[VIDEO] Are Blog Posts Dead? Blog Marketing Tips

Tiffany‘s blog marketing tips that will never die … if you have ever talked to her about marketing, you have likely heard this before.

Have you wondered if blog posts really matter, and if so …. why? 

We’ve used blog posts to answer questions for our clients and prospects for years.

Here are blog marketing tips that you can use to get more visitors to your website and even generate leads!

Are Blog Posts Dead? Nope.

They are absolutely NOT dead. Here I share some blog marketing tips. Some overlap, but all are incredibly powerful and cost far less than advertising.

But First, A Little History

OMH Agency avoids (like the plague) managing social media marketing for anyone without their own blog or other Core Content.

When I decided in 2015 to focus on becoming a marketer, my husband, Duane, was excited to spread the word. He knew right away that I would be well suited for this gig. It was like a light bulb went on – I thought, “why didn’t I do this all along?” I really have found my calling. It’s my favorite job ever.

We have always helped business owners from a variety of industries, but Real Estate Agents have always been our “people,” so it’s not surprising that my first client was a local agent. He was a friend of Duane’s (I’ll call him “Joe,” which is not his real name). Duane simply mentioned to him in passing that I would help him with his website and social media, and Joe contacted me soon after.

As it turned out, he didn’t want to spend much, so opted to just get social media help. That was fine with me at the time – I was excited to get started! I hadn’t even named my new company yet, but I jumped right on Joe’s social media.

After about a month I noticed something: our campaigns were working! He was getting a following, and people were clicking the links.

But I was pissed.

It was becoming clear that his terrible, low-end, Zillow-provided website, slow updates to listings, and absence of value added content like blog posts, were sabotaging us all. My biggest issue: the links we were sharing to give his growing list of followers value and solve problems they were facing at that moment – those links went to third party site.

So, we drove a ton of traffic using social media; just not to Joe’s website.

That was my first lesson as a Professional Marketer: Step 1 is to provide content on the website so the reward goes to the right party.

I really appreciated Joe. I did beg him to let me even just update his Zillow theme to remove the “this theme has been discontinued” error I saw every time I logged in, but to no avail.

I’ve gotten to see first hand the amazing outcomes and benefits of blog articles. Here are the cream of the crop blog internet marketing tips for the best results:

#1 Soar on Search

Google cannot read text within a video, and the only information it reads is the title and description when you post it. So when you embed a video into a blog post and include text that covers what the video is about, makes your media content visible and adds priceless value to how well your website is found organically (meaning without paying for ads). 

Here is a Speed Round Guide to the Magic of Blog Posts on Search

These are ways that your blog post makes you much more “findable” on search engines! SEO companies call it “visibility.” We use SEMRush for most of our data, and they give a percentage value for overall visibility.

Here are ways blog marketing improves your site’s visibility on search:

• Your site will show up on searches for more keywords
• Rank for search terms that your target leads are using, then delight them with the info they’re looking for
• Visitors stay on your website longer
• Clicks from a blog post – or to a blog post – reduces your “bounce rate” (the percentage of people who leave your site without going to a second page)
• In-bound linking improves your ranking the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
• Home page “latest posts” date stamp your home page with recent updates, which tells Google that your site is active
• More quality content signals Google that you are an authority and theoretically gives preference to authority websites
• Blog / Article Schema Markup is a positive indicator to Google
• Within the blog post are not just one version of your keyword phrase, but synonyms – another thing search engines look for
• Comments on your blog post signals to Google that people engage with your website

When you answer a question that people are looking for, in a video or an article, suddenly your blog post can become a landing page and a valuable resource. 

More About Keywords

A typical website home, about, contact, and services pages. Sometimes there are others, but static web pages like these can provide only so many keywords. In fact, it is best practice to focus on one or two keyword phrases to focus on to clearly articulate your message to your audience.

Search engines pick up on search terms on each page.

As someone goes to a site like Google, he enters a term or two to find what he’s looking for.

