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Reasons Why Your Business Should Be Writing a Blog

A lot of business owners say they’re too busy managing their business that they don’t have time to write blogs. Others put off blogging because they think it’s just a waste of their time and effort. What they fail to realize is that blogging is a great tool that can provide a wide range of benefits for their business. This is especially beneficial for small businesses.

If your business doesn’t already have a blog, we encourage you to create one today. Here are 4 reasons why your business should be writing a blog. Hopefully, these benefits would encourage you to start a blog for your business.

Establish your business as an industry leader

Blogging allows you to share your expertise. Here, you can post how-to articles, tutorials, trends, industry news, your thoughts or opinion about relevant topics and more. If you run out of ideas to write about, we suggest that you listen to questions customers and prospects usually ask, and answer them in your blog. By providing them with helpful information, people will eventually look to you as a reliable source for information in your industry.

Let your brand’s personality shine.

Blogging gives you a chance to reach potential and existing customers. Through this platform, you can share your business’ story, provide more information about your products and services, as well as future events. Every post you publish helps increase brand awareness and provides more insight into your company. Through this platform, you can show people what your business is all about.

Drive traffic to your website

Writing blogs is one of the most effective ways to attract prospective customers and bring traffic to your website. Most people go online when looking for answers or when they want to learn more about certain topics. If you can provide them with content that are interesting, informative and unique, they’ll keep coming back to your website. Once you gain the trust of your target audience, it would be easier for you to turn them into paying customers.

Boost search engine optimization

Blogging is an effective way to improve your site’s SEO –if you do it right, that is. When people research about specific topics, most of them would only visit websites on the first page of search engines. Some would only check out the first 3 sites.

Search engines like Google reward websites that produce great content. By taking time to create good quality content and publishing one on a regular basis, your website is likely to rank on search engines. But if you write poor quality content or just copy someone else’s blog posts, Google will penalize you by placing your site on the last page.

With all the benefits listed above, now is the best time to start a blog for your business. If you need help writing them, please contact BIMS today. We can help you create blog posts that are informative, unique and relevant to your business.

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Blogging: What to do after you publish a post

You wrote a blog… now what?

We often are asked, “I wrote an article, what happens now?” This checklist provides an overview of the steps to publish your blog or article and how to share it as part of your digital marketing content strategy.

Prepare for Publishing

  • Write an effective post title that includes keywords and is persuasive
  • Divide text into smaller sections with headings
  • Deep link to past posts
  • Add a question at the end to encourage discussion
  • Add on-brand, SEO-ready images
  • Add “alt text” to your images, which will be used as your Pinterest pin description
  • Add a featured image (on WordPress)
  • Make sure your blog contains keywords and header tags

Share your Blog

  • Pin your post image onto Pinterest
  • Schedule it to be pinned to any Pinterest group boards that are relevant
  • Share your post on Facebook and Twitter
  • Create a LinkedIn Group Discussion from your Blog Post
  • Post your blog to your LinkedIn Company Page and Personal Profile
  • Schedule your post for Twitter 3-5 more times over next few days and weeks
  • Share an excerpt from your article to Medium.com
  • Respond to comments
  • Check the analytics of your post to see how much engagement it received. The worksheets in our Blogging eBook offer one place to store this information.
  • In 1-2 months, repin your post onto Pinterest and re-share on other social media channels

We often are asked, “I wrote an article, what happens now?” This checklist provides an overview of the steps to publish your blog or article and how to share it as part of your digital marketing content strategy.

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What’s Up With All Those Beaches?

Odds are, you’ve seen and ad or two come across your Facebook feed with some “Business Expert” on a beach or in tropical paradise. Do all successful entrepreneurs strive to live their life jumping from one wave to another?

NO!

I’m lucky enough to call Colorado my home. My dream is right in my backyard. Yes, beaches are nice, but a cold jolt of fresh air as you click into your bindings beats laying still for hours on end and awaking to a massive sunburn. Rather than showing success through pictures from a beach, though my summer months are spent with my husband on boats in New Hampshire and beaches in Maine, I’m committing to showing pictures of success that ring true to those of us who work hard and play harder. Enough of these beach shots to signify success!

What does success look like for you?

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Blogging: Creating an Editorial Calendar

Creating an editorial calendar for your marketing collateral is often an overlooked piece in designing your small business’ web strategy. These calendars create a easy to understand reference for your blog topics, newsletters, social media posts, and promotions. They allow you to keep ahead of upcoming holidays and make it so you don’t feel like you are always playing catch-up.

