These are simple ideas that work.
1. Build Your Blog on Your Own Domain Name
Will you build your house – with your time and your money – on somebody else land, land that you don’t own.
I won’t. In my mind it is foolish.
Picture by Sorry for reminder but it is 2013.
It is OK if you created your blog on blogspot or wordpress hosted (wordpress.com) when you were starting. Time to bring that content to your own domain.
Go for something like – blog.yourdomain.com
Why you should do it?
Because your company blog – on a free platform makes you look cheap. It makes you look as someone who is still stuck in old ways.
Also you give away potential search juice. See, new content is a great way to get search engines to notice you. If you blog on a free platform (which is someone else’s domain) then chances of your business being found via search engine is less as compared to when you do it on your own domain.
It is OK to go for for a tumblr as yourbrandname.tumblr.com – that is in fashion these days, but mostly for media and fashion brands.
2. Show your human side.
Do not be a robot.
Share personal stories and insights based on personal perspective.
If you have bloggers doing this – let them do it.This will create human connectionLet your personality speak louder in your blog posts. From the opening of the blog post to the end, express your identity as an expert. Yes you are the author and you are giving this free advice. Real personality itself brings tons of traffic and more engagements.
3. Write off-topic content on purpose
Or do mash-ups.
It is good if you write content that is focused and helps them know more about business and products. But once in a while, surprise them – or even better give them a chance to laugh. April Fool’s Day is a good day to pull content like this – or times around holidays.
This will make people happy. You see (normal) people are more excited by looking at a lolcat or by looking at a popular meme.
SEOmoz took it a new level by releasing a meme-based press release for an important event.
4. Don’t Talk Only About Yourself
Sharing own experiences is definitely a good idea. People would like to listen your ideas. But, what should be careful is not to talk only about yourself all the time. Bring on board other people and their expertise. Let your readers know what and how other people are doing the same in your industry.
5. Produce Useful Content In Your Target Market
This is what I personally call useful publishers. Producing lots and lots of content is good but should be relevant and should be as per the standard of your target market. Produce content that your reader would love to read and watch.
6. Produce Variety Of Own Media Content
This is what I have seen a lot of blogs get skyrocketed. Most bloggers are lazy, lazy in terms of producing quality of content as well as variety of content. Use your own images and videos on your blog. This will help other bloggers to link your blog and you will have SEO benefits. For example – at my initial phage of blogging, I used to insert someone else’s pics on my own blog.
7. Do interviews And webinars
It’s time to be more creative with your content. As I said above, you should produce useful content. Interviews and webinars are not new types of content. Interviews and webinars put more value to your blog. It also gets widely shared as well as lots of views.
8. Invite industry experts to contribute
It should be in your schedule to invite other bloggers for guest blogging. It is a kind of mutual benefit out of blogging practices. Guest bloggers get chances or promotion, back-link as well as visitors; at the same time, you get more useful content on your blog.
9. Answer Customer Questions
Maximize the questions and their targeted answers. Look for the quality of questions and answers. You are here to educate and inform your readers. Q&A is the only best practice to educate beautifully.