Olivia Dunn, Author at Lean Marketer

February 22, 2017 By Olivia Dunn Leave a Comment

Blogging Tips: 10 Things You Must Do Right After Publishing Your Blog

Nothing gives a blogger more joy than clicking the publish button. But blogging is not all about churning out new posts every single day. If you want to get more views, comments, and tweets, you have to embrace content marketing. You can’t publish a post and wait for people to comment or tweet. If you do this, you’ll soon write off blogging. Creating great content is just one part of content marketing. If you want to increase the reach of your blog post, rely on these blogging tips.

#1 Share It On Social Media

As soon as you publish a new blog post, promote it on social media. Share it on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Instagram. These are the social networks that send a lot of traffic to blogs. When you share your post on the different networks, you reach different audiences.

Identify your target reader and know their preferred social networks. If your post is aimed at professional readers, share it on Google+ and LinkedIn; if your target readers are more visual, focus on Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. When you start getting traffic from social media sites, analyze it to find out if your target readers are visiting your blog.

When sharing blog posts on social media, automate the process. Content marketing can take a lot of time hence automation is key. Fortunately, there are tools that can make your work easier like MassPlanner, Hootsuite, and Buffer.

#2 Post To Community Sites

After sharing your content on the major social networks, don’t stop there. If you do this, you’ll miss out on the potential views that may come from sharing on other sites. Share your content on community sites like Growth Hackers, inbound.org, and Triberr. Growth Hackers is a top destination for content associated with growing businesses. It has a highly targeted audience of marketers, entrepreneurs, and growth hackers who visit it to learn from the best in the industry. Inbound.org is a community of marketers, bloggers, and professionals who enjoy reading and sharing interesting content. Triberr allows you to join targeted tribes so you can build relationships with other bloggers and get traffic by sharing other people’s content.

#3 Post To Forums

This is one of the best blogging tips you will ever come across. Whenever you publish a new post, update your forum signature to draw attention to it. Your forum signature is a great tool for getting traffic from forums. In most forums, your signature is automatically added to the end of your posts. In your signature, add a link to your blog post to ensure every post you write on the forum advertises it.

But remember that unashamed self-promotion is unaccepted in forums. Don’t join forums and start posting links to your post saying “Check out my post, it’s awesome!” Forums have rules for conduct and do not tolerate bad behavior. Make sure you read the rules before posting or you could find yourself kicked out. Credibility is very important in forums so make sure you become an active and useful member before sharing your content. Some forums allow valued members to post links to their blog posts. Help people gain insights or solve problems and getting traffic will be easy.

#4 Link to Influential Blogs

When you link to influential blogs and industry gurus, you get on their radar and they might start linking to your content or sharing it. Link to show people similar topics, where they can get additional information, or where they can find opposing views. Influential bloggers can help you to get:

More social shares for your content
More loyal fans
More inbound links from industry-related blogs

#5 Call in Favors

At times, influential bloggers might not share your content or link to it even after you’ve linked to their blogs. This is because they might never realize you linked to them in the first place. But since you send traffic their way (no matter how small) by mentioning or linking to them, tell them about it. Send them an email saying you liked their work, linked to it, and would love it if they shared your post with their followers. Most will do it. If the post is great, you won’t have to convince people to share it.

#6 Email Your Subscribers

If you have an email list, promote your new post to your subscribers. Those who have subscribed to your email list already like you and the topics you write about. They are the people who should see your post first. Send them an email telling them about your new content. Use an email template to create an email you can send every time you post a new article. You can include links in the post and a call to action. For instance, you can tell your subscribers to leave a comment or to share the article on social media. Once your email list grows, it will drive good traffic to your blog. You’ll have comments even before you start promoting a new post.

#7 Link to Old Posts

When you link to old posts, they get traffic as well. After posting a new article, include links to old posts and appropriate anchor text. Your readers will be able to navigate through your website and find more useful information. Internal linking ensures your readers linger on your site. Once they visit a post, they are directed to other ones. Internal linking also helps reduce your blog’s bounce rate. But always remember to add links that are useful to your readers as that’s what internal linking is all about.

#8 Ping Search Engines

A week or two after publishing your blog post, search engine crawlers will visit your site and index it. But there is a lot of competition out there, and you should not wait for search engine crawlers to come to you. Alert search engines as soon as you publish a new post. Google and Yahoo allow you to ping (alert) them when you post new content. All you have to do is simply tell them the URL and blog name of your new post.

#9 Don’t Forget Social Bookmarking

This method no longer holds the power it used to, but posting new content to major social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, and Delicious can help you to get backlinks, traffic, and more exposure. When other people digg or bookmark your content, you get more exposure and other bloggers can link to you or mention you in their posts. However, be careful about bookmarking your own posts as these sites don’t like self-promoting bookmarks.

