3 Ways Blogging Will Positively Impact Your Organization’s Website

From connecting with more customers and donors to putting your industry expertise on display for the world, the advantages of having an active blog are numerous for any organization. Perhaps the most important benefit of a blog is the positive impact it will have on your organization’s website. By analyzing data from our own blog (the one you’re reading right now), we’ve pinpointed three significant ways a blog will make your website more valuable.

Three Important Advantages of Blogging for Your Business or Nonprofit

A blog will bring more people to your website. A lot more people. And you definitely want more people on your website. More people visiting your website means more people learning about what makes your brand unique, and your products and services. Here are three specific ways having a blog adds value to your organization’s website:

#1  The Traffic Spike

By analyzing our website traffic data over the past six months, we’ve noted a pattern of significant spikes in traffic whenever a new blog post goes up. Keep in mind, we promote our blog. We post links to it on our social media sites, and share it in emails and within other online communities. All that promotion contributes to our results. We found the publication of a new blog post generally produces a spike in overall website traffic on the day of post publication and the two days immediately following publication. That’s a consistent three-day spike before our traffic settles back into average daily numbers.

#2  The Ripple Effect

Here’s the kicker: While the majority of website traffic following publication of a new blog post is directed at the specific post, our results showed traffic also increased on all other pages of our website. That means with each new post, your entire website (all pages) experiences a traffic spike for three days. One can reasonably stipulate the influx of visitors to the new post are trickling out to the other pages of the website. This result illustrates the single most compelling reason an organization should have a blog: With each new blog post, more new visitors will lay eyes on your website. More people will learn who you are and what you have to offer.

#3  The SEO Factor

After initial publication and the three-day website traffic spike, blog posts continue to add value to your website. Primarily, they do this through SEO (search engine optimization). Analyzing the hundreds of search terms that brought visitors to our website, we determined more than 2/3 of our search engine traffic leads visitors directly to blog posts. That means your blog serves as a vital website entry point. Weeks, months, even years after you published a post, you will find people are still entering your website through that post because it turns up in search engines. In this way, blog provide a great SEO advantage.

A Note on Timing Your Posts…

To get the most out of your blog posts, you should publish posts when they will have the biggest impact. For a blog targeting businesses and organizations (or more specifically people who work at businesses and organizations), the best time to publish posts is during the work week (Monday-Friday). When taking into account the two-day echo of increased website traffic that follows each new post, you will want to publish early in the week (Monday-Wednesday) to get the most out of your post.

Want More Website Traffic? Start Blogging

The bottom line is a blog will give your organization’s website traffic a significant boost. In the case of our website, over 1/3 of all our site traffic is the result of our blog.That’s a big number, and it means a lot of additional eyes exposed to your brand and your website. If you’ve been dragging your feet on launching a blog for your business or nonprofit, don’t miss out on this easy way to increase your site traffic.

A couple final tips to help you get the most out of your blog:

1. Post regularly to your blog. Publish at least 2-4 new posts a month. The more you post, the better results you will see.

2. Spread the word about your blog. Share new posts on your social media pages, in email newsletters and any other way you can.

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Time Traveller's Tips for Internet Marketing

It's 2012. You've got a website, you've put some tracking code in to see how you're doing. All good so far.

But wait. Your traffic isn't growing and you're certain that with the visitors you have, more should be converting into customers.

So what do you do? How do you take what you've got and really make it successful? I mean more visitors, more customers, more turnover. More success!

Do you redesign it? Do you get some search engine optimisation done? Do you start blogging and tweeting? And if you do any or all of these things then how do you know if it's really working?

It's difficult to know what to do, because depending upon who you talk to you'll get different advice.

If you talk to a design agency, it's a design problem.
If you talk to an SEO company, it's an optimisation problem.
If you talk to a PR agency, it's a PR problem.

Ouch.

To answer this, it looks like we need to go back in time!

Let's zoom back to 1996 in our DeLorean (if you're going to build a time machine, you might as well build it in a DeLorean right?)

First stop. Design Agency. 1996.

In 1996 websites were seen simply as online brochures. The design and structure of websites was geared around explaining business activities and products from the businesses perspective. Copy was generally written by product or marketing managers to communicate important features.

Today, successful businesses understand that they must engage with customers by listening and solving their problems, focusing on benefits whilst building trust and maintaining relationships.

Strong and consistent branding is still important as it helps to position and differentiate, making sure that any communication has maximum impact and that brand communications are mutually supportive.

However, it is the content that is crucial in developing and maintaining customer relationships. Repeatedly redesigning around stale content will undermine brand consistency and strength.

Time machine tip: Strong consistent branding adds value across multiple communications and maximises content investment.

Second stop. SEO agency. 2004.

As people came to rely on search engines to find stuff, businesses came to rely upon search engines to get found. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns were two ways to get in front of people on the web.

Back in the day, an SEO company would help you to understand the search phrases your customers use and to restructure your website to align your content to these search phrases. Then build back links from other websites to get your pages to rank well for your prospects searches.

If you were creating great content that naturally attracted links from other websites, Google loved you and your traffic grew. If you were buying links to 'brochure' pages on your website, you spent your time dodging Google's algorithm changes.

Yes, it's important to get ranked in search engines. But the content that you rank with is more important. Because when somebody clicks through to your page, they are either going to be engaged and want more from you. Or they are going to click away. Disappointed.

Think content strategy. Search is still massively powerful, we've got our branding and tone of voice from 1996, let's pick up our content strategy from 2004!

