Question: I know what a blog is but worry my clients won’t get it. Would “news” be better? But that doesn’t convey to me what blog does. News/blog? What should we label the button to the page with all those things we publish?
Answer: The purpose of this thing (blog, news, whatever) is to drive traffic to the website. Doubtful that people coming to the website will click on either the blog or the news link. So, it doesn’t really matter what we call it. We could call it Insights, Resources, Blah Blah Blah, or anything you like. The important thing is that it exists and you publish something to it once in a while.
Along those lines, what happens is that you write a tiny little article, story, letter, blog post, news item or whatever you want to call it. It could just be some thoughts or reflections you have developed over time. You need to create a subject line that is relevant to whatever you are writing about but also reflects a typical Google search that your target audience might likely Google if they are searching for help or answers.
For example, perhaps your target audience segment is recently retired people who have moved to Florida and are bored with their new lives and perhaps suffering from depression. What would these people google to get out of their funk? Maybe: How to deal with post-retirement depression? You should stick that search phrase directly into a blog post and then write for about 5-10 minutes about that topic. Then, categorize it under: depression, retirement, florida and then maybe add a couple tags to further describe in another way. Then, click Publish.
Magically, when people start Googling this phrase his website starts to rank on the first page, they read the article, click on the other links of your site: Home, About, Services, Contact.
That’s how it works and why this thing called Blog or News or Insights or Reflections or Thoughts exists. It doesn’t really matter what you call it as long as you use it and publish content.
