How your blog could bring 1000s of visitors and sales
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Blogging is a great way to attract visitors to your business website and it can even help generate sales. Learn how to do business blogging the right way in Nick's presentation.
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How your blog could bring 1000s of visitors and sales
- 1. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online How Your Blog Could Bring 1000s of Visitors and Sales @Nick_Leech
- 2. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online OR
- 3. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Your blogging efforts aren’t working. Here’s what you can do about it. @Nick_Leech
- 4. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online 3 million updated blogs in the UK 35,000 New Posts per day Average of 400 page views per month Average blog has 100 posts A blog post takes at least 2 hours to write 2 hours work for 4 views?
- 5. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online That’s Not Worth it
- 6. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 7. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Why blog What to write about How to write How to get readers
- 8. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Why Blog?
- 9. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Why Blog?
- 10. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Moving up the funnel Moving up the funnel means that the size of the potential audience becomes much bigger Exposure Discovery Consideration Conversion Upper Funnel Lower Funnel Potential reach circa 400k prospects / m** Potential reach circa 4m prospects / m* *The number of SMEs in the UK & Germany 2015 – BCG *The number of people searching for products that HEG sells
- 11. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 Stuff
- 12. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online What should you write about?
- 13. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online What to write about? Stuff that your potential customers are interested in Stuff they need to know in their journey to become your customer Stuff you are expert in because of your niche This is the stuff you need to write about
- 14. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online For 123-reg Cars Technology Sport Finance Consumer Legal Office IT Brand Marketing Suppliers Branding Search engines Selling online Communications Design Conversion rates This is where we place the 123-reg blog
- 15. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Be focused. Be consistent.
- 16. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Be Unique
- 17. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 18. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Feedly.com Keeps you up to date!
- 19. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 20. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 21. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 22. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 23. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 24. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 25. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 26. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 27. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Look at Google Analytics to see what is popular
- 28. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 29. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Surveying your customers to see what they are interested in 3.5 3.4 2.9 2.8 2.8 2.5 2.2 1.7 Getting a high ranking in Google with SEO Turning visitors in to customers Advertising online Selling products directly online Understanding how people use your website Building your website Communicating with your customers Finding the right domain name
- 30. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online How to write?
- 31. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online 1. Get writing! (But in the right way)
- 32. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Blocks of text are boring and don’t get read
- 33. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 34. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 35. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 36. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 37. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Use the active voice not the passive voice
- 38. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online The cat sat on the mat. (active)
- 39. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online The mat was sat on by the cat. (passive)
- 40. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online The web is a visual medium!
- 41. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 42. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 43. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 44. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 45. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 46. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online
- 47. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online The Magic Formula 1. Start in the middle of a story 2. Illustrate your points with data 3. No more than 25 words in a sentence. No more than 3 sentences in a paragraph etc. 4. Read your post out loud to see where you stumble over awkward ffffphrases and which bits are boring
- 48. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Make sure your blog looks good
- 49. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Make sure your blog looks good Time on Site: 2mins 20 Time on Site: 5mins 18
- 50. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online How to get readers
- 51. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Sharing it on social media
- 52. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Sharing it on social media Different images Different message Use hashtags
- 53. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Paying to promote your posts 1. Your customers & website visitors 2. Their lookalikes 3. Interest groups
- 54. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Finding influencers, getting them to share!Craft your content
- 55. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Finding specific influencers z
- 56. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Finding specific influencers
- 57. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Finding specific influencers
- 58. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Finding specific influencers
- 59. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Engage them! Form a relationship 1. Follow them 2. Create a complimentary list on Twitter, and add them to it 3. Start retweeting, liking, commenting on and replying to the the stuff they share 4. Answer questions they ask 5. Follow #journorequest and watch for anyone asking for expertise in your area
- 60. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Find their Email address
- 61. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Getting a relationship with them 1. Be Concise 2. Be Relevant
- 62. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Relevant to me A great post, well thought out
- 63. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Get subscribers
- 64. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Monitor success
- 65. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online Any questions? Thank you
- 66. get online | grow online | succeed onlineget online | grow online | succeed online We’re producing a full Online Business Training programme designed to take you on a step by step journey through the topics you’ll need to make your business an online success. • Learn online at your own pace • Over 50 interactive modules • Self-assessment included Interested to learn more? Join our exclusive pre-release review panel marketing@123-reg.co.uk Email us
Editor's Notes
- Hi My Name is Nick Leech. I’m the digital director at 123-reg. and I’m going to talk about how everyone in this room could write a blog capable of bringing 1000s of visitors and sales. http://okdork.com/2014/02/09/grow-blog-100000-visitors-less-year http://okdork.com/2014/04/02/how-you-can-create-content-that-generates-40000-targeted-visitors/ https://moz.com/blog/generate-content-ideas-using-buzzsumo-and-apis
- I did have another title for this presentation that I think works better, because what I really want to say is
- Put your hands up if you have blog? Keep your hands up if you have more than 100 visitors to your blog Kepp your hands up if you have more than 500 visitors to you blog. You’re doing well then! Because the fact is. 99% of blogging is a complete failure. We’ve all been told that it’s a great, free source of traffic and visitors to your website. That it gives personality to your brand. So we set up a blog. We do a few posts. We run out of ideas. We run out of time. The frequency drops. We feel guilty.
