By Georgia Kirke with special guest Guy Remond
If you’ve been following our blogs for a while you’ll know the value we put on creating and sharing content to build an interactive community and a thriving business.
Perhaps you like the idea of starting a blog or tried it for a few months but then let it tail off, or maybe you’ve been churning out consistent content and wonder when you’ll start to see fantastic results.
Either way, this blog is going to share author, serial entrepreneur and investor Guy Remond’s story. One of his software companies, Cake Solutions, generated 700 blogs over a five-year period which attracted, on average, 50,000 visits to their website every month.
The content built the company’s reputation, credibility, community, and resulted in a multi-million pound acquisition in 2017.
7 reasons why blogging is a smart marketing tool
- It positions your business as an expert in your field which builds credibility.
Guy: “Our Chief Technical Officer Jan Macháček began to write about some of the experiments he was running and they caught people’s imagination. Readers enjoyed finding out about what he was doing, why he was doing it and what he hoped to achieve. We picked up on the fact that he was beginning to build a strong following so we encouraged the rest of the team to write blogs and share expert content from their point of view.
We built our presence in the community and in our sector to the point where we were seen as the de facto experts.”
- It helps you build and nurture your community.
Guy: “People really appreciate it when you share a blog that offers genuine value and answers key questions they might have. If you put out salesy stuff all the time it alienates people.
Our blogs led to customer enquiries and generated sales. We built a multi-million pound international company without a sales team; we had one person who dealt with all of our customer enquiries. We continuously generated sales based around the expert content that we shared.”
- It helps attract collaborative partners and opens the door to new opportunities including speaker events or guest blogging.
Guy: “When other people have already read your content they know what you’re capable of and what you’re passionate about; this makes it easy for them to engage with you and invite you to contribute to relevant events they’re working on.”
- It boosts your SEO ranking and drives traffic to your website.
Guy: “We produced what we called an aggregation blog; our team would invest time each week finding other information relevant to our audience. We’d then pull out the most interesting parts and share links to them in our own blog. People really loved it because it saved them hours of research and introduced them to people or businesses they might never have found on their own. It was a great way to increase traffic.”
- If you are looking to sell your business potential buyers already have huge insight into what your business does and how it’s perceived.
Guy: “We didn’t set out with the intention of using blogging to sell the business but that’s what happened. The people who acquired Cake Solutions had been following us for a number of years, had seen our team speak at conferences and knew they wanted to buy the company.”
- You’re likely to have the right people asking to work for you instead of you trying to find the right people.
Guy: “Another massive strategic byproduct for us was that, as well as incoming sales calls, we had incoming enquiries from people who wanted to work for us. People enjoyed the fact that so many of our team wrote blogs and spoke at user groups or conferences. They wanted to be part of something exciting!”
- It’s free!
Guy: “Blogging is a really modern way of marketing. Gone are the days where you have to have a huge budget to pay for adverts in multiple publications; openly sharing your knowledge through blogs is a really cool way to promote yourself.”
The right type of blog can create incredible results.
3 top tips to help your blogs drive new business your way
- Reverse engineer your content.
Write with your reader in mind. What is their level of knowledge? What do they struggle with? What do they really need to know? Mention topics or share resources that are of interest to them and encourage them to engage. Think about the action that you want someone to take at the end of your blog (get in touch, buy a product, sign up for a newsletter etc), and take the reader on a journey to that end.
You might enjoy our earlier blog How To Use Your Ideal Client Avatar To Boost Your Bottom Line.
- Be consistent.
Ideally publish a blog on the same day of the week every week so that the repeated exposure helps your audience get to know, like and trust you. Blogging is also a fantastic way to help you find your voice and build your personal brand; use key phrases or words in your blogs that will help drive the search engines in your direction.
- Repurpose your content.
If you write a blog you can also create shorter social media posts that signpost to your blog or share a different slant on a point made within a blog. You might also choose to record an audio version to use as a podcast and vice versa. You can also provide links to previous blogs of interest to the reader. All of this helps to create a “sticky” content triangle where people are delving more and more deeply into your work and building their relationship with you. You might like to read Why A Content Marketing Framework Helps Leverage Powerful Results.
Content marketing is a phenomenal way to build your personal brand, and if you’d love support to leverage your expertise and boost your bottom line get in touch with our team. Write Business Results is passionate about helping you create books, blogs and podcasts so that your ideal clients find and buy from you with ease.
P.S. – if you’re concerned about how you’d find the time to manage your social media or website, help is at hand!
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