For example, a quick search today (3/10/2019) of keywords related to “Selling a Home,” here are the top 10 search terms, according to SEMRush:

• selling a home
• costs of selling a home
• selling a mobile home
• closing costs when selling a home
• selling a home without a realtor
• selling and buying a home
• how to sell a home
• selling a home as is
• capital gains on selling a home
• capital gains tax on selling a home

For example, if you’re a real estate agent with a website, you only have so many pages that you can optimize for certain keywords. So each time you add a blog post, you’re increasing the number of keywords that you are showing up on search engines for.

The keywords related to selling a home, shown above, would likely NOT result in your home page showing up on the search. Yet, this could be a great lead – I mean, someone wondering about capital gains, or specifically asking Google, “how to sell a home,” seems like an excellent potential real estate lead.

When you answer a question that people are looking for, in a video or an article, suddenly your blog post can become a landing page and a valuable resource. Click To Tweet

For example, if you’re a real estate agent with a website, you only have so many pages that you can optimize for certain keywords. So each time you add a blog post, you’re increasing the number of keywords that you are showing up on search engines for.

#2 Use Each Post as a Landing Page that Converts

When you answer a question that people are looking for, in a video or an article, suddenly your blog article can become a landing page and a valuable resource. It also helps your website include more keywords that people are looking for.

A “landing page” is the first page that someone sees when they are your website.

Each page of your website is like a very important employee (and your website is one of the most critical members of your sales team). They shou goal, and ways to reach that goal.

Each page of your website is like a very important employee should have a goal, and ways to reach that goal. Click To Tweet

You might be asking, “What kind of ‘job’ could a web page have?”

Here are Just a Few Jobs That Each Blog Post Can Have:

• Answer questions that your clients and prospects ask frequently in a more thorough manner.
• Train and educate your clients. In the past we used a blog post to introduce clients to a new analytics dashboard.
• Demonstrate your propensity to provide value to people consistently and without a “catch.” Because your audience can read the blog posts without any kind of opt-in, there really is no catch (even if you later ask for an email address before offering additional resources).
• Position yourself as a knowledgeable leader in your industry.

With a job comes a goal. It is helpful to you and to your audience that your website is such a hard worker, but now let’s talk about outcomes that a successful landing page should deliver.

Measurable Conversion Goals for Each Blog Post

The possibilities are nearly endless, but here are a few goals you can choose from for each blog post.

Landing Page Goal #1. Lead Capture:

include an offer to give each visitor a tool, checklist, or report that makes sense as a next step from the blog post from which it comes. This potential lead can enter her contact information in exchange for that giveaway. Quick tip: the more valuable the giveaway, the more information you can ask for, and the better you can qualify your leads.

Landing Page Goal #2. Reduce Bounce:

When a website visitor clicks on a link that goes to another page within your site, it reduces the “bounce” rate, or the percentage of people who go to a page on your site and leave without clicking to go to another.

Landing Page Goal #3. Funnel Leads to Sales Pages

Linked text or buttons within the body of your blog post can guide people to take the next step when inspired by the blog post to proceed with hiring you or purchasing your product. You could even embed a “Buy Now” button if the blog post is compelling and likely to convince prospects to purchase right then and there (although this goes against buyer behavior data and is not recommended; you usually need to nurture them more).

Landing Page Goal #4. Attract Podcast Listeners, Vlog Watchers, and Social Media Followers

When someone’s first impression of you is something like show notes from your podcast or blog, along with the embedded media, they have the opportunity to clock a watch or listen right there within the article, and you can urge them to subscribe to future episodes.

!! It’s best to choose just one goal to really focus on for each post. 

#3 Generate Leads

If you want your blog post to become a landing page with lead generation as the goal, you’re not alone. Specifically real estate agents look for not only leads, but leads that are higher quality and more targeted.

Fill your blog post with great content, and people will be interested. They will start to value your website as a valuable source of information. Then all these potential prospects become potential long-lasting clients because what you have to say resonates with them.

