Are you ready to build social brand authority that increases your influence and impact – and will result in increasing your income?
First, focus on creating content that adds value to the life and business of your target audience.
Then become disciplined about posting your content on a platform that you control – like your website blog. If you want your blog to be influential, here are 11 steps to get you started …
1. Branding: Purchase a domain name for your blog that is easy to remember and easy to spell. GoDaddy is my favorite place to purchase domain names.
2. Distribution: Set up an RSS feed (aka real simple syndication) to make it easy for people to keep up with new content that is published on your blog.
3. Images: Upload a photo for every blog post. People love to share photos, so make it easy for them. When using photos, be sure that you purchase them – or, give proper credit when using a resource like Flickr. Using photos without permission or given proper credit (as instructed by the photographer or artist) can get you sued. Don't take the risk – it's not worth it.
4. Metrics: Use a tool like Google Analytics, Get Clicky or StatCounter to monitor traffic to your blog.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Use keywords in your blog post titles, content, tags and categories to increase organic search engine results for your chosen keyword phrases. To make this easy, create a list of 15 or so carefully researched keyword phrases – then use this list whenever creating new content for your website, blog or social media platform.
6. Engagement: Encourage reader engagement on your blog by asking your folks to leave comments – or share your post with their online communities (e.g, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.). Make this easy by installing a plug-in like Shareaholic.
7. Content: Share various types of content on your blog – case studies, stories, videos, lists and audio clips are just a few examples.
8. Keywords: Tag your blog posts with relevant keywords to help readers and search engine find your blog posts.
9. Consistent Content: Be consistent and write regularly. Consider scheduling your blog posts for certain days of the week and times of the day. This is a great start to building ‘social brand authority' because your folks will know when they will receive new content from you and … will start to expect it.
10. Guest Posts: Increase your “social brand authority” and your visibility by writing articles and blog posts for popular websites and blogs that cater to your target audience.
11. New Visitors: Expand the reach of your blog by inviting popular writers and people with active online followers to submit content to your blog. This will expose your guest blogger's audience to your blog. If these folks enjoy your content, they'll likely stick around.
Now that you know what to do, get to doing it. Need help? Apply for a private strategy session with me by clicking here.
My best to your best!
TC Cooper