- Here’s some facts for you. According to blogging .org, there are over And we are making, so we are really putting effort and this But … That 19 page views? 550 a month? The average blog has nearly 100 posts! http://www.jeffbullas.com/2012/08/02/blogging-statistics-facts-and-figures-in-2012-infographic/
- So I have a fact for you. That’s just not worth it.
- But! Many successful, high profile brands say that their blog is their biggest source of new business. So if done right it can work.
- Here I’m going to talk about **Why blogging is the right choice for your business. **I’m going to let you know what to write about, which is about understanding your audience **How to show you how write so that people engage with what you write **And I’m going demonstrate how to reach readers
- So first off? Why blog?
- The fundamental reason is that blogging, when done well, attracts people to your business because they’re interested in what you have to say. It’s a nice soft introduction to your brand. This is called inbound marketing. This is in contrast to traditional advertising – outbound - where you shout your message to people you think should be buying your product.
- Blogging moves your marketing focus up the sales funnel. Rather than waiting around for people to decide to buy your product, and hope that you can get in front of them at that time, blogging helps you reach potential customers before they’ve realised they need what you do. When they do decide they need what you sell, you are the first choice. They’re already aware of your brand. And **that makes you potential audience a lot larger, it means you have the potential to reach a lot more people who will be receptive to your message.
- Blogging makes use of a typical small business resource. My experience of small business is that they have plenty of **effort resources. But not much **cash resources. Blogging takes effort. But it doesn’t take much money.
- So what should you write about in your blog?
- Well you need to write about stuff that sits a the apex of three different subject areas. First off, you need to consider stuff that your customer audience will be interested in. Then you need to consider stuff that they need to learn before deciding your customer. Finally, there’s stuff that you’re expert in and can speak about with authority. You need to cover topics that lie at the crossroad of these three areas.
- Lets consider 123-reg as an example. We know from our demographics, our surveys, our data that our audience – you lot – are into stuff like .. We know that when you’re setting up your business you need to know…. And from where we are and what we’ve done, we’re expert in these areas… So where these three meet is what we have to write on our blog…
- Once you understand the sort of topics your content should be covering, you need to be really focused, and be consistent in your approach. I don’t mean that you have to post 3 times a week and 500 words per post. I mean that you have to speak from the same perspective each time, so returning visitors will know what to expect from stuff you produce. We really learned this lesson on 123-reg. We used to think we were a technology blog and write about everything from iphone launches to social media tools. But then we understood that our voice could help small businesses grow their business online, so we made sure that every post fell into line with that. And from that point onwards our visit and engagement rate from returning users shot up and up. So be focused, and be consistent
- And its important that your content is unique. You’re obviously not going to be consistently covering topics that no-one else is talking about. But every time you produce something for your blog, think about how to make your post unique from others writing on the same topic. For example, if you have a running blog, rather than talking about 6 tips to boost your speed training – which many others may have done. Why not flip it around and talk about 6 training disasters and how to avoid them. So lets talk about how to come up with some specific ideas to write about.
- First, Make sure you have a list of websites who are in your niche. Read their content and find out what they write about. The chances are they’re racking their brains for ideas too, so piggy back that.
- Keep up to date with their latest posts. A good way to do this is with an RSS Reader. My favourite for this is feedly.com, where I gather the latest posts and read them whenever I get a spare 5 minutes. For me, I want to know what kind of advice start up businesses are interested in, so I’ll read the latest posts on sites like startups, growingbusiness, marketingdonut, moz.com. These sites all have editorial teams, they’re thinking about what startups are interested in all the time. Be inspired by the topics they pick.
- 2nd: Find out what questions your audience are asking. If you know what they’re asking, you’ll know what your content should be answering. Quora is a great place to find out what questions people are asking. On Quora users ask questions and have them answered by experts. Just search for the topic that you’re interested in and find out what people want to know.
- Here’s an example. Let’s say I have a running shoe shop, and I want to produce content that runners will be interested in. If I type ‘running’ into Quora I get a list of questions that have been voted the most popular. Lo and behold, here are some great ideas. I’ve got What are the top running technique suggestions? Should I run if sore? What is the best run meal?