Because many of us wear different hats within our business, it isn’t unexpected that some things just fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, however, sticking to a content calendar really is an income-generating task that should garner a space in your list of top-priorities. It is also something you can outsource if it makes sense for your business.

What should your Editorial Calendar include and why is it important for your business?

Your editorial calendar should be broken down by quarter, month, week, and even day. Additionally, it should include a column for blogs, newsletters, promotions, social media posts, videos, etc, and a column for results.

When you put together your calendar, think about what you can commit to. Realistically, can you commit to writing a fresh article once a month, or every day? Do you have the systems in place to post daily to your social media networks or only a few times per week? Is there a social media network that you are most passionate about? Perhaps you should just focus on building this up rather than getting burned out trying to tackle too much at once.

The next step is figuring out which topics to discuss. To brainstorm this, I recommend the following process:

  1. Your products and services
  2. Your background
  3. Your clients and their success stories
  4. Common questions you receive
  5. Topics that interest your target market
  6. Following the topics trade journals (or even your competitors) discuss
  7. Holiday or seasonal topics
  8. National organizations and their promotional schedules
  9. Topics you are passionate about
  10. Other news outlets and articles

For each of these topics, brainstorm a short list of specific topics you can discuss. Add any necessary links in your notes or bullet points to provide more context.

Now, think of the context for posting these. Can you post once per month on certain topics while only quarterly for others? Are there natural sales promotions that go along with the topics? What about videos? We have one client who has committed to filming quarterly reports rather than taking the time to write and format his analysis.

Now it is time to add these to your content calendar.

We’ve put together this workbook to help you organize your topics and ideas.

Why follow an editorial calendar?

Editorial calendars make it easier to stay consistent and keep yourself from being reactive. Consistency can truly transform a business as prospects come to know what to expect and trust you before taking the leap to being a paying customer.

Additionally, being proactive about the content you need to put out allows you to be more mindful about your business and messaging.

Stay tuned for more information on how to build your social media posts into your content calendar for your business!

Blogging Your Business

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6 Best WordPress Themes for Photographers

Top WordPress Photography Themes

We’ve worked with numerous photographers to redesign their website’s. These photographers are looking for websites that are: clean, crisp, responsive, and load quickly. Though sometimes plugins and additional features (or just too many photos per gallery) cause the site to slow down, the following themes are our favorite for Photography Websites.

1. AVADA Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme by ThemeFusion

You’ll find the Avada theme listed as a top theme option on many of our lists. This theme offers flexibility and comes with predefined page layouts for your to customize for your photography business. It is the #1 selling WordPress theme on the market.

$60

avada theme for photography

2. X | The Theme by THEMECO

X is intuitive and allows you to get a site out fast! With 4 different unique designs, this theme is great for photographers looking to set themselves apart!

$65

X Theme for Photographers

3. Enfold – Responsive Theme by Kriesi

This is currently our go-to theme for many of our clients, especially photographers who want a combination of crisp-clean layouts with advanced functionality and ease of use.

$60
Enfold theme for photography

4. Impreza= Retna Responsive by UpSolution

Elegant with functionality for animations and sliders, this beautiful theme is great for photographers looking to showcase their images. It includes the ability to integrate with other top plugins for optimal performance.

$59

Impreza Theme for Photographers

5. Core Minimalist Photography Portfolio by ThemeGoods

This minimalist photography theme is perfect for the photographer who wants their site to stand out. With all the latest WordPress features, we highly recommend this theme to display your portfolio!

$49

Core WordPress theme for photographers

6. Photolux – Photography Portfolio WordPress Theme by pexeto

This theme is powerful and offers tons of options for photographers. You can easily edit any aspect of the theme and offers different slider layouts and unique portfolio template.

$49

Photolux for photographers

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Running a Business: 4 Tips to Start Today

My first introduction to Digital Marketing was back in 2006 with an internship I found through the Tuck Business School Bridge Program. This 1 month, highly selective, program gave students from liberal education backgrounds an extensive introduction from Tuck Business School professors into business courses. As a part of the course, we were assigned to teams that helped local businesses overcome their own obstacles. Our focus was on the branding and marketing for a digital mapping company in the area. As I am originally from the area, I continued working with the company a few hours a week trying to figure out how exactly this whole Google thing worked. We used data as a way to justify or disprove hypothesis we had regarding changes to the website and their effects on the organic ranking of the website.

