“I’ve created blog posts in the past. But what I hate most about that is every post dies a slow death. It gets shoved to the bottom of my home page until it disappears forever, never to be seen again. I have some great content there. But now its not doing me any good. Why should I keep writing and creating posts when they are doing very little for me?”
I’ve had conversations with a lot of business owners who have concerns like the comment above. Have you ever thought that to yourself as well?
What the above comment shows is old world thinking.
In the “old” days of marketing, everything was in print format. If you wanted to get something to a potential customer, you wrote it up, printed it out, and handed it to them.
Things change when you put it online.
You write up an idea, create a post, and publish it online. There it resides forever, or until you decide to take it down.
Yes, if you’re used to content being on your home page, you’ll see it gradually slip into neverland. You won’t see it on your home page, and your brand new visitors won’t see it there either.
But now its time to think from an online vantage point.
If people don’t know you and have never heard of you, chances are they won’t make their first impression based on your home page. Instead, they will find you through a Google search, which will pull up a very specific page on your site and direct them there. Or they’ll follow something shared on Facebook or LinkedIn, and follow the trail to the post that captured their attention.
That’s why blog posts – content – is so valuable.
But there’s another reason as well.
Once you have content in place, it doesn’t have to remain in its original format. It can be repurposed and used in a variety of ways.
1. Use blog posts in your ezine. Why not send out a regular ezine to people that don’t visit your site on a regular basis?
2. Use blog posts in newsletters. While ezines are online, nothing says you can’t take the content and put it into a hard copy newsletter to send out to existing clients and referral sources.
3. Use blog posts in your marketing. Sometimes your blog posts cover pretty amazing topics. Why not take some of that and incorporate it into a brochure, a postcard, even a presentation at your local leads networking group.
4. Combine several posts to make a dynamic free report. Sometimes you’ll have several posts that go well together. They provide just the right amount of detail that together tell a complete story of what you want your potential customers to know. Put them together, create a motivating title, and send it out to prospects. Even if they’ve read a post or two in the past, this new presentation will provide meaning to them.
5. Combine multiple posts to create an ebook. A few years ago, I created my very first Kindle book in this manner. I called it 30 Ways In 30 Days and it consisted of 30 blog posts that I created over a one month period to provide a detailed look at building a niche marketing plan. It sold very well on Amazon for $4.99 for a number of years.
6. Allow others to use them. Yes, it seems like the online world is filled with content. And in many ways it is. But that doesn’t mean others in your community won’t find value in the way you write and what you write about. Find people and sites that share content on a daily basis – portal sites, associations, news sites, etc. These people need fresh content all the time. If you have quality content, they would be more than happy to share your posts. With a byline back to your site of course.
7. Bring it back to life. Lets say you wrote a great post a year ago. Since then, things have changed a bit. Take that post, create a new title on a similar topic, and rewrite it with your new content. So a post like 5 Ways To Finance Your Child’s College Education may become 7 Secrets To Financing Your Daughter’s 4 Year College Degree. You can link to the old post and expand on it. Or simply use it as a guideline for writing the new one. Either way, it makes adding new content much easier when the idea is already there.
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Blogs can benefit any website but don’t worry if you can’t do all the writing yourself … you can hire a ghost blogger for that!
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