Rule about blog growth is to publish content that will hold the reader’s attention. Furthermore, they must be valuable which will lead to sharing your content with other people.
If you want to have dedicated Readers then you will have to develop a routine of posting regular quality content on your website. Blogging regularly is the gateway to having dedicated readers
Fresh content will attract more visitors to your blog or site, these visitors will eventually become dedicated readers and finally they will be transformed into prospective clients all through the power of great quality content.
The Good News is…
If you published great quality content on your site regularly, you will be far ahead of your competitors in no time because most of your competitors are stuck with static sites dying of lack of fresh content.
Blogging structure is vital to being successful as a business person, you might have a great product or provide great services to your Customers but if your business lacks proper structure in no time your competitors will outshine you. “The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do about It” will change your perception about running a business for good.
Blogging Action Plan – Five Steps to Blog Successfully.
1. Create a folder and named it IDEA, this folder is for storing ideas for great content, add ideas to this folder on a regular basis.
2. If time is not on your side to create good content, then you will have to assign a trustworthy individual, perhaps a member of staff or an independent freelance writer.
3. Try and prepare ten articles at once and schedule them for posting on your site. If you publish an article every four days, then ten articles will last for forty days. This gives you enough time to produce another ten articles.
4. You don’t have to be a P.H.D Holder in English Language to write effectively, write in a conversational tone. Write in a way that makes your readers pause, think and keep on reading.
5. The vital thing is to be consistent with updates on your blog; this is quite challenging, but will also give you the best result.
I’ll like to expose you to Four Steps action plan that will help keep you on track and help grow your site in no time.
The available options for providing Content for your Blog are listed below:
1. Write the Content yourself
2. Make the existing content unique
3. Outsource Writing
4. Subscribe to Guest Blogger
Let’s take a look at each one of them in details
Option 1: Write the Content Yourself
An advantage of writing your content by yourself is: this is the major way to get the best results in terms of readership loyalty and conversion. If you write your own content you will be regarded as being sincere, natural and authoritative.
You’ll be able to weave in industry related terms and jargon in a natural fashion, this will make the Readers quest for more and search engines will constantly visit your website. An effective content blogging strategy that you can use to produce content is called A.I.D.A. A.I.D.A stand for:
1. Attention – Your headline must grab your Reader’s attention. In other words your title must be eye catching, if you want to be very good at this apart from the fact that there are many courses regarding copywriting, you should spend time studying the tabloids especially the headlines.
Your main keyword must be included in your title for example an article about Blogging for Money might be titled Blogging for Money – 5 Effective Ways to become a Successful Blogger.
2. Interest – Whenever Visitors lands on a Blog or Website, what they usually do is to scan your Homepage looking for something to grab their attention. If your Content is not interesting enough to stop them in their tracks and make them curious about wanting to know more, they will click away in no time.
Get Your Readers interested in your post by writing about something that relates to them and their situation. This could be problems, frustrations, quest, benefits and challenges that are usually encountered by People who need your Products and Services
Experienced Sales Copywriters know that People will read extremely long sales letters and remain keenly interested as long as the subject of the sales letters addresses their issues.
3. Desire – After learning how to create an engaging and compelling content that interest and help your Readers, the next line of action is to create a desire for your Readers to take action.
For example, writing a detailed and interesting review of the top products in your business category and convincing your Readers that it is pointless to keep looking around because your Product or Service will meet all their needs.
Let them know that your Products and Services are the cheapest, the best, most cost effective, more robust, and best supported and final, best value for money. Bear in mind that exaggeration will lead to nowhere therefore be careful.
The main thing is to focus on the aspect of your business that puts you ahead over your competitor and try to create a desire on this fact. E.g. Free Shipping, 60 Days Money back guarantee as compare to 30 Days Money back guarantee.
4. Action – Once you’re able to get them interested and have also intensified their desire, it’s only sensible that you direct them to take action.
This will be of great benefit to them and to you as well, you must be specific about the type of action you expected, it could be clicking the buy button, fill-in a newsletter subscription, watching a video, downloading a free report or taking part in a survey.
The A.I.D.A principle is very effective when used to create Blog content. It’s also important for the other options of creating content for your Blog, do familiarise yourself with it.
Option 2: Rewrite Existing Content.
Rewriting your existing content is an option to create new content from the scratch and then makes it 100% unique. There are several ways you can achieve this:
1. Research, Copy, Paste and Rewrite: Research the topic you want to blog about online, go through the various sites that come up with your research. Copy and paste snippet relevant to your article in a Word document.
Sourcing materials this way will be from different sites ranging from Government sites, Business sites and Blogs, Forums, Product Review sites (e.g. Amazon) Audio Podcasts, Videos, etc. Once you’ve gathered enough information, don’t just rewrite the content, but you will use them as a template for providing a fresh angle on the topic thereby creating a unique content.
2. Content Rewriting Software: This kind of software is a no go area for me. Avoid using Automated Software Applications and Content is rewriting scripts because even though they promise unique content they will only produce unreadable scripts.
The same content they promise are the same content they will deliver to thousands who blogs about the same topic as yours.
This means that they don’t produce unique content, there are great software programs that help you to research and gathered information from reliable sources but you will still have to intelligently rewrite the content.
Search engines prefer 100% unique content and if you are willing to give it to them, they are willing to reward you with tons of traffic.
Two Content rewriting software tools that are worth checking out are an Instant Article Wizard and the best Spinner. You can visit their Web sites for video demos, testimonials and more information.
