Monica Pitts 0:00
Well, hello again, and welcome back to marketing with purpose. I have been looking forward to this episode for a really long time because I'm an Idea Factory. Okay? This girl, Monica Pitts, I'm your host. I love to come up with ideas. I'm one of those folks. And what I like even more than coming up with ideas is finding ideas with purpose, right? I like to have a strategy behind my ideas to make sure that they're going to work. So in this episode, I'm not just going to turn you into an Idea Factory, giving you all kinds of ideas about what to blog about. I'm also going to give you my methodology behind how I pick things for people to blog about, because I have a very specific methodology that I use that helps me make sure that we are blogging about the right thing for the business, so that they can meet the right people in the right place and reach their goals. Whoop, whoop. It's a what to blog about workshop. Let's get to business. You're on a mission, and you just need more people to know about it. And whether you're brand new to marketing or a seasoned pro, we are all looking for answers to make marketing decisions with purpose. I'm Monica Pitts, a techie, crafty business owner, mom and aerial dancer who solves communication challenges through technology. This podcast is all about digging in and going digital. I'll share my marketing know how and business experience from almost 20 years of misadventures. I'll be your backup dancer so you can stop doubting and get moving towards marketing with purpose. I just want to give a quick thank you. Before we get started to our featured resource sponsor, what to put on your website. This is a page by page website content checklist, and it's one of Mayecreates most popular free resources. It has more than 7000 downloads. It outlines suggestions of what content to put on each page of your website in an easy to understand checklist format. And my nonprofit friends, we've got a special one for you. Just check the nonprofit box and it will deliver a nonprofit specific checklist right to your inbox, so you can download it for free at resources.mayecreate.com that's m, a, y, E, C, R, E, A, T, e.com, or you can just click on the Resources tab of at the top, or you can click on the link and the show notes. Now, if you're wondering what to blog about, then you're probably here for one of two reasons. You're either considering starting a blog, or you have one and you want to make it better. And either way, I've got you covered. I promise by the end of this episode, you're totally going to be an Idea Factory. But first, for my newbies, I want to take a really quick road trip into the reasons why you would start a blog. And for my veterans, don't leave me, my friends. I'm only going to talk about this for like, two minutes. I am setting a timer. Okay? And remember, we just talked about blogging with purpose, making sure that you use a methodology that's going to help you make the right decisions about what to blog about, and part of that is knowing why you're blogging. Okay, so if you're considering why you would blog, just know that it's still completely viable. It's not dead, even in the age of AI generated search results just last year, mayecreate had over 87,000 page views on our blog. So that's 51% of our total page views, and 62% of the users viewing those pages were new to our website. So that means that we met a lot of people through the blog, because we use our blog to meet new people to be found online and to start building new relationships, because that's what blogging does. It starts to build new relationships for you, because it allows you to be found online by attracting new people through search engine optimization and being found in search results. It allows you to build credibility by demonstrating your knowledge and expertise, and it also allows you to build trust by being transparent about your processes and your values and your mission and so that, my friends, is all I'm going to say about this topic. Right this minute. If you're on the fence about blogging or continuing your blogging efforts, then you can hop on over to Two episodes ago, our blog slash podcast combo, blogging Q, a For more answers to questions that I hear about blogging all the time. Okay, so let's dive into this methodology that I have. Okay. Now remember, blogging is about building relationships. If that's where you're coming from, in the heart of your blog, you will be successful at it. If you're just shoving crap out there to try to be found in search results, my friends, in the age of AI, you are going to fail. Okay, you've got to be authentic and offer a unique perspective, or you're not going to connect with people. People, they know that you are just pumping things out through chatgpt, and that is not the way to make friends. Okay? Autoresponders don't make friends. So what better way to build relationships than to help people solve their problems? Right? And when you're planning your blog topics, what you're trying to uncover is what people need to know or believe before they choose to work with you, because your blog is the platform that you can use to fill in that knowledge gap of what they need to know or believe before they choose to work with you. And the answer to that question highly depends on who you're speaking to. It depends on their goals and their current education level about what you do. And when I ask most people that question, they think, I mean, how many years of schooling has your audience had? But that's not what I'm really asking. I'm asking, Does your audience know that you're what they need? Okay, now we have a lesson dedicated to planning out what goes on your website in the very first module of our better than DIY website program, and at the beginning of that lesson, I posed the exact same question to our participants to guide them through planning out the meat and potatoes of their site. So you can ask yourself the same question in relativity to the pages on your website, like, does your audience know what they need? Now as a side note, if you've never heard about our better