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August 9, 2021 Content Chat Recap: How To Turn Your Blog Into a Revenue Generating Resource

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Blogging can unlock a range of benefits for businesses and professionals alike, but how can you turn your blog into a revenue-generating resource?

In this #ContentChat, we’re joined by Anthony Gaenzle (@AnthonyGaenzle), marketing consultancy founder and author of Blogging for Business and The Business of Branding You (both here on Amazon), to discuss how to earn money from your blog. Read the full recap below, where we discuss the do’s and don’ts of enabling automatic ads on your blog, why you need a lead magnet, ways to partner with guest bloggers, and more.

Q1: How can a blog drive revenue for a business or individual?

A blog can drive revenue through affiliate marketing (learn what that is here), sponsored guest posts, ad networks, and by raising awareness of your paid solutions and offerings like products or online courses.

Consistency is key to drive a successful blog strategy. You need to provide a consistent flow of content that addresses the range of topics and priority keywords for your readers.

In this capacity, your blog showcases your expertise in your space and builds your reputation as a trusted expert for your community. This thought leadership status could unlock new opportunities for your team, like speaking engagements, awards opportunities, or access to exclusive business networks.

Regarding ads on your blog, be conscious of what you promote and how you present these ads. By promoting poor-quality content or presenting ads in a way that detracts from the reading experience, you can actively deter your readers from engaging with your content.

Q2: What should a blog content plan include?

Per Anthony, approach your blog like a business if you really want it to grow.

Your blog plan should include your blog goals (which should tie to your business goals), relevant topics for your audience personas, budget considerations, and requirements for success (tools and resources). Your blog plan should link to your brand style guide.

It’s essential to include audience personas in your blog plan. This way your team can understand who you are writing for and the unique pain points that this audience faces.

Christian sums up the main blog plan elements to include:

And you can check out Anthony’s book Blogging for Business to learn more!

Q3: What is a ‘lead magnet’ and where do they fit in a blog?

A lead magnet is something of value that you provide to your blog visitors in exchange for their information (usually name and email) to get them into your pipeline.

The lead magnet can be anything that provides legitimate value to your audience, including a whitepaper, eBook, infographic, discount code, guide, checklist, template, video, or course (but don’t let that list limit your potential).

To reinforce: Your lead magnet needs to provide actual value to your audience. Create quality, useful assets that help your community overcome its challenges. If you provide lackluster lead magnets or ask for too many personal details (do you really need their phone number at this stage?), your audience may provide fake information in your form or actively avoid your gated content.

Each lead magnet should have a landing page that clearly explains the value of the asset, plus a strong call to action.

Keep in mind that you need to build trust with your community for them to become more willing to engage with your gated content, and you should limit how much content you gate. We explain how to know if you should gate long-form content in this past #ContentChat recap.

Q4: What is the best way to welcome guest bloggers to your site? What foundational elements should content marketers create to ensure a seamless process?

First, ensure that your blog has a smooth user experience, which includes fast load times, easy navigation, and consistently valuable content. Clearly define what your blog is about, and provide opportunities for your readers to engage with your content and reach your team as needed. This will increase the likelihood that guest bloggers will want to contribute to your blog.

Provide prospective guest bloggers with your style guide, information about your audience, and preferred content topics. Also detail what they need to know about working with you, including how guest bloggers should submit content, the typical timeline for reviews/approvals

When working with guest bloggers, allow their unique style to show through. It helps to have a new voice on your blog, and as long as that voice is speaking about someone relevant to your audience, you should only copyedit for grammar issues or spelling errors.

Q5: How can content marketers successfully build and nurture relationships with their community of readers?

The best way to build relationships with your community is to actively invest in them as individuals across their preferred channels. Engage with your readers. Seek to understand their challenges. Present solutions to these challenges. Show that you care.

Stay active on social media to nurture your community. Engage with their content, share high-value content that meets their needs, and show that you are an expert they can trust.

Enable comments on your blog, and respond to any comments that are shared.

Segment your community for ongoing email communications, including a consistent monthly newsletter and targeted emails to segmented lists.

Survey your readers to understand their challenges, topics they’re interested in, and ways you can better meet their needs with content.

And stay consistent with your activities.

Once again, Christian provides a quick list of the main areas to cover.

Q6: What are the main SEO considerations for content marketers when creating blog posts?

Quick disclaimer: SEO can significantly affect the success of your content, but SEO will not fix bad content. Your focus should always be to provide value for your readers.

Use a tool like SEMrush, Moz, or Ahrefs to conduct an SEO audit.

Keywords are a major SEO consideration for teams.

Support link building by linking to high-quality content within your content, and create high-quality content that other sites will link to.

Address your H1, H2, and other structural elements.

If you’re looking to learn more about SEO and content marketing, check out this SEO basics post to learn about keywords, headlines, content structure, backlinks, and meta descriptions, and read this post for a deeper dive on the ideal content structure to boost your content SEO.

Q7: What simple changes can content marketers make to their blog to increase its speed?

Upgrade your hosting provider if your site has slow load times or other issues.

Optimize visuals to increase your load times, and consider hosting video files on channels like YouTube.

Assess whether automated ads enrich your reading experience. In many cases, these ads slow down your load time and can detract readers from staying on your site.

Q8: What KPIs are the best to use to track blog content success?

Your blog goals should ladder back to your overarching business goals, so there is no one-size-fits-all approach. However, metrics like total traffic, bounce rate, link clicks, scroll depth, and conversions are all options. Check out the community ideas below to help determine your KPIs.

About Alek Irvin

Alek Irvin is a content marketing professional with a rich history in social media management, executive thought leadership development, and media relations. As a consultant at Erika Heald Marketing Consulting, he creates human-focused content and thought leadership platforms that help brand leaders connect and engage with their communities. Alek has worked with a range of startups and Fortune 500 companies across the B2B technology and consumer spaces, including IBM, Dell Technologies, Hitch Works, Emtrain, Integrate, and Frameable. Connect with him on Twitter @AlekIrvin.

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