How to Blog Powerfully (and why you should care!)

Lately I’ve had several conversations with clients about the power of blogging*. Especially when speaking with people new to marketing online, I tell them that adding new content to your blog on an ongoing basis is one of the most powerful search engine optimization and traffic generation strategies you can follow without knowing much, if anything about Internet marketing. It truly is a strategy any beginner, in any industry can follow and succeed at, over time.

What almost always comes up is the complaint that most people aren’t writers and that it takes a lot of time and mental energy to create blog posts regularly. Well, what did you expect?! Blogging regularly is work. For some it’s easier than others but anyway you slice it, creating interesting, relevant and timely content is challenging. Heck, lately I’ve even fallen prey to posting less frequently than I should.

So how do you blog powerfully?

The first and foremost way to be a powerful blogger is to create interesting, timely, relevant, new and creative content on a consistent basis.

What do I mean by blogging powerfully? I mean blogging in a way that benefits your clients, your prospects, and your wallet by expanding your web presence, and generating more traffic, more, leads and more sales for your business.

Why is creating content so powerful? Here are a couple of reasons for starters:

Google ranks web pages, not websites. What this means is that each page on your website is a potential doorway for people to find and enter and engage with you through your site. To say that in another way, every time you add a new page of content, this page can be found by search engines and can then be found by people searching for things related to your products and services. The more pages you have (every time you create a new blog post you are essentially adding a new page to your blog or site by the way) the more chances you have, the more ways you have of being found by people.

Each page of content (aka: each blog post) you create can rank for multiple keywords and phrases. This matters because even if you write on a broad topic, say the downtown Vancouver real estate market for example, this piece of content may rank in search engines for a variety of terms, not just “downtown Vancouver real estate market”. In fact each piece of content may very well rank for 5 or 10 different terms which means that piece of content has become more than a single doorway but an entrance with many different doors in it. Make sense? This example should give you a taste of why there is a lot of leverage in creating good content, consistently for your site. Each page of content represents multiple ways for people to find you.

Another reason to create good content (and great content when you’re on the ball!) is that others may link to this content. Inbound links are critical to your search engine optimization efforts. While creating links is a topic for another post, suffice to say that if you don’t add content to your site regularly, there’s not much motivation for bloggers, website owners, people participating in forums or social networks to add links to your content or share it with other people. Static websites don’t attract links. Links can help rankings and can be excellent sources of traffic if they come from relevant sites and networks within your industry.

A few additional reasons why blogging is powerful:

• Search engines like to regularly visit blogs that are updated often
• People like blogs because they are personal in nature
• Blogs are social because of people’s ability to leave comments on your posts (you should encourage this!) Social media and social networking is a great way to spread your ideas
• Writing builds the perception of authority, value and expertise, which people pay for.
• And the list goes on….

I’ll leave you with this quote today from one of my favourite authors, Brian Tracy:

“Above all, you must develop a greater respect for yourself and your potential brain power. The psychologist Abraham Maslow estimated that not more than 2 percent of adults were doing all that was possible for them based on their special talents. You must therefore develop a higher level of faith and confidence in your ability to use your mental powers to overcome any obstacle and to achieve any goal that you can set for yourself.” – Brian Tracy

The point here is you need to first believe you can do it. It takes some effort and though but in time you can develop the skill.

Write regularly. Grow your web presence. Grow your blog and generate traffic, leads, and sales as a result!

*Please post thoughts and ideas to the comments section.

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