Blogging is used by many organisations to help them engage with new and existing customers, develop a “voice” to educate and inform visitors and also to boost visibility on search engines and social media. This business-focussed blogging taster seminar from internet marketing specialist Opace will provide a practical approach to blogging for business. Event hosted at Bournville College on 30th May 2013.

1. Blogging for Business
Bournville College

2. What we hope you will
achieve today?

3. Understand the benefits
of business blogging?
Identify keywords and
create blog content
Set up and configure a
basic WordPress blog

4. A brief history of blogs

5. • Web journals / personal
• Techies
• Marketers
• Politicians
• Business

6. How blogging can help
business

7. • Support SEO
• Improve customer engagement
• Build authority and brand
awareness
• Boost sharing and social media
content

8. Some ‘facts’
• Companies that blog have 55% more website
visitors (source: Hubspot)
• B2C companies that blog generate 88% more
leads per month than those who do not, while
B2B companies generate 67% more leads than
those who don’t blog (source: Hubspot)

9. Some ‘facts’
• Companies with more than 51 blog articles
experience a 77% lift in median monthly leads
(source: Hubspot)
• 40% of US companies use blogs for marketing
purposes (source: Hubspot)
• The average company that blogs gets 97%
more inbound links (source: Hubspot)

10. Creating a basic
blogging strategy

11. 1. Research – competitors and target audience
2. Set objectives and align with business goals
- comments / shares / website referrals / Google
rankings / sales / sign ups, etc
3. Create a team
4. Set guidelines
5. Decide on frequency and word count
6. Decide on the technology / platforms
7. Identify the keywords and develop content
8. Set up reviews, analyse and measure
8 Key Steps

12. • For point 8, make sure you have a good
analytics tool installed on your blog –
Google Analytics is free and easy to
integrate - www.google.co.uk/analytics/‎
A note about analytics

13. • 43% of “less than monthly” business
bloggers yielded a customer from their
blog, compared to 92 percent of
businesses who blog “multiple times per
day.” (source: Hubspot)
A note about frequency

14. Deciding on the right
tools

15. There’s lots of choice

16. Which blog should I use?
• We often get asked which is better
WordPress or Google’s Blogger?
• It’s personal preference but we
love WordPress and even
Google’s most visible SEO
spokesman Matt Cutts
uses WordPress over Blogger.

17. Types of blogs
• On-site blogs e.g.
www.opace.co.uk/blog
• Off-site blogs e.g.
www.opace.wordpress.com

18. On-site Blog Off-site Blog
Pros
• Increases indexing of your website
• Helps website SEO
• Keeps fans up to date
• Draws people to the site domain
• Additional exposure
• Two domains can rank twice for
keywords
• Easy and quick to install
Cons
• Harder to implement
• Can’t‎rank‎the‎same keywords twice
• Might lower the rank of other pages
• May take longer to get traffic
• Twice the marketing effort
• Less control
Which is better for your
business?
We’ll focus on on-site blogs

19. Understand your keywords
• Why do we need to think about keywords?
• For each blog, think about your audience
• What would your readers search
for and different variations?
• Brainstorm ideas with your team
• Use the Google Keyword Tool –
https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool‎

20. Keywords – example
• Lets identify some for today's
session and see how many
searches they get on Google

21. Setting up a simple
WordPress blog

22. WordPress glossary….
• Theme – design of your website
• Plugin – pre-made functionality
that can be installed
• Widget – areas (blocks) on your
website where plugins or
content can be placed

23. What we’re going to show…
1. Install WordPress
2. Install a theme
3. Install 3 critical plugins
• SEO plugin
• Social sharing plugin
• MS Word style editor
4. Publish the blog
5. Show an optimised blog

24. List of plugins…
1. Async Social Sharing
2. Ultimate TinyMCE
3. All In One SEO Pack
4. Google-Maps-GPX-Viewer

25. We’re filming….
So don’t worry if you miss anything,
and we’ll publish it to our blog
afterwards.

26. It’s as simple as 1 2 3 – example
• Live demo
• Alternatively can be downloaded
from http://wordpress.org
• Example blog can be found at
http://businessofblogging.co.uk

27. Using your blog with
social media

28. Why should I care?
• Socialising your blogs will help with brand
awareness and SEO:
22% of all time online
Over 600m social users
Impacts credibility
Impacts SEO

29. • The best thing you can do is make
your blog pages socially sharable –
and encourage engagement and
sharing by others!

30. Using your blog for
SEO

31. Why should I care?
• Google’s looks for all kinds of signals
when ranking websites and blogs help:
Encourage social engagement
Keep your website fresh
Add relevant content & interlinking
Increase the amount of content

32. • Make sure you include relevant meta
data (this is another topic) and write
the content around your keywords,
but always with the visitor in mind
and not Google.

33. 20 brilliant ideas for
content

34. 1. News
2. New products or services
3. Topical-themed items
4. Editorial blogs
5. Thematic blogs (Summer’s here….)
6. Top 10s
7. Best, worst etc
8. Reviews
9. Customer care
10. Top tips

35. 11. How To….
12. Staff profiles
13. 10 things you didn’t know about…
14. Testimonials
15. Community-based
16. Latest sector research
17. News or updates
18. Useful resources (websites, social media, etc)
19. Competitions and giveaways
20. Comparison of two or more products/services

36. • When writing content always go
back to the keywords and make
sure these are aligned
• Consider longer keyword phrases
(long tail keywords)
A note about keywords

37. • 40% of people respond better to visual
information than text. Viewers on average
spend 100% more time on pages with videos
on them (source: Hubspot), so vary the type of
media used and get creative!
• Words
• Photographs / infographics
• Video (a whole new seminar)
A note about media

38. Next steps

39. Devise your strategy
Brainstorm keyword and
content ideas
Choose your blogging platform

40. Advanced topics

41. Google+ and Content Authorship
SEO and Writing Search
Engine Friendly Content
Video Blogging and Video SEO
Social Media Marketing

42. For further support from Opace
please visit
www.opace.co.uk/blog

43. Thanks for attending