Question: We have been writing multiple blog posts per week for almost 6 months with very little traffic. Any tips to help us increase our readership? We already post everything on our Social Media accounts.
This is one of those questions where it is really hard to know where to begin. Mostly because the question leads me to want to ask about 5 more questions, however I’m going to take a stab at this one.
The other day I was talking to a prospect who was interested in blogging for his business, but kept calling “Blogging” social media.
Not wanting to be rude, I let him go for a while as he talked about how important it was to use social media to provide information and content to his current and potential clients. Furthermore, I was a bit hesitant because maybe he really did want to strictly use social media to accomplish this type of content identity, but deep down I was pretty certain of what he meant.
After we talked a bit more, I confirmed he was indeed talking about blogging. He wanted to blog about how his business could help customers with their unique service.
Great, I thought. This is exactly why a business should blog. To explain your value and build trust.
The client also wanted to use Social Media to spread the content.
Once again, great! Social Media is a great way to get the word out.
That was when the client informed me that he had very few Social Media connections. Almost no presence on Twitter or Facebook and just a very small network on LinkedIn. However, he had a customer list with about 500 current and former customers and their email addresses.
All I could think of is…why are you so worried about Social Media.
Now, you may be wondering why I answered your question this way.
I think one of the problems with most B2B’s and businesses that get into blogging is they tie the relationship between blogging and social media much too tightly.
Social Media is a promotion vehicle, but just because you are creating content online, that doesn’t mean you have to use social media to promote it.
The question I have for any company struggling to get traffic is: Who do you want to visit your blog and where can we find them?
In my story above, the prospect I was talking to had a terrific list of emails that could be a vehicle to get more traffic and readership of the content he was creating. That was a great place to start the content marketing and promotion efforts.
Then we could start working to build the social profiles.
In short, maybe the reason you don’t have traffic is that the content isn’t good. Maybe it is because the methods to promote the content aren’t good. However, many times the reason you don’t get traffic is because you are writing for an audience that you haven’t defined and targeted.
Answer the question of who you are writing for and then make sure to make the content you are creating easy for them to consume. If your target customers are indeed on social media then get active and engaged, however make sure you spend your time and effort where you have the best chance of success which isn’t always social media.
Do you believe too many brands associate content marketing and social media too closely to one another?
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