If you haven’t heard, blogging is one of your greatest advertisements. (Actually, we think it’s even better than traditional advertising. Seriously.)

But while there’s huge potential for your blog to be your greatest tool to increase brand awareness, there are also A LOT of blogs out there. So how do you effectively use your blog to help more people get to know your brand?

1. Create offers. An offer is the most effective path for lead generation and your blog is a great place to share these offers and build buzz around them. Offers are premium pieces of content that your reader can get for free in exchange for his or her contact information. Offers are designed to guide your reader through your sales funnel and are the most effective way to turn a lead into a paying customer. Offers shouldn’t be product-centric (meaning focused only on the benefit of your product or service) but instead should share compelling information that meets a need or desire of your target audience. Some examples of types of offers you can create are ebooks, webinars, slideshows, templates, or free consultations.

2. Find guests to post on your blog. When you’re trying to widen your sphere of influence, it’s helpful to find others with an established audience who can share a post on your blog. Bringing in other bloggers with a different audience base is a great way to build awareness because not only will they be sharing valuable information with your readers, but they’ll (hopefully!) be promoting their post and their audience will be introduced to your company. The key to finding guest contributors is to not only find contributors who have a big audience and will bring you traffic, but who have an audience that is a good fit for your company so that it’s the RIGHT traffic coming to you.

3. Focus on keywords. If you want people to organically find your blog, having a keyword strategy in place is crucial. By making use of long tail keywords, you can center your blog content on keywords that your target audience is likely to be organically searching for. Having a plan in place for what keywords you can realistically rank for AND that your target audience will likely be looking for will help improve your rankings in organic search and greatly expand awareness about your product or service.

4. Curate content. Nobody likes people who ONLY talk about themselves. In the same vein, sharing only YOUR content on the blog isn’t nearly as effective as sharing content from other outside sources. Sharing other valuable resources position you as an expert in your industry, and shows your reader that you’re knowledgeable about what’s going on in your industry. It’s also an opportunity to earn the trust of your readers because sharing other content shows them you understand what problems they face and that you have solutions for them.

5. Use blog traffic to drive traffic to other parts of your website. Your blog posts should usually end with some kind of a Call to Action. This Call to Action should be strategically designed to drive readers to other parts of your site. Perhaps it’s asking people to click on an offer, or maybe it’s driving traffic to a video that you have on your website or to other information about your product or service. Regardless of what this Call to Action is, capitalize on the traffic your blog is bringing you to direct readers to other informational pages on your website.  If your blog is the introductory handshake that you give your audience, your website is the next step to inviting them in to get to know you better.

About the Author:                                                                                          

Katie Humphreys is co-founder and Chief Action Officer of Plume & Post. Find more musings from Katie on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.

If you’re tirelessly working on ways to capture the attention of your target audience on Facebook and Twitter, welcome to the club. You, along with millions of other businesses are in the same boat, trying to turn the social media microphone into a way to make more money. While many companies make the mistake of thinking that the number of fans and followers they have is what’s important, true social media ROI (the kind that translates into dollars and cents!) isn’t just about popularity. It’s about ENGAGEMENT. In other words, is anything meaningful happening with those fans and followers?

Audience “engagement” can mean anything from someone re-tweeting your content, replying to your posts, clicking on a link or getting more information from your website. This type of engagement is meaningful because it can help you see if you’re reaching your target audience. This engagement also is a starting point for tracking whether those engaged audience members are following through and contacting your company (which is what you really care about!)

If you want to increase your audience engagement and kick start social media conversations, keep these guidelines in mind:

1. Initiate timely conversations. News travels at breakneck speeds because how instantaneously information spreads online.  Because of that, it’s critical to capitalize on conversation starters when they’re relevant.  Don’t make the mistake of posting on old news and falling behind. If you don’t catch your window, your audience will have moved on to the next thing and won’t be as interested in that conversation.

2. Make sure your content is mobile-friendly. Your audience is likely surfing content and social media on mobile devices, so you want the content you’re sharing to be easy for them to consume. If you want your audience to be able to easily engage in conversation with you, keep things easy-to-read, follow good formatting practices, and make sure everything you’re sharing is mobile-friendly.

3. Go back to the basics. What is your ideal audience’s picture of happiness? What challenges do they face? What types of things are consistently on their mind? Ask questions, share content, and initiate online conversations that speak to these topics that your customers genuinely care about.

4. Don’t forget to make it visual. Don’t forget about sharing images and videos via social media. Including photos and/or video in your posts radically increases engagement. It keeps things more exciting and interactive and is a whole lot more fun to read than a page full of text.

5. See if it’s working. Sounds basic, but don’t forget how important it is to look at whether your efforts are actually paying off! Are you customers engaging with you? Are they striking up conversation online, and from there signing up for your email list, filling out contact forms, or opting into offers you’ve created? If so, then you know what you’re doing is working. If not, it’s back to the drawing board so you can make improvements. There are lots of great tools we love for measuring and tracking engagement but two that we think are particularly helpful are Awe.sm and Hubspot.

About the Author:                                                                                          

Katie Humphreys is co-founder and Chief Action Officer of Plume & Post. Find more musings from Katie on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.