Laurie McCullagh provides an overview of the benefits of blogging for businesses. Some key benefits include increasing website traffic, brand awareness, and strengthening customer relationships. The document then discusses best practices for blog design, formatting, titles, links, keywords, images and video. It also provides tips for publishing blogs regularly and using them to build an online presence through email marketing and social media.

1. Laurie McCullagh
WSI Digital Marketing Consultant

2. Why Blog?
5 Great Reasons…
• Increases traffic to your Website
• Increases visibility and brand
awareness
• Opportunity to promote new products
and services
• Gives people a reason to visit Website
• Strengthen customer relationships

3. Benefits of Blogging
Benefits to Your Organization:
• Increases trust & credibility
• Positions you as the expert
• Foundation for Social Media posts
• Lengthens the lifetime value of
client
• Increase online touch points

4. Benefits for YOUR Website
Improve Your Google Rankings by:
• Increasing the number of pages
• Adding fresh content regularly
• Integrating relevant keywords in
both the title and content
• Adding text links to your main site
Tip: You must own your own domain-based blog
to draw any SEO benefit
Ex.: www.domainname.com/blog

5. Anatomy of a Blog
Standard Features
- Recent posts
- Categories of posts
- Archives
- Blogroll
- RSS feed
- Conversion CTAs in header or
sidebar
- Social Media links
- Sharing plugins for posts
- Blogger bios

6. Digital Marketing Breakdown

7. Essentials for Blogging Success
Design & Format
- Clean, simple with customized headers
- Use bullet points for easy reading
- Bold text and subheadings (mind the white space)
- Remove clutter in sidebar, keep essential widgets
Titles & Headlines are Critical
- Must be attention grabbing
- Keep under 150 characters
- Add to main sections for easier scanability
Links to Your Website
- Add conversion links to Your Website
- Use calls to action (CTA) for your top marketing offers
- Add links to external resource sites and quality references

8. Essentials for Blogging Success…/2
Keywords
- Use keywords in both the titles and content
- Use keywords in link text
Video and Images
- Add (embed) a video as some people prefer watching a video
- Add images to illustrate you topic but mind the placement.
Comments
- Start a conversation and build relationships with people
who comment
- Akismet – Anti-spam plugin to eliminate the amount of
spammy comments.

9. Publish and Communicate
Share your Knowledge and Expertise
Email Marketing Social Media

10. Blog Topic Brainstorming
What am I going to write about this month?
- Write about the commonly asked questions
- Step-by-step guides
- Top 10 lists
- New product launches
- How-to videos
- Keyword research
- Check your analytics (what are visitors
looking for?)
- Upcoming events, conferences
- New trends in your industry
- Read your social media group’s questions
- What is your competition writing about?
TIP: It should NOT be all about YOU!

11. Blog Topic Blueprint
What is blueprint?
An outline of the upcoming year’s posts.
Create a spreadsheet that includes
• the publishing date
• title of each post (track the # of characters)
• brief description
• Blog responsibility
Allows you to plan the future posts around
• Holidays and crunch times
• busy times of the year
• seasonal highs (and lows)
Consider inviting a guest blogger that would add
value to your offering

12. Rivers of Information

13. Build Your River
• Google Reader
• Feedburner
• Evernote
• Instapaper
• Zite
• Flipboard

14. Blog Resources
• www.copyblogger.com
• www.hubspot.com
• www.socialmediaexaminer.com
• www.mashable.com

15. WSI Profile
• Internet Marketing Firm since 2000
• Certified Digital Marketing Professional for 2013
• WSI President Circle Member
• WI Chamber of Commerce Accolades Winner

16. THANK YOU