This content from: Small Business Marketing Blog - Strategies That Increase Sales
One of my fellow Duct Tape Marketing Coaches is part of a new company that provides content for blog owners – The Blogger’s Voice. Here is how it works – a journalist from The Blogger’s Voice will research your website to discover which keywords are good for your content to target and optimize for. Then they will call and interview you – that’s what journalists do, right? Two days later, they will add the post to your blog. They will even update your social media statuses to let your online communities know you have a new post.
I recently went through this process and the blog post I received is below. What do you think?
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Does it make sense for an accountant to maintain a blog? If the operative term is maintain, the answer is definitely “yes.” Consistently updating a blog with new information is an excellent way to draw in new visitors, and get the old ones to come back. Focused blog posts are faster to write and easier to read, making it easier to post to the blog consistently.
Google and Bing love new material – maintaining a blog tells search engines that there's new and interesting things going on, and as a result the web site gets more visits from the “bots” that index the internet. More bot visits mean that the site is showing up in more relevant searches – searches made by people looking for the specific accounting services covered in those blog posts.
The way to help the search engine bots is by focusing each post on a single idea, and talk about it in plain language. Accountants and attorneys alike can write at length about a very technical topic like 1031 exchanges, but that sort of comprehensive writing is better suited for professional journals. Complex topics should be broken down into installments for a few reasons:
- Lengthier posts may get bookmarked for later reading (and forgetting), rather than being read and acted upon now.
- Each blog post will be indexed by search engines separately, giving the site more exposure.
- Breaking down a big concept into several posts can prevent the blogger from running out of ideas, or getting burned out on blogging in general.
Writing a plain language blog doesn't mean avoiding complicated topics, but it does mean taking the time to explain any acronyms, jargon, shorthand, or tax terms being used. The more clearly an accountant defines his or her ideal client, the easier it becomes to blog in language appropriate to that reader. Accountants who are targeting CFOs of mid-sized manufacturing companies won't want to write the same way as they would if they were looking for Etsy shop owners.
Writing more focused posts also makes it easier to be consistent. If an accountant writes a short, focused blog post one a week, a year later there are 52 more pages of quality content on his or her site – which translates into 52 more ways to be found online.
This blog post was prepared from an interview with Bill Brelsford of Rebar Business Builders by Terence P Ward of The Blogger's Voice.
