Differences between blog posts and other website pages & their purposes
The main pages on your website are for conversion, taking action, or providing a function. Sometimes, though, these main pages need some help.
In terms of a ‘good converting landing page‘ it should be concise, easy to understand, and not overwhelming – it should focus on the main point – to generate an action.
A blog is used for expanding on topics using posts (articles) related to your main / core offers or other main sales & information pages on the rest of your website.
MUCH OF OUR LEADS COME FROM BLOG POSTS THAT WE WROTE YEARS AGO.
The main pages of your website are meant for converting sales, but blog posts are pieces of content used to “get people in the door“, increasing your chances of acquiring new customers.
What to do with your blog
The blog is where you keep all of your additional published content so that your main website pages are kept well organized. Blog posts can play a pivotal role in an inbound marketing strategy.
Use for lead nurturing
Not everyone has time to read every post you ever make, so you could use blog posts as content to nurture your leads.
Each post can be an email drip
Since you can hide certain blog posts, you could create the content of an automated email drip campaign in a sequence of posts that are only accessible through the emails.
Enriches overall content and topical relevance for industry / niche
As you create content in the blog section of your site, the overall indexation of related keywords & terms will grow and your website will appear in search results for more people. Optimized to be found in Google searches.
Each post can become an additional lead capture page
Your website has the ability to sell for your company 24/7 – whenever anyone searches for what you do, that could be at 2AM. If you think about what you could offer within a blog post that would benefit the visitor in exchange for their email – you are creating lead capture pages with each additional post.
Offers more user engagement
Potential customers and visitors can contribute to expanding your content by commenting on blog posts, which in and of itself is a means for generating leads – not to mention it will help your SEO.
EXAMPLE
To be honest, we are writing this blog post to help you understand why it’s important, and at the same time using it as a soft-sell to generate leads for our website content creation & design services.
Differences between using social media platforms vs your own website
There have been a lot of changes, court cases, and terms of service or privacy policy updates since 2018, no doubt you have received an email from one of these major social media platforms about that.
They have the ability to silence, shut down, censor, or terminate accounts. Many of these platforms are moving to strictly “pay to see” models, where your business will not reach anyone organically anymore, the ad-pocolypse may be upon us.
Having your own website ensures that you won’t be bothered by any of this. We may need to use these platforms to get traction but we do not need to live or die by them.
BUY THIS MICRO-SERVICE NOW
If you publish on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – it’s not YOUR content anymore, they OWN it & your account can be terminated without notice.
Google maps has been known to do the same things. Why we suggest that if you do not own it, do not put majority stock into it, but still use it.
The most commonly used strategies for a blog
Divided into main sections
Think of your core offers, services, products and build those concepts into a hierarchy – this is what categories are for.
Categories based on services, or related topics of the main sales pages on the rest of the site.
Write about topics closely related to the main categories of your website / business, write in a way that solves a problem related to the product or service – just do not try to create a blog post that is the same as the main sales page or there could be problems.
Blog posts are meant to enhance the main sales pages on your website.
As mentioned above, you do not want blog post cannibalizing the same keywords as your main landing / sales pages. You want those posts & articles to support the main pages.
Since you could not fit every possible ‘thing’ about your offers (sales pages are meant to be simple and convert) you need blog posts to expand on those ‘things’ or ‘topics’ and point links from those posts to your main sales pages.
Posts can act as low-bar of entry offers to get people further into your site.
Most of these blog post articles are going to be informative. Things people might think & researching about before they are ready to buy. In that case, you should look at each blog post as an opportunity to captivate those people and get them further into your website / sales funnel.
Blog posts can answer FAQ.
A blog can have a section dedicated to the questions your customers are always asking, saving everyone time. You can use these types of Q&A posts for on-boarding sequences & information to help them be more prepared to do business with you – lots of ideas & selling points here.
Some posts can be public, and other posts can be private view by link only.
If you have valuable information that you would like to share, why not capture some basic lead info in exchange for sharing it? You can make section of a blog private for member access, or enter email to access only – lots of benefits in that concept.
Blogging tips for local businesses
Here are some additional tips for local business blog post ideas
The local areas
Best places to live
Community events
Local statistics
Company events
If your company is doing something new, write or make a video about it and post to your blog!
Industry topics
Write individual topics on your industry, news related and more and tie it into what you do.
Behind the scenes
Not for everyone, but if it makes sense consider creating content that shows a little behind the scene of what you do, it will make you stand out and customers will trust you more.
FAQ / Q& A
Becoming one of the main functions of a website is to answer common questions right off the bat. It saves everyone time, and helps to pre-qualify your leads, plus, it makes the sales process much easier.
Product / Project Showcase
If you frequently create new products or build projects it’s always good to share a completed job well done.
- Case study (or project results)
Show off a flagship service, product, or project with a detailed report, lots of photos to show how it changed your customers life and the benefits they received.
Your business process
If possible, give insight into how you conduct business and what your potential customers can expect.
We hope this helps and gives you some ideas. If you have not started expanding your website content by using a blog, hopefully this has inspired you to take action.
Nexxus Digital Media Designs