than di web website program, it's open for enrollment at any time, and we set up the design and templates for your website, and then we train you to put the information inside of the site. Now after planning and building websites for about 20 years, what I find is that audiences usually fall into one of two buckets. Bucket one is they know what they need, and bucket two is they know who they are and maybe the problem that they're trying to solve, but they don't know what they need. Okay, so I want to talk through these buckets so you can decide where your audience lands, because that's going to help you understand how you're going to make choices about what you blog about. So bucket number one is they know what they need. So they know enough about what you do that they already believe that a business like yours can solve their problem. They just need to know that you're the right company to make it happen. So examples of these types of businesses are painters, plumbers, dentist, restaurant, web designer. So when people search for these services, they often search directly for the provider they're they're really close to being ready to buy. Here's how I know. And thank you google keyword planner for this lovely data. I literally looked it up for y'all, okay, and you can look up your own data in Google Keyword Planner, you just have to create a free Google Ads account, and then you can use the keywords planner to do the exact types of searches that I just did for this information. So across the US, there is an average of 8100 monthly searches for toilet repair. Okay. Now there are a million monthly searches for plumber near me. Okay, so what that tells me is that they know a plumber does toilet repair, so they're just searching for the plumber right now, I also used dentist as an example. So across the US, there's an average of 1800 monthly searches for teeth cleaning, versus 2,250,000 searches for dentists near me. Okay, so they know the dentist is going to take care of their teeth, and that very specific term of teeth cleaning, they might use that occasionally, but most people are searching for a dentist because they know that the dentist is going to clean their teeth, and it's not as cut and dry for every single company like for example, not everyone knows to search for HVAC, for air conditioning repair, but they aren't searching for the answer to why their house is hot. They know why it's because their air conditioner is broken, right? So for organizations who fall into this category, your audience knows they need a dentist or a plumber, the question that they are trying to answer is, which company can I trust to solve my problem? Now, the whole purpose of this methodology, and the reason I'm talking about it, is because we want to make sure that blogging is reaching your goals. And I feel like I really need to tell you that if what you're trying to do with blogging is get a quick and steady influx of new customers,
and you fall into this bucket right here that I'm talking about, then you may actually consider not adopting a full on blogging strategy at all. You might instead consider running Google ads, because like the people that are searching for your services online, they're at the end of the buying cycle when they start their search and Google ads is a great solution to pop up right on top of the search results. Results and get in front of them when they're ready to buy. I don't do Google ads. I don't I used to, and I'm not saying I don't ever run them for myself, but I understand that. You know, blogging is only part of the mix. Now. You still need to update your website and fill it with things like photos of your work and testimonials from your customers and answers to frequently asked questions. You might just not need to invest a bunch of time in blogging and instead invest your money in ADS. Now, blogging, in the long run, will help you show up in Google search results more frequently and higher in the listings, but that takes time, and those buy now, search terms will still show up with ads on the top of the search results. So if you want to compete for new business online, you may still have to run ads anyway. And I mean, every marketing strategy has a time and a place, right? So I just have to tell you this, you know. So now, if your goal is to nurture existing and new clients, then a blog is a good marketing strategy to add to your mix. You can showcase new solutions and technologies and build a relationship and reminding your audience that you're the expert that they need to solve their problems. It's always easier to close business with someone you have a relationship with than with somebody that you don't but if you just do business with someone once, and then you don't ever speak to them again, you don't actually have a relationship. You're just an acquaintance, right? And so they might not even remember you when they need your services again. So blogging can help you fill that gap between transactions and also power your marketing. Now, if you're in bucket one and your audience knows what they need, then your blogging priority is to stay top of mind and to educate people, because once again, your audience is closer to the end of the buying cycle, so they're developing preference and intent to a specific company. So you want to focus your blogging efforts on what makes your way the best way, like, why are you better than the other guy, but not in a salesy way? Because nobody likes that, right? It needs to be driven with the buyer in mind, like what's in it for them, and as you're answering that question, you need to stay hyper focused on what you do. It may feel fun to talk about the randomness that pops up in your head, but randomness is very confusing to Google. When you stay focused on what you do, then Google sees your posts and it understands what you do, and it's even more likely to serve your site for searches related to your business, because you made these blog posts about things that are related to your business. I'm going to give you more ideas at the end, but I want to give you a few ideas based on the examples