My #1 Tip for Blogging and Content Marketing
Everyone knows what blogging is. A blog, or "web log" is an online journal used to display information or share views on topics of interest.
But What is Content Marketing?
Content marketing is a little lesser known, but so much more critical for businesses like mine who are doing everything they can to gain authority and notoriety within the online space.
Along with social media, blogging can be a form of marketing that involves the creation and sharing of online material that does not explicitly promote a specific brand but stimulates interest in a niche topic and its associated products or services.
The key to content marketing is to provide relevant and useful content to your prospects and customers to help them solve a problem.
Basically, you're attracting an audience (read: YOUR audience) by telling a story that relates to the readers. If the readers don't relate to your story then they're not your audience—that's ok.
How Does Content Marketing Help You?
Think about how many times a day you Google a topic. When you do Google something, you are presented with literally millions of results, and yet you'll likely only see the top ten to fifteen results.
If you're one of the million results, what are the odds that someone is going to land on your page? Probably not very good.
I like to think about blogging as a couple drops of oil in an ocean of content. One drop is indistinguishable. One-hundred drops might be noticeable up close. A thousand drops—now you're starting to make a little mess. A million drops! Now you have a BP oil spill that makes international news, and it's nearly impossible not to know about.
Strange analogy? Yes, but it makes sense to think of Google as an ocean of content. It's your job to disrupt that ocean until people begin to take notice.
My Secret to Starting a Blog and Effective Content Marketing:
The big secret to content marketing and blogging is...
...there is no secret to blogging or content marketing. There are a plethora of websites that will preach "17 steps to effective content marketing," but as someone with no experience, no education on the topic, and who did no prior research about content marketing or blogging, I can tell you that there is no secret to the results I've achieved.
Just do it.
If you have something that you care about, just write. Someone is listening. If you have something to say—say it. Be honest, be sincere, and be consistent. That's all.
I'm writing from experience. My first blog entry was so bad that I recently deleted it when I went back to read it, but that first blog was the one that got me started. Even though it was terrible, it was done, and it was an essential step to creating another, and another, and another.
This is What Happened
I started blogging mid-March. I committed to being consistent with 2 posts a week (consistency is key) and these are the results:
The traffic to my website since March has increased by 6704.8%, which I attribute mostly to blogging.
With every blog post you create, you're adding another page to your website, increasing the chances that someone is going to land on your website. Each page is also an opportunity to rank for the keywords in your niche.
I am a huge proponent for blogging as a form of content marketing. I would encourage you to try it out as well.