Time machine tip: Google is in the business of helping people to find the content they want. If you make it your business to create and deliver content that your customers want and need, you win.

Back to the time machine and..

Third stop. Business blogging. 2008.

Everyone knew that they should have a business blog, to keep their website up to date, to get people to come back maybe even make their website a destination.

But many struggled to find the time to create the content, or spent time creating posts that didn't add value and saw little return on the time and effort invested.

Interestingly, those that did find success in blogging, did so by aligning the content they created with the search terms they knew that their potential customers used to research their marketplace. They added white papers and PDF ebooks that could be downloaded in exchange for a visitors contact details to create engagement and to identify business leads.

These tactics drew in the prospects who were using the web to research their purchases, the very people advertising was finding it increasingly difficult to reach.

But wait. On the subject of reach, we have one more stop before we go back to the future..

Fourth stop. Social media. 2009.

I'll confess, it took me a while to get it. "What good is a 140 character tweet going to do my business"? I said to myself back in 2009.

Well listen up, old me from the past!

It's about reach. And It's about influence. It's word of mouth on a global scale in real time. And building your own network that draws those with shared interests towards you. This is how it works...

Social media drives visibility for your blogging and content generation. Blogging and content generation drives the growth of your social media network. Both support your SEO strategy.

Creating strong, interesting content that helps and informs, and then sharing it, is incredibly powerful.

Got it? Well we're outta time... So let's get back to the future!

But before we land back in good old 2012. I want you to notice that over the years the conversation you have had with your customers has become less about trying to communicate the things that you do as a business, and more about delivering the things that your customers want. Think benefits, not features.

So here we all are, with our ingredients for success pilfered from across time. We've got our consistent brand identity, our content plan and a social media powered global publishing system.

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Social Networking for Business Growth

Don’t forget about old networking methods

As you enter into the realm of the social media, you can’t forget about the old ways. Tweeting, posting and sharing are all great ways to get your brand to a lot of people. However, meeting people in person, networking, making phone calls – those methods all still work.

Today I went to a luncheon for business women and they were quite a hoot. As I generally spend my days hunched over my computer tapping away at the keys, getting out and seeing other humanoids was enriching, if nothing else! Just like giving a polar bear at the zoo a giant ice ball with a fish in the center of it, meeting some people in person was my enrichment for the day.

The women I met were from various fields, only one other spends her entire day alone with a computer. While immersed in cyberspace, we tend to forget about how important it is to do networking in person with other business people to help grow our businesses.

Check your community and find a networking organization. Most allow visitors to attend at least one or two meetings without joining the organization. Get a feel for the group and see if it is a good fit for you. You don’t have to meet everyone at once. I felt a little intimidated at the first one I attended. If you just make a few connections, the next time you go, you will know at least one or two people. Then, it becomes much easier.

Always take a big stack of cards, even if you think you will only give out a few. It’s always best to be prepared. If you don’t have cards – shame on you! Get some. There are reasonably priced places online like vistaprint.com where cards are very inexpensive (some are free, you just pay shipping). Vista Print offers designs already made up for a variety of businesses or generic cards. If you need help, get in touch with me. I can design something for you at a reasonable price.

Take advantage of all the ways to connect with others and grow your business. Don’t limit yourself by relying completely on the internet.

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7 Tips to a Great Skype Interview

Thankfully, working from home has gotten easier because of the wonderful world of technology. We are able to perform job duties to our fullest without ever leaving home. Skype is becoming the fastest interview platform for many different companies because of simplicity and inexpensiveness. Whether you are conducting a Skype interview or on the interviewee end, here are 5 tips to consider before you log on next:

Internet Connection:

First and foremost, you want to make sure that your internet connection is fast and reliable. There is nothing like a choppy and dysfunctional Skype interview to really frustrate both ends of the interview. Contact your local internet provider to make sure that you have a dependable and fast connection well enough for Skype.

Location:

You want to set the computer in a part of your home that is quiet and has little to no distractions. You don’t want a child come running in during an important interview.

Background:

Your face and upper body should be framed evenly in the screen and reflect a simple background. Avoid any personal photo frames, busy wall paper or anything that the other person on the other side could deem distracting. With that said you don’t want a stark white wall as a background either. Think about sitting in front of a nice bookshelf or a window with curtain/blinds.

Lighting:

Lighting placement is very important on how you appear to the other person. A bright, fluorescent light directly above your head can be harsh on your skin tone and cast awkward shadows on your face. Try sitting near a window with natural sunlight or use a soft table lamp and place it near you.

Eye Contact:

When it comes to video chatting, your eyes naturally gravitate to yourself as you speak. The goal of the Skype interview is to make it feel as real as possible. You want to give the feeling that you are face to face in an actual office interview. So look at the camera as you speak, it will have the other person feeling like you are speaking directly to them.

Clothing and Makeup:

Test out your make up by doing it before the interview and seeing how you appear on screen. You don’t want to look like a clown and you don’t want to look like you just woke up. You may need to go a little heavy on the blush to give your face some color on screen. As far as your outfit goes, avoid anything that will wash you out, wear dark colors like plum, navy and black. The neckline needs to be professional.

Practice:

Skype with a friend or relative to make sure that your Skype is properly working. This is a good chance to test out the lighting and background on your friends. Ask them if they feel like your make up and clothing is good for an interview. Also note the volume level of your voice and that you are heard clearly.

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