If you think that your company blog is little more than a place to churn out content for the sake of SEO, perhaps it’s time for a mentality shift.
Three Savvy Tech and Design Tools to Supplement Your Company Blog : eAskme |
While blogging can indeed be a potential goldmine for SEO, the rewards of keeping up with a consistent blog go far beyond search traffic. When considering benefits such as the potential to capture leads, grow your email list and establish a stronger brand identity, it’s no secret why so many businesses are on board with daily or weekly blogging.
Building a stronger blog often has less to do with being a master writer and more to do with the elements of design. Do you feel that your blog is under-performing in terms of clicks, conversions and time spent on-site? Consider the following tools and plug-ins you can use to supplement your blog and transform your once-tepid traffic into long-term subscribers.
Integrating Interactive Marketing
Engaging with a company blog should not be a totally passive experience for readers. Beyond encouraging actions such as comments and replies, marketers today should understand the importance of allowing followers to have meaningful interactions with your content. Sometimes that means going beyond the realm of your blog and taking them off-site.For example, interactive marketing for businesses today means integrating platforms which boast features such as augmented reality to bring your followers closer to your content than ever. Consider also how social sites such as Instagram represent an awesome environment to interact with followers via photos and hashtags. In short, don’t craft a blog that screams “look at me” but instead create opportunities to get more involved with your audience.
Featuring Your Social Media
Given that most people are glued to social media versus traditional websites or blogs, there’s definitely an incentive for bloggers to transform their one-time blog traffic into long-term social followers. Some tools, strategies and plugins for making it happen include…• Social feed integration: if your traffic sees a sidebar boasting a social feed or user-generated content, they know from the start that you’re an active player in your industry versus a blog that’s gathering cobwebs
• Click-to-Tweet functionality: one-click tweeting is all the rage right now to turn the best bits of your blog posts into social content
• Smart social buttons: providing your followers the ability to share your content in a single click increases the likelihood that your message gets spread around versus staying trapped on the page
Capturing More Leads
The key to seeing a positive ROI for your company blog is turning your readers into leads, plain and simple. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to gathering leads; however, lead capture forms and exit pops have become the bread and butter of modern marketers.While these strategies may seem somewhat spammy, the fact remains that they just plain work. Studies show that exit pop-ups encourage subscribers exponentially and provide your readers with an action to take on-site which is always a nice bonus.
Don’t let your company blog underperform or tank because you don’t have the right tools on deck. The three ideas outlined above represent awesome ways to steer a failing blog in the right direction.