Whether you depend on your website to be a qualifier of prospects or to generate sales or new leads, you may not have a better opportunity to make a case for yourself as an expert in your field than through your website content.
While the other parts of your website can tell the story of your company, your blog is the perfect platform to share your knowledge and industry experience directly with your readers. The more clarity you can bring to each topic, the more likely it will lead to new opportunities to grow your business. If you haven’t paid much attention to your blog or your website content, now’s a good time to clarify your messaging and make a plan to update your website with fresh content on a more regular basis.
5 ways your blog can help build your business:
- It can create more inbound website traffic for your company.
- It proves your level of expertise.
- It can encourage prospects to take the next step in your sales process.
- The content can be repurposed and used in more marketing materials.
- It can lead to new opportunities through increased readership and awareness.
But where to begin?
Even if you know your business inside and out, writing content for a blog isn’t easy. There’s a difference between written content that’s laden with facts, and a short business-related narrative that tells a story that appeals to the reader as well as the search engines (aka Google). It’s common for businesses to struggle when trying to craft blog content. To get over this hump, some will hire a team with a professional copywriter to do the job for them. Once the content is created, you can repurpose it for additional marketing efforts—giving you a distinct advantage over your competitors.
Take, for example, the Trillion blog. It has provided a gateway to some of our biggest opportunities. The same can happen for your business. I started writing content more than 10 years ago in an effort to highlight our understanding of our clients’ needs. It was a form of inbound marketing for the company. I answered common questions that our prospects and clients ask in the hopes that people with similar marketing problems would ask Google—and that we would rank high in search results.
4 important rules for writing website content:
- Make it readable.
- Keep the voice on brand and in-line with your brand values.
- Write for your customers (but keep Google in mind, too).
- Make sure it’s original.
How can you repurpose your website content?
When you prepare to create content for your blog, plan on spending twenty percent of your time writing it and eighty percent repurposing it—this formula will allow you to leverage your expertise across different media channels, websites, and target audiences without having to start from scratch every time. By repurposing I mean reusing parts or all of your blog content so that you can stick to your key messaging as you spread the word via other media outlets. Below are a few suggestions of other places where you can repurpose your written website content:
- Your website’s news section
- Inbound marketing landing pages
- Email marketing campaigns
- Your social media channels
- Industry publications and websites
- News and media outlets
- Podcasts
- Webinars
- Whitepaper downloads
- Other blogs
Spend 20% of your time writing blog content and 80% repurposing it.
How to get started writing your blog content
Begin by creating an outline covering all of the topic areas you want to address, as well as everything that should be included under each topic. Your content can answer common questions and discuss how you help your clients and customers. I recommend including each of the Top 20 questions you receive from customers as your basis for future written blog posts. When we prepare content for the Trillion website, we imagine what a prospective client would type into a Google search query. The written content is prepared in a way that strategically answers the questions. The goal is for a prospect to find the answer or product they are seeking, contact us to discuss, and then convert them into a viable opportunity for the company.
Include each of the Top 20 questions you receive from customers as your basis for future written blog posts.
You can also expand written content to describe photos, graphics, infographics, videos, or presentations too. These are additional valuable ways to get your expertise across and to guide prospective customers through a marketing funnel of information.
Consider the order of this marketing funnel when writing content:
- A prospect has a need and searches for that need.
- Options are presented for a prospect to choose from.
- A chosen option is reviewed and qualified.
- The prospect seeks more information or decides to engage (purchase).
Do you need help developing or optimizing your website content?
If you need help cleaning up your web content and optimizing it for today’s marketing channels, give Trillion a call at 908.219.4703 or just complete our form and we will contact you promptly.
