It’s just not working. No one can say you didn’t try, but all those blog posts you’ve been churning out haven’t been translating into increased traffic, leads or customers. What have you been doing wrong? Chances are, it’s a combination of these factors:
1. You’re inconsistent
Yeah, you blog…when you get to it. And you only get to it when Venus is in conjunction with Ursa Major and the moon is full, which translates to a handful of blog posts a year if you’re lucky. If you aren’t putting out content on a regular basis, you’re hurting yourself in two ways. First, you aren’t giving Google a reason to come back to your site and re-index your content. You aren’t feeding it new words to fuel its unending appetite for what’s new, so you’re hurting your SEO. The second is that it looks embarrassing. There’s nothing sadder than clicking onto a company’s blog and discovering that they haven’t blogged in months–or worse, years. If you’re going to blog, pick a schedule and stick to it. It will never be a priority unless you make it one.
2. You’re boring
Being consistent won’t help you if you’re consistently boring. Now, I’m not saying that your staid manufacturing company needs to talk about kittens and Game of Thrones on your blog. What I am saying is that you need to provide information that’s useful to your customer and helps them solve real problems, whatever those problems might be. Don’t drone on endlessly about yourself or speak in technobabble no one can understand. Be human – act like you’re helping a customer through their problem, and your blogs will be better.
3. You don’t tell anyone where to find you
Why are you keeping your blog a secret? That’s like throwing a party but not sending any invitations. Sure, you’ll get some traffic from search engines, but you need to tell people that you’ve got awesome stuff on your blog for their perusal. That means sharing it on social networks, your email newsletter or just plain telling customers and prospects to check out your blog.
4. You don’t research keywords
You don’t want to be a mindless keyword stuffing machine, but you need to refer to things in the way your customers do. If you’re in HVAC, don’t call it a “home comfort system”–call it an air conditioner. Or an AC. Or whatever people actually use when searching for and talking about your product. Not sure what that terminology is? Google Keyword Tool is a great place to start.
5. You’re unrealistic
If you just started blogging last week and are already calling the program a failure, take a few deep breaths. It takes time and consistency (remember #1?) to turn your blog into a solid source of traffic, leads and sales. How long? Usually about four months is the magic time when we see blogs taking off, but the timeline can be different for everyone. In a competitive market, it might take a year. If you can’t wait that long, maybe blogging isn’t right for you right now. That’s okay, too.
Blogging can be a huge boon for your business, but it takes work and time. If your blog isn’t working, why?