A blog can be one of the most powerful marketing tools at your company’s disposal. It can help your business reach out to new customers, engage your active customer base and once you have an idea for a blog post, it makes great raw material to boost your social media activity. A reader could become a potential customer, simply by reading one blog post they find interesting, then subscribing to your blog and getting automatic updates whenever you post something new.

Here, Sally Tomkotowicz, Customer Acquisition Marketing Manager, Register365, shares her top tips to help you gain and retain new customers for your business online:

1)    Keep the blog post as short as possible- it doesn’t need to be a long essay, just make your point.
2)    Keep it topical (where possible try making your point using an issue that is current).
3)    Optimise keywords – if you want your blog post to be found, try to work the important keywords (the ones that a typical user might use if they were searching on the topic) into the blog heading, the first paragraph and your keyword tags. Make sure you categorise and tag your blog post once it is done.
4)    Include hyperlinks (simply the web addresses of other relevant content) – links to your website, links to the writer’s LinkedIn Account, links to other resources on the web.
5)    Identifying the content you need in your blog posts may sound obvious, but some blogs lose readers and focus over time because they end up talking about irrelevant topics, and overusing technical jargon. (No matter how interesting irrelevant subjects seem, stick to the subjects your company deals with!)
6)    Get interesting, varied guest bloggers involved from time to time – you can even get your customers involved! Outsourcing can give posts a fresh take on different subjects and be of great interest to your readers. It can also help you out when business becomes busier.

Some common mistakes to watch out for:

Seeing blogging as a direct sales tool. The blog is about building a voice for your brand, brand exposure, improving SEO to your website, setting yourself up as an expert in your field.  Many people give up on blogs if they are not seeing a huge increase in sales.  This is a mistake- you need to be patient!

Often you will see people practically including a press release as a blog post or writing them as if they were an advert – this won’t work!

Another big mistake we see people make is thinking that the job is done once the blog post is written. Now you need to find an audience and social media is a great way to build an audience for your hard work.

Key emerging trends:

One of the key things we are seeing at the moment, is the move away from cheap SEO content for blogging and push towards high quality rich content and storytelling.  This means Irish businesses are thinking more about the content they put on their blog, especially if they currently pay someone to do it for them.

More than ever, the variety of your online content affects how many readers you can draw in. The wider the range of images, video clips and text, the better chance you have of pulling in more visitors. YouTube is so popular and attracts 1.6 billion viewers monthly because it manages to integrate so much and feeds this back to the user.

With social media becoming such a congested place (over 2.2 million people use Facebook in Ireland) a great way to stand out is to use these channels to bring readers material that is much deeper and richer than regular status updates. Let the status update be the ‘hook’ that will attract the reader to your material, where you can really demonstrate your expertise and show the personality of you and your business.

One final tip is to find the right blogging tool – view our range of simple to use blogging apps to get started today. Enjoy giving your blog a boost!