Do It! Marketing Blog: Marketing for Smart People™

Want to get more marketing juice out of your business blog? 

Don't tell me - the answer is... Yes!

Ha - knew it!!

Sooooo... what should you be doing on that good old blog of yours - BESIDES blogging? 

Here are FIVE big ideas you can implement in FIVE minutes or less... and generate some pretty serious results FAST. 

1. Optimize past post titles. Based on your keyword and search engine optimization strategy, you probably have some great blog content with titles that are not optimized. For example, as a marketing speaker and marketing coach, two of my SEO key words (in case you couldn't tell!) are marketing speaker and marketing coach.

Sometimes, I'm good about including those keywords in my blog titles right when I post them. For example: 

Marketing Speaker: 5 Books You Oughta Buy NOW  

and

Marketing Coach: 17 Ways to Drive More Traffic FAST  

And sometimes, I'm not. For instance: 

23 things to say when you're asked for 'free consulting'

17 great answers to 'How much do you charge?' 

So if you go back to some of your older posts and change the titles to be more in line with your SEO keyword strategy, you'll attract new traffic and more traffic to your older (and probably underappreciated!) posts.

2. Add or update Calls to Action on your posts - including adding or updating the calls to action on your most popular posts which continue to generate a healthy volume of regular traffic.

A call to action is NOT a sales pitch - it's a way to OFFER value and INVITE engagement. For example, good calls to action for your business might include: 

• Subscribe to get regular updates
• Download this free eBook
• Get a free assessment
• Contact us for a No-BS initial consultation
• Take an interactive quiz
• Register for this free teleseminar
• Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes

This is the simplest and fastest path to convert visitors to leads to sales.

3. Reblog your golden oldies. If a topic worked really well, got a lot of comments, inbound links, and social media love the first time around, it may be time to revisit that topic.

Grab your old content and use that as a starting point for an updated new post - using 80% of the proven material from before and simply adding to it, enhancing it with newer examples, adding video, audio or other multimedia enhancements like Slideshare or Animoto. 

Add links to resources from other experts that relate directly to your content. Make sure to optimize the post's title, tags, categories and metadata to get some zesty Google juice, choose an eye-catching photo or graphic from Shutterstock.com or your favorite stock photo site and boom - you're done!

4. Use your blog to test new offers. Sometimes you want to put an offer out there to see what kind of response it might generate WITHOUT hitting your email list with a blast that might send more of your subscribers scurrying for the "Unsubscibe" button.

Your blog is a great place to send up "trial balloons" for new products, new services, new programs and new investable opportunities that you're not 100% sure are ready for major promotion via your ezine or email marketing efforts.

It's perfectly OK to "soft sell" occasionally - or even better, launch a short 3-question survey - on your blog to gauge your audience's interest in working with you in a new way.

5. Review older posts and find places to cross-promote your newer blog posts, your social media postings, your Flickr photos, your YouTube videos, or your other multimedia assets.

This is a great opportunity to build what are called "internal links" - links from one of your web pages or blog posts to another - to create a "web" of interlinked content and to boost the SEO of your overall site using anchor text that describes the content you are pointing people to.

For example, you might add the following to your older blog posts:

• Check out this YouTube video on effective business card design
• Here's another post you might like titled "What is inbound marketing?"
• Here's a screencast about How to Generate 10X Traffic on LinkedIn
• Want to get better at generating referrals? Read this post on Building Your Referral Blurb

Tags: blogging for business, business blogging, doit marketing, marketing speaker, marketing coach

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Use the COMMENTS area below to leave your advice, insights and recommendations on these ideas to breathe new life into your blog...

Guest column by Jerry Minchey, SearchEngineU

There are a lot of ways to get incoming links, such as:

• Get listed by the directories.
• Write articles for ezines and newsletters.
• Provide useful content so people will link to you without you asking.
• And the technique we are going to talk about today . . . Ask other sites to link to you. I'll go into the other techniques in another article.

Sample Link Request email message

Create personalized custom letters and send them manually one at a time. (My comments are in parentheses. The actual lettler is the text outside the parentheses.)

Subject: Link request (Look at their website and see if they request a special subject line when requesting links.) (Start of actual email message text:)

From: Jerry Minchey at http://www.SearchEngineu.com Personal email address: JMinchey@xxxxxx.com (This tells them that this is NOT spam. Spammers don't leave their email address.)

Cell phone: (Use a cell phone or a number where you can almost always be reached. If they want to talk to you, they may only try one time.)

Dear Jim, (Take the time to find the site owners name)

I found the information on your site at http://www.YourSite.com to be informative and professional, particularly the section on (fill in something to show that you have actually visited the site).

I think your visitors would all appreciate help getting their websites ranked higher on Google and other search engines. We are a subscription website, but we offer a ton of useful search engine optimization information to non-subscribers as well. (Show them an advantage to having your link on their site.)

I would like to request a link to our Home page at http://www.SearchEngineU.com from (Describe their page you want a link from. Home page, main product page, etc.) at http://www.yourSite.com/resources.htm. (List the URL of their page you want to be linked from. Maybe give them two suggested pages. Find two on-topic pages that have a reasonably high Google PageRank if possible. Of course, their Home page is always nice, but their Resources page may be where all of their other links are from.)

You can link to us by downloading our logo and code from: http://www.searchengineu.com/public/department25.cfm or just creating your own code. (You should have a “Link to Us” page with simple step-by-step instructions on your website showing people how to link to your site. Refer to it here.)

I have subscribed to your newsletter and look forward to receiving it. (That is, if they have one. This shows that you have looked at their site and find it of value. Stroke their ego.)

(And if you are proposing a reciprocal link arrangement, include the following statement:)

I have already added a link to your site. You can see it at: http://www.searchengineu.com/public/department25.cfm

I think the visitors to your site will appreciate your help in providing this valuable resource for them and of course, it will be greatly appreciated by me.

If you can provide the link, an email to confirm it would be appreciated.

Please let me know if you have any questions. I can be reached by email at JMinchey@xxxxxx.com or call me anytime on my cell phone at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Thanks for your consideration, Jim. (End any request with the person's name. It works much better than starting the sentence with their name.)

Sincerely,

Jerry Minchey

P.S.Remember, adding this link to your website will take you less than two minutes. And your thoughtfullness in adding this valuable resource of additional information will be greatly appreciated by your visitors.

(Always add a P.S. to your email message restating what it is you want and why they should take the time to do. They may just scan your email message, but they WILL read the P.S.)

Click here if you want to see more articles on Search Engine Optimization Techniques.