Though during the starts of the recession I was a financial advisor, I quickly came back to marketing and the notion of using data to make educated business decisions. After a year of working for another business, I launched Boundless Marketing in 2011 and merged with Your Marketing Voice to form The BIMS Team in 2013. I wanted to share some of the most important lessons I’ve learned from owning a small marketing agency.

Lessons Learned from Owning a Small Business:

  1. If you can work from home, great! This take discipline, but can be extremely rewarding. We invested in office space one summer, but have decided working from home is our jam. It allows us to keep our overhead low and the flexibility to work hours that fit the best with our schedules.
  2. Join a networking group! I’m a huge supporter of local networking groups, but as an introvert, I’ve decided only to attend groups with consistency and that follow a set meeting structure. I’m currently the President of a local BNI chapter while Amber helps to run 2 networking groups down in FL. Because we aren’t working from offices, this not only creates new business opportunities, but also gives us the space to create relationships with other business owners in the area. Even if you are just starting out, I highly recommend attending a local networking group. If nothing else, it forces you to refine your messaging.
  3. Find contractors! We outsource a lot of our tasks. If you haven’t already, take a look at The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich (affiliate link). Even following just a few of his recommendations can safe you time and effort. Some of our contractors are friends and family who just want to make a couple hundred dollars extra each month, while others live abroad. We’ve worked with one writer from the Philippines for the past 3+ years. Part of me thinks our business would shutter to a halt if we lost her!
  4. Work with clients you love. You are always going to have some clients who are absolutely draining. We use conversations and phone calls at the start of our relationships with prospects to try and weed out these individuals. It can just ruin your day/week/month when the client undoubtedly is difficult to work with, forcing you to bend over backwards. As a small business, you just don’t have the time or resources to deal with people like this.

Above all, love your life as a business owner! If set up properly, it can give you the freedom and flexibility you need to live the life of your dreams!

Free Ebook for Business Blogging

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Introduction of 60 x 60

What’s up with 60 Blogs in 60 Days?

This is a challenge I’m making for business owners (or marketing managers) to blog every day for 60 days straight. In our mind, blogging is one of the most important content creation activities you can do online. It not only is a way to show your expertise, it also provides collateral for you to share through other marketing avenues, and aides in boosting your on-site SEO.

Most small business owners can realistically commit to writing one blog every month, or those who really understand the value make an effort to blog once a week or hire a contractor to provide a few additional blogs here and there. Now imagine Google is trying to figure out which website is more relevant – one that has had 12 blogs in the past year, or one that has been actively updated, every day, for the past month?

Additionally, the blogs are a place for you to explore and dive deeper into topics that you haven’t focused on for a while or topics your clients and prospects care about. This additional writing can help you to position yourself as the expert you truly are.

What’s my goal with 60 x 60?

We have a team of individuals who write blogs for our business and for our clients. These blogs are incredible, but our writers aren’t in the daily grind of operating a digital marketing agency.

My goals for committing to 60 x 60 are two fold:

  1. To cultivate a community of business owners who are looking for support and guidance as they too work to change their business through blogging.
  2. To explore topics and create resources that we’ve rewritten over and over again for clients and prospects. These blogs are hopefully going to allow me to share my knowledge from the last 10 years of digital marketing and empower others to better position themselves online.

How can you get involved?

The more the merrier as we jump into the quest to write 60 blogs in 60 days! Please join our Facebook Group to gain insights into what practices and tips have worked for others on this journey or write in the comments about how you’ve taken your blog to the next level. We want to hear your successes (and failures), your goals, and the actual results of this practice!

Looking forward to working by your side as we transform our businesses!

Blogging Your Business

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Tips to Improve Your Facebook Ad Campaign

Facebook Ads is a very powerful tool. It is an excellent way to promote your business, increase brand awareness and can lead to increased conversion rate. Unless you have a big budget, achieving these goals can be difficult if you’re not an expert.

In this blog post, we’ll give you 4 tips on how to create an effective Facebook ad campaign. Use these tips and you’ll be on your way to a great Facebook campaign.

Identify your target audience

To make the most out of your Facebook ad campaign, you first need to identify your target audience and then create an ad that is targeted to them. Take a moment to decide who you want to see you are ads. Are you looking to reach new audience? Do you want to connect with your existing fans? Or do you want to focus on the people in your area?

Facebook allows you to target your audience by gender, age, location, education, relationship status, workplace etc. The more relevant the ad is to the people you’re targeting; the more likely are they to notice and act on your ad. If done correctly, this will lead to a higher success rate and will reduce your spending in the future.

