With a little imagination, your blog could put real thrust under your sales
It amazes me how small and medium-sized enterprises fail to maximise the potential of their business blog. If you think that writing a blog and posting it to your website is the most your efforts can produce, it’s time to rethink your blogging strategy. Your blog is the gift that should keep on giving, and help you to reach out to new audiences and nurture warm leads.
In this post, you’ll learn about seven key strategies that will help send your blog ROI into the stratosphere.
1. Leverage local press
Have you noticed how local newspapers are packed with more adverts than ever, especially the free papers? There are two reasons for this. First, they sell their advertising space really well to businesses that want to sell in the local market. Second, they need the revenue to increase their profits.
But, here’s the thing – very few people would bother picking that local newspaper up if it didn’t have worthwhile articles. And, very few people actually look at the adverts unless they want to find a specific product or service.
Why not offer to write an article for your local newspaper? I can tell you now, most local newspapers are desperate for copy, especially of the free variety. It only takes a small amount of work to repurpose your blog as a newspaper article. And you’ll find that the returns will probably be better than those you get from your paid-for advert.
A few years ago, I started a writers group where I live. For six weeks running, we posted adverts at the cost of £50 per week, to try to get people to come along. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Then I offered a weekly article, free of charge (and repurposed from our blog). Within a month, those articles had tempted eight would-be writers to join our group.
If you’re a franchise, or company with more than one location, you can use the same article to support the marketing efforts in different areas. Incredible bang for your buck… or blog, should I say?
2. Spread the word with a newsletter
If you publish several blog posts every month, then with a little extra effort you should be using these to publish a newsletter. Write an intro, add a feature article, and make sure you highlight your most popular blog post of the previous month.
It’s a great way to build your email list – create a landing page on your website, or make sure that your blog posts carry a call to action to sign up for your newsletter. Sign up to an email service such as MailChimp or Infusionsoft, and personalise and automate your newsletter emails.
Every newsletter is a direct sales opportunity. Marketing gold dust. Continue reading 7 secret strategies used by savvy small businesses to boost their blog ROI