3 simple tips to improve your blog’s performance

Blogs are a great way to expand your brand’s presence, show your authority within your industry and attract new customers. However, actually getting conversions from your blog can take time and experimentation. Perhaps you are wondering why your blog isn’t getting much traffic, or maybe why the traffic you are getting isn’t translating into new paying clients or customers.

Let’s look at some of these issues and show you how to improve your blog’s performance.

1. Make your blog’s design more professional
It sounds obvious but it’s an often overlooked factor. First impressions really do count! If you want visitors to trust what you write, your blog needs to look as equally professional as a slick corporate website. If you’re not sure what to look for, run your blog past a cross-section of people you know and ask them to give you honest feedback.

Simple tips that can make a big difference include:

• Using a simple, clean design which embraces your brand identity
• Keeping your posts relevant, factual, and engaging
• Making sure your blog can be easily read on a mobile device
• Avoiding hosting third party advertisements.

2. Come up with a compelling content plan
A blog is not the same as a website. You can’t just list your products and services and then walk away. People read blogs because they want to be educated and inspired. A blog visitor may need numerous interactions with you before they’re ready to make a purchase or contact you. However, if you regularly post great content, when they’re ready to make a purchase, your company will be the one they come to. If your blog hasn’t had an update, many people will be secretly wondering if you are still in business!

This is why you should prepare content in advance. A compelling content plan will include several different types of content, including written posts, Slideshares, photos, videos. Content topics and ideas could include: employee testimonials, industry research, behind-the-scenes previews of new products, updates on your community projects, clippings from the press about your company and much more.

Remember to write your blog in plain, everyday English. Don’t assume your visitors are experts and known all the technical jargon.

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3. Create effective calls to action
Not all your posts should be focused on trying to make a sale. In fact, company blogs which only ever try to make a sale, tend to put people off. However, that being said, you definitely need to have a few posts a month that promote a product or service and actively encourage and ask for sales. Whether a particular post is directly sales-related or not, every post should feature a call to action at the end.

A call to action simply means that you ask whoever is reading the post to do something once they’re finished reading. Maybe you encourage people to leave a comment underneath the post, like your company on Facebook, sign up for your email list, download a freebie or enter a competition. Not including a call to action simply encourages people to navigate away from your blog and doesn’t ask them to take any step to allow you to continue to build a relationship with them.

Make sure you advertise your blog in multiple places – on your website, on the bottom of company emails and in-store leaflets, and finally embed social sharing buttons so if a visitor reads an article on your blog that they love they can easily share it with their friends.

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