Blogging: A Business Model for Growth
Do you blog for business?
Are you wondering how the blogging can help your business?
To learn how a blog can be the center of your entire marketing program and explode your business’s growth, I interview Joe Pulizzi for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.
It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.
The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).
In this episode, I interview Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute and co-author of Get Content, Get Customers and Managing Content Marketing.
Joe shares his blogging story and how sharing free content grew his business. You’ll learn how blogs can grow your email list, why multi-author blogs may be worth exploration and how to widen your professional network.
Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!
Listen Now
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You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.
Blogging for Business: How Content Can Improve Your Sales
Are you wondering how a blog can help your business?
Are you trying to figure out how content can improve your sales?
To learn more about the connection of blogging and content marketing, I interview Marcus Sheridan for this episode of the Social Media Marketing podcast.
More About This Show
The Social Media Marketing podcast is a show from Social Media Examiner.
It’s designed to help busy marketers and business owners discover what works with social media marketing.
The show format is on-demand talk radio (also known as podcasting).
In this episode, I interview Marcus Sheridan, founder of The Sales Lion and author of the ebook Inbound and Content Marketing Made Easy.
Marcus shares insights into the struggles marketers have to get results from business blogging. You’ll learn what to focus your efforts on and a few simple tactics that will work.
Share your feedback, read the show notes and get the links mentioned in this episode below!
Listen Now
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
You can also subscribe via iTunes, RSS, Stitcher or Blackberry.
3 Ways to Create Highly Valuable Blog Content
Do you struggle coming up with content ideas for your blog?
Or maybe you create plenty of blog posts, but they get few views and even less engagement?
If you find that creating engaging content is challenging, keep reading.
This article will identify some of the best tips, tools and tactics for creating blog content that helps grow your business.
#1: Be the resource your customers really need
What’s your ideal customer’s biggest problem? Your blog is not about your business, it’s about your customers.
If you want to attract and engage your prospects and lead them down the sales funnel, you need to focus on them and their problems.
The more you create content that helps your prospects succeed, the more engaged they’ll become with your blog.
So how do you know what your audience is struggling with?
Ask.
If you’ve been in business for a while, chances are you already know a lot of what your customers are struggling with.
26 Tips for Managing a Social Media Community
Do you wonder how to go about exercising good social etiquette and managing your social networking communities, all at the same time?
Social media community management has expanded into a growing field and there’s a lot to think about.
In this post, I’ll cover 26 tips, an A-Z guide, on ways to manage your company‘s presence.
#1: Answer Questions
With more and more of your customers participating on social networking platforms, businesses need to be doing much more than posting their own updates. Companies must also be willing to answer questions.
A recent survey organized by InSites Consulting found that eight out of ten American companies answer client questions and complaints via social media. The survey shows that US companies are very successful in answering questions via social media: “83 percent of companies indicate they always deal with questions or complaints sent to them via social media. Still, only 54 percent of the companies in this survey also talk to and actively participate in online conversations with consumers.”
What about your business? Are you answering or avoiding questions?
4 Ways to Discover More About Your Audience With Social Media
Your audience is the lifeblood of your business, and knowing who they are and what they want is a key to success.
What you might not know is that there’s a treasure trove of knowledge about your ideal audience hidden in the sea of followers and fans you’ve already attracted.
Here are four ways you can learn more about your audience by looking at their social media life.
#1: How Do They Describe Themselves?
Look at their bios on their social networks. How do they describe themselves? What are they passionate about? This may be obvious, but most of the users you’ll run into take this space very seriously, and the short (often < 200 character) bio is a precious piece of real estate.
By analyzing your followers’ bios, you can get a deeper look into the things that they value most highly about themselves.
5 Creative Tips to Increase Blog Traffic and Boost Your Business
Does your business have a blog?
Is it working for you?
If you said “no,” I wouldn’t be surprised.
But it doesn’t need to be that way.
Keep reading to discover why many blogs fail and what you can do to boost your traffic and brand.
What’s Wrong With Blogs?
This platform, if done properly, can generate tremendous traffic, leads and sales for your business that you otherwise would not have had.
Unfortunately though, most businesses do not blog well. Why? Because they refuse to think like a consumer.
They refuse to tell consumers the answers to the questions they most want answered. And it is because of this approach we so often hear the phrase, “Yeah, our company tried blogging, but it didn’t work for us.”
I own a swimming pool company, and when the economy crashed in 2008, it was our blog that really saved our business.
How Content Turns Prospects Into Customers
How do you attract passionate customers?
What can you do to cut through the noise and get people to notice what you have to say?
The answer is CONTENT—interesting and compelling information that helps solve your customers’ problems.
Why Content?
It’s interesting content that drives people to push that Share button or say to themselves, “Wow! This is a great article! I think I’ll subscribe.”
Here’s an analogy: If a big-time investor invited you to pitch your business idea to him, how much effort would you make to impress him?
I’m guessing that you wouldn’t dare show up without a compelling idea and a well-thought-out strategy. And yet most businesses do just that when it comes to social media marketing.
