As a digital marketing agency, your blog gives you a platform to share your expertise, educate your audience, and generate leads.
However, many agencies leave money on the table by making these five mistakes.
1. Not Posting Consistently
The key to blogging success is consistency. If you only post once in a while or go through a phase of heavy activity followed by months of radio silence, you’re sending a message to potential clients. A lack of consistency could be interpreted one of several ways:
- You don’t follow through on projects
- You get bored easily and move on to the next shiny object
- You are too busy or overwhelmed to maintain a blog (which will lead a client to think you’ll be too busy for them)
The moral of the story is that if you’re going to have a blog, post consistently.
2. Choosing the Wrong Topics
Too often, agencies post about things that are interesting to them but aren’t relevant to their audience. Instead of writing about yourself or promoting your agency, share information that answers your audience’s questions.
There are several ways to find relevant topics, including keyword research:
- Ask your team to share the most common questions they encounter on sales calls or in meetings
- Type a topic (relevant to your business) into the Google search bar, and check the “People Also Ask” section for inspiration
- Visit a site like Answer the Public, type in an inquiry, and see related keywords to give you a treasure trove of topics
The key to choosing the right topics is to educate your audience by answering the questions that they already have.
3. Forgetting About SEO
When you sit down to write a blog post, writing by the seat of your pants can be tempting. While it’s always a good idea for your writing to be authentic and match your tone of voice, following SEO best practices maximizes your chances for cold traffic to discover your Pulitzer Price-worthy pros.
Blogs that are well-optimized for search engine discovery don’t have to be (nor should they be) stuffed with keywords to rank.
Instead, consider these best SEO practices for blogs:
- Include your target keyword in the headline
- Consider user intent when crafting your blog, and make sure your blog answers the question
- Use internal and external links
4. Omitting a Call to Action
Even if blogging is your passion, you’re probably not doing it for your health. Instead, your goal is likely to acquire new leads and customers, demonstrate your credibility, or drive traffic to other resources and content.
To accomplish this goal, you have to tell your blog visitors what to do next. Don’t assume they’ll think to themselves, “this is the best blog post I’ve ever read. I’m going to dig through every page of this website to find the author’s phone number and hire them.”
To guide visitors down the path you want them to take, include calls to action and various prompts, including:
- Schedule a discovery call
- Fill out a lead form
- Read another post on a related topic
- Subscribe to your email newsletter
- Download a free (or paid) resource
- Sign up for a webinar or trial
As you collect leads from your blog, you can follow up with them using email marketing to turn those leads into paying clients. You can find examples and inspiration from the best digital marketing blogs here.
5. Letting Content Grow Stale
Digital marketing tools and tactics change at the speed of light, and you must keep your content up to date to be credible.
Allowing stale, outdated content to live on your website is a disservice to you and your audience.
If you already have a lot of blog content, keeping it fresh can seem like a daunting task, but these tips will help keep the job manageable:
- Schedule time once per year to review content and make sure it’s current
- For each new post you publish, set a reminder to review the post one year from the date of publication
- Check your Google Analytics and prioritize updates on the posts that get the most traffic
Take Your Blog from Zero to Hero
Now that you’re familiar with how to make your blog a valuable lead and revenue-generating asset, the next step is to start writing (or revising). Before you get too deep in the weeds, you must ensure your titles are click-worthy. This guide to optimizing blog post titles provides actionable tips that beginner bloggers and veteran content creators can put into practice today.
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