How to Blog to Nurture Your Audience and Grow Your Business
Use Your Blog to Nurture Your Audience and Grow Your Business
How do you transform your blog into a powerful tool for business growth. It's all about nurturing your audience.
When done right, you can turn casual readers into loyal customers, boosting your business in the process. Let's dive into some proven strategies to make this happen.
Understanding Your Audience
If you’re one of my regular readers then you’ve heard me say this A LOT!
In order to reach your audience, you need to understand your audience. And rather than reinvent the wheel here, I’m gonna redirect you to another post on this topic, A Brand Message Will Help You Blog for Your Business.
While many Squarespace users are spending hours on the internet trying to learn how to do some cool designy thing, you’re going to get ahead of them and learn how to attract and engage your target audience. → (website strategy blog posts)
Don’t get me wrong, cool designy things are fun, and I like them too! I even have a whole bunch of blog posts on cool designy things.
But cool designy things don’t sell–content sells. So you MUST get this right.
And it all starts with a Brand Message for your business.
If you can’t tap into your audience’s pain point, how it’s making them feel, how you can bridge the gap between where they are now and where they want to be, and what their life will look like if they engage with your brand, and instead you focus on the esthetics of your website, you’re already in trouble.
There’s no saying you can’t have both! You absolutely can!
But the message comes first because it informs everything else you do in your business, including the design.
Your blog is the place where you can speak to and resonate with your audience, but only if you know who they really are.
Create Valuable Content
Content is king, but only if it's valuable. Your goal is to create blog posts that will keep your readers coming back.
And remember, all they care about is what’s in it for them. They don’t have time for your personal stories. Those are boring, and they don’t care.
Yes, it’s okay to share something anecdotal about yourself so long as it makes a point that resonates with your audience and isn’t full of “fluff.” This is difficult for most people to accomplish–we LOVE to talk about ourselves.
But your blog isn’t about you, it’s about your target customer. Focus on THEM and what THEY need, and don’t talk about yourself too much. It’s off-putting.
Careful With Keywords
Should you use keywords–YES!
Should your content be dictated by keywords?—In my opinion, NO.
Start with a strategy that aligns with whatever is going on in your business and create a content calendar that will keep you consistent and ensure that your content is lining up with whatever you have going on in your business.
Keywords can bog you down if you let them dictate your content. Keyword research is great, and I’m excited for the soon-to-come SEOSpace update that will help with keyword research.
But it’s also okay to use keywords that you THINK your target audience is searching. No one knows your business better than you do, and it’s okay to take your best stab at it, especially if you’re pressed for time and don’t know how to do keyword research and don’t have time to learn that today, thank you very much.
Keyword research takes practice, and I’d rather you be blogging than waiting until you’ve figured out how to do keyword research, and then let it dictate your content that doesn’t have a strategy. Does that make sense?
In my course, Traffic Transformer, I go into detail about how to create a content planner and calendar that is NOTHING like anything you’ve ever seen before, created by someone who has struggled with planning and scheduling content for a VERY long time–ME!
Be Consistent
Consistency is important, as it shows your audience that you are reliable, generous, helpful, and accessible. All of these great qualities create a relationship with your audience built on trust, and they will be much more comfortable doing business with you if they trust.
No one is going to hand their hard earned money over to someone they don’t trust.
Offer More Value and Grow Your Email List Simultaneously
Your blog is the #1 place on your website that will get you subscribers. Since you’re already showing your audience how much you know and how helpful you are, include at least one lead generator in every single blog post so you can grow your email list, creating a direct line of communication between you and your audience.
By having 2 or more lead generators that speak to different segments of your audience, and using a great Email Service Provider like ConvertKit, you can then personalize your emails to speak to your subscribers' interests and tailor your content to different groups of subscribers.
Sometimes you need help getting those creative juices flowing to come up with ideas for lead generators, so I’ve created The Ultimate List of Lead Generators to get you started.
Use a Good Email Service Provider (ESP) like ConvertKit
With a great ESP like ConvertKit, you can really dive into the metrics and see how effective your lead generators are and how your subscribers are interacting with your email campaigns or email blasts.
A good ESP will provide you with reports that show you open rates, click through rates, which lead generators are generating more subscribers, and who is unsubscribing from your email list (don’t let it get you down).
Analyze this data to identify what’s working and what’s not. Are certain topics performing better than others? Are there patterns in subscriber behavior? Use these insights to refine your content strategy and improve engagement.
Convert Subscribers Into Paying Customers
The ultimate goal is to convert your subscribers into paying customers. Honor your subscribers for being loyal followers and let them enjoy the benefits of being on your email list.
Here are few ways you can show your appreciation to your subscribers:
Exclusive Deals: Offer your subscribers special discounts or early access to products/services.
More Free Stuff: Have you just created a new lead generator you think a segment of your audience would benefit from? Email it to them!
Ask for Input: Are you working on an offer that your audience could help you develop? Ask them what they want/need and let them help inform your next offer, then offer them a discount for their contribution.
Leverage Squarespace Analytics
Squarespace analytics is a wealth of information. This data will help you determine what’s working and what’s not.
The ‘Engagement’ tab is a great overview that quickly shows you which pages your visitors are interacting with the most and the average amount of time spent on specific pages as well as the bounce and exit rates.
This is great when you want to have a “Big picture” idea of your popular content without getting too bogged down in the details.
Was this helpful?
By understanding your audience, creating valuable content, personalizing your approach, engaging with your subscribers, integrating email marketing, leveraging analytics, and surprising and delighting your subscribers, you can transform your blog into a business growth powerhouse.
Ready to put these strategies into action? Are you doing some but not all of these things? How’s it going? Share your thoughts below 👇
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