SEO Guides, Tips & More!

As the new year has quickly begun, many are in “strategy and planning” mode for the months ahead. While there are many areas to focus on to further develop in 2016, hopefully, your blog is included in those plans. Many marketing managers feel that maintaining a successful blog is a daunting task that requires extensive resources, but this is not necessarily the case. A  blog is a marketing vehicle that can be managed by your existing staff.

A blog offers many opportunities including:

• Demonstrating the expertise of your staff to clients and prospects
• Showcasing the values your firm embraces and conveying your firm’s personality so you can attract the “right” clients
• The ability to answer frequently asked questions
• Introducing team members and pointing potential clients to the appropriate staff who could help them
• Improving your firm’s SEO rankings

If enhancing your existing blog or creating a new blog is part of your 2016 strategy to improve your firm, below are seven tips to help you in the process:

1. Create a blog strategy: Just as a member of the firm would advise a client to have a plan in place to reach their retirement goal, you need to develop a strategy for your blog. Consider what you ultimately want to achieve with the blog by asking a series of questions, such as:

• • Do you want to gain more business from a new line of services you’re offering or do you want to spotlight under-utilized services?
  • Do you want to demonstrate your firm’s expertise in a particular area or do you want to showcase that you are a family-owned firm?
  • Going through this exercise will determine what content you create for your blog. Think of your strategy as a roadmap that will likely change as your organization evolves. Therefore, plan on revamping its strategy at least once a year.

1. Know your audience: In most instances, visitors and readers of your blog are either current or potential clients. Take time to get to know them. Find out what their sticking points are. What are their fears, dreams, desires, habits and goals? Tapping into your target audience’s mind will guide you in creating content that solves their most top-of-mind problems, which leads us to the next point.
2. Provide valuable content. Offering your firm’s best advice on your blog is a way to develop the “know, like and trust” factor, which is essential to building long-term relationships.
3. Stay consistent. Depending on your firm’s resources, you may decide to blog once a week, twice a month or once a month. The rate isn’t as important as sticking to it. Consistency is key. It’s difficult to capture, let alone keep, an audience’s attention, so you need to create content regularly. The best way to stay on track is to develop an editorial calendar. Planning topics ahead of time will not only save you the headache of writing last-minute posts, it can also help you time posts to coincide with new services being launched or other firm events.
4. Respond to comments. Blogging is a way to build relationships with your audience (both existing clients and potential), so take time to respond to comments. Unfortunately, negative comments can be made, but rather than deleting them, address the issues raised head on. It will speak volumes about your firm’s culture. Just be sure to spin the response in a positive light.
5. Market your blog. As a marketer, it’s imperative to make the content you are electronically publishing available for the world to read. You might have the best blog content ever, but if no one realizes it exists, you’ll never have an audience. A great avenue and way to share your blog is via social media channels such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and Google+. Another method is to include recent blog posts in an email newsletter if your firm has one. Sharing builds better connections, and better connections build trust, engagement and ultimately your bottom line.
6. Measure results. Google Analytics provides a wealth of information on blog and website traffic. You can also look at engagement on your social channels to see what topics resonate best with your audience and create more content around those issues.

A successful blog can be a catalyst that drives your entire business forward when you first identify your purpose and then populate it with good content.

Contact Us

If you have questions about creating or maintaining a blog or if you would like to learn more about how to make a blog more successful, let us know. We’re here to help.