Business Blogging: 5 Lessons Learned and Strategies Discovered

In celebration of my 100th post on the Junta42, Content Marketing Revolution blog, I thought I'd review a few observations and strategies I've discovered relevant to blogging, and to delivering ongoing valuable business content to customers and prospects.

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1. Focus on great content. Before launching the blog, most bloggers I talked with pressed the importance of frequency in blogging.  "Post as much as you can," they said. So, when I started, my goal was to post at least once a day or more. I average about four posts per week. Although I still believe in the importance of frequency, I now believe that "less posting, more substance" is a much more effective way to build traffic and loyalty. Make sure what you are writing is something important and not just random musings. This may seem like common sense, but a lot of bloggers I've read just ramble on, making no point on certain days between great posts (let me stop here before I ramble). This "more content substance" strategy is something I've noticed from Scott Karp on the Publishing2 blog and Brian Clark over at Copyblogger.
2. Leverage social media sites. After a few weeks/months, traffic starts to come in from the search engines. SEO is extremely important, but just as or more important is leveraging the social media sites such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Sphinn, etc. Also look into niche social media sites like Small Business Brief that are specific to your area of expertise. Depending on the content of the day, social media sites can and will drive more traffic to your sites.
3. Promote a call to action - Getting Names! Whenever possible, be sure you promote your RSS feed or email feed in and around your blog. Some users may come to your site for the first time, enjoy your post, but then leave. Your goal is to keep talking with them. Make sure they see your feeds! Getting readers through RSS and email is MUCH MORE important in the long-run than search engine traffic. Look at it this way...if you completely focus all your attention on search engine traffic or social media sites, and then one day all that dried up or they changed their algorithms, you'd be dead. If you have a loyal following of readers that willingly receive your material every day, you never have to depend on outside traffic alone.
4. Write at least one "pillar" article per week.  A pillar article is a piece of evergreen content that is timeless, and also works to teach your readers something about a product or industry. They tend to be longer, and if written correctly, tend to generate a lot of links to your post. I worked for 2-3 days on 42 Content Building Ways to Attract and Retain Customers. It was designed as a key pillar article.  I have about 15 now that generate the majority of my traffic. If I made the time, I'd write two pillar articles per week.
5. Identify the top 20 blogs in your space and get active.  Once you identify the sites, begin to comment on posts, as well as use TrackBacks when you talk about their post in your blog. This is something I've done a bit of, but haven't dedicated as much time as I should have. That said, the little I have done has created great relationships with other bloggers, as well as a good amount of traffic to my site. I'm now working with two other bloggers on projects that resulted from my posting comments on their site. This will be a key effort of mine over the next six months.

These are the key five that I have found important in my blogging.  For more exceptional blogging tips, check out ProBlogger's Blogging Tips for Beginners (by the way, I used a TrackBack for this post). For more tips on setting up a successful business blog, check out this post from The Lonely Marketer.

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Comments

[Patrick Schaber]

Hey Joe,
Thanks for the mention! Great post with some key strategies for a successful blog.

[Rick]

Very educational. Thank you.

[Guy McLaren]

Hi Joe

You have me re considering my approach right now as I am suffering from Blog overload.

Guy

[Joe Pulizzi, Junta42]

Hi Guy...I hope for the better!

Best
Joe

[Howard]

This is a great list that I'll share with some of my clients who have had blogs going for some time.

[Stan Faryna]

Joe,

This is a nice example of a pillar type article. I have recommended this entry to several friends.

Are you Linkedin? If so, let's make a professional connection.

Best regards,
Stan Faryna
http://www.halo.ro

You can visit my blog at http://stanfaryna.wordpress.com

My blog has a little bit of everything: online strategy, foreign films, etc.

[Adalia John]

These tips are very useful to me a nubie in the blogging hemisphere.
Thank you