by Alyssa Craft | Jul 15, 2014 | Blogging
For small businesses that use blogging as part of their marketing strategy, it can be difficult to think of what to write about. This difficulty can lead to frustration and even giving up on the tactic all together. If you’re looking for new ideas to blog about that people actually care about, check out this Blog Topic Generator tool from Hubspot. It will generate intriguing titles such as “Miley Cyrus and Marketing: 10 Things They Have in Common.” I’m not actually going to compare Miley Cyrus to marketing (sad face, I know!), but I will show you a pretty cool free tool to generate creative ideas for your small business blogging and eliminate your writer’s block. How to Kickstart Post Ideas with the Hubspot Blog Topic Generator Step 1: Pick 3 Words Pick three words or phrases that have to do with your business (preferably nouns) and type them into the generator. Phrases that work for my business are are lead generation, small business marketing, and marketing consulting. Step 2: Generate A Week of Blog Topics Press the button labeled “Give me blog topics”. Here are my results. A blog topic generator can help you plan weeks or months of content. The ideas may not make sense 100% of the time, but they should be enough to get you started. You should make sure your posts provide useful information for your audience and support your overall marketing strategy. We hope this gives you some inspiration. Happy blogging! If you’re having trouble thinking of blog post ideas, or if you aren’t seeing results from your blogging, why not schedule a consultation with one of our marketing consultants? We’d be happy to talk to you about your...
by Alyssa Craft | Jun 9, 2014 | Blogging
For some small businesses, blogging can be a great way to gain and retain customers. If you’re blogging, you’ll get better results if you encourage readers to engage with your content. Whether you’re looking for views, comments, newsletter signups, or simply want to stay in touch with your existing customers as part of your loyalty marketing strategy, these six tips should help you get started. 1. Include social share icons A simple way to encourage readers to share your blog post is to include social share icons at the beginning or end of the post (or both!). If those icons aren’t there as a reminder to share your useful post with friends and followers, then readers may not make the extra effort to do it. The likelihood of sharing goes up if those buttons are easily accessible. Think of social share icons like candy bars at a grocery store. You may not hunt them down on your own (and if you do, feel no shame, we’ve all been there), but seeing them near the checkout line may suddenly whet your appetite and motivate you to buy one. In a similar way, social share icons remind and encourage readers to share your content. 2. Encourage readers to participate Many businesses blog (or should blog) to interact with their readers. Interaction requires two-way communication, so you want to encourage readers to respond to your post with their own thoughts and comments. One way to do this is to ask the readers a question at the end of the post to get them thinking, and also to let them know their...