When you offer giveaways, like maybe a “home buyers guide” or a  “ Buyer’s Home Search Organization Tool,” you can collect email addresses from people who have real estate on their mind – they likely want to buy or sell at some point …. and they are on your website!

If your blog post/landing page is doing its job well, you will be getting great leads.

#4 Spin Social Media Gold

Are you building your social media presence? Something that we here at OMH Agency tell real estate agents all the time is to try not to sell all the time. Even the most well-meaning REALTORS® get tripped up by over-selling themselves and their listings.

If you have to constantly remind people of how great you are, it may be too late. It’s best to SHOW everyone that you are great through your actions.

If you have to constantly remind people of how great you are, it’s probably too late. You need a way to SHOW them that you are great. Click To Tweet

Having said that, in real estate marketing, people still love to see listings. Our advice would be to promote yourself or your listings 25% of the time (we call these “selling” or “sales” posts, and then answer questions and provide incredible value the rest of the time.

If you’re NOT in real estate, post to sell yourself or your services/products even less. Promote yourself only 10% of the time, and add value for the remaining 90%.

This makes blog posts exceptionally useful, because that content you consistently add to your website can be spliced and used to expand your influence.

Your blog posts already contain the value because you are answering the questions that you are commonly asked. Giving your target audience the information they are looking for. On social media, this means going to one of your blog posts and finding a short but sweet nugget of information that quickly answers a common question. What is important here is to link back to the blog post with a call to action.

EXAMPLE

Let’s say you write a blog post titled, “5 Reasons Why You’ll Kick Yourself Next Month for Not Putting Your House on the Market This Month”

A great blog post to intrigue your audience and spark clicks would be this:

On the fence about selling your house? Here are 3 reasons why now is better than even a month from now:

1. 1. Interest rates are great, so buyers can afford more than they will when interest rates rise
   2. The government volitility has created uncertainty in the area of regulations, which may spook buyers if things change again
   3. By selling your home now, you won’t have to wait to see your STEP UP home you’ll be moving into next!

Click the link for TWO MORE ways today’s market is perfect for homeowners like you to sell. (Link directly to your post)

Simple enough right?

A full blog post is FULL of snippets you can use to promote on social media.

#5 Drive Visitors To Your Website

By using blog content on your social media posts, you will see clicks back to your website. People are so social forward these days. Providing those simple links that get people to the information they want quickly will only help you grow.

You will get a lot more new consumers finding you on social media or through your landing page on search engines. When you provide great content in this way, you are proving yourself to be knowledgeable about your industry. People will be more willing to turn back to your first when they need to learn more.

There are So Many More Benefits!

Here is a blog marketing tips for better organic search results rapid fire. Sorry in advance – I’m going to let myself geek out here a bit. This is off the top of my head – again, we’ll be releasing more advice about this in the future.

1. You can answer questions more briefly by email to clients and prospects, then link back to a blog post that answers that same question in more dept.
2. If you want to incredibly increase website traffic with more advanced SEO practices like Guest Blog posts, you MUST have helpful content on your website to link back to from the off-site posts
3. Adding countless keyword terms your website ranks for is truly priceless
4. When you content starts getting noticed and other people share it, those back links improve your SEO better than almost anything
5. Embedding YouTube videos into text rich blog posts helps improve not only your Google ranking, but also on YouTube (you know, the 2nd biggest search engine in the world – behind only Google)
6. You can use a plugin like “Click to Retweet” so readers of your articles can share your content in one click – again, getting you visibility and providing broader reach overall
7. You can use blog content to help you write articles on sites like LinkedIn
8. Use an excerpt of your blog post in your email newsletters to constantly provide value to your list – and it’s a great added “touch” when you’re trying to make contact with your prospects and past clients at least 33 times per year
9. Researching blog posts – or proofreading for your writers – helps you continue to learn more about your industry

Again, there is so much more. Stay tuned – and reach out by message or phone with any thoughts, questions, or comments!