Blogging For Success by Chukwuemeka Fred Agbata Jnr

Is it really possible to blog for success? This is a multi-million naira question that I do not have all the answers to but I will attempt to do justice to it based on six years’ experience as a professional blogger – an usual career path I chose over the fat paying job with a telecommunications that I resigned from six years ago.

Recently, after my presentation at a forum where I was one of the guest speakers, an entrepreneur told me he had been blogging for over two years now and there had been no improvements in his business. He asked me what he could do to turn around his situation.

Content marketing as well as social media has rapidly developed into a premiere way of reaching out to new customers for your business. Regardless of the product or service you are promoting, you will find yourself being virtually checked out by every potential online prospect.

You need to have a well thought out marketing strategy for your blog content. Essentially, there has to be something persuasive and informative to offer. The idea of blogging is either to increase awareness or to generate leads and to convert the potential leads into real time sales for your business.

As this may not be happening for many striving business owners, let’s take a look at four essential common reasons that are stopping their goals from being fulfilled.

Lack of a blogging plan: It is imperative to have a plan to guide your blogging efforts as well as generate positive results at all costs. To achieve success, you must first fully grasp who your target audience is, develop appropriate content and build buyer personas that will hold their interest.

You also need to get to know more about social media channels that suit your needs best and how these may be most effectively applied, what buying incentives and information needs to be offered, means of developing the interest of your audience through to a positive sales relationship, and learning to manage your new customers.

The protracted list of necessary items that need appropriate management and implementation can not only be fairly complex, but merely assuming that everything will eventually work out on its own while rolling down the lane is pure wishful thinking.

Lack of SEO strategy: As highlighted above, your plan should help you identify your ideal customer base, and the keywords they are likely to be searching for. You need to apply the right Search Engine Optimisation procedures such as determination and usage of long-tail keywords or key phrases along with monitoring competitor and trade language as well as SEO usage, testing variety of headlines and varying content, on-going usage of on-page type of SEO, etc. These attract additional prospects that will prove as better fits for your business; helping you to get to your goals much quicker.

Unstructured integration between actual sales and online marketing: The truth with online marketing is that all activities related to content generation are marketing driven. As such, these expand your audience, help engage them with content that is worthy and also creates greater interest for your customers. That’s all fabulous stuff.

Just what precise good, however, can thousands of likes on Facebook and uncountable followers on Twitter do if not a single one of them is willing to become your buyer or an ambassador? Businesses mostly rely on what is known as quantitative metrics, assuming that relevance and quality are somehow a built-in component; whereas it is SEO strategy and good planning that actually assists in attracting high quality and relevant contacts.

It is, thus, vital that your marketing and sales personnel are an integral online part of your business initiative. Best approach needed by them involves dovetailing. Hence the process becomes a seamless one: leading from client interest to potential prospect and then onwards to client – with no gaps whatsoever or a potential prospect slipping through cracks that are avoidable.

You then have a nurture sales plan handy so that you are ready to instantly put a dedicated sales team to task for fulfilling the promise that your well laid out marketing plan deems to imply. Sales being accounting-based, while marketing is typically CRM-based; different software are commonly used by many businesses that tend to segregate these processes as though the prospect somehow turns into a separate entity as soon as they decide to make an eventual purchase.

Buyers are a lot more sophisticated today and, thus, have much greater expectations. They are less likely to give you repeated opportunities should you fail to get your act right the very first time.

Insufficient implementation and/or monitoring is another factor. Many companies watch quantitative stats which only portray a partial story. It is critical to have sufficient monitoring to actually understand how your business is truly performing. Monitoring as well as implementation is an equal part of your initiative’s success.

Useful data related to your keywords and website usage is provided by Google Analytics. Customizable and detailed SEO stats are also provided by gShift Labs, while HubSpot helps to accurately monitor the leads activity of your website. You can also employ the services of analytics experts to help out.

Blogging has become rather competitive but if you are resolute and committed, then you can make something out of it like I have done plus the fact that you can do better. Best wishes for anyone ready to try out blogging!

As part of the official events of the Social Media Week 2015, Ynaija honoured 100 most innovative persons (including yours truly) in the Nigerian technology space, who in their various capacities, are working hard to uplift the tech industry, thus, contributing their own quota to the national and economic development of the country. I dedicate mine to everyone who reads this column week in, week out; thank you very much.