- Each of these are not just ideas in isolation, each of them spark a lot more topics. For example, for the question ‘what are the top running techniques’ here’s half a dozen related ideas. All of these could be turned into content that’s interesting to my audience.
- 3rd. Another great place to come up with ideas is Facebook. If you’ve already set up your business on facebook, or even if you are active in your community on Facebook, you can get lots of ideas from the people you interact with. How? Ask a question.
- We wanted to produce some interesting content about how businesses can make their facebook page look great. We’re lucky enough to have built up an community of web designers and people who have their own website, so it’s a topic they’re really interested in. We asked the question ‘How can you make your Facebook page look great and represent your brand effectively?’ Now we only got 8 answers, but the level of thought and detail of those answers meant that we immediately had lots of content ideas about how to make a facebook page look great. And by the way, its not ripping off ideas. Asking questions and getting answers from a community is crowdsourcing. Of course if you are concerned about ripping off ideas, then you can always attribute the idea to whomever you got it from. The chances are they will love to see their name appear in your content and will be more likely to share it themselves.
- 4th. Another great source of ideas for content is Google Consumer Surveys. I encourage anyone to try out this fantastic tool. Here you can ask survey questions at a cost of just $0.10 per response. So with $100 you get a statistically valid survey. Google asks these questions of a random sample of UK internet users. Users answer the questions in exchange for premium content. Its really easy to set up, the survey takes just a few days to run….
- …and at the end of it you get loads of interesting information, presented in compelling, interactive graphs, which you can turn into press releases, articles, infographics and blog posts. Here’s an example survey that we ran to try and produce some content about ‘the cloud’ – a topic that technology companies seem to go on about all the time. We wanted to find out if people actually knew what ‘the cloud’ was. And it turns out they don’t! Not only do they not know what it is, they also don’t realise that most of us use it every day, with services like iTunes, Dropbox and so on. You can manipulate the data to focus on specific respondents on your survey. For example: **Gender, Age, Geography. And you get lots of options about how to display the data too, with **these toggles on the top right.
- 5th. Buzzsumo. This is is a great tool, with a free version, that can show you the most popular content for a particular topic by shares. For example, if you run a florists you can search for content related to flowers and get an instant view on the articles that are thought to be most interesting to people who are into flowers. Be inspired by the topics.
- 6th. If you already blog, then take a look at your Google Analytics to see what articles got the most visitors, and how long they engaged people. This is a grab from one of our blogs. It tells me that ** if we make videos, if we write about SEO, and if we write about web design, these are topics that our audience want to read, and spend a lot of time with.
- 7th. Another good trick is uses a tool called Social Crawlytics. Social Crawlytics can give you an almost instant view on any websites’ most shared content. Check out what sort of articles your competitors are getting the most shares for. Can you make something similar, but with your unique voice? Back to my running shop example. I’ve found another running blog – a competitor – and I can see that one of the most shared articles was about 5 unique marathons to run. This is clearly stuff that runners want to read about. I should think about a blog post on a similar theme.
- 9th Ask your customers what they need help with, using a short survey. Then use that information to craft your blog topics. We do this ourselves.. These are the results from our survey when we asked customers what they need help with. From this we know we need to write about SEO, conversion rate optimisation, and advertising online.
- There’s no point in having all these ideas for the sake of it. They need to be turned into great content. And the easiest way to do that?
- Expect 80% of the ideas to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong; **There’s writing, and there’s writing. You need to be able to write in a style that is interesting, engaging and easy to digest. People on the web don’t read in the same way they as they do for books and newspapers. Their attention span is short. Your text has to compete on the internet with some pretty interesting stuff! There’s Youtube, Facebook, cat pictures.
- To start with, know that blocks of text are boring and don’t get read.
- At best someone will read the first paragraph, and then the first line of some others. But many won’t get beyond the first sentence.
- To start with, break up your text with some headlines. It looks less daunting to readers, they know they don’t have to commit as much, and at worse they can get a meaning just from the headlines.
- Then add a sprinkling of bullet points or a list. These help users quickly navigate to the important stuff, and helps them retain it in their visual memory.
- Trying breaking up your content with images. Cliché I know but they speak a thousand words, and give people a different way to digest your content.
- Use the active voice. What I mean by this is: don’t let your readers only understand the meaning of your sentence by reading all the way to the end of the sentence.
- Look at the difference between the
- With this version I only find out the key thing – that it’s the cat that’s sitting on the mat, until I’ve got right to the end of the longer sentence
- Above all, the web is a visual medium. So always think how you can turn the content the you’ve created into something that’s visually compelling. Fortunately, there are some useful tools to help you visualise your content.
- With infogr.am you can create amazing, clear infographics that turn your dry data into something that’s really interesting to look at and read You can also illustrate your data, and use anything from…
- …Bubble charts…
- …To tree maps
- Piktochart is another fantastic, and free tool to turn your content into compelling visuals, infographics and charts.