#10 Adjust Your Content to Reach New Audiences

There are many ways you can repurpose your content. You can convert the post into a PDF file and share it on document sites like SlideShare, Scribd, and DocStoc. These sites boast massive internal audiences. If you want to reach new readers through visuals, make infographics or videos and share them on DailyInfographic, Visual.ly, Vimeo, or YouTube.

Many bloggers publish new content in order to grow their audiences and drive traffic to their websites. However, most don’t optimize the content they produce. If you are serious about your blog, you must be serious about marketing your content. Your blog posts, no matter how awesome they are, will never be read if you don’t promote them. Utilize these blogging tips and build your readership.

February 16, 2017 By Olivia Dunn Leave a Comment

Debunking Myths About Optimal Blog Post Length

Ask bloggers about the optimal length of a blog post and each one will have a different answer. Some will tell you 500 words while others will tell you to write not less than 2000 words. Some bloggers say that shorter blog posts are ideal because people only scan content, they don’t read. Others say that longer posts are better because they are ranked well by search engines and build authority and credibility. Today, we are debunking the myths you’ve been told about optimal blog post length.

Myth 1: Only Long Blog Posts Get Noticed

Sure, only one post can scoop the first position on search engines. Google and its counterparts work hard to ensure that the first result contains the best content for that keyword. However, this doesn’t mean your blog posts should be more than 2,000 words. Longer is not always better. Twitter allows a 140-letter character limit, but the perfect length of a tweet is 100 characters. If your website is not optimized for search engines, your posts may not show up on the first page no matter how long they are. Your competitors’ posts may rank highly than yours simply because their sites are optimized.

It is no secret that Google loves content-rich sites. The average length for many articles that appear on its first page is 2,000 words. If you have a long post, you also have more opportunities to fit in many relevant keywords. As a result, search engines rank it in different areas. You may find that your posts generate traffic from searches you never thought they would rank for. But this doesn’t mean you make every post a short novel. There is nothing people hate more than fluff. Make your posts as long as they have to be.

It also depends on your industry. For example, most recipe websites that rank well on Google have pages with less than 500 words. Quality outperforms quantity every single time. Don’t just write long posts to rank well, write content that solves a problem. It’s the secret to ranking highly.

Myth 2: Only Short Blog Posts Get Noticed

Some bloggers belong to the school of thought that believes shorter is better, that a post should be as short as possible. They claim that readers have a short attention span and once you cross the 300-character threshold, you’re done for. One marketing genius who writes short blog posts is Seth Godin. Some of his posts are no longer than 50 words! But the thing is, he knows his audience and writes posts that appeal to them. He has a unique approach that works for him.

But shorter posts are not always better. They might work in some situations, but not all. The idea behind short blog posts is that people are more inclined to read and share them. Short post advocates say that if a topic must be explained in a thousand words or more, you should not write it. Or you can write it using fewer words so more people can read it.

You may have heard that readers’ attention span doesn’t last beyond 500 words. This is rarely the case. Many bloggers have seen an increase in readership once they started publishing long-form content. Instead of worrying about how long or short your posts should be, concentrate on offering value to your readers.

Understanding Blog Post Length

No question about it, different blog post lengths work for different industries. Here is a list of common lengths to help you find your ideal one.

300 words and below: These posts help generate discussions. They aren’t ranked well by search engines and don’t get many shares on social media, however, they get a lot of comments! Google’s Panda Update penalizes thin content. If your post is less than 200 words, search engines will punish you.
300-600 words: Many bloggers recommend this length. However, articles with this length are too short to rank well on search engines and do not position you as an expert. The only good thing about them is that they get a good number of social shares and comments.
600-750 words: Posts written by professional journalists and newspapers are usually this long. They tend to get many shares on social media and bloggers link to them.
1,000-1,500 words: This is the perfect length of an optimized post. If you want to get more search engine traffic, make your posts this long. You’ll be seen as an expert and get more shares on social networks. You may also get many comments depending on the topic you’ve covered.
2,000-2,500 words: The highest-ranking posts on Google are usually more than 2,000 words. Long posts will generate a lot of traffic for your site each month and rank well on every search engine. But be sure to cover a topic people want to read about, not one they can’t be bothered to read.

The Optimal Length of Other Blog Post Features

Title

The title tag is the most vital on-page SEO component. Google normally displays the initial 50-60 characters of a title or the amount of characters that fit into a 512-pixel display. If you write a title with less than 55 characters, it will be displayed properly on search engines.

Meta Description Tag

Search engines use Meta descriptions to show preview snippets of pages. The ideal length of a Meta tag is between 150-160 characters. It should use keywords brilliantly and make searchers want to click.

URL

While there isn’t a set limit for the length of URLs, research shows that a lot of Google’s URLs are approximately 70-90 characters. Search engine results pages show about 50 characters in the URL fields; they highlight the keywords and shorten long URLs.

Paragraph

It has been said time and again that web readers are not patient. This is true in every sense of the word. Use short paragraphs that make sense (4-5 sentences), don’t just start a new one because you think it looks nice. Each paragraph should explain a main idea or topic. If a post looks like one big block of text, visitors won’t bother reading.

