There are few jobs easier than blogging. In its simplest form there is little to separate the writings of a private diary to those of a blogger. With a computer, internet access and a willingness to pour one’s thoughts out over a keyboard –BLOGGING in essence is easy.
Unfortunately blogging as a business is anything but easy. Success, as we all measure it, isn’t the number of posts we write but the fans, “likes”, comments and money we get. Success rests on the fundamental understanding of the science of human behaviour, the mechanics of search engines, and that mysterious art of writing effective copy.
While blogging is easy, running a profitable blog can be maddening.
There are three main components to business blogging success:
- Writing to attract
- Writing to serve
- Writing to profit
And mastering the tightrope among them all.
While McDonald’s proudly announces how many burgers they’ve sold, we bloggers aren’t given the same freedom to gloat about our income winnings. We’re somehow programmed to be excited about interaction, “likes” and page views, but we keep silent when we start making more money. How odd it is to successfully provide readers with products and services they like while hiding the income proof that we’re doing a good job.
But there is a way to walk the tightrope that progresses all three components. There is a method to writing blog posts to improve their relevance, SEO, profitability AND MOST IMPORTANTLY, engagement by our audience. That process is outlined quite succinctly in our Clusters plan.
For a single writing to create income it must be found, be timely, be relevant, be readable and be authoritative. That’s the process of our Clusters Marketing Program. In creating a profitable plan for your blogging business, Clusters takes you through the following steps:
1. Choosing a calendar. Learn why you really need to and under what circumstances a real, paper calendar is the best.
2. Understand seasonal trends. Human Behavior dictates buying 99% of the time. Even when aggressively priced, it’s hard to sell Christmas trees in February. Even fake ones. That seems obvious, but the rule applies to just about everything.
3. Manage the science of search engines. That doesn’t mean just optimizing the post correctly for SEO – but also making sure you plan the necessary time for indexing, moving up the ladder, message testing, customer touch points lead time and how to make sure it’s on the home page just as people are thinking about it.
4. Reading and taking action on your Google Analytics information. Understanding where your customers are from and what they look at is crucial – but more it is more important to know when, how and how long.
5. You can’t win if you don’t write about what people search. If you’re not using the exact phrase people are searching for, you’ll find it hard to both attract and educate. It’s important to know which keywords to use on site, and which to use offsite as incoming links. Furthermore, if you optimize your site for a term that doesn’t get searched – how will you ever know you did a good enough job?
6. Finally it’s important to understand what your niche path looks like to get your customers from novice status to expert status. Helping your clients achieve their goals is our main goal . So understand and implementing the steps for them is crucial to improving the number of page views and time on site. And there is no faster way to move customers from fans to cheerleaders.
Clusters is your guide to understanding the Science of Blogging. Let us help you transform your current “editorial and content calendar” into a business building machine. Without really thinking through how to improve the lives of your customers, your efforts today will not snowball into your success tomorrow.
Ever rave about Netflix or your favorite restaurant, song or movie? Let’s build those kinds of customers on purpose. Let’s build a blog that meets the needs of the fans the exact moment they’re looking for the answer. Let’s create so many repeat visitors that we no longer rely on the Google Algorithm.
Author:Dan R Morris
photo courtesy of AnomePhoto.