iDEA JOURNAL

Getting traffic to your website can be difficult, and getting traffic to your blog can be even harder. Part of the difficulty in making those aspects of a brand work is this: you're busy running your business—you don't have time to worry about website traffic and blog views! That's an understandable issue to have, and we've all been there. However, a relatively simple way to make your job a lot easier, while simultaneously gaining traffic, is to write in such a way that your audience cannot refuse your content…

Writing a successful, captivating blog post begins with one (seemingly) simple idea: knowing your audience. However, this isn't as simple a concept as it may seem. Your audience can change at the drop of a hat; are you creating relevant content? Semi-relevant? Or non-relevant content entirely?

Blogging is an important component of many companies marketing mix. Written content helps inform your audience about how your company’s products or services can make their lives better. In fact, companies that blog generate 126% more leads than companies that don’t blog!

Marketing has been around in one form or another for more than 1,000 years, but digital marketing and the Inbound Marketing methodology are still in their infancy.

As is true in most aspects of life, we generally don't care who or what has created our favorite things, as long as they remain just that: our favorite. As consumers—no, as human beings—we don't ever want to be tricked, be it on the web, in a relationship, or even on a seemingly good sale price at the grocery store (you know the ones... when the food's expiration date is the following day?) Getting duped just isn’t something people enjoy.

There are a few very important things that you need to consider before starting a blog, and even before you begin writing a single blog post. What’s the voice? How often are you going to post on yours or your client’s blog? How long will the posts be? Will they be uniform length, or constantly varying? The list could go on and on... but we'll stop there and get started.

Brilliant content springs from the heart of the writer and into the mind of the reader. It takes a certain amount of skill and innate talent to produce and is extremely hard work. Publishing a piece of writing that will stand the test of time and be cherished for generations with the likes of Hemmingway, Twain, and Tolstoy is a noble goal, but for the content marketing program of a company, brilliant may be out of reach and the company will need to settle for good, and occasionally great.