Keeping ahead of blogging trends in 2015
In 2014, there were a total of 18,300,771 new blogs created on WordPress alone − an increase of 12.5% from 2013. That’s about 50,000 new blogs created every day, which works out to about 1.5 million blog posts/content published, every 24 hours! These stats simply can’t be ignored…
As the numbers indicate, online competition is huge. Add to this the fact that content marketers are focusing more on providing their customers with carefully curated content. Forbes.com predict that content marketing, not solely SEO, will become the primary influencer of search visibility. Marketing Consultants Inbound, who work exclusively with companies using WordPress, predict that in 2015 business-to-business companies with blogs will likely generate 67% more leads each month than those who don’t blog.
So how can you stand out and get your share of those leads? Keeping ahead of the blogging trends is a good place to start…
Keep it clean
With so much information flooding people’s screens, they want to bypass the bling and get to the meat of the matter. Forget trying to attract attention with busy graphics and flashy pop-ups. When it comes to web and blog design, less is more. While you want to maintain a professional look, your pages should be clutter-free and dedicated to the content and images you post. This may mean a redesign of your website, or a simpler theme for your blog. On that note, some are even avoiding the word ‘blog’, choosing to call their blog page ‘company news’, ‘updates’, ‘latest’ and the like, so that it feels more like a niche magazine.
Tell visual stories
If you would like your brand’s philosophy or products to stand out, consider audio-visual storytelling. How? Upload video content that explains your company’s story or offers product ‘How To’s’. With so much to read, and bandwidths improving, blog visitors are increasingly wanting to cut to the chase, bypassing heavy reading in favour of scrolling through images or watching videos.
To create social videos that engage viewers’ emotions and help build your brand community, consider vlogging or micro-vlogging, using do-it-yourself platforms like Snapchat, Vine and InstaVid. As for blog images, select the best that you can, and consider paying for quality stock options.
Get Personal
One-on-one marketing is said to be on the rise, so put the client’s needs first with personalised content. Entertain them, amuse them, inform them… and do so with a bit of panache. This means, yes, you may put aside the professional mask a little and step out from behind the pro persona once in a while. Got an interesting story behind how your business came to be? Is one your staff a particularly personable brand ambassador? Were the behind-the-scenes shots of your last company event interesting enough to publish? Share it with your client audience. Readers are responding more to the individuals behind the business speak.
Know the numbers
Data analytics are becoming more advanced – and more important to bloggers. Knowing your stats helps you fine-tune your social media strategy, by helping you know who your audience is, when and what they read, and more. Get familiar with Google’s guidelines and with Google Analytics.
Join communities as a guest
With the proliferation of content topics out there, readers are gathering around one or two communities that they respond to best. Find out who the key content players are in your industry, and consider doing a guest post (or few) on a reputed site. Make sure the blog or site you approach is highly regarded, with good reader figures, and that your post has a good bio and links back to your own blog. This will increase your reach and reputation. If it goes well, consider forming a relationship that will see you do more regular guest posts.
On the flip side, if writing is not your forte, you could always get industry pros to guest post on your blog, or outsource the writing part (using your industry know-how and authority as a guiding brief), to offer more value to your client.
Don’t forget Email
To get readers to read your blog regularly, nothing beats having an update on new posts delivered straight to their inbox. This is where it helps to get readers to subscribe to your blog via email.
Increasingly, content marketers offer an incentive to get readers to go through the subscription process, such as a free eBook full of industry tips. Consider how you can pool your knowledge to tailor-make such a lead market to potential new readers.
Extend beyond the blog
In many ways, in-person events still remain more relevant than online meeting spaces. Combine real-life events with the online space, such as by using an effective blogging campaign, to get more attendees and client conversions.
You could run a workshop, where your online community gets to follow or participate in some way. Speak at a conference and share your talk on your blog, or for an offline affiliate workshop to generate some buzz around your brand persona. This way, you grow fans as well as followers.
Bloggers are running workshops, speaking at events, managing retreats and creating unique parties all across the world. When the online and the real world collide, magic can happen.