Number of Images

Many bloggers often wonder how many images they should use in their blog posts. A study conducted by Blog Pros showed that the highest ranking blogs on the internet have an image for every 350 words. People connect with content via the text and images.

Blogs have been around for many years, but people still have a lot of mistaken beliefs about them. Let no one dictate how you should write, choose your optimal blog post length for the best outcome.

February 11, 2017 By Olivia Dunn Leave a Comment

The Anatomy of Landing Pages that Convert

What makes one landing page great and another mediocre? Catchy words? Form length? Every expert has their own opinion, but one thing is for sure: for your landing page to convert, you must plan in detail and carry out creative testing. Remember that what works for someone else might not necessarily work for you. If you want to know the secret of landing pages that convert, this post is for you. Try any of these tactics to give your landing page a competitive advantage.

Value Proposition

What are you offering your site’s visitors? Your offerings should be in line with the message you put on your landing page. Remember that for people to buy from you, you must offer a solution. Your product or service must meet their needs and requirements. Your unique selling point is what makes your business different from others. Use a killer headline to tell people the problem your product or service will solve. Research shows that you have less than 1 second to convince visitors to stay on your landing page. If you don’t communicate your unique selling point quickly and concisely, they will leave.

Have a great subtitle that convinces your visitors about how irresistible, dependable, great, and essential your product is. Come up with 10-50 diverse selling points that you have and write them down using the following questions as a guide:

§ What distinct feature does your product offer that sets it apart from other products?

§ In what way are you a better option than your competitors?

§ What are you offering?

§ What problem are you solving?

Narrow down your answers and use only the best and most convincing ones on your landing page.

Videos and Images

In most cases, visuals convert better than text. Have a video explaining your product in detail. Also, add an image of the product. Images draw attention more than any other thing. They are very easy to relate to and communicate ideas better than text. The quicker you are able to capture your visitors’ attention, the longer they will stay on your landing page.

The best images are those that show off your unique selling points. You can add an image of your product, business, or happy clients. This portrays your business as personable and enhances the visual appeal of the page. But avoid using too many images. Excessive use of visuals can distract your visitors. Only use pictures to upgrade your message. Test the effectiveness of videos and images to see what your site visitors respond to. Track the page’s conversions keenly to see what works for you.

Clear List of Benefits

Landing pages that convert have one thing in common: they list great benefits. They don’t use too many words to get a point across. If you don’t tell visitors what your product or service does, you might as well not create a landing page. People dislike reading long paragraphs that beat around the bush, use bullets to list your key points. The key points should focus on the benefits of using your product. They must be related to and expound your unique selling points. Lists increase focus and decrease your bounce rate.

Tell the visitor what they will get and why they should buy from you. The explanation you give should be benefit-oriented. For example, instead of saying, “We maximize social media,” you should say “We help you to engage better with your audience.”

Powerful Call to Action (CTA)

Creating a call to action is a very important task. This is because the call to action you use can make or break your landing page. It gives the visitor a single choice for action and should stand out on the page. Here are a few things to keep in mind when creating a call to action:

Make it big – the bigger it is, the more it will get noticed. Use compelling words. The words you use will determine how your site’s visitors respond to the page. Make sure it contrasts with the rest of the page. Use a contrasting color in your call to action to capture attention and coerce people to click. Ensure it’s a button. People usually expect CTAs to be clickable buttons – make it easy for them.

User-Friendly Copy

A landing page that converts has a brief and engaging copy. Utilize a captivating headline, call-out boxes, subtitles, and bullets (for long text). Use different hues to point out the most critical information. Every word and sentence on your landing page must support your call to action. If it doesn’t, it’s of no use. Use a few words to tell your visitors what they want to know, and they will respond to your call to action.

As well, avoid using terms such as “submit”, “click here”, and “purchase now.” Get resourceful and use phrases such as “I want my free account,” “Yes, I need my free newsletter,” “Yes, send me more great information.”

Reliable Testimonials

Build your credibility by including trustworthy testimonials in your landing page. People like knowing they aren’t guinea pigs, that other people have used a product before them and endorse it. When visitors see a great testimonial on your landing page, they will know they can trust the service or product. Your landing page must have testimonials from real people. Every testimonial must be accompanied by a picture or a video of the person. Ensure the testimonials are backed by real numbers and data.

Multiple Methods of Contact

If you want to show your visitors that you are legit, provide various methods of contact. Give an email address, a phone number, a physical address, and a contact form. You can even integrate a popup that allows visitors to chat with customer representatives. These show that you are a real company and go a long way towards helping you to build customer trust. They also help you to get rid of any friction in the conversion funnel.

Creating a killer landing page is a difficult undertaking, but it is doable. Always remember that your landing page is the face of your business; if it’s not appealing, no one will want to know more about your company. If it is, it will turn website visitors into leads and customers. Now that you know the secret of landing pages that convert, go and make yours.