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What makes a great blog? For that matter, what makes a great blogger? How can a blogger insure their blogging success? As a blogger, I received my training from several successful, experienced authors and writers, (including Dr. Ivan Misner, the Founder of BNI). I was taught that brevity is your friend. I was also taught that prose should be clear, clean, and concise, yet elegant. On top of that, your grammar needs to be impeccable. Your blogs need to open dramatically and beat a clear path that readers will want to follow. Then, your story needs to fulfill its promises by providing useful information that compels the reader to continue reading to the end of the story.
In this episode of Working the Web to Win, I will explore five case studies that show how would-be marketers made their blogging bones. I will detail their methods while exposing the good, the bad and the ugly paths to blogging success they took. These are true stories with some elements modified to hide the writers’ identities. The paths they followed will be explained in detail so you can learn from their mistakes, as well as from their successes. So, get ready to learn from these five blog marketing methods as we explore; “Blog Marketing – What Works Exemplified by Five Case Histories.”
Most of our marketing prospects have heard of blogging and the concept of content marketing. Marketing falls into three categories today: Push, Pull and Branding. All three can have some overlap, however, push marketing exemplified by cold calling, is more of an intrusive nature while pull marketing exemplified by blogging and social media work by attracting readers. However, it is important to note that all three methods can be used to push, pull and brand as part of the desired outcome. This article will primarily explore blogging as a “Pull and Branding” methodology. Blogging when implemented properly can provide both “Pull and Branding” marketing with great effectiveness. Unfortunately, many would be bloggers come to the fray with preconceived notions of “how things should work!” Let me lay down some prerequisites that will clarify some of the reason’s bloggers fail.
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The best way to avoid this folly is, to begin with, an open mind. Start by thoroughly researching your target market, determining your ideal customer profiles, developing your unique selling propositions, creating a compelling offer, testing your ideas and elements and then following this up by creating realistic goals based on a specific amount of profit you need to achieve (i.e., return on investment).
If you’re are a blogger, it is important to imbue your writing with your passion. It helps others want to read more. It must provide value in a way that is compelling. No amount of keyword stuffing, pithy writing, or SEO trickery will make up for a blog that is not high quality, authoritative, relevant, timely, useful, entertaining and targeted.
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Most businesses, much less bloggers, follow this methodology. Often it is because of the time and money they perceive is needed to engage in this type of comprehensive methodology. More often it is because they are looking for shortcuts, they vehemently adhere to preconceived notions of what works, or they have unrealistic outcomes of what they expect to occur.
Our Methodology – At this point, I need to provide an overview of our blogging methodology. In our system, we believe to be successful (i.e., to build an audience 3 to 5 thousand monthly readers in one year) you need to provide to your potential audience consistently published; high-quality, authoritative, relevant, timely, useful, entertaining and targeted blogs without fail! We believe the best articles are of an evergreen nature based on unchanging principles. Second, best are seasonally based articles and lastly, dated or single-event subjects as the least valuable to produce. These articles are published on the client’s social networks, and if permitted, to our large following as well.
The advantage of posting material to a large, untargeted following is the immense exposure it provides. This allows them to garner many more followers than they would otherwise. This usually includes publishing one article a week at a minimum. When this article library reaches 12 blogs, we organized them and create multiple curations for each blog post which in turn is then used to begin a recycled posting schedule to their current targeted social following. We also distribute these postings to our large, untargeted social following. This recycled posting schedule is revised when we reach 24 articles, 45 articles, 65 articles and then again at 90 articles (if they reach that number).
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If the campaign continues for more than one year, dated articles are revised or pulled (if they no longer draw readership) from the rotation. This tactic has been effective at growing a blog from zero to over 5000 page views a month from scratch in as little as a year. Having said this, let's look at five real-world examples.
Case Study #1 The Abject Failure – This client came to us looking to grow their business. We set them up on a program where their part in the campaign was to provide a minimum of one 800-word blog article a week, which we would then copy-edit, optimize and return the blog to the client to be published. We would then post their blog to their social nets and our large social audience. During the first four weeks, the client fulfilled their obligations perfectly. However, after that initial success, they began skipping weekly article writing until they were only publishing one every six weeks. At every step of the campaign, we warned them that missing publishing deadlines would negatively affect audience growth and their ability to utilize their blogging platform to generate social leads. At the end of one year, they had only published 23 articles (verse 52) and only achieved an average of 1200 readers per month. They soon stopped publishing altogether and abandoned the campaign.
