If you’re anything like most
people, if you’ve taken the time create a blog or website for your business,
then what you’d really love is to see it get some actual user engagement that
helps you establish your brand online and, ultimately, increase your customer
base. In no particular order, here are a
few tips that can help you turn a stale or neglected blog into something people
enjoy viewing.
Incorporate Video
This lets people get to know
you, builds trust, and gives you the opportunity to establish your expertise
and credibility before you ever even get to the point of discussing a potential
sale. Your own videos are always best,
but provided it’s allowed by the terms of service of your different platforms,
sometimes referencing highly-established industry videos on the subject can
still be a good idea because it makes your posts more interesting. Plus, the presence of video has been directly
correlated with better chances of a higher website rankings.
Be Helpful
Give people information that’s
actually helpful, and more than just a sales message. This doesn’t mean that you have to solve all
of their problems, but it’s an opportunity for you to demonstrate your
expertise. Additionally, the act of
giving people something of value for free has been shown to create reciprocal goodwill.
Clean Appearance
Don’t clutter your website with different
places to click all over the screen, glaring colors, or lots of flashy
graphics. Make it incredibly easy for
someone to land on your website and immediately find what they’re looking for
without having to look all over the screen just to figure out where to even click. Your landing page should have a primary
purpose, whether it’s to get them to sign up for an email list or to actually
pick up the phone and call you. All of
your page elements should drive the user toward that one action. If it’s to call you, then you don’t want a
bunch of other links saying things like Click Here, or Sign Up. That creates mental confusion over what you
actually want them to do, and a confused mind never buys. This brings me to the next point.
Know Your Purpose
If you create a website that’s
more of an information resource, you have to be extremely careful in its design
if you hope for it to generate any sales, because a website optimized for sales
and a website optimized to distribute information are two very different
things. When you try to mix the two,
that’s when you’ll see your conversion rate plummet and wonder why you aren’t
getting many customers. Many people fall
into the trap of trying to build a hybrid website simply because they see so
many other people doing it. If the
purpose of your website is to generate leads for your business, then everything
about your site should be designed with that principle in mind.
Write for the Reader
Forget about old SEO stuff that
you may have heard about like keyword stuffing, and do your best to take any
latest “tricks” with a big grain of salt.
Modern search engines are extremely smart about determining whether you’re
actually writing information intended for people, or whether you’re trying to
game the system. Now, that doesn’t mean
that you ignore SEO – it’s quite important.
My point here is that a lot of people are following old, bad practices
that are going to get you into trouble, so unless you truly understand how to
optimize your website then you need to keep things simple and write with a
human reader in mind. Ask yourself the
basic question of what would an actual human visitor to your website both want
and expect to see, and provide that.
Get Social
Customers are everywhere. Make efforts to grow your brand on social
networks where you can engage with current and potential customers. Don’t have the time? This is easily outsourced to a company that
can manage it for you. Getting SERP love
from Google is not simply a popularity contest, but social signals are
considered a powerful factor with search engines in determining whether your
business is worthy of attention. Imagine
for a moment that you’re Google. You have
two companies that both have nice websites, but one of them has people talking
about them in social media, and one doesn’t. Which one would you rank higher?
Be Consistent
Unless you’re going to hire
someone to do it for you, develop a routine that gives you time to write on a
regular basis. Often, the easiest
inspiration for things to write about will come to you from things you’ve done
over the last few days. Think about
recent jobs you’ve worked on, and something you encountered that many people
might not know about it. Then take that
experience and use it as the basis to create a short write-up on either how to
do it yourself, potential hazards if not addressed, how others in the industry
see the issue (and why), or perhaps simply explain how life will be better once
the issue is addressed. Any time that
you can translate the resolution of a problem into a time or dollar savings,
this starts getting a potential customer thinking about how you could
potentially provide value to them, without you having even tried to sell them
anything.
Conclusion
There you have it – 7 tips to
help you build a better blog that will help you grow your online brand and
create trust with potential customers before you ever even get to the point of
discussing a sale. Thanks for reading!
