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Advanced Blogging Panel: How to Create Content That Drives Traffic and Engagement

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How can businesses use blogging effectively to increase online visibility and build relationships with their target audiences? To answer that, the team at Designhill put 15 questions to four blogging pros.

Below is the video along with some answers to the questions posed (not a transcript). Watch the video to get expert insights from Maddy Osman, Lisa Sicard, and Casie Gillette. (And me.)

business blogging panel1. Why is now the best time to start blogging, and what opportunities does it bring for business bloggers?

It’s like the old saying about trees: the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today. If blogging will be part of your strategy, get started now! It takes time to build an audience and credibility with Google, but once you’ve built that it produces results over the long term.

It’s not unusual in companies for their blog to account for 60-80% of total website traffic, with most of their online leads coming through the blog.

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What’s the Ideal Number of Experts for Expert Roundup Posts? 27 Experts Weigh In

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Expert roundup blog posts have become a staple of influencer marketing and content marketing programs. Any why not? They’re relatively easy to write, influencers (often) are happy to contribute, and readers gobble them up. They often perform well in terms of both SEO and social media sharing.

After all, what’s a more appealing blog post title? “Randy Schmuck Shares His Top SEO Predictions for 2018” or 48 Experts Share Their Top SEO Predictions for 2018? The wisdom of the crowd, and multiple perspectives, are more appealing.

Best number of experts for an expert roundup blog postThe range of the number of experts quoted in such posts is very broad, from less than 10 (e.g.,  Expert Advice on Building an Effective Content Marketing Campaign) to more than 100 (such as 104 Digital Pros Share Their Top Christmas Marketing Tips).

But while much has been written about how expert roundup posts support a highly productive content strategy or best practices for writing expert roundup posts, it’s hard to find guidance on the best number of experts to include. Is a large number better (wider sharing, more comprehensive) or a smaller group (experts feel more valued, viewers more likely to actually read the whole post)?

To find out, the logical approach seemed to be…ask a number of marketing experts. So—what’s the best number of experts to include in an expert roundup post?

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12 Lessons I’ve Learned from Writing 1,000 Blog Posts

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Revised February 17, 2017

After writing 60+ additional blog posts since October, I find these lessons even more important today than back then. 

In Taekwondo, students are taught they must perform each kick at least 1,000 times before they can safely say they have learned the kick perfectly.

I’m not sure I craft “perfect” blog posts even after writing 1,000 of them—but I’ve certainly learned a few things.

lessons learned from writing 1000 blog posts(For the record: I wrote 440 posts on the Blogger-based WebMarketCentral blog between 2005 and 2010, and have now published 560 posts here on Webbiquity. Hence, 440+560=1,000. It’s true there have been guest posts published here, but those have been balanced out by posts I’ve written for other blogs.)

Here are a dozen things I’ve learned and observations I’ve drawn from writing 1,000 blog posts.
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How to do Lead Nurturing Right

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Marketing automation provider Marketo has just published The Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing, a white paper that provides real value, covering the lead nurturing process from the basic how and why through ROI measurement. Unlike most white papers, this guide is very light on marketing (selected pages have sidebars headed “How Marketo Does It” rather than embedding marketing copy in the content—a nice touch). Also, it’s available in full immediately for those willing to provide their basic contact information, or as a series of chapters to be distributed throughout the month of August for those who prefer to obtain the guide anonymously.

The guide itself is well-researched, clearly written and highly practical. It starts with a clear rationale for making investments in lead nurturing processes:

  • “Up to 95 percent of qualified prospects on your Web site are there to research and are not yet ready to talk with a sales rep, but as many as 70 percent of them will eventually buy a product.” (Brian Carroll)
  • “On average, nurtured leads produce a 20 percent increase in sales opportunities versus nonnurtured leads.” (DemandGen Report)
  • “Only in the last third of the today’s purchasing process do buyers want to engage with sales reps. This changes the role of marketing; instead of generating the lead and moving on, today’s marketers must synchronize their marketing throughout the buying process, providing potential buyers with high quality content that is contextually relevant.” (Scott Albro).

Research from other sources shows companies that excel at lead nurturing generate more qualified leads at a lower cost per lead, reduce the percentage of marketing-generated leads that are ignored by sales, increase win rates, and have a higher percentage of sales reps who make quota.

Content marketing plays a key role in lead nurturing as well as a successful lead generation and social media strategy. As the report notes, “The most important brand attributes for a B2B vendor are often credibility and trust – and unless you are a well known company like IBM, the best way to build credibility and trust is by sharing useful information. If you can help frame the discussion, your company will be seen as a trusted advisor and thought leader. If buyers believe that your company understands their problems and knows how to solve them, this helps reduce the feelings of fear and can make a big difference in being selected for consideration and purchase.” It also sets you apart and builds credibility on the front-end of the buying cycle, making efforts from SEO to banner advertising and AdWords more effective and productive.

The report provides helpful guidance on lead nurturing basics, lead scoring, the different types of opt-in (and when each is most appropriate), and advanced lead nurturing tactics such as accelerator campaigns (“campaigns that attempt to move prospects along the buying cycle faster by providing relevant `nudges’ at the right time, usually triggered by specific buyer behaviors or sales updates”).

It closes with a section on the ROI of lead nurturing, complete with worksheets for performing your own lead gen activity return calculations.

Again, Marketo’s lead gen guide will be made available in chapters throughout this month for anonymous download, or you can grab the complete Definitive Guide to Lead Nurturing today.

Note: this post was originally published on the WebMarketCentral blog in August 2009.

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