The short answer: almost anything! Although we all want people to comment on our blog posts a positive comment doesn’t mean those people are going to do business with you. (Yet!) As long as any comments are positive, they do provide social proof that you are standing at the helm of a great company. If your blog is sited on your website, by the way, you have the authority to determine which comments you show the world and which ones you hide. Spammers often crawl the web looking for blogs where they can leave “comments” that are actually garbled instructions to go visit someone else’s website. You want to delete those ones from the back end of the site. The good ones can stay!

You might not, in fact, ever hear from anyone about how great your blogs are, or how wonderful your business is. But what you can do is track how many visitors your blog is getting through Google Analytics or some other analytics program. You’ll find, over time, that some blogs get more visitors than others, and then you can use that information to create more blogs that are like the ones that get more visits. You want to be linking to your blogs, by the way, through your social media platforms. The idea of almost all online marketing is to funnel visitors to your website where you have the opportunity to lead them into a conversation that might result in a sale. Your blogs represent a wonderful opportunity to share information about the kinds of things that make your company special, and you can also reference products or services your company offers in your blog, and link to them, so your visitors have the chance to explore what your company offers.

You can also track results from the calls to action you put in your blog. If you develop a free white paper for site visitors to download and only promote it through your blog, you will know that people are reading your blog and taking action by how many downloads you’re getting.

Blogging does take time and, although the results might not be immediately obvious, it is a key part of your content marketing strategy and probably the first component you should consider implementing, if you haven’t already jumped in.

This can be as much a branding tool as anything and it’s sometimes a “slow converter.” As we know, many people use the web to shop slowly – they visit various sites, research what’s out there, think about what they’re after, compare, consider and, finally, take action by picking up the phone or sending an email. It may take some time for people to discover your blog and begin thinking of it as a destination – but the more valuable information you provide in your blog the more interested people will be in returning to your blog. The old wisdom about marketing still holds: it can take 13-15 impressions before people are ready to make a purchase; consistency counts.

Don’t be discouraged if your following builds slowly – it’s quietly positioning your business as a reliable source of wisdom, and consistency.

Would you like some help with your blogging? Please send me an email at susan@crossmancommunications.com and let’s have a conversation about how we might be able to support your blogging and your business results. With decades of training and experience behind me I am standing by to put my skills to work for your bottom line!