that I shared earlier to get your wheels turning right now. So let's say that you're a dentist. Okay, so let's think about what makes you different. Maybe you do an excellent job of cleaning sensitive teeth. So you could blog about methods to ease teeth sensitivity while cleaning, or why regular cleanings are important or caring for a loved one after a dental procedure, or what dental insurance covers and what it doesn't top toothpaste that you recommend, or does charcoal toothpaste really work? So these are all things that you might hear questions about in your office from your patients, and you have more than one of them might have the question right? And so you could spread that information out online throughout all your marketing and position yourself as someone who cares about their dental health and their teeth and solving their problems. Right now, if you're a plumber, you might log about tips and tricks for faucet repair or reasons why you need to turn off your water when you go on vacation, how to properly prepare your home for winter, signs you need a new water heater. Why updating your plumbing fixtures as that adds value to your home, or things you think you can flush down the toilet, but you really can't, because these are all things that you know, that your audience, they don't really know about. You might have helped them with one Plumbing Challenge or another, but maybe people just don't know when they need a new hot water heater, or they continually flush things down the toilet that don't belong there. So you can blog about these things, push them out to your current audience, but also pull in new people with these exact same concerns. Okay, so moving on to bucket two. So remember, bucket one is your audience knows what they need. They're further down the buying cycle. Now, bucket two is they just know who they are and maybe the problem that they're trying to solve. So if you spend a lot of time answering the question, what do you do? Or you have to explain the problem that you solve to people, and then after explaining what you do to people, they say, Huh, I never thought of that. Or, gosh, how does that even work? Then these are key indicators that your audience has a low education level about your product or service. They are just entering into the buying cycle. In the awareness phase, they realize that they have a need or a problem. They want to solve. They just don't realize that you're the solution yet, because you probably solve all kinds of problems for them, they just don't know that your solution exists. So businesses that fall into this category tend to be businesses that offer highly specialized solutions, like engineering, software, tech companies that provide a very specific, niche service to a targeted audience, progressive or holistic healthcare providers, like specialized massage therapists, dieticians, functional medicine practitioners, like people who provide non traditional treatments, coaches and therapists. And actually, a lot of nonprofit organizations fall into this category as well. So if your audience now, if you fall into this bucket, and your audience has a low education level about what you do and the problems that you solve, then your blogging priority is to understand their needs and offer solutions. So your blog content and your website content needs to show your website visitors that you understand the problem that they are trying to solve and that you are a viable solution that they should consider. Okay, so let's say that you are a specialized massage therapist and you help reduce and alleviate migraine symptoms. Okay, now, after digging around in Google Keyword Planner, I am going to say that you fall into this bucket, and your audience just knows that they have a migraine or severe headaches. They don't know that you could be a potential solution to their symptoms. They only know about conventional medicine and practices, but they might be turning away from conventional medicine and practices because the search terms alternative medicine for headaches or alternative remedy for headaches, yields an average monthly searches of 14,800 in the US. Okay, so that's that's a lot of people searching for that solution now, people who are looking for natural cures for migraines or natural migraine treatment. There's less of them, okay, 8100 massage therapy for migraines or massage for migraine headaches. So that's really specific. That's what you do. Only 3600 average monthly searches in the US, and then people looking for migraine massage near me, only 1900 searches there. So we went at the very, very top of the funnel, people just looking for alternative, like alternatives for medicines, for headaches, 14,800 down to migraine massage near me, 1900 that is a far cry from what we saw with the plumbers, right friends. So more people are looking for a solution to their migraine than no massage is a potential solution to treat their migraine symptoms for this type of service. So in this instance, you would want to blog about things like proven migraine remedies that don't include narcotics or migraine myths. What are some things that people think about migraines that aren't actually true, maybe common causes of migraines, or why simply treating migraine symptoms isn't the answer to being migraine free, right? If that's even a thing. So you see how we can take the fact that these folks are just searching for solutions and help them evaluate and find potential solutions through your blog. You can do that, and a blog is an incredible way to meet people at the beginning of the buying cycle, because that's where we go. We go online to learn about these things. Now there's some companies and organizations that fall in the middle. Think about think about assisted living or long term care facilities, right when a loved one is getting ready to go into one of those facilities, if you are the person who's facilitating this change for them, you've never done it before. Probably it's pretty new to you. I
