resourceful way, seeking out new opportunities without fail.

Taking Your Business Blog to the Next Level

Now that you’ve started your business blog, it’s time for some advanced tactics to attract more readers, beef up your content, and become known as an expert in your industry.

Goal 1: Attract More Readers

You want your blog to ultimately drive traffic to the rest of your site so people will buy your products or services. That means you need to amp up the number of readers your business blog gets so that you’ll convert a decent number of them into customers. 

One of the best places to find new blog readers is through social media. You should be sharing every post you publish through your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google + page. Here are a few strategies to improve the clicks you get:

  • Customize your update. Simply relying on links to your posts being autopublished isn’t enough. Also craft updates that will really make people curious to click on the link to your post.
  • Schedule updates consistently. Use tools like HootSuite to schedule updates to publish for days after a new post goes live. Make each update different, and entice people in different ways.
  • Use Social Buzz Club. This social sharing community  gets people posting your content to social in exchange for you doing the same.

It’s Time To Shift Our Thinking About Guest Blogging

In case you’re not as tapped into the SEO world as us marketing professionals, you might have missed the firestorm that Google’s head of Webspam team, Matt Cutts, started a few weeks ago. He wrote a post about Google’s stance on guest blog posts, which many misinterpreted to mean that we should all give up on writing them. Before his words get twisted yet again, let me quote him from his  post:

…if you’re using guest blogging as a way to gain links in 2014, you should probably stop. Why? Because over time it’s become a more and more spammy practice, and if you’re doing a lot of guest blogging then you’re hanging out with really bad company.

A similar outcry happened in 2012 when Cutts made a similar decree about press releases.


 

So Should We Stop Guest Blogging?

Let me interpret what I believe Cutts is trying to tell us.

There are plenty of people using content marketing tools like guest blogging, search engine marketing, and press releases in the correct way; that is: using them to build credibility and to reach a wider audience. But there are an increasing number of people who take advantage of these strategies to get their spammy links on other people’s sites, in the hopes that Google will raise their sites up search results.

Find New Customers by Guest Blogging

I was recently talking to a client that offers virtual legal services. She’s established a niche for herself, but her industry is so new, she has trouble finding clients.

I told her that her challenge was educating the marketplace. Sure, she offers legal services at a fraction of what the big boys charge, but if her audience doesn’t know that her company exists, she doesn’t stand to take some of that market share.

I told her she could find new customers by  guest blogging on sites that cater to her audience as a solution.

Why Guest Blogging Works

I’ve been guest blogging for my own marketing company for years, and I use it as a way to show off my services (blog writing) and get introduced to new audiences. I’d say at least 30% of my leads come from people who have read my writing around the Web.

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