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Case Study #2 The Defiant Slow Winner – This client allowed us to ghostwrite all their blogs so all of our article criteria were met. However, this client had a turnaround problem. We would create a new high-quality article quickly then pass it along to him for approval and publication. The problem was, the client often took anywhere from 10 days to a month to get the article proofed, revised and returned for publication. This slowed audience development to a crawl. It took two years to reach 30 articles. What saved them was that fact that they kept at it. With a library of 30 articles, our recycled posting method allowed us to build a decent readership of 3400 readers per month. We are now four years into their blogging campaign, and they have 55 articles and an average monthly readership of as many as 6000-page views per month.
This client did not listen well. In spite of deviating from our prescribed methods, they still did well in the long run because they did not quit. They did not learn or adapt; their success was a product of sticking to the program for a very long time. They found that long-term consistency does lead to success, even if it's not on a weekly basis. This showed us that a monthly blog with the right distribution could succeed as long as the client took the long view.
Case Study #3 The Self Starter – This client was a good student. They were willing to listen and follow our lead. They followed our method verbatim. They produced more than one article a week on a few occasions. Within the first six months, they started getting leads. By the end of the first years, they had closed several multi-thousand-dollar deals.
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Case Study #4 The Open-minded Learner – This client started out as a staunch skeptic. They had been victims of too many overpromised and undelivered marketing campaigns over the past few years. We took our time educating them and had them talk to several of our previous clients as references. During these meetings, we made sure the client fully understood our methods and they were willing to let us control their online marketing campaign for at least a year. After four meetings, they accepted our proposal. This proposal came without any guarantees except for a low-level of social network growth. Within three months of the campaign, their website had moved from page three of Google search to page one, and their readership went from zero to 1,300 plus visitors per month.
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Case Study #5 The Marketing Scientist – I call this client the marketing scientist because right from the get-go they were results driven. The biggest problem they had was that they had not done any research. They had been spending a lot of money on pay per click, with much initial success. However, that success had evaporated to the point where they were losing money on their pay per click campaign. When we analyzed their needs, we looked at their strengths and weaknesses, as well as those of their competition. We noticed their competition had better digital assets, including lots of landing pages, blogs, social and video posts. Our proposal included moving half their PPC marketing budget to build an organic following and multiple landing pages (as opposed to only a single all-encompassing website). The center of our campaign was wrapped around a weekly blog and video post which would showcase some aspects and benefits of their flagship products. Their campaign had a page one search engine guarantee, as well as guaranteed social growth. Once they signed on, we began the campaign in earnest. Every week we conference called the client to cover their progress, as well as to get feedback on leads generated, and sales made. Within six months, we had lowered the overall marketing cost of this client by a fourth while meeting our goals and marketing guarantees.
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At the end of the first year, we began phase two where we started targeting specific cities and regions and began fishing for leads with a 120-page eBook specific to their industry, which we produced for them from the blogs we had written for them. The second year was very successful until one of the owners decided they wanted to retire. This buyout cut deeply into the cash flow of the company which brought about an end to this campaign.
The Vicissitudes of Change - Even when you have a method that is proven you still need to be flexible. The digital world of marketing is always in flux. For example, many search engines use artificially intelligent algorithms to determine ranking which directly affects being found. Social nets can change how newsfeeds and timeline item posts are filtered. New media can blot out newsworthy information when they focus solely on disasters, international or political news. Prospects and customers can become indifferent to newsletters and branded social messages. Even the branded look of a web property can lose its appeal caused by overexposure or ad fatigue. And lastly, it is also possible that you could make other business mistakes that directly affect the results of your successful marketing campaign. Examples; an employee caught engaging in unethical or immoral behavior could kill a company’s reputation, losing a partner or franchise could alter the branding negatively, or improperly using a marketing platform could result in negative press that can diminish your brand. Recent changes in Google A.I. search algorithm and changes in the timeline filter and posting methods allow by LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, have all had an impact of lowering monthly page views. This is not the first time this has happened. In some instances, these fluctuations have caused as much as a 50 percent decrease in readership (depending on the industry and the number of followers a person has). Marketing success is not an easy row to hoe, but success can be had if you follow a proven method.
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That's my opinion; I look forward to reading yours.
This article provides examples of common blogging failures and uncommon success through the exposition of five case studies. Each of these case studies details what the company or blogger did right or wrong and what the outcome of their chosen path led to. This article will help all bloggers and would-be internet writers move towards success. It will help them grow a large following and allow them to avoid common marketing mistakes. Additional links to other related articles are provided along with a link to the BlogTalkRadio show notes page.
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If you found this article useful, please share it with friends, family, and co-workers. I recommend checking out the links on the blog, along with checking out other related articles on our Show Notes Page. Also, don’t forget to listen to the BlogTalkRadio show on this subject. If you have a related useful comment or opinion about this article, leave it in the comment section of this blog. Also, don’t forget to plus us, on Google+ and share us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well.
Thanks for the tips!
ReplyDeleteWill definitely keep these in mind for the future
social media marketing