Take Your Blog To The Next Level With Mike Allton [PODCAST]

[PODCAST] Take Your Blog To The Next Level With Mike Allton

In the midst of the social media revolution, can blogging still be an effective way to reach your target market? It was in 1997 when blogs were first coined as “weblog.” The term was created by Jorn Barger when he made his first blog, the Robot Wisdom.

Fast forward to 2018 when social media marketing is at its peak, blogging stays strong under the content marketing umbrella. There is no doubt that content marketing, specifically blogging, does not only give you a short-term lure for your audience, but most importantly, establishes your credibility and trustworthiness for the long haul.

Take Your Blog To The Next Level With Mike Allton [PODCAST] Apparently, there is a direct relationship between the amount of content you create and the speed by which you will be able to achieve success online. So the more that you create good quality content in a short period of time, the faster you will be able to reap the revenue-generating benefits of blogging. In a study conducted by HubSpot, the statistics confirmed how exponentially effective blogging has been in increasing the number of visits and leads for a variety of companies. This typically happens after fifty pieces of content have been published on the blog. And so the faster you can get to 50 blog posts, the faster you can get to your target audience. Mind you, blogs generate organic traffic and that implies almost free marketing for you.

In order for your blog to stand out however, you need more than 1997 tactics. It is 2018 and you have to take your blogging to the next level if you want to stay relevant.

In Episode 10 of The Digital Slice Podcast, Mike Allton Shared some tips to help make your blog stand out. Mike is the founder of The Social Media Hat, a content marketing practitioner, an author, an award winning social media blogger and he's also fluent in Star Wars.

Make Your Content Helpful

There is one primary reason why blogging drives traffic and that is because your target audience is typically looking for answers to their problems. And if your content helps them solve their concerns one way or another, it is almost a guarantee they will be directed to your site and keep coming back for more. Because of this, it is important to make your content as informative and insightful as possible.

In the same way, hard selling on your blog will never work. People are looking for solutions first that may or may not be in the form of products or services directly. But if you can initially establish your blog as their go-to site for helpful information, they will be all ears when you start to recommend products, tools, or services.

Overcome The Fear Of Blogging

For some, writing for a blog seem like a daunting task. You can get haunted by questions like, what should I be writing? How often should I write? How long should each post be? What if I don’t have anything to write about? You may not be a writer by profession but if you are writing about your passion, about your industry, about your most favorite topics, then writing for your blog is going to be a breeze. And you don’t even have to go that far or think you have to do a lot of research just to complete a blog post. Think about your own experiences, your opinions, or your own analysis about certain topics. You will find the ideas will just flow when they come from your head.

Think About The Most Common Questions To Answer

If you are trying to fish for ideas about topics relevant to your target audience, you can have two profound sources. One is your audience’s frequently asked questions and the other can come from the questions they are supposed to be asking but are not. By now, you already know what your target customers keep on asking about. Writing about them in your blog is a creative way of giving them the answers. If there’s information you want them to know, but they are not asking themselves, this is another relevant topic to expound on through your blog.

Use Videos Or Video Interviews To Create Related content

Videos are huge right now whether they are live or pre-recorded. Needless to say, you need to take advantage of this powerful marketing tool as well. You can produce your own videos, or interview someone then do it live or record them ahead of time. You can invite industry experts to be interviewed so it can become a very productive recording. Your audience is certainly going to learn and will have a lot to take away. After that, you can have the recording transcribed and posted as a blog post. Or, you can create numerous blog posts based on the video to delve more deeply into the topic.

Humanize your blog

Human to human is not only a trend. People will gravitate more toward your blog when you are able to present to them the human being behind the blog. You yourself would rather talk to a human more than a machine right? So in your blog, show you are someone they can easily relate to. Talk about the things you are interested in, your hobbies, or favorite activities. Better yet, focus on one interest you have and blog about this topic often. In this way, you will be creating a personal brand in which people will go to you for credible information when it comes to the strong interest you have chosen. Turn yourself into a thought leader in your industry.

Write like you talk

You have to make your blog very conversational. Remember, you are trying to get to your audience and you never will if you keep a distant, formal tone. Besides, a blog can be informal and highly conversational like one individual sharing his or her thoughts with the world. So write like you are talking to someone directly and make your words leap out of the page. In this way, your target audience will not be “reading” your blog but actually talking to you about things you can relate to. Now, that’s a fun way for your audience to learn how to resolve certain issues and an even more exciting way for you to write your post.

Promote your content

Your blog will be of no use if you will not go out of your way to let people know you actually have a blog with tons of content that can be very useful to them. So you do need to promote your blog in every way you can. Social media can be very helpful in this sense. You can use the various social platforms including LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and the like, to direct your target audience to your blog. Meanwhile, you can also use tools that will help you do this faster and more efficiently. Mike is a Brand Evangelist at Agorapulse and Agorapulse is one tool that can help you spread the word about your blog using social media.

Be sure to listen to the full podcast to pick up on the value bombs Mike dropped. Then, contact us for help developing your digital marketing strategy and a blog you can be proud of.