Is Anyone Reading Your Company Blog ?
If you have recently looked at your web analytics and the stats show that your blog does not bring in as many visitors as you would have hoped for, here are some reasons for that:
1. Your blog is self-indulgent
Often a blog can be associated to a clothing store. If a potential customer walks in a clothing store and finds that the apparel isn’t suitable to his/her age and taste, it is very likely that the prospect will walk out of the store empty handed and most likely will never return again.
The same applies to a blog. If a visitor lands on a blog and finds that the content is nothing but self promotional information – there are no tips, no tutorials, no opinion pieces he/she will be put off and will probably avoid clicking on your blog if it comes up in search results or promoted on social media.
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How to overcome:
Ask yourself this question: If I were my target market would I consider these topics informative and useful? – Put yourself in the place of your readers. Read your blog post before you publish it and think whether or not it’s worth your audience’s time and attention.
It’s not to say that you shouldn’t have posts where you talk about your latest product development or you update your readers on what promotions you have coming up, but if all your posts are nothing but that, your blog will soon end up being a ghost town.
2. You don’t post often enough
Users need to be constantly fed with information to keep them loyal to your blog post. If you don’t post often enough, your subscribers are likely to lose interest and search for content elsewhere. Also, blog frequency impacts customer acquisition. 92% of companies who blogged multiple times a day acquired a customer through their blog.
How to overcome:
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research the latest trends/news in your industry
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research the topics your audience is most interested in and engaged with
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create a list of topics you would like to blog about
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create a schedule of when you are going to write the blog posts
Getting yourself organised, means that in time, you will develop a strong writing habit and you will push out high quality content that is relevant and engaging.
3. Your posts are either too long or too short.
When it comes to the length of a blog post most books and courses on blogging suggest that 250 to 500 words will do, depending on your subject. However, a lot of people will agree that 200 to 500 words doesn’t work for all bloggers.
I cannot answer the question, “How long should my blog posts be?” for you. All I know is that your blog post should be long enough to fulfil it’s purpose whatever the purpose is.
However, when you write a blog post you should keep in mind the following.
- Don’t be repetitive. If you are, you may lose your reader’s attention.
- Make your blog post scannable (include bulleted or numbered lists , highlight text etc. ) This enables readers to digest the information quicker.
- Think about the time you have for writing your blog posts! If you have time to research and write a hearty blog post go ahead! If you don’t, there is nothing wrong with shorter posts.
4. Lack of visuals
Having pages and pages of content but no visuals might be why the bounce off rate is so high on your company blog.
The expression “a picture is worth 1000 words” applies very well to blogging. If you want visitors to think of your blog as exciting and full of life, you need to entice their eyes with visuals: images, videos, infographics, memes, gifs etc. Research shows that the human brain processes visuals 60.000 times faster than text . Give your readers valuable information without making them read a novel and they will keep coming back for more.
5. Lack of exposure
So, your company blog is full of great visuals, accompanied by non-promotional content that gets published every other day – yet you still experience low traffic and readership. The thing is: it takes more than great visuals and informative content to acquire high readership. It takes promotion.
Not making time to actively promote your blog posts will only lead to poor SEO and poor traffic.
Research shows that 75% of users never scroll past the first page of search results which means that if your URL is on the 10th page of a search, your blog won’t get noticed easily.
How to overcome:
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SEO your blog. Great article that teaches you how to do this here
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Contribute to the community. The more blogs you visit and leave comments on, the more people will be aware of your blog and will return the visit.
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Drop a quick email to your database – let them know about your blog’s existence and list reasons why they need to read it.
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Send a tweet or write a post about your latest article you published. Make use of all those fans your company has on social media.
The most successful blogs out there are the ones that pull the visitors in through great content. Learn how to implement a pull strategy for your company blog by downloading the Free Eguide: Pull Marketing Strategy
Read more at http://www.business2community.com/blogging/anyone-reading-company-blog-0603712#jXXxPS2BzpRRQDgx.99
Andrea Biasca-Caroni 