I get a lot of clients through networking and word of mouth, but guess what those prospects do before calling me?
They check out my website. They read my blog. They might even sign up for my newsletter.
They want to make sure I know what I’m talking about before they invest in my services.
They might also want to learn a little more about content marketing and its benefits before deciding whether it’s right for their business.
One of my most recent clients hired me after we met at a networking event and she subscribed to my newsletter. We didn’t talk for a few months, but then she reached out saying she needed help writing blog posts for her clients. She knew what she needed and I didn’t have to convince her of the need for a blogging strategy or why longer blog posts are better because she had already seen all that information on my blog. She was convinced of the value of what I provide and she trusted me to come up with a blogging strategy for her because my own blog posts had done their job of convincing her of my status as a thought leader.
If your blog isn’t driving the same results for your business, let’s talk about some ways you can turn that around.
Table of Contents
- Write for Your Audience
- Consistency and Quality Are Key
- Research the Competition
- Stay Up to Date on Recent Developments
- Create a Blogging Strategy
1) Write for Your Audience
Ultimately, we all want our blogs to help us increase our sales, but they can only do that if we have a target audience in mind through every step of the blogging process. I’ve already talked about how to create a marketing persona, so I won’t repeat myself here, other than to stress the importance of the role your marketing persona should play in every aspect of your marketing process. When it comes to blogging, that means everything from keyword research to choosing topics to distribution should all be done with the goal of getting in front of your target audience and answering their questions in a way that engages them.
2) Consistency and Quality Are Key
Google loves consistency, and it loves high-quality content, so if you’re regularly publishing high-quality content that answers the questions your target audience is asking, you’ll have a better chance of getting in front of them when they conduct their online searches.
Google is getting better and better at identifying high-quality content, so you can’t just stuff a bunch of keywords into your blog post and expect it to do the trick. Your content needs to be relevant to the keywords you’re using and it needs to be as high quality as possible. Google is constantly updating its algorithm, and that can be a lot to keep track of, but at the end of the day, it just wants to direct users to the content that answers their questions, so if you can do that on a consistent basis, you’ll have a better chance of improving your search rankings for those keywords.
Google prefers consistency and quality because that also happens to be what humans prefer. Low-quality content is not going to convince anyone you’re a thought leader in your industry, and not only will it fail to convert the leads who find your website, it will also suffer a reduced chance of ranking for relevant keywords, so always make sure you’re producing the best quality content you can, and that you’re doing so on a consistent basis.
If someone comes to your website and sees you haven’t posted anything in months, they’re going to start to wonder if anyone is still behind the website, or if it’s gone dormant. They might wonder what kind of attention they can expect to get as your client if you can’t even keep up to date with your blog.
3) Research the Competition
When you’re trying to become a thought leader in your industry, you have a lot of competition. While blogging is a great way to position yourself as an authority on your subject, more and more people are investing in blogging as they come to recognize the benefits it provides, so regardless of your industry, I’d be willing to bet you have a fair amount of competition.
That’s why one of your first steps in becoming a thought leader is to research the competition. When are they publishing their blog posts? How often? How long are they? What topics are they covering? Where are they distributing their blog posts to get the most visibility?
You should never copy the competition, but you should keep an eye on what they’re doing to gain inspiration for your own blogging strategy. If they’re consistently doing certain things, there’s probably a good reason for it, so try it out and see if it works for you.
4) Stay Up to Date on Recent Developments
In addition to staying up to date on what your competition is doing, you also need to keep abreast of overarching developments in your industry. Hopefully, you’re already doing this anyway, but if you’re regularly blogging for your business, it can give you an extra incentive to research the latest updates in your industry. If you want, you can set a Google alert for certain keywords so you’re always the first to know when something new is announced.
Seeing what the competition is talking about is a great way to get topic ideas for your own blog, but if you really want to become a thought leader in your industry, you should be the first one talking about it, which requires you to stay on top of the recent developments in your industry so you’ll know what to write about next.
5) Create a Blogging Strategy
Just blogging once in a while is not enough to be seen as a thought leader. You need to implement a blogging strategy if you’re going to have any chance of standing out from the crowd, much less ranking for relevant search terms.
A strategy requires research and the right tools. I’ve already talked all about the content marketing tools I use, so feel free to use that post as a guide.
Your blogging strategy also requires you to publish new content on a regular basis. Remember that earning Google’s trust and becoming a thought leader are not goals that can be accomplished overnight. You need to give it time to work, but that doesn’t mean you can just sit back and wait for Google’s algorithm to do its thing after you’ve published one blog post. You need to keep publishing new content in order to get (and keep) Google’s attention, and the same goes for your audience.
You also need a strategy for distributing your blog posts as soon as they’ve been published. If you just wait for Google to index and categorize your content, you could be waiting months, so do what you can to boost your visibility now by pushing it out through your newsletter and on social media. That will drive organic traffic to your website, which will tell Google the content is valuable and in demand, which will boost your SEO, and as a result, your online visibility.
You also need to research your keywords, not only to make sure you include them in your blog posts, but so you can identify the best topics to cover on your blog. It won’t matter how consistently you publish blog posts or how high quality the content is if your target audience doesn’t care about the topic.
6) Conclusion
Becoming a thought leader is a great way to get warm leads to come to you, rather than having to seek them out, but it’s not something that happens by itself, nor does it happen overnight. It requires strategy and consistent effort, so if you need help with any of it, don’t be afraid to reach out. Blogging is our specialty.
If you found this content helpful and would like to receive more of it in your inbox, you can sign up for our newsletter in the space below. You can also see what we’re up to by following us on LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook.
If you want to become a thought leader, but just don’t have the time to consistently write high-quality blog posts, our blog writing services are just what you need.
