Turn Your blog Into a Marketing Strategy

by Doug Karr, Marketing Technology Blog

Thanks to Lewis for this guest blogging opportunity. Lewis and I have been long-time followers and supporters of each other's blogs. I believe we're kindred spirits in the business world - both of us are results-based marketers and his book matches all of my beliefs on how leaders should work.

If you ask someone how visitors are getting to their blog, you'll typically get stories of Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, linkbait, Blogroll swaps, memes, etc. I often ask, "How many of your visitors come by way of search?" The answer most always is, "Oh, the majority of new visitors get to us from Google."

The majority of your new visitors get to you from Google

Often, web analytics packages separate referring sites from search engines so we tend to see them as different. They're all referring sites, though. Now ask your business, "So how many of your visitors are returning?" They'll typically respond with a 30% to 40% window.

The majority of all your visitors are new visitors

But I thought blogs were a technology to communicate with your customers. I thought it was a retention strategy. On the web we speak about subscribers, engagement, number of comments, transparency and other stuff. How come we aren't talking about the massive number of leads that could be pouring in from your business blog?

What are those visitors looking for that they're finding on your blog?

Most business blogs fail. There are a couple of reasons: the first is strategy and the second is platform. New media pundits often lure businesses into blogging with, "Just go! You don't need a strategy... just blog!" Businesses are intimidated by the technology and they don't leverage the platforms. And then they start to be found for all the wrong terms.

What should you be blogging about to connect with a search engine user?

Companies are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on pay-per-click and optimized landing pages to draw in as much paid and organic traffic as they can to fulfill their inbound marketing strategy. They execute these strategies by first figuring out what searchers are looking for and then they optimize their pages to be found for those terms.

Why aren't they leveraging blogging?

In blogging:

1. Every page can be an optimized landing page.
2. Every new visitor lands there because they typed in a relevant term and your post appeared as a relevant answer.

The majority of blogs don't take advantage of this. The majority of blogs are publications, not lead generation systems. Nor do they follow best practices for landing page strategies. Business blogs are cluttered with ads, widgets, gadgets, link lists, extraneous navigation and other interactive features.

Best Practices for landing pages require:

1. The answer to the question the searcher was looking for.
2. A clear path to distinct Calls-to-Action to engage with your business.
3. No clutter, no extraneous navigation.

Turn your blog into an inbound marketing strategy by:

1. Researching search statistics to find the right keywords and phrases you want to be found for.
2. Implementing a blogging application that leverages your content but doesn't confuse nor intimidate your business. (Might I recommend Easy Blog Software.)
3. Removing the clutter and navigation elements from your blog and instead provide a clean path of engagement through strategically constructed Calls To Action.

When you do those kinds of things, new visitors will find your blog through relevant searches, and you then can continue to measure and test your Calls To Action to maximize your inbound marketing strategies. This allows you to both target the market of search engine users you're after and continue to measure and test the leads that you have coming inbound. You'll find the majority of these leads are relevant and most are even qualified.

Happy Blogging!

Note: For more information on leveraging blogging for inbound marketing strategies, check out Doug's Slideshare Presentation.

Bio: Douglas Karr is the Vice President of Blogging Evangelism for Compendium Blogware, a successful corporate blogging platform that enables lead generation and customer acquisition. Doug blogs at the Marketing Technology Blog, a marketing blog that centers around automation and technologies enabling marketers. Doug also blogs at Social Media Domination, a blog that specifically speaks to businesses leveraging their content in Social Media.