- Who would have thought that management culture could be interesting!
- … or that customer service in Latin America might be capture a readers attention. Its through great visuals that dry facts, stats and narrative can come to life
- I would like to share with you a magic formula for creating compelling blog posts. Follow this and you will be better than you are right now. Make your main point, talk about your lightbulb moment, right at the start. It’s the important bit. The hook. Then circle back to the start and tell the whole story. Take any claims you make an illustrate them with data, preferably a visual. It’s the maximum that people on the web can take on easily. Very revealing.
- When it comes to your blog, its not just the actual posts that need to be easy on the eye. Your whole blog design can transform engagement from your visitors. We really learned this lesson on 123-reg, when we went from this, to this.
- Here’s a screen grab of our Google Analytics – Time on site jumped from around 2 minutes 20 to over 5 mins. Same content. But now the blog was a nice place to be, and the design helped people discover new, interesting content.
- So we’ve covered how to come up with ideas, and how to turn it into good content. Now I’m going to talk about how to promote your blog content in order to get it read by the right people
- First off. An easy free one. Make sure you are sharing it on your social media channels. But don’t just share it once. Due to the nature of social media, most people will miss a single post. So share it multiple times, or different days, and at different times of the day.
- Every time you share it, **use a different message to keep things fresh. Use** hashtags because some people follow particular hashtags, so more people will notice your post. And always use great images. Search online for royalty free images.
- 2nd. Pay to promote your posts. Facebook has really reduced how much visibility a business page has. Less than 5% of people who like your page are going to end up seeing your posts. But paying to get your content in front of the right people on social media is one of the best ways to promote it. You may have found that promoting your products on facebook doesn’t work too well. You get a really high bounce rate. But promoting content really works, because its essentially what people are on facebook for – great content. There are three groups of people its worth paying to get in front of. I won’t go into detail here about how you do that, but we’ve got an easy guide on how to do it so come and see me afterwards.
- 3rd. One of the most effective ways to promote your blog is to find influencers relevant to your target audience, and to get them to recommend and share your content.
- Once again, Buzzsumo can help you find influencers in any niche. To promote my running shop, I’ve searched on Buzzsumo for bloggers, influencers, journalists and regular people who are into running and have lots of followers..
- Another good idea is to find the most popular sites in your niche, the real authorities, and find out who is writing for them. Just search on Google for your topics and Google will of course show you the most visited and loved sites.
- See who is writing on those sites – the actual writers and journalists that are contributing the content.
- Search on Twitter for your topic and find out which accounts are popular.
- Once you’ve find your list of journalists, follow this process. Follow them. All but massive celebs see who their followers are Create a twitter list and add them to it. Something like ‘Awesome running advice’ would work in this example Start retweeting, liking, commenting on and replying to the the stuff they share Answer questions they ask Create a relationship with them. If they share something that they’ve written, and you have a contrasting point of view, or you can take what they say further, write that blog post and then share it with them. You’re starting a conversation 5. Special top tip. Follow #journorequest and watch for anyone asking for expertise in your area. If you see anything, reply with relevant and interesting information
- The next thing to try is emailing them. To get their email address. Try a tool called voilanorbert.com. It crawls the web for names in conjunction with domains.
- When you email them or reach out, follow these 2 rules. Be concise. Make your email as short as you possibly can. Be relevant. Only ask people to share stuff they care about. Study what kind of content the influencer is currently sharing. Show them you understand what they’re into. http://www.searchenginejournal.com/5-best-practices-blogger-outreach/127230/
- Here’s a really good example of some outreach I received a few weeks ago. Someone had written a new blog post, and they wanted me to share it. Its concise and to the point. Its relevant to me, because it references content I’ve shared. They’re letting me know about a great post they’ve written that applies new thinking and data to the original post. If I shared the first, it makes sense I will share theirs.
- 4th. Invite people to sign up for email updates. Email can be the biggest source of traffic to a blog. Add a form to every post, with as few sign up fields as possible. Consider a pop up for people who have read more than half a post. And then send them high quality content consistently and regularly. The great thing about email is that if you’re producing good content, people will forward your email onto others they think are relevant.
- So I’ve shown you how to come up with ideas. And I’ve shown you how to turn them into great posts And we’ve looked at how to promote Finally, measure what you do and use that to inform your future strategy. See how many visitors each post gets, how long visitors stay, and how much they share. Rank all this stuff. If you thought your audience were into one thing but you find another really working, change tack and focus on that instead. Always be driven by the data you can gather from GA, & Social Crawlytics.
- And that’s it. By understanding what to write about How to write about it And then how to reach readers Your blog can bring you 1,000s of visitors and sales. Thanks very much.