Effective Inbound Marketing Tips

Creativity is a vital ingredient when it comes to blog writing. Although the main aim of blog posting is provide readers with valuable information and not to show off a writer's creative skills, without creativity you will only produce dull content of no interest that soon lose your readers' attention.

Creativity is about finding inspiration, often in unusual sources, rather than coming up with a brand new idea. For blog writing, this translates to thinking differently about how to communicate a common idea. The more you can learn about facts outside your professional niche, the more creative your blog writing will become. This means reading and experiencing as much as possible as you never now what may prove to be beneficial to your creativity.

When writing creatively, do not be afraid of seemingly crazy ideas; these are what grab your readers' attention and prevent your audience from becoming bored. While person may tell you that your idea is too wild, another may think you have a great proposition. At the very least, your creativity will spark some interesting discussion in your blog comments.

Do not let grammar be the focus of your blog writing. If grammar is not your strong point and your blog writing not up to scratch for representing the company, elicit the help of another member of staff after you have finished. The main point of your blog posts are to be interesting and captivating for your audience. Boring posts, even when exceptionally well written, will not gain you any readers.

It is essential to enjoy what you write if your audience is to enjoy reading the content. This could mean implementing a variety of creative ideas in your blog writing to keep readers returning instead of just focusing on your subject expertise. For example, tips and advice relating to your field of business give you the chance to share creative ideas you may have had in the past. You can also ask other people in the company for contributions. These should be updated frequently with new ideas to keep visitors coming back to your blog to check for more.

Interacting with your audience does not only help you stay creative, it also helps develop a personal feel to your blog. Perhaps experiment with recognizing active commenters in your blog writing to initiate discussions and interactions with your readers. You can ask your readers for their input and opinions on content and use their comments to extend on any ideas that arise. Questions and queries that your readers present could lead to whole new blog posts in the future.

Internet users are looking to be entertained with new information so it is ideal if you can provide them with content on subjects that typically do not receive much coverage. This could involve introducing your readers to information that is little known outside of your trade. Additionally, you may be able to dig up interesting facts, trends and history by conducting your own research.

There are a huge number of ways to stay creative in business blog writing. What have you found to be the best methods to keep creative ideas flowing? 

After you've been blogging for awhile, you're probably going to hit a point where you want to step back and ask, "OK, what am I actually making off this?" After all, while business blog writing is certainly inexpensive, it's not truly free. You need to make sure from time to time that it's not draining your budget.

It's fairly easy to calculate the strict ROI (Return on Investment) for a blog, although there are a few things to watch out for if you're only looking at your blog in terms of dollars. We'll get to that in a minute.

First, let's go over the basics of figuring out the ROI on your business blogging.

Calculating the ROI on Business Blog Writing

For starters, calculating the ROI on anything uses an extremely simple formula:

(Revenue - Investment) / Investment = ROI

In plain language, you just subtract your costs from your income to get the gross profits, then divide by the costs to get the percentage of the returns on your labors.

Investment

Calculating your blog's investment costs are simple enough. If you're already using a Internet marketing firm, your blogging fees are probably a line item on your bill. Otherwise, you need to figure out:

• The cost in manpower (hourly wage) for your blog. Even if you're doing it on your own, remember that time is money, so don't undercharge yourself.

• Any overhead costs, such as internal power usage or web hosting fees.

• Any other fees you might be paying to outsource your content.

Revenue

Then, it's time to look at revenue. This is trickier. First, you need either a way to access your server's records directly, or you need analytics software like Hubspot or Google Analytics. Once you can see your customers' behavior, like what "path" through your website they take, you can figure out your returns.

• First look for any clear instances of people going straight to a sale after reading your blog.

• Then look at instances where one or more blogs were stopping points in a longer browsing session. You'll probably want to pick a minimum threshold for how long they were there, perhaps under thirty seconds, where it can be assumed they weren't looking closely at the blog.

