If you are trying to build up your business presence online, one of the methods you might be using is blogging. Periodically, you sit down at your computer and let the creativity flow. You publish your thoughts…and nothing happens. Blogging can be a great outlet, but if you don’t have a plan for the content, it doesn’t necessarily become a magnet to draw people to your website. This is where cornerstone content comes in.
Of course, there are many potential purposes for a blog. It can showcase the tone of your company to help close customers who are comparing you to competitors. It can establish you as a leader or thought leader in your industry. It can enhance the outside perception of your company among people who happen to get to your website. But there is another thing a blog could be doing: Attracting people to your website. To do this, it is best to have a plan for cornerstone content.
This all sounds great, but what is cornerstone content?
Think about the keywords that people research related to your industry. In fact, don’t just think about it. Go to a keyword search tool such as you might find on Google AdWords. Look up what keyword phrases people are using that are relevant for your industry, products, or services. Look for words that perhaps aren’t the most competitive, but still popular. When you find a keyword phrase that seems promising, put it in quotes. That phrase should be the topic of a blog. Blogs built from searchable keyword phrases pay dividends over time.
If you take a few of these popular search terms and turn them into blogs that are meaningful, insightful, applicable to your audience, and loaded with the right phrases, you are creating content that can have a huge impact for you in the long-term. Publish this blog like you would any other, then the fun begins.
Cornerstone content is designed to attract new leads to your website. Instead of working really hard to promote every single blog, work extra hard to promote those blogs. Go out and get your top blogs backlinked from other sites. Refer people to them. Feature one in your email signature. Promote them. Put your attention and resources into your cornerstone content. And then, make sure that every single person who lands on those blogs knows exactly where to go next.
Cornerstone content is designed to attract new leads to your website. #marketing #smallbiz #smb Share on XWhere people go next from your cornerstone content is an important part of the process. Do you need to keep warming them? Send them to another smart blog. Or maybe now they are warm enough to opt in for a free offering. Perhaps you can send them to a video. Be intentional about the next call to action you make so that you aren’t wasting the effort or money you expended to attract the leads to your key content. (If you are not sure how to use calls to action effectively to move leads between your marketing tools or content, read here to learn about marketing funnels).
Where people go next from your cornerstone content is an important part of the process. #mktg Share on XThe beauty of this approach is that as more people click through to your cornerstone content, those pages will rank higher and higher in organic searches. The higher a page ranks, the more people will land on it. It’s a cycle. Eventually you won’t have to work so hard for those pages to rank anymore, and a stream of people will continue to stumble upon your smartest blogs with the potential to keep browsing your website, because you have designed your blog to convert to the next call to action.
Writing a blog can be a wonderful creative outlet, but if you are missing the strategy behind blogging you are probably losing out on valuable marketing power. Building cornerstone content into your plan isn’t that hard to do, but the long-term benefits can be significant!