know we're working through all the details with my grandma right now, preparing for the future. We're not ready for her to make the move yet, and she's not ready yet, but we need to be ready when it happens. And so my mom is searching all the time to try to find the right solution. How do you get admitted? How do you pay for it like? What does the process look like? What happens as you continue aging and you need more care? People don't know the answers to those questions, right? So although, when it comes time to look for the right long term care facility for grandma, we're going to be looking for long term care facilities in Minot North Dakota, but right now we're just trying to learn about them. So that long term care facility in North Dakota could start the relationship with us by offering these solutions and answers to our questions. And we could search, we could find them online, and then we could get all this information from them and think, wow, they're incredible. I am. Abs. Absolutely using this facility. I trust them, right? So even though there may be millions of searches for specifically what you do, that doesn't necessarily mean that all of your audience, or the majority of your audience even doesn't fit into this they just know who they are, and they're not very educated about what you do. Okay, so just keep that in mind as I turn into an Idea Factory. Oh, because it's time, my friend. So take these ideas and put your put your spin on them, right the right spin for you, the right spin for your audience. The first thing that I think everyone can do is project highlights case studies and success stories. So you can showcase successful projects with like before and after photos. You can include client testimonials and project challenges. You can share stories of individuals or community communities that have benefited from your work. You could highlight the positive change that was brought by your work, or for my nonprofits, you could highlight the positive change that your donor contributions made possible, right? So think about that. That's a really great way to continually reach out to your current audience and to build credibility and build trust, because you're showing people that you're doing great stuff and that you had a reason behind it, and that you're really smart, make sure that you're focusing on the people that you helped as much as you're focusing on your solutions. Okay, all right, so another thing that I think works for everyone are how to guides and tips. So think about the common problems that people have and just write about how to solve them. And just because, if you're a plumber, you explain the ins and outs of replacing a toilet. That does not mean that people aren't going to call you. Because there's a lot of people who think they can fix their toilet, and then they read your suggestions and they're like, Oh heck no, I'm not doing that. I'm calling a plumber. Okay?
So just because you give advice doesn't mean that you're not going to get business because of it, you can always provide maintenance tips, safety advice, just really position yourself as the expert. And if there's something that you don't like to do where that's really simple and that they could do on their own, you could help them with that too. Okay, always, you can share industry trends and news. So discuss the latest, like materials, tools or techniques. Talk about your investments in your company or organization, new technology, processes, equipment or training that you're doing to make your service even better, and why that's going to show people your uniquely remarkable competitive advantage that sets you apart from other people they want to work with someone who's always making things better, right? Because you're making things better for them, right? And you can share your perspective on industry developments, especially if it's something that might affect them and they might not know about the very first podcast episode that we did was all about cookies, because cookie pop pups were becoming a thing, and it was there you go, all about this cookie business, right? Okay, so that kind of blurs its way into client education. So explain complex processes in simple terms, like permits, zoning laws, insurance, any type of legal, anything, taxes, how websites work, how domains work, all of those things can be broken down in simple terms, and you can also use them in your process as you're servicing your clients to help them through. You can offer advice on how clients can prepare for your product or service, like, what do they need to do first? What are some tips to make it easier for them? You can bust myths and address common misconceptions about your product or service, especially if you keep hearing it over and over and over again. You want to make people educated, and you want them to be even more educated when they come to you to buy. And you can do that by busting myths. You can also address common objections that people tell you about why they're not going to buy your service or volunteer for your company or make a donation. Right? You could address them right away on your blog, and then you can use that as a script whenever you're having conversations with them. So this is kind of, you know, are you feeling a repetitive thing, like, oh, a consistency, a pattern, a pattern. Are you feeling a pattern? I'm going to talk about recycling things in a second. You can share resources or tips related to the problems that you solve. Also behind the scenes. Content is always really fun to put into your blog. So you can introduce your team and their expertise. Give a glimpse into the daily operations of your business. Remember, they don't do it every day. They don't know what it's like. So you can write a blog post about it and explain to people what it looks like and give them a minute behind the scenes. You could do volunteer spotlights and feature interviews of why they volunteer and how it helps impact your mission. You could. Explain how your company gives back to your community. Talk about your company, kiddos or fur babies, new company swag, holiday parties, any types of staff enrichment. Now, I love behind the scenes content. I think it's really cool.
