What we have learned from a small business venture:
I had total blind faith this would work for me and was totally committed to blogging, but I know this is something people struggle with. I think sometimes we expect massive results too quickly. Whereas we need to realize that if one person reads your blog post and becomes interested in your services, then that is a result.
Your titles should be interesting, but also be something that people will search for on Google. When you answer customer questions, take some time to do some research on how people are asking those questions on Google and make sure you are phrasing things the right way in your title.
A longer article which is broken up via sub-headers will allow you to rank for other phrases as well as the main title. Take some time to research the topic and make the most out of title and sub headers.
If you don’t tell people what to do, then they will do nothing. You need to make it clear to people to contact you or book services at the end of each blog post. Keep testing different call to action options and see which work best for you.
Every blog post needs a strong image. If you can take your own good photos that’s great, but if you aren’t good at taking pictures then stick to stock images. Just try to pick the better stock photos or use many of the free image sites on the web.
This is something I really didn’t do enough of in the early days and I would strongly recommend getting to grips with this from day one. Get yourself an SEO plug-in for your website and learn how to fill it in properly. It’s a painful job going back to update old blog posts!
You need to tell your audience about your content. Build a following of people who are likely to become customers and share your blog posts with them. It’s likely if you are not seeing readers then you are not telling enough people about what you are doing.
Whether you opt to use a free analytics tool like Google Analytics or you opt for a paid solution it is important to analyze your results. Spend some time each week looking at what people are enjoying and what you should write more about.
I hope you have enjoyed our story and these ideas. We’re committed to continuing our content journey as well as expanding it to our new franchise system. I will be overseeing it myself, at least at first, until I can train others in the skills I’ve learned.