In our company meetings, we often expect to hear Alyssa (our blogmaster) solicit the engineers for blog posts. I get it, if you’re not used to writing, coming up with an idea and then writing that blog post can seem daunting. But good blog posts don’t have to be long, just useful. Keep it simple, get to the point. Having a blog is a great way to tell your customers what is going on, plus a very useful marketing tool. I’m going to be talking a little about this during my presentation at the MBS Xojo Conference in Cologne, so I thought I’d offer some basic information about how blogging can be helpful to developers.
In marketing, we drive traffic, conversions and brand awareness with content. Blogs can be great for communicating about your product when it is in development, like if you have a huge project in the works that your customers are really excited about. They can also be venues for you to comment on happenings in your industry. Establish your product and yourself as a subject matter expert, your blog will then be a great vehicle to build trust with prospects through your content.
Don’t start a blog if you’re not committed. You are going to need to maintain it regularly, but it’s up to you to commit to the schedule that is reasonable for you to maintain. Start small, one to two posts a month. Set a schedule for yourself so you have plenty of time to take a break from coding and focus on writing a valuable piece of marketing content. Go a step further (and make it easy on yourself) by writing up several blog posts before you launch so you can draw from your bank when it’s time to post.
For your first post, start simple and write a launch post to boast about the features of your product/service, showcase screenshots, videos, and a link to download or purchase. This post will be a great piece of content that you can repurpose. Because when you have all of this great content – why only put it in one place? Use it in your other marketing channels, like on social media, email blasts, presentations (remember, I said before that I was going to talk about this in my presentation!), etc. Also, once you have created your content you can also post it on third-party sites, like Medium, LinkedIn, or you could even turn it into a slideshow if that makes sense. From those other places, you can link directly to your landing page, bringing it full circle. Your content about your app made it out to the world and brought some prospects in – sweet!
When blogging, take things into consideration that can help your SEO, like your target keywords, making sure the content you create is quality and try to put it into places where you can gain some quality backlinks.
One great thing to remember about blogging (and on your landing page or website in general) is that you always want to offer a call to action. For a blog post about your newest release with a video, end your post by saying, “Check out our new video now!” Or if you just announced your company conference, make sure to offer – “Learn more about the 2020 conference!” (shameless XOJO.CONNECT plug – you really should be there). You always want to offer more content to keep people on your site.
Did you know that B2C companies that blog generate 88% more leads per month than those who do not? Given that fact – why not try it out and see how it works for you? Prospects need to see your messages 7 times in order for them to resonate or take action, so don’t let your beautiful content go to waste – repurpose, share and enjoy a bump in your traffic and hopefully, downloads!