Then you also need to work out what the blog nets in terms of leads. Your analytics software can tell you easily how many people clicked on Calls-to-Action while on a blog, and how many went out to convert. If you take an average of how many leads go on to become customers, you can get a good idea of what the blog is netting you in terms of lead conversions.

Lastly, if you run paid advertisements on your blog, add in whatever extra they net you.

Then, once you've got your investment and returns worked out, plug them into the formula above. If you get a positive number, congratulations, your blog is officially profitable.

If not...

Well, Don't Be Too Hasty

Even if your business blog writing isn't directly profitable, that doesn't necessarily mean it's a waste of money. It's still a valuable communications tool, and a good tool to assist in spreading your brand awareness across social media. These are the intangibles of marketing: you can't quite put a dollar amount on them, but they definitely make a difference in the long run.

So, you might also want to look at your blog, not in terms of sales, but in terms of PR potential. How many impressions does it get, versus your other channels for public communication? If the cost per impression is lower than other forms of media you utilize, there's another way to demonstrate its value.

In short, while calculating the strict dollar worth of your business blog writing is easy enough, remember that it serves many functions and its value should be weighed accordingly.

How do you measure the returns on your blog?  

We've said it before, we're saying it now, and we'll undoubtedly have to say it more times in the future: Content is King when it comes to inbound marketing. If you're designing website content that people don't want to see or don't have an interest in, your SEO efforts are not going to yield the results you're looking for.

Now, second-tier inbound marketing strategies like link-building and keyword optimization are certainly important pieces of the puzzle, don't get me wrong. However, at the end of the day, it is your content that will almost single-handedly decide whether you're converting visitors into sales, or into bounces.

The key to this is focusing on the User Experience (UX) when designing website content. The more friendly and compelling you make your site, the more visitors will hang around to buy something.

Designing Website Content With The User Experience In Mind

To focus on the user experience, you must first know who your customers are. UX is really all about looking at your site and your content through your customers' eyes, to try to gauge how they will see it. The best way to do this is to create a series of customer profiles, to try to get an idea of your customers' views.

In these customer profiles, ask and answer questions like:

• How old are they? (What generation do they identify with?)

• What's their average income and education level?

• Why do your products appeal to them?

• What are their political or social inclinations?

• What other products / companies do they like?

• What interests do they have outside of your industry?

Your customer profiles can be as broad or narrowly-defined as you want, but fundamentally, they should give you an at-a-glance idea of who your average customers are and what they want out of you, and out of life.

Then you can start designing website content that appeals to them specifically, rather than throwing spaghetti at the proverbial wall.

Quality, Relevance, and Value

Content breaks down into three simple concepts that embody good content design: Quality, Relevance, and Value. Remember, these are all entirely subjective ideas, and what really matters is how your audience responds to them.

• Quality: This should be self-explanatory, but it bears repeating: If your content offers no interesting or new ideas, you're going to have a hard time selling it to skeptical customers with an entire Internet of content to choose from. Don't forget that your approach or writing style can also be a part of this. Just look at the success Woot! has had with its postmodern and often self-deprecating comical sales blogs. They knew there really wasn't anything new to say about selling TVs or T-shirts, so they found a new way to say it instead.

• Relevance: Here's where your customer profiles really come into play. Your content should be picked, as much as possible, based on what your customers want to see rather than what you want to talk about. Of course, in the best case scenario, these two ideas go hand-in-hand. That's what breeds the best blogs.

• Value: Especially when it comes to a Call to Action, you should always remember that modern customers are absolutely aware of the value of their personal information. Even if your video or eBook is free in terms of money, customers know that they are still trading a commodity when they give you their email address or phone number. As such, your content needs to be compelling enough to make them want to complete that transaction.

Focus On The Customer, And They Will Come

The entire UX philosophy really can be summed up by saying, "Look at your site through your customer's eyes." Focus on designing website content that appeals to them, and you'll have a successful site.

What tricks do you have for keeping the customers' needs in focus?