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Blogging

I’m a firm believer in the power of blogging. I first started my blog using desktop software—shocker!—since few online services where around then. I would open up Microsoft FrontPage, write a blog post, save it, and then upload it to my website. This was the first iteration of my still-thriving blog, SmallBizTechnology.com.

Of course, years later most blogs are powered by WordPress or other hosting websites such as Medium.

Whereas the social networks are ideal for snackable bits of information, blogging is ideal for longer communication and is indexable by Google. Google is still by far the biggest network for searching. When people are searching for new shoes for their kids, tips on organizing a wedding, or advice for how to clean their home gutters, they’re going to search on Google. If you, as a business person, post only on social media, you’re missing out on the power of the Google search engine. It indexes blog content. So, yes, build your social following, but also publish a regular blog of great content. You can share this directly with your community through an email newsletter, and people searching on Google will find it as well.

Social media is transient; once you post something, it is buried under thousands of other posts filling your followers’ news feeds within a few hours. You may tweet today about the bake sale, but a few hours later someone’s looking at a silly cat video and your tweet or Facebook post has been pushed far down.

Blogging is powerful because Google is powerful and it more fully indexes what goes on websites. While it does in some ways index what gets posted on social media, it doesn’t seem to index all of it, and it doesn’t count what is posted on social media in its ranking of search results.

As a future celebrity CEO, you’ve got to use every tool in your arsenal, and SEO (search engine optimization) is one of those tools. Maybe you’re the founder of a $4 million marketing agency and you’re looking to expand your speaking and help orthodontists with their marketing. For sure, there are busy dentists who are looking to grow their practices and are looking for tips on marketing for dental offices. If you’re creating a blog dedicated to all things MARKETING and DENTISTRY (see the two keywords), Google will index your blog and help dentists who are searching for marketing find your blog. Once they find your blog, they’re apt to continue to click to reach out to you. See the power of SEO? Search is powerful, and the more great content you have online, the more people will find it through a search engine or because someone on a social network shared it.

With this understanding, it’s important to blog on a traditional website, such as WordPress (the best option) or Medium, so that Google can index your content and your customers or potential customers can easily find it—with no other distractions or posts from others.

Let me further clarify: you could “blog” by posting regular content to LinkedIn or Facebook. However, in order to take full advantage of the power of Google to better rank your content in its search results, I highly recommend your actual blogging take place on a platform like WordPress or Medium. This is how a search engine sees your content.

While you should post snackable pieces of content on social media, you should also do a regular blog about this topic. Doing this means that people can find your expertise as they search Google and you can easily reference it and refer people to it. You could even have a domain name mapped to your blog—LocalFootballCoach.com or something like that.

Another reason why I like blogging is, if you can discipline yourself to blog and have an editorial calendar of content, you can use it as the start of your entire content-marketing strategy. With an editorial calendar you can write down different topics you might like to share with your community. If you’re a landscaper, you might decide you’ll do a blog post sharing tips on what people should do for their lawns every Monday. On Wednesdays, you’ll share a blog post covering what they should prepare to do for the weekend. Maybe for Fridays you share a blog post on fun things they can do with the family to enjoy their lawns!

Here’s a few tips to help you start or grow your blog:

1. Have a theme for your blog. The more niche it is, the better. I have SmallBizTechnology.com, which is all things technology for growing businesses and more. It’s a bit broad, but it works. I also have SmartHustle.com, which is all about stories of entrepreneurs.
2. Video is powerful. Video you share on a social platform can often be embedded into your blog. Of course, you can also upload video to YouTube or Vimeo and embed it into your blog.
3. I also use audio quite a bit, especially on SmartHustle.com. I interview a guest and record the call, which is then downloaded to an MP3 file. I upload this file to an audio-hosting service, like SoundCloud. I get an embed code from SoundCloud and copy this code into the blog post related to the interview. Now I have a blog post summary of the interview and an audio interview as well. Talk about engaging content!
4. Build your email list. On your blog be sure to have a way for your blog readers to submit their email address to your email list or other opt-in email service. You can manually send them a regular email newsletter. You can also use a WordPress widget so that each time you create a blog post, those who have signed up get an email.
5. Use short and descriptive headlines. Maybe you are a health-and-nutrition consultant and you’re writing a blog post about the benefits of eating nuts. Your blog post might be “6 Nuts to Eat Every Morning for a Healthy Heart.” This headline is short but very descriptive. You want your headline to be as descriptive as possible for your audience. You also want it to be of relevance for Google to index and know what it’s about.
6. Be consistent. If you’re just starting out, don’t expect to see results in just a few days. It can take several weeks, or even months, to see more traffic, more followers, or more email subscribers. But keep at it and be consistent.
7. You don’t have to write your blog all by yourself. You can invite guest bloggers to contribute to your blog. Having a guest blogger gives you fresh content and takes all the pressure off of you. Plus, guest bloggers will want to share their featured blogs with their fans too! This cross promotion is a great technique to use.
8. Be frequent. You don’t have to blog once a day, but I’d recommend that you blog at least once a week. If you’re only blogging once a week, make sure it’s thoughtful and highly informative to your audience.

Remember, your blog and your social content go hand in hand. Your blog content can direct to the content on your social networks. Your social content can direct traffic to the more in-depth resources on your blog. All of this can generate leads for your sales funnel and further marketing.