The majority of us are now aware of the multitude benefits of creating a corporate blog and the blogging movement has gained serious traction. But while many organisations now have the basics of blogging for business down pat, the next generation of inbound marketers want to crank things up to the next level – scaling up their blog efforts to the extent that they make a serious impact on overall marketing results.
Is this possible? Yes. Lots of people ask us how they can measure the true success of a business blog, and we cite measurable sales and lead generation as two of the most tangible measures of the ways a business blog can impact the bottom line.
But such measurable results require what some refer to as ‘blog marketing’, in other words applying a marketing strategy to your blog to both grow and scale its impact. Let’s say you have already launched your blog and achieved a reasonable amount of traffic. The next step is to convert those casual visitors into dedicated subscribers, or avid readers and fans who enjoy your content so much that they are willing to become evangelists, inviting new readers to discover your blog for themselves. Here are some simple steps to help you get more value from your readers by converting them into subscribers:
1. Blog frequently
One of the toughest challenges of blogging for business is maintain consistency and finding the time, resources and ideas to keep publishing. Frequency is vital. If you don’t regularly generate brilliant posts, why would time-strapped readers have any incentive to return to your blog? Perhaps you only post one blog per month at the moment. Take it in baby steps and try to initially work your way up to once per week. From there, you can take the next step to twice-weekly blogging, According to Hubspot, the most successful blogs publish content daily or even multiple times throughout the day. Of course this isn’t always possible, particularly for smaller businesses, so you might want to consider creating a dedicated in-house blog writer/team or outsourcing content writing.
2. Create a blog subscription landing page
You probably already use a landing page to convert website visitors into valuable leads. Why not do exactly the same for your business blog? The idea is to make it as easy as possible for people to sign up. A blog subscription landing page will help to convert those who may have casually stumbled across your blog into dedicated subscribers, without having to reach out to them via social media.
With a dedicated blog subscription landing page, you can use a simple call to action with a link inviting people to subscribe quickly and easily. Use high quality images and landing page copy to attract visitors’ attention and to relay the benefits of subscribing – that is, regular, free delivery of excellent content straight to their inbox.
Place call-to-action buttons within blog articles and elsewhere on your website to drive traffic to your blog subscription landing page – you can either outsource creation of these CTAs or do them yourself in PowerPoint.
3. Use email marketing
As a complementary partner to social media promotion and calls to action on your own website, email can be a highly effective channel for encouraging people to subscribe to your blog.
One method is to send dedicated messages tailored to different segments of your email database. Craft copy based on the specific behaviours of each segment, for instance their preferred topic of interest. Offer enticing, compelling content and incentives such as a free ebook or downloadable article on the areas they have previously shown interest in. You could also email a particularly successful previously-published blog article which racked up significant amounts of shares – you’ll not only be usefully repurposing content but also potentially attracting more loyalty through encouraging sign-up to future blogs.
Social media marketing, call to action buttons and email marketing are three simple and effective ways to drive blog subscription rates. What other tactics do you use to turn your casual blog readers into loyal subscribers?
photo credit: Ed Yourdon via photopin cc
