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BroadVision Marketing Blog

Business Blogging Requires Effort And Ideas [Tips]

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaar on Fri, Mar 03, 2017 @ 09:00 AM

The bottom line when it comes to inbound marketing is that every business needs a blog. Business blogging is at the core of a content strategy. But you need ideas.

[Parts of this post were originally published in a slightly different format in April 2016. But we feel that some things never get old or go away. Like the need for great blog post ideas!]

One of the fundamental elements of inbound marketing is the effective use of business blogging. While a blog by itself does not constitute the entirety of an inbound, or content, marketing strategy, it is a big part.

Typically, the more frequently the blog posts are published, the better. Differing schools of thought prevail here, but it is generally agreed that a minimum of two posts per month are needed. Once a week is better.

But this requires a regular supply of blog post ideas. And ideas can often be difficult to generate, especially week after week.

Business Blogging 101

You may be a small business owner functioning as your own marketing manager, or possibly a staffer who has been tasked with publishing the company blog every week or so.

Either way, you have probably discovered that, while the blog is a good idea and it can generate traffic for your website, feeding the insatiable beast with blog post articles can be challenging.

If you are engaged in creating and publishing your own blog for your company, the challenge can be frustrating at best. You are probably busy doing everything else your job calls for and now you have this blog task to keep up with on top of all that. 

The Never Ending Need for More Ideas

Unless you've been provided with a pre-made list of blog topics for every week for the rest of the year, you'll have to come up with your own blog post ideas.

The good news is that you are surrounded by potential ideas - you just probably haven't noticed yet. Your employees, for fellow staff members as the case may be, all have unique skills, experience, knowledge and perspectives. A simple interview can reap dozens, if not hundreds, of ideas can be pulled from these valuable sources.

In addition, we have created this handy quick tip guide:

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Topics: business blog post ideas, article writing, Business Blogging, blog, inbound marketing, content creation

4 Key Elements of a Killer Business Blog [Infographic]

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaar on Wed, Aug 26, 2015 @ 02:45 PM

You've determined that blogging for business is a great way to generate leads and communicate your brand story. Good for you!

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Topics: blog posting, blog, inbound marketing, Blogging, business blog

7 Internet Marketing Tips on Lead Intelligence

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaar on Mon, Feb 18, 2013 @ 07:53 AM

Where did that prospect go? He showed some interest in something connected with your service or product, but then he drifted away. The truth is that with so many marketing tools available, your leads are showing up much earlier in the buying cycle than ever before. You might see some activity on your blog, social media or from a web search; but this might just be a case of information-gathering on the part of the prospect. Could you use some internet marketing tips on using lead intelligence so you don’t lose that lead?

By doing a little mining of the lead intelligence information you get when someone drops in, you can develop a super sales advantage. Lead intelligence is all about learning vital information about your prospect to help you close the sale. It enables you to create personalized, targeted lead nurturing campaigns geared to the needs of the prospect. Using lead intelligence you can create personalized, lead nurturing suiting your prospect’s needs.

Here are 7 internet marketing tips that will help you collect information on your quest for lead intelligence.

  1. What’s in a name? A lead’s name is one of the easiest pieces of intelligence you are able to mine. After you have her name, you can address her by name when you send out an email. You have just created a more personalized experience for your prospect. This is one of the super internet marketing tips to add to your lead nurturing campaign.
  2. Demographic lead intelligence is a must. We can’t stress demographics enough as one of the must-have internet marketing tips. You want to know your prospect’s age, gender and location. With these bits of intelligence you can get information about your prospect’s wants and needs, and how you can qualify this person up front.
  3. Is your persona on stage? Another of our internet marketing tips on lead intelligence concerns well-defined marketing personas. You need to know where your actual lead might best look for information. One persona will be looking to your website for information on your business while another has a particular question that he wants answered. You want to be sure that each different kind of lead can find you though the noise of all the other sales businesses on the internet hawking something similar to yours.
  4. What pages has your prospect viewed? By getting this piece of internet marketing lead information you can tell what stage of the sales cycle your lead is in. If your lead visits your product pages, this could mean the prospect is close to a sale and is ready for nurturing with information and content focused for that product.
  5. Let’s get sociable. What if your lead comes to one of your social media platforms? Of all our internet marketing tips, this is one not everyone takes adequate advantage of. Does your prospect get sociable or just lurk? If he leaves remarks, you can get an idea of what his problems and pain points are. You have a great chance at this point to answer back as soon as you can to nurture this prospect with content on your website that addresses his pain points.
  6. It’s free (well, almost). Has your prospect already gotten some of your free whitepapers and reports?  While he thinks they are free, he does “pay” by giving you his information. How many times has he done so? Do you know how many forms the prospect has completed and what type of business lead generation material the lead has looked at? How long has this prospect been on your site? If you can, offer a discount or coupon to those who have come to your site often. If it works for Starbucks, it can work for you.
  7. Email in good measure. Email is another of the great internet marketing tips. How much have you emailed this prospect? Is your lead a part of an email list or lead nurturing campaign? Has she clicked on any links (you should have at least 3 places per email to encourage her to do that)? Which links did your prospect click on? Be careful. This piece of lead intelligence is not an opportunity to bombard her with all kinds of campaigns and multiple email posts a day. Remember we want to nurture our prospects, not have them unsubscribe from our email.
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Topics: blog, Inbound marketing agency in CA, internet marketing tips, Jaco Grobbelaar BroadVision Marketing Petaluma CA, lead intelligence

