Some companies still don’t get it — You need to publish lots of interesting content for your website to attract visitors and convert them into sales leads. On a webinar last week, I talked about how we created content for this website for four months before the visitor count hit 1600 per month. Then we added social media and our visitor count jumped to 3000 per month.
A study by HubSpot found that over 1,500 small- and medium-sized companies that had a blog, on average, had 55 percent more website traffic. Certainly, there are probably some other things that go along with that, because companies that have a blog are maybe a little bit more sophisticated, etc., but if you want to act like those companies that are getting more traffic, one of the key things you can do is start to blog. It gives you more pages in the search engines, making it easier for people to find you.
Companies that blog, and create content regularly, have 55% more website traffic than companies that don’t blog.
Not only do you get more traffic when you start to blog and start to create content, but you also get more success in social media. The data that HubSpot looked at (from over 2,000 businesses) shows that if you have a blog, you get 79 percent more followers on Twitter. Basically, if you’re creating more content, it’s making you more interesting.
Content is what makes you interesting in social media. To me, most businesses need a little bit more than 140 characters to share their interesting content, and that’s why all the social media services allow you to have links in those status updates. Use these links to drive people to your blog, where they can read the full article.
“Interesting content” is in the eye of the beholder
Ok, I understand that what’s interesting to one person may not be interesting to the next. And that’s GOOD! That simple observation is the core of our inbound marketing methodology.
To maximize the effectiveness (value) of your content, write for your readers. If instead of writing about content creation, I wrote about how to bake brownies, I wouldn’t be serving our readers like you! Actually, I think our brownie recipe is the best one in the world — but it has nothing to do with the audience we’ve developed here.
Think about the audience that you have or want to have, and write for them. Address their issues and concerns and challenges. Educate them. Help solve their problems. And do it from an interesting point-of-view. Writing for your audience will keep it interesting for them. And the people who aren’t interested in this content — they’re not your targeted audience!
Getting started with interesting content
Here’s a quick way to get started with topics that are very interesting to your audience. Think about people you’ve met over the past two weeks, and make a list of all the questions they asked you about your company or how you do business. Now do two things with this list:
- Write a short answer to each question and publish the whole list as a blog post.
- Write a long answer to each question, including examples and quotes from other people, and publish each one of these questions-and-answers as a separate blog post.
Want more content ideas? Check out our “107 Content Marketing Ideas.”
What’s next? Optimizing your website for maximum lead flow
Publishing interesting content is the foundation of successful inbound marketing. But when those visitors come to your website, what do they see? Is your great content easy to find? Do you have a call-to-action with it, to tell your web visitors what to do next? Does your landing page follow best practices for layout?
We’re covering this and more in our newest webinar: “Optimize Your Website for Maximum Lead Flow.” Won’t you join us? It’s free.