Establish goals

Before launching your ad, you need to consider what you want to get out of it. Ask yourself, why are you creating an ad in the first place? Do you want to increase your followers? Do you want to increase your web traffic? Or do you want people to download your app? This is important as it will help you plan your strategies for the said campaign and help you assess whether or not it is a success later on.

Choose your bidding option

If this is your first time to create a Facebook ad, you may think that your only option is to optimize your ad on a CPM basis. But the truth is that you have the option to choose from a number of bid setups. You can opt for CPC pricing or opt for bidding based on your objective. Don’t let Facebook do your bidding.

Use eye-catching images

Posts with eye-catching photos get more likes, comments and shares than those without. The same principle also applies with Facebook ads. If you want your ads to perform better, then you need to invest in good quality photos. If you are a restaurant owner, make sure your photos look appetizing. If you own a salon, then feature women with gorgeous, shiny locks. Remember, your goal is to create an ad that gets noticed and create more clicks. Good quality photos will help you achieve that goal.

 

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Keys to Selecting Highly Effective SEO Keywords

Driving traffic to their website is one of the goals a lot of online marketers and business owners share. This is especially important for those who are selling online. But it’s not just about getting people to visit your site; it’s more of driving the right people to your site. SEO plays an invaluable role here.

SEO will help your potential customers and clients find your website and increase your sales in the process. How? It all starts with the words they type into the search box.

Here are some keys to selecting highly effective SEO keywords.

Create a list of topics that are relevant to your business

Take a look at the content, articles, and categories in your site. If you have a business blog, there are probably some topics that you often write about. Start there. If you want to get a high ranking on a keyword, it should be based on a topic you’re already writing about. Otherwise, you’re going to fail.

From these topics, make a list of keywords that you think your target audience will be using to search for your business. For this to be effective, the terms you choose should be specific enough that you’ll be able to get a high search rank for it, but broad enough that a lot of people will search of it.

Use SEO tools

There are a lot of tools and data resources that you can use to gather and analyze the necessary data. These tools play a significant role in selecting your target keywords. This is important as the right keywords will build the foundation of your SEO campaign. Unfortunately, this can be a costly and tedious process, and not all businesses have the resources to invest in such tools

Luckily, there are several tools that you can use for free. Google Keyword Planner, Moz, Google Search Console, Keyword Tool and Google Analytics are just some of them. These tools will help boost your organic rankings on search engines and instantly improve your marketing.

Refine your list

If you notice an increase in traffic to your site but there is still no improvement in your sales, then you need to refine your keywords. As mentioned earlier, you need to attract the right people in order to reach your end goals. To do that, you’ll need to take a look at your keywords and determine which one delivers the most conversion. Use those keywords in your content and optimize your landing page as well.

Keys to Selecting Highly Effective SEO Keywords

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Clever Ways to Ensure You Never Run Out of Blogging Ideas

Whether you’re running a small business or a multi-million dollar company, having a business blog is important. It helps attract prospective customers, drive traffic to your website and enhances your inbound marketing effort. In order to reap these benefits, you need to create content on a regular basis.

While there is always something out there for you to blog about, overtime, you may find it difficult to come up with interesting and relevant topics to write about.

Here are 4 clever ways to ensure you never run out of blogging ideas

Recycle old content

You have probably written some great contents that your readers have enjoyed reading. These pieces of contents are packed with lots of information that readers still appreciate them even after posting them a few months ago. But with the surplus of information on the web, people tend to forget about these timeless gems as businesses and bloggers churn out content every day.

Instead of giving up on those long forgotten contents, you might want to breathe new life into your older articles by rewriting them.

Current events

Something is always happening, so you’ll never run out of topics to blog about. It’s understandable if you want to do away with politics, but if you have an opinion on certain issues, why not blog about them? Topics can range from industry news, natural disasters, latest celebrity hook-ups, trending videos, movie reviews etc.

Check the calendar

Most businesses focus on topics that are relevant no matter what time of the year. After all, these topics retain their value even after a few years and can easily be repurposed. While evergreen topics are valuable, you might want to include some seasonal topics as well.

Write blog posts revolving around the holiday season or holidays like St. Patrick’s Day, 4th of July and Thanksgiving. This is especially beneficial if you’re offering certain products or services that are specific to that holiday or season. Plus, there are less content around these topics; hence, helping you reach more new visitors.

Ask your readers

One of the best ways to know what types of post your readers would like to see is by asking them. Not only will it ensure that they’ll read your blog post, it’s also an effective way to connect with your audience.

Clever Ways to Ensure You Never Run Out of Blogging Ideas

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