Do you think that a website can’t do anything for your business? I’m going to tell you a dirty little secret that most agencies won’t tell you – building a website is not a magic fix to your online presence.
I often hear from my customers that they built a website before and “nothing happened.”
Well of course not.
This isn’t Field of Dreams. You can’t just build a website and hope that people will come to it.
You have to bring people back to your website over and over again.
There are many ways you can drive people to your website to (hopefully) get them to convert and become a lead or customer.
But in my nearly twenty years in this industry, I often see business owners missing this one key tactic to drive continual traffic to their websites.
Boost New and Returning Traffic with a Blog
I’m not sure if any business owner I’ve talked to ever likes this answer (a few do, admittedly but most groan).
Blogging on a regular basis can be one of the best ways to not only attract traffic to your website, but it can also help you get more leads and build trust with your audience.
Studies constantly show that B2B companies who use blogs can receive up to 67% more leads than those who don’t have one. More than that, blogs have a lot of trust built into them. They’re considered the 5th most trusted source for accurate information online.
Before you go thinking that this still doesn’t apply to you and your business, think again. 80% of internet users interact with both social media AND blogs.
Creating regular, helpful content for your dream customer can be one of the best ways to bring them into your sphere of influence and get them to start following and even buying from you.
Blogs Boost Your SEO
One of the main reasons that works?
Writing great blog articles can be your SEO secret weapon.
Think about the last time you were trying to figure out how to DIY something. What was coming up most often?
It’s not going to be a business’s homepage. It’s their blog article that matches your search.
That same concept can and should apply to you. If you want to attract new people into your business, you need to create consistent content that answers their questions and begins to provide them with solutions.
When you write a blog article, it’s also far easier to target specific keywords and key phrases to improve your overall search engine ranking – and thus increasing your visibility to customers.
Plus – blogs can be found via Google search for years. One article can live longer and bring you more traffic and leads than a single social media post ever hopes to.
The Mechanics of Running a Blog
Where Does Your Blog Live
One thing I want to note before we delve any further is where your blog should live.
Your blog should be part of your website but will live in a slightly different section of the site.
If you go to captcoder.com/blog, you’ll see all of my recent blog posts (articles) that live under that one page.
Each article has its own separate URL, but my website is set up to recognize them as a blog article instead of a page on my site.
With WordPress, this is really easy to set up. WordPress actually started as a blogging platform, so they have blogs baked right in.
When you log into your WordPress admin side, you’ll see a section called Posts. Those are your blog articles. To write a new article, you just have to go to Posts > Add New and fill in the content.
If you’re on SquareSpace, Wix, or something similar, you’ll want to check their documentation for how it’s created but they often called them Posts as well.
How Do You Blog?
I think where a lot of us get tripped up when it comes to blogging is that we make it feel far more overwhelming than it needs to be.
Instead of calling it “blogging,” think of it as writing short, informative articles for your audience. These articles don’t need to be overly long – I’d recommend at least 500-1,000 words. The longer the article, the better your results can be, but the point here is to just get started.
Use Images
When you can, I would highly recommend that you use images within your blogs. These images will not only help you rank on search engines, they’ll just allow you to break up your text and make it easier to read.
Break it Up with Headlines
You’ll also want to use headlines throughout your articles to allow for easier skimming (come on, we all do it) and help your customers get to the parts that matter most to them.
Remember Your Audience
The most important thing here is to remember who you’re writing for. Anything you write about needs to be something that answers a question for your ideal customer, helps them get a quick win or gets them to open their mind to a service/solution they actually need.
How Often Should You Blog?
Ah, the joy of blogging. Once you start, are you allowed to stop?
If you want to get the most value out of your blog (including that SEO boost), you’ll want to create that content consistently.
That means releasing a new blog article on the same schedule.
If you choose to blog monthly, then you want to post that new article on the same day every month – say the first Tuesday at 9am.
If you choose weekly, you’ll want to have that released on the same day and time every week.
Now, while I want you to just get started, I will say that your best option here is to release a new blog every week. That helps you build a better connection with your audience, keeps your content fresh, and builds up your article volume faster.
Schedule Your Blogs
The great thing about WordPress is that you can write several blog articles in one session (it’s far easier to batch so you’re in the writing groove), and then schedule them to release on a specific day and time.
Next to the Publish Immediately option at the top right of your WordPress posts there’s a little edit button. Hit that and you’ll get the ability to schedule the day and time you want your blog to go live.
Make Blogging Doable
Of course, not all of us enjoy the blinking cursor in the empty Google doc. I get that.
Blogging can be very hard to get started with if you’ve never done it before or made it consistent.
Thankfully, there are newer AI tools like ChatGPT that can make this a whole lot easier!
I just want to clarify – I’m not saying that you can use ChatGPT to write your entire blog for you. But you can use it as a tool to get started.
Generate Topic Ideas
I think one of the most difficult things with blogging is knowing what even to write about.
You can choose topics from your most frequently asked questions, things you see others in your industry saying that are just wrong, or you can have ChatGPT help you generate some ideas.
If you want to get up to 90 days of content ideas for your business, I’ve got you covered with some ChatGPT prompts. This cheat sheet will help you to use ChatGPT effectively (getting the best possible answers out of it) and get 90 days of weekly content topics and even outlines in a matter of minutes.
Make Your Blogs Stretch Further
One final thing I want to leave you with today – your blogs don’t have to be just a one-and-done thing.
The great thing about blogging is that you can turn that content into multiple other pieces of content.
A single blog post for instance can become a podcast script, a video, multiple social media posts (for weeks!), and even an email to your list.
When you start with a blog, you’re creating a great foundation of content that can stretch further and live longer.
It’s simply the best way to start building and growing your online business.