3. Buy Quality PLR Articles and Rewrite Them: PLR stands for Private Label Rights. The PLR article normally employs the services of Professional Writers to write the content, they end up selling a limited number of the same content to members.
For instance, if you are looking for articles relating to travelling you can join a Travel PLR Article Site, you will receive new articles every month on travel related topics.
You’ll still need to rewrite this article because you are not the only one paying for them, if you don’t, you might end up being a duplicate which will be disregarded by Search Engines. Do check out the supplier’s reputation before making a purchase.
Here are some Great Sites:
1. PLR Mini Mart: This PLR site was started by Tiffany Dow, a very successful ghostwriter who has written articles and content for many online business owners.
2. EasyPLR: If you are looking for great quality content that are informative and engaging to post on your blog or in your newsletter, you can’t go wrong with this website.
The number of content buyers is quite limited to about 100-150 per PLR pack. The services of Professionals are employed to create niche specific content. You could buy content for the topics you need only.
3. All Private Label Content: Another great site that allows you to buy specific content pack on the topics of your choice, or perhaps you could become a member of specific niches.
4. Article Builder: This is another site that offers great service. This site takes the hard work of having to write the article yourself. The main thing you have to do is generate up to 95% unique content, search engines demands at least 30%. This can all be set up within ten to fifteen minutes and you will leave the rest to run on autopilot.
Option 3: Outsourcing Your Article Writing
Outsourcing is the last option to consider, you can engage the services of Professional writers to help you to create blog content. These Professional writers are known as experienced freelance writers.
There are many online services to look at but the two most outstanding ones are Elance and Freelancer. You post projects on these sites and writers bids for your job; you hire a writer and manage the process.
You could sign up for the services that manage the writers and the content creation process and you will be charged a nominal fee for the content produced. It’s advisable that when starting out you must be knowledgeable about spotting good writers that will meet your demands.
Some pitfall to watch out for:
- Writers that lack credibility
- Poor or Plagiarized Content
- Cheap service might mean poor result
- The outsourcing process
Below are recommended to establish article-writing services:
1. SEO Writers – Business clients all around the world use the services of SEO writers all the time. This is mainly because they employ Professional writers who are native English speakers and highly trained to write quality content to engage readers and optimized for search engine. Their prices are affordable and offer quick turnaround.
2. Articlez – This article writing site also use the services of experienced source writers, they offer competitively priced services compared to other content outsourcing sites. You can create a free account and purchase content as you go.
3. Text Broker – Services offered on this site are unique and customize content for articles, blog post, travelogues, product reviews, press release and more.
If you’re interested in their services, then I recommend you also check out WPTextBroker plugin. This allows you to order articles and receive ready to publish content directly to your blog from your WordPress administration panel.
They will help to manage and audit the writers on your behalf and provide a reliable turnaround on time. Submit your request and your work is done.
Other outsourcing needs is a site like Fiverr; this site allows you to hire people to do things for you for $5.
A word of Caution: No matter the services you employ for your content writing, always spend time reviewing the contents before publishing. Using Professional services doesn’t mean that you won’t have to tweak and adjust your articles for good quality.
Option 4: Invite Guest Authors to post Content on Your Site
Allowing other authors to guest blog on your site is another way of keeping the content on your blog fresh. WordPress will give you the options for specifying different roles for your registered users.
You can configure your WordPress in a way that areas you don’t want registered users to access will be restricted. Guest Bloggers are able to post content on your site, but won’t be able to access your administrative panel.
Getting Started
The main thing to do now is take action.
Open a new text file on your computer or if you prefer a notepad and a pen, write down ten Blog post ideas that will help you to grow your business and services.
Do it now. Write down…
- Product idea
- Company idea
- Industry idea
- Event idea
- Customer’s tip idea
- Reseller’s training idea
- Common FAQ idea
- Other content idea
Be committed to positing 1-2 articles every week on your site. Writing quality content yourself could mean spending up to an hour getting it right if you are just starting out. The more you practice the easier it becomes with each passing day.
If you can’t maintain posting a couple of articles on your site every week, then try posting every fortnight, just make sure you are consistent. Investing 2 hours a week shouldn’t be a problem, very soon you will start reaping the fruit of your hard labour.
Food for Thought for Business Owner
As your business grows, you’ll be getting new prospects and one thing with new prospects is they will keep asking you questions. You will have to create a page on your site that answers all the questions your prospects and even clients are likely to ask.
Use a page to provide FAQs, address, sales objections, add videos to demonstrate how your product works. You could also offer readers a downloadable report with more information.
By setting up this page you are maximizing your time, you won’t be wasting time on people who are only curious. You will be providing education for customers about how to do their own research in their spare time. They will only have to contact you if they are more serious about doing business with you. The time you spend with them after moving from suspects to prospects will be time well invested.
In Conclusion
You will agree with me that Blogging is serious business; well the truth is if you are going to be successful you will have to make sacrifices. There are technical aspects of blogging that has not been addressed in this article. Providing quality content on your site is just one aspect of the whole process.
The technical aspects means configuring your site to operate even when you’re sleeping, this is one of the beautiful things about using the internet to your business advantage.
If you need help or you want to increase your knowledge about how your site will be optimized for the search engine, perhaps you want to start making lots of money from blogging then as you move onto the next page you’ll begin to discover more about blog setup, blog configuration, etc. These techniques will help your blog to get on the first page of search engines as soon as possible.