Blogging used to be a fun pastime, but now it’s become a serious part of effectively marketing your business. When you gear up for your new website launch, you may want to create a game plan for your blog at the same time.
Showit makes this really easy with their WordPress blog integration, but you can include a blog on virtually any website platform. Instead of trying to point visitors to long website pages with too much text, you can break up this content into separate blog posts to educate your audience about what you help with.
People love to browse blogs on their own time to learn about new subjects, gain insights from experts, or brush up on their skills. Blog posts usually feature outside resources and insider tips, providing an ideal environment for potential clients to build trust with your brand.
The good news is that it’s relatively easy to get started with blogging! All you need is a great website platform, a nice user-friendly design, and a few blog posts ideas.
If you don’t enjoy writing, that’s okay! You can also include audio and video content on your blog if that’s more your style. People like to learn in multiple ways so pick a format that works best for you and your audience.
If you need more convincing, here are the major reasons why you should include a blog on your website when marketing your wedding business online.
You can increase your website traffic through your blog
One of the greatest benefits of creating consistent content for your blog is increasing your overall website traffic. Since most of your website pages are static (meaning they don’t change very often), there’s nothing new about them. This makes it harder to create social media and marketing content about your pages if they stay the same.
With blog posts, you can increase your website traffic because there’s always new content on your blog. It’s a lot easier to market your website when you have fresh content that educates, inspires, or entertains your audience.
Once a visitor lands on your blog, they have the opportunity to browse through the rest of your website. This is the best way to use your blog so you can direct your audience to where you want them to go.
If you want to highlight your services, think about creating a blog post about your unique process with a call-to-action to contact you about their project. If you’d rather sell an eBook or mini-course, think about creating a blog post that outlines step one of the process and then include a link to the sales page.
You can get creative with this! No matter what your website goals are, you can find a way to bring blogging into the mix. When your blog is thoughtfully crafted to meet those goals, you’ll be able to increase your overall traffic and leads, which we’ll talk about next.
You’ll have the opportunity to increase your bride leads
When you look to work with someone, you probably visit their blog first. Why? Because you want to make sure they know what they’re talking about before you hire them. Most of us would rather hire someone who has shown how much they know about a topic through blog posts than someone who says they’re good but has nothing to back it up on their website.
Blogs are a great place to expand on your expertise and showcase just how much you know. If you can create blog posts that help your audience, they’ll be more inclined to trust you to help them with their bigger problems, which often lead to paid client projects.
Think of your blog as a platform to build your authority and credibility while you build a more long-term relationship with your blog readers. After reading high-value blog posts from you, you’ll be their first choice when they get married or when they’re looking to refer someone.
It gives you a chance to educate your brides before their wedding day
Let me guess: your brides are awesome, but they also send you a lot of emails before their wedding day. Most brides are getting married for the first time so they aren’t familiar with the process of what you do.
Instead of emailing back and forth, take their frequently asked questions and expand on them in a blog post. Not only does this create intuitive topics for your blog posts, but it also helps you streamline your emails. It will feel like magic!
It’ll help you look like you’ve already thought of everything they’re thinking about and solidify you as the expert. These blog posts will also help brides who aren’t working with you yet. They’ll start to think, “Wow, if this is how much value I get for free, just think how much they’ll help me in the wedding planning process!”
This is why many marketing experts say to give a lot of value upfront so you show how much you care about clients before they become clients. Your blog is a great place to do this!
You can create an ongoing marketing plan from a few blog posts
You may have heard of the term “evergreen content” before, but it basically refers to any article that is created to stay relevant over a long period of time. Some bloggers focus on trend-based articles, but I recommend sticking with evergreen content that will still be relevant for years to come.
You can create the content one time and link to it again and again on social media, through your email blasts, and any other online marketing platforms.
Since it’s still relevant, you can repurpose the content and reuse it multiple times. This is great for those of us who are trying to market and run our businesses at the same time.
Are you ready to start blogging for your wedding business?
If you’re wondering where to start, here are a few task-oriented challenges that can kickstart your blog content creation process. Most of these can be completed within an hour or two so there’s nothing holding you back from getting started!
- Create a pin-worthy vertical graphic (like this!) and add it to a few of your Pinterest boards. To take it a step further, join some group Pinterest boards so you can add your graphics there.
- Brainstorm a list of 30+ blog post ideas and try to do it one sitting. Chances are that when you think of one, several others will come. This usually only takes a few minutes, but you can leave with almost 6 months of content – wow!
- Make a list of blog categories that clearly outline the themes you talk about on your blog. This will also help you when you think of blog post ideas!
- Create a blog sidebar with a photo of you, a small summary of who you are with a welcome message, social media icons, and links to your blog categories. You can look at my blog for an example.
- Format one blog post inside Showit or your website platform of choice. Include different sized headers, graphics, and other visual elements to help your blog posts stand out.
Which challenge are you taking on? Let me know in the comment section below!
