One of the first bits of advice any budding blogger is given, is the need to up their game on social media. In a surprising twist of events, however, Pew Research has found that around 42% of Facebook’s users take a break of several weeks or longer away from the platform. The research has also discovered that usage of Facebook has dropped since 2016, and in March of 2018, the interest has dropped even more following the data leak. It doesn’t help that 42% of users have deleted Facebook from their phones either. Although Facebook is a major contributor to blog traffic, this could be an opportunity for bloggers to drill down on other ways to attract visitors to their sites.
Blogs Have To Stay On Top of Trends
If you just bought a course by a successful blogger and it includes the phrase “sales funnel” in it, you’ve been duped into an ancient internet strategy. What worked in 2017 is simply not applicable in 2018 anymore, as the internet evolves at groundbreaking speed. The new catchphrase for internet marketing is the “flywheel”. With the sales funnel, marketing led to sales and the customer was an afterthought. With the flywheel approach, sales, marketing, and service work together in a continuous cycle with the customer at the center. For those hoping to market to millennials, the flywheel is an integral part of sales success.
Drill Down On Your Usefulness
The sales approach puts up bright red flags to both readers and Google. Current Google analytics are geared towards being useful more than anything else and this means teaching, helping, and guiding first before even mentioning a product. For content writers and web owners, this means creating content that provides insight into that particular niche for free. Not all of it needs to be free, but a small portion should be made available in order to remain relevant. There is plenty of competition on the net and Google is getting better at providing the most useful information first.
Upgrade Your Tools
Whether you’re using your blog to promote your writing service or you’re a blogger by trade, there are a number of reasons websites can do with an upgrade. Although looking pretty is a part of it thanks to visual appeal, it’s all those things that work together in the background that make the difference. While some add-ons or plugins worked in the years before, there might be a whole new arsenal of tools required to make a blog more successful. The right tools that are geared toward ranking sites higher can make a world of difference. This is because the SEO rules have changed and old products might not be geared towards the new ranking rules.
Writing for the internet has a whole different set of rules and for those in the industry, the ability to adapt and evolve will determine the success of a website. Whether it’s meant to be a bread-and-butter income generating site or a means of showcasing a writing portfolio, the website can be that stepping stone to passive income or landing that coveted writing gig without relying on those referrals from Facebook.
