Business Growth Blog

The thought of sitting down, hashing out ideas and forming them into a blog post for your business blog is daunting. It’s so hard to find the time and make it a priority! I even struggle myself: do I do client work or my own blog?

For example, as I’m writing this, I feel a lot of pressure because I have a meeting tomorrow that I HAVE to prepare for. Technically, I should be doing that right now. Instead, I’m writing this blog because I know it is a critical part of my business growth strategy.

So that begs the question: how do you find time to blog in an already over-worked schedule? Here are 3 ways you can ease the burden and make blogging easier.

I evaluate a lot of company websites and their online presence. The first few things I look for are whether or not they have a blog, if the articles lean more company-centric or customer-centric, and who the authors are.

The Internet is flooded with content. Not every article is going to be a hit, but posts that are interesting and compelling to the right audience can drive website traffic and leads for years. The best articles usually come from people in the trenches: business leaders and industry experts who are actively working in the field. They bring unique insights, advanced learning, and fresh perspectives that drive the conversation forward.

In the following articles, I explored some of the important benefits businesses realize when leaders engage in the blogging process. When you read the titles, you may think they contain the same information. But each blog has a slightly different take. Check them out! Comment below and share what you think about blogging.

One of the first priorities of your company’s marketing strategy should be to develop a process for blogging. From a technical perspective, blogging helps you get found online. It increases the number of web pages on your website (the more web pages, you have the more chances you have to get found) and increases SEO mojo. That’s definitely important stuff, but buyers don’t really care about that. The main reason to blog is to provide your prospects with the information they need as they travel through the decision making process.

Blogging is a profitable marketing tactic that companies from all industries can use to attract and engage target buyers. The two biggest questions marketing executives have to answer when planning their blog strategy are 1) what will they write about, and 2) who will write the articles.

The best blog articles come from people within your organization that have deep industry expertise. Unfortunately, most internal experts or other potential blog contributors don’t have time to write, don’t like to write, or don’t know what to write about. It’s not part of the corporate culture, and they’ve never done anything like that before.

The good news is that there are processes you can implement to simplify the content creation process and make blogging the norm within your organization. Business leaders will be able to quickly create quality blogs that build a following, generate leads, and help salespeople sell.

Here are four ways to create blog articles without having to agonize over the writing process:

For the majority of salespeople today, blogging is not a prospecting technique that is on their radar. However, when sales and marketing align around the content strategy, the return on investment goes way up. Here are 3 reasons why sellers should be part of the blogging process, either by helping to craft articles or by guiding the content strategy.

I’m addicted to marketing metrics. Once I complete a marketing activity, like post a blog, launch an email, or promote an ebook, I’m desperate to find out if my efforts are paying off.

Here are 4 marketing metrics that I check daily. I try to only look once per day so I can stay focused on other things, but I often find myself checking them whenever I have a free moment!

Every morning I check my email box, and it’s full of articles about a variety of topics. I go to my LinkedIn home page, and I’m bombarded with more articles. There’s no way on God’s green earth I could ever read them all. Sometimes I feel annoyed that there are so many.

So why bother blogging and adding to the plethora of information online? Won’t your articles just get ignored like the zillions of other articles do?

When I talk about email marketing, the first thing most people claim is that they get too many emails. While that’s probably true, it’s still one of the most powerful ways to engage potential customers.

When people mark email as spam, it’s because they never asked to get the email, and it adds no value to them. The definition of spamming is “send the same message indiscriminately to (large numbers of recipients) on the Internet.” At first glance, you might think all email marketing is spam because you’re sending to large numbers of recipients, and likely not all of the people on your list have opted-in on their own.

The keyword to look at in the definition of spam though is “indiscriminately.” It means “in a random manner” or “in a way that does not show care or judgment.” Creating a customer-centric email strategy that focuses on adding value to the reader will have a much lower likelihood of being considered spam.

Here are five ways to create a non-spammy email marketing program that effectively supports the sales process.

Many of my customers use WordPress when we first begin our engagement. I've tried and tried to do inbound marketing on WordPress, and it hasn't worked out for me yet. I spend more time dorking around with technology than actual marketing. On top of that, I don't get all of the functionality I need, and my efficiency and effectiveness decrease dramatically.

People think that WordPress is “free.” Yes, it is true that it doesn't have a subscription fee or anything like that. However, time is money. Would you rather spend money on implementing WordPress plug-ins and creating workarounds to make it sort of do what you want or on designing and implementing marketing campaigns that can actually drive business results?

If you want to do inbound marketing (meaning blogging, email marketing, social media, lead generation, and the like), we recommend our clients - large and small - migrate fully from WordPress to HubSpot. Here's why:

When I talk to salespeople about blogging, I get the same response Bob Wiley gives Anna when asked about going sailing: “I've never blogged before; I don't think I can handle it!” The good news is that even though Bob is terrified, he has a great attitude and is willing to try.

Below are some blog ideas that can get you started. Hopefully, when you write a few of your own posts, you can be as excited about your accomplishment as Bob is about sailing!