Along the same lines with the behind the scenes content, your you can do event recaps and announcements, like when we go to golf tournaments and stuff, we take pictures of the people at the golf tournament, we put them up on our website in a post, we say, it was really nice meeting you, and then we email out to the people that we met and send them a link to go view the pictures, right? So it's a great way to get people to go back to our website and learn about what we do, and keep developing that relationship that behind the scenes, content, those event recaps or announcements, those are things that are good to foster those relationships, but they're not going to get you found on Google. Okay? They're not so they're not the cornerstone of your plan. Now, as you come up with all these ideas, keep a document with them and make sure that you can find it again, because you're going to turn into an Idea Factory at one point. It's just like going to be poof. And all these ideas are going to come especially as you start really thinking about what your audience needs and who they are, and you need to capture all that awesomeness. And just because you write it down doesn't mean that you have to write about it right now or ever, really, for that matter, because some of your ideas are going to be better than others, but when the time comes to write, you'll have plenty of ideas to get you started. Make sure that you're recycling your blog content, as I was mentioning earlier, that repetition or pattern that you were hearing, you can let your blog content literally fuel your entire marketing. Don't just post it on your site. Okay, put it everywhere, from social media and your email newsletters, podcast guest spots. Like, I have some really good blog posts and and podcast episodes of my own, and then I reach out to other podcasts and I like, Hey, can I talk about this on your podcast? And I just keep that information like, kicking the informational can down the line, because people need to know what you're talking about. They really need it like you're smart, you're gonna help them solve their problems. You've spent a lot of time on developing these processes and concepts and opinions and and they deserve to be read. People need you so as you're going through and you're planning out your blog, just know that it's a marathon. It's not a sprint, right? Don't give up. Your solutions and your content are really important, and they do help people solve their problems and improve their lives, but it just takes time to gain momentum. So don't give up. I feel like with a regular cadence and open ears and an open mind, your blog is going to be driving traffic to your site and building relationships in no time, especially if you're picking those blog topics with purpose, using that methodology, considering, does my audience know what they need, or do they just know who they are? And using the answer to that question, guide yourself through that process of really putting yourself in the shoes of your audience, so that way you can help them solve their problems. And of course, if you need one on one planning help for your topics, I'm here right? You can just give me a shout.
[email protected] and you can always go back to the previous episode our blogging Q and A episode for even more answers about how often you blog, how to measure the success of your blog, if you should monetize it, how to attract readers, yeah. So so many ideas in that episode. Hop on back over there and give it a listen. So thank you so much for hanging out with me today and talking all about blogs. I would love to hang out with you again.
In about two weeks, I am going to introduce you to our guest, Donna Dube. She's really cool because she is a time and process master, which I that's something that I love. I love finding people who can do this, and I like to recruit them into my life and into my business. And she helps shift leaders from being overwhelmed by the daily grind to confidently steering their companies towards growth and sustainability. She's basically I asked her so many questions. I already recorded it, okay, but she basically puts on an audio workshop about CEO habits and what habits we can develop that will allow us to create rinse and repeat marketing systems that will allow us to avoid the feast and famine months and create time to work on our businesses. It was so cool. I took so many notes. I really did. Can you tell I'm excited? It was a great interview. So hop back over in two weeks. Actually. How about you subscribe? Yeah, and then I'll, just like, show up in your feed, and then you'll know, and you can hear all about it. I just want to give one more quick thank you to our may create resource sponsor, what to put on your website. Now in this checklist, you'll find the must haves for every page. Of your site, tips on how to make the most of your content, and practical advice to help guide you through creating your website. You can download your copy for free resources.mayecreate.com that's m, a, y, E, C, R, E, A, T, e.com, or you can click on the link in the show notes. So thank you so much for joining me today. Make sure to subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss out on our next episode. And don't be afraid to use that link in the show notes to go over and enjoy the fully formatted blog post with all the pictures broken down, covering every single thing that we talked about today, because your next step is to put this information to action and until next time go forth and market with purpose.
