Using your Blog to Attract Real Humans and Potential Customers

How many of us have blogs on our websites?  A blog is a must have because it is the perfect place to consistently, routinely, add fresh content to your website and provide insights to your visitors.  Your SEO guy will tell you it’s a must have because Google likes it.  The freshness algorithm and your need for onsite optimization are reason enough for you to spend an hour or two a week making sure you get up another of those pesky blog posts.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret…It can be just as important to the actual humans that visit your website.  Don’t just blog for the purposes of Google.  Put a plan together and actually blog for the people who visit your website.  Seek out to offer some actual value to your visitors and provide them with something helpful, or at the very least interesting.  Sounds crazy right?

Write Something Someone Will Want to Read

If you really want to use your blog to attract customers, then put a plan together to provide the kind of information your customers and potential customers will want to read.  For example, if you sell supplements and work out products like GNC, why not write content about working out? Creating content for your audience will create articles that you can actually promote through social media, and bring a return audience.

Spend 30 minutes with your crew and put together a loose content calendar.  Outline a blog strategy that plans for 2-4 blogs per month.  From there set out to be consistent and again, create blog articles your customers want to read.  You do not have to write overly promotional “buy now” articles.  I would even stay away from product spotlights.  In the case of GNC, why not write an article about 3 new exercises for summer and wrap up with a short spotlight on a recovery drink.

Promote your Blog Through Social Media

Once you start putting blog articles up, promote them to your audience and potential customers.  If you haven’t set up social media and specifically the Facebook Ad Manager, you should!  Right now!  Facebook’s new instant articles are perfect for promoting your blog articles and bringing visitors to your site.

Once a blog is on your site, go into the Facebook ad manager and put up a post/ad. You want an ad aimed at traffic.

With regards to placement, concentrate on Facebook and Instagram feeds as well as Instant Articles.

Finally, make sure you have the facebook conversion pixel installed on your site, and make sure the url you put in your ad actually goes to the article you are promoting.

If you aren’t familiar with the Facebook ad manager or how to do this part, they have a great help section that will teach you everything you need to know.

Capture your Visitors and Retarget

Finally, you need to capture your visitor’s information and you need to retarget them.  Odds are, visitors are not going to purchase from one blog article.  This is certainly “Top of the Funnel” stuff.  That being said, they came to your website so try to keep them.  Set up a way to get their email from them, maybe having them opt into receiving future information.

Remember that “Facebook Pixel” I mentioned earlier, this is where it comes into play.  Facebook will keep track of everyone that goes to your website from Facebook and Instagram.  You can then go into the ad manager and start sending ads to everyone who visited your website who didn’t purchase.  This is “Retargeting”.  I am sure you have witnessed this in your own web surfing.  You look at a pair of shoes for a brief second and Nike ads continue to appear for several weeks, subtly reminding you that you still need to go purchase those shoes.  It Works!  Make it work for you !  Google offers retargeting as well.  Make your SEO guy set it up.

Create some Content Already!

We all know the blog section is valuable.  We know it will help with SEO.  We now have come to terms with the fact that it could actually work for real people.  So what’s the hold up?  Write some articles, stay consistent, provide some real value, and promote and retarget.  If you don’t have the time to do all this hire someone who can.  After all, don’t you want a consistent flow of new customers?