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Technology, social media and Search Engine Optimization have changed and transformed more frequently than we care to even divulge into.  So when people begin to blog, many times, they start out accomplishing the biggest hurdle of all: BLOGGING itself.

There are many types of blog, blogging for leisure and blogging for revenue being the most popular.  The satisfaction of blogging for leisure often times, comes from the small audience of choice.  However, revenue blogging (or blogging for business) has some curves and bumps you’ll want to avoid sooner rather than later.

There are MANY do’s and dont’s when it comes to blogging, so we’ve decided to mention the first 5 we feel are critical to the structure and future of your blogging efforts.

1.  Blogging Should Be Your Lure, The Internet Being The Water.

Best practices at one time suggested that your blog should be a site all on it’s own.  Don’t get us wrong; there are several reasons why people and businesses still do this today.  However, for the purposes of drawing traffic to a main website as well as refreshing your website constantly, blogging on your current website is by far the best practice.  Statistics from Hubspot support the theory of blogging for business:

“Companies that blog get 55% more web traffic .”

2. Sporadically Blogging Is Not Worth Blogging At All

Search engines, like Google, LOVE consistency…and businesses who understand this, thrive on the responsiveness from Google when they are consistent in their blogging efforts.  Consistent means something different to each and every one of us.  If you can create good, quality content 5 times a week, you are in a great, great spot!  However, if your business can only consistently blog three times a week, but with great quality content, that is also great.  It’s the blogs that get published twice last month, three times two weeks ago, once last week and no blogs for the current week that really do not reap the rewards of the free tool.

3. STOP Promoting and Selling.  Its Annoying and a Turn-Off

Blogging requires creativity.  Blogging requires the thought process from a consumer standpoint.  When your Mother goes online to find answers to one of her questions, she isn’t looking forward to running into a virtual sales person, she simply wants some free information…which, in all fairness is what MANY of us want.  However, if the location is right, Mom might pick that company of a product and service based on the information and knowledge she received.

There are STILL loyal customers and future clients out there!

4. Call To Action….You WANT More Than Just A User.

This is true in most, but not all blogging cases.  Again, you have the blogging groups that simply connect based on the specifics of their writing, there is the bloggers that like to write out of pure therapy and then the bloggers who want to send you down the funnel…yes, that’s right…the FUNNEL.

Once you realize that people are reading your blogs for a specific reason, they often times will like to see more on the topic of choice.  A call-to-action on your blog such as an subscription for a free webinar or e-book is a great way to the collect the data on the visitors you’ll need in order to funnel them down in hopes of a future sales conversion.

Again, this isn’t necessarily for everyone, but for those businesses who want to nurture their clients down the sales funnel.

Like anything in the realm of marketing, the list can go on and on and on.  Would you suggest any other pointers?

We Want To Hear Them!