(This article was originally posted in Boost.re’s official blog)
Why Your Blog is Not Receiving the Traffic It Deserves
It’s a problem I see again and again…
Businesses are told they need a blog and should be constantly creating content.
So, they invest in content creation without having a clue how they are going to profit from it. They just do it…
After a while, they feel frustrated because this ‘blog thing’ is taking time and money. It is not magically appearing in the first results of Google or spreading virally through social media.
Un-motivated and frustrated, they stop creating content and the blog shuts. Instead, they start paying for low quality traffic through AdWords or Facebook Ads.
Not using their blog is wasting their opportunity to take advantage of the best type of digital marketing.
The creation & distribution dilemma
Let’s be honest for a moment, creating a brand through content marketing takes a lot of time and effort. Well, creating a brand from zero is hard in itself, period.
For instance, if your domain is young (you bought it in the last three years), you will struggle to optimize your content for SEO. It could take years before your content becomes the first result in Google.
At the same time, if you want to be noticed on social media, you need to spend time creating a followers base, a fan page, a LinkedIn profile, Pinterest, etc…
Using a blog smartly is challenging. You’re required to know not only how to create great content, you’re also asked to be an expert on how to distribute it effectively.
Two completely different skill-sets.
What can you do to solve this dilemma?
If you want your content to receive the traffic it really deserves, the best way to start is to:
- Dedicate all your time to one task, either creation or distribution of the content
- Then, get some external help to execute the task you didn’t do in step 1.
Start with the task you feel more comfortable.
Focus only on creating the best content in your industry…
The best way to become a thought leader is to share with the world your knowledge about your passions. This is the kind of content you can create relatively “easily” and that your readers will find useful.
This goes from food recipes to scientific breakthroughs. Share with the world the things that are useful to you.
It is highly likely that there is a lot of people out there, similar to you, wanting to have this information.
Once you have your content, there are awesome services that can help you receive high quality traffic organically, and usually they are a lot cheaper than paying a full time person to do it.
One of the most popular service to bring organic traffic to your website is Boost.
… Or concentrate on the distribution of “other’s” content
There are lots of content creation agencies that can help you craft the best content for your company, so you can concentrate on its distribution.
You can also, become a content curator that brings value to the audience by picking the best reads from around the web.
At this point, a blog wouldn’t make much sense though. You can use Twitter and other similar platforms for this.
Use metrics that indicate your success or failure
Avoiding creating a blog just because the cool kids are doing it.
From day one, establish what success looks like for you, whether it be new subscriptions, new customers, page views, etc…
Then compare your performance against these metrics, to know where you can grow.
If you see that a particular article made your traffic grow quickly, ask yourself why, and try to reproduce that “why” with another article.
On the other hand, if you see that another article didn’t perform as you expected, try changing the wording. Sometimes a simple word can change the angle of a entire piece of content.
Remember to test and test and then test some more, always having in mind what you expect and then comparing it with what you get.
At the end of the day, what counts is that you are sharing the knowledge you’re passionate about and that you measure its performance against what you picture as success or failure. This will help you tune your compass to bring high quality traffic to your website.