6 Internet Marketing Tips on Newsjacking--Hijacking the News?

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaar on Mon, Feb 11, 2013 @ 07:38 AM

Newsjacking—love it, hate it, never heard of it? How can an internet marketing tip that has been around since 2011 when David Meeman Scott wrote Newsjacking: How to Inject Your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage not be a part of common marketing terminology? You need all the internet marketing tips you can get to help you publish interesting blogs. So what is newsjacking? Scott, describes it as “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real-time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

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Topics: blog, Inbound marketing agency in CA, internet marketing tips, Jaco Grobbelaar BroadVision Marketing Petaluma CA, newsjacking

Internet Marketing Tips: What a Blog Has to Have

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaar on Thu, Sep 06, 2012 @ 05:50 AM

Ask a Realtor what’s one of the most important factors in selling a house and all of them would have “Location, Location, Location” as a factor. When we apply that same question to internet marketing I’m convinced all internet marketers would say “Content, Content, Content.” Although there are many tools available to make your content available online, the most important tool is blogs. So, what is a blog? None better than Wikipedia to answer the question. “A blog (a portmanteau of the term web log)[1] is a discussion or information site published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first.” Now that you know what a blog is, did you know that according to current estimates there are over 133 million blog readers in the US alone! In other words, if you are not blogging, you are missing a big chunk of readers.

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Topics: blog, internet marketing tip

Fishing for Clients

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaa on Thu, Mar 01, 2012 @ 06:17 PM

Have you ever gone fishing and taken several poles?  Business blogging and other platforms like Facebook and Twitter are like having several poles in the water to hook a client into coming to your website and using your products or services. These platforms are not hard sell platforms. People won’t come visit you if all you do is bombard them with why they need your product or service. They want to learn something or be entertained. What you tell them is the bait on your hook.

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Topics: marketing, Using Different Media, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter, Marketing strategy

The Five Part Skeleton of a Business Blog

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaa on Tue, Feb 28, 2012 @ 05:36 PM


A business blog is the anchor to which all your other social media platforms are tied. It’s your blog that goes on your Facebook Fan Page and you tweet about. These in turn get passed around by others who in turn come to your website to read that blog. Furthermore when the search engines are aware of the information in your blog, strangers will search for some keywords and find themselves on your business blog. That’s powerful stuff.


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Topics: Google, WordPress, Corporate blog, Business Blogging, blog, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Business, Branding, Blogging, Twitter

Realistic Business Blogging-Five Pointers for Beginners

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaa on Sun, Feb 26, 2012 @ 06:48 PM


Business blogging is a powerful low-cost marketing tool when you look at all the other marketing tools available. Its power is in the fact that you are writing about what you know. While it takes time, your knowledge is the value added if you have taken the time to learn how to use blogging properly. There is a big caveat here. Do not expect your blog to get you instant clients, customers or even readers. Expect little and you will be surprised when things work out. Expect instant success and you will be disappointed.

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Topics: marketing, Web search engine, Business Blogging, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Marketing strategy

Be Social: Four Insider Facts for Promoting Your Business Blog

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaa on Tue, Feb 21, 2012 @ 04:23 PM

[caption id="" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Being Social"] [/caption]

Do you see yourself as Mr. or Ms. Business Blogger, along the same lines as the  “Cherry Ames, Companion Nurse” stories by Helen Wells? Writing a business blog is a good step in the right direction, but if no one reads your blog, you have just wasted a lot of time.

How do you get that great article you wrote out there? Blogging and social networking are both parts of the same strategy. You have to go out and promote your blog by being social. There are many different ways you can use to get your word out. We are just going to look at four.

  • Twitter is a quick way to let people know that you are in business and that you have a live website, as opposed to one that is static where nothing new is ever going on. You can tweet about your new post in such a way that people will be interested in reading about it. Remember that no one wants to be sold on social network. They do want to learn things and be entertained. If you are offering information, make that obvious in your tweet. Oh yes, it’s a good idea to put out around 10 tweets on various subjects a day and then spend some time actually on Twitter to show that you are a real person.


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Topics: Using Different Media, Google, Corporate blog, Social network, Helen Wells, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, LinkedIn, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Blogging, Twitter

Four points concerning multimedia for business bloggers

Posted by Jaco Grobbelaa on Thu, Feb 16, 2012 @ 04:05 PM

One of the greatest things since sliced bread in the business blogging world is using multimedia. This week you have seen me use some of the ideas that I have written about. Today I have a video for you because words sell and video helps.

[kkytv id="livzJTIWlmY" width="600" height="385"]

 

  • Adding video and photos to your website and blogs can have a major impact on your sales.



  • Unless you are aiming for an amateur look, create videos that look professional or you can find something like the one I found on YouTube. These will enhance your image.




  • You can also purchase photos and graphics, often for reasonable rates.


What sort of multimedia are you using? How has it worked for you? What would you like to know more about?

 
Jaco Grobbelaar, owner of BroadVision Marketing, helps business owners and business professionals put marketing strategies in place that consistently secure new clients. He can be reached at jaco@broadvisionmarketing.com or 707.799.1238. You can “Like” him at www.facebook.com/broadvisionmarketing or connect with him on www.linkedin.com/in/JacoGrobbelaar.

 


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Topics: Google, YouTube, Videos, Multimedia, Photos, blog, BroadVision Marketing, Facebook, Social Media, Marketing Principles, Business Owner, Jaco Grobbelaar, Business, Branding, Blogging, Marketing strategy

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