I have set up a few blogs for friends, clients and family. It is my number one recommendation for people looking to get ahead in their filed, make some beer money and generate connections that wouldn’t exist without the internet.The number one problem lies in the Field of Dreams quote,
“If you build it, they will come.”
Sorry folks it doesn’t work like that. Most clients give up after 2 or 3 posts with minimal hits, no comments and no additional sales. Just a big fat bill from the mean old social media marketing guy (thanks G-Ro for nothing, and try to get me Twittering either!).
Where they fail is in the “build it” portion of the quote. It is not just about throwing up a Blogger or Wordpress template and slapping up a post about your products. And while I make that perfectly clear, they think that all the hoopla surrounding blogging and Social Media will draw thousands of new users to their site tonight, or maybe in the morning.
The build it part requires the following parts:
1. Consistent, interesting and compelling posts and content.
2. Engaged conversations on your site and outside of your site.
3. Link building
4. Reputation Management (Google Alerts = free and easy)
5. More content that your clients, fans and customers want to read.
For some people, coming up with content on a regular basis is not the easiest thing to do. For artists, musicians, extreme sport athletes and other creative types this should be an easy task. For students or experts, I am sure your field has enough interesting and breakthrough material to keep you going for a long, long time. I’ve seen blogs on everything from laundry techniques to sneakers.
Content isn’t all about writing novel sized posts with crazy research. It’s about engaging your readers. Photos from your night on the town, last show and your fans is a great conversation starter. Videos of your latest trick you landed or a videoblog with a joke of the day will keep people coming back for more and hitting the subscribe button.
The problem with all of this is that your marketing team cannot hold your hand and make the content for you. It needs to be authentic. It needs to be thought out and come from the maker. It needs to take time. But I guarantee that it will be time well spent.
Blogs are an amazing source of inspiration, great place for information, networking and resources. But they are also a place to keep eyeballs glued into your brand, your company or your industry. You just need to start posting, commenting and building your audience. Patience pays off for a great blog.
What do you think? How did you get over the hump of minimal readers and inconsistent engagement? We’ve all been there.
Read this author's blog.
You’re exactly right about staying away from “novel-sized posts with crazy research” - readers will respond much better to a familiar, conversational writing style. That’s one of the things I’m working on to improve my blog because my default writing style tends to be a little too academic thanks to all those research papers in college. A good rule of thumb is to “write how you speak”. A casual tone will help your readers connect to you in a more personal way and keep them coming back for more!
@Lindsay - You are right! Writing in a way that is conversational creates an appeal to your readers that you are more than just words on a webpage.
I think persistence is the key. You have to be willing to get back up and dust yourself off when something you do fails miserably. Even if you’ve spent a lot of time working on it.
Keep working at coming at topics from different angles. Find a way to approach something someone else hasn’t, even if you’re talking about the same thing.
And lastly, help other people out. Link to them in your content and at the bottom of you posts. Digg/stumble their posts. Don’t be shy to let them know in their comments you’ve done this as well, they’ll be likely to reciprocate.
This is such good advice. I am still in the early stages of my blog, working on developing my brand and building a readership.
I know that I get the most comments when I really take the time to think about what I am writing.
I also think relevance is important. I am in PR so knowing what the readers want and what is timely is a big part of driving eyes to your site.
Thanks for the great post.
What advice would you give for developing a personal brand through blogging?
@Jonathon - Good points on the linking out. I totally forgot that one. That is a great source of building relationships and can also attract attention as bloggers tend to know who is linking to them.
@Kristina - Glad to see you taking the right steps into starting to activate your personal brand. My best advice would be to keep writing. Through your persistence you will start to see your strengths in your writing and a passion for something within your industry. I am a music marketing guy who stumbled onto this whole personal and Gen-Y branding stuff and not it encompasses a great deal of my daily routine (and income).