When you start a company blog, you might think that your No. 1 priority should be to get as much traffic as possible. Surely if you can get thousands of hits a day on your blog, this will increase your bottom line as well, right? Not necessarily. While traffic is essential to ensure your content is being seen, it does not guarantee that your product or service is going to be purchased. You need to convince readers to take the next step to buy, without overtly telling them to do so. Here’s how to get the greatest return on investment from your blog.

Step No. 1: “Sell” Without “Selling”
Although it may seem contradictory, the biggest mistake you can make as a company is creating a blog filled with posts that read more like sales pitches than useful articles. Instead, mention your products or services in blog posts only when relevant to the topic at hand. For example, if you are a blog writer for a paper company and are working on a post about do-it-yourself cards for every occasion, highlight types of paper stock you would recommend, which also happen to be products that you sell.

Step No. 2: Promote Other Content
After producing regular content on your blog for several months, your writers may find themselves covering similar topics more than once. Instead of spelling out the same point each time, direct your readers to the content where that point was already covered at length. If you work for a fitness company, for example, and you’re writing a post on “Five Ways to Workout Without the Gym,” link to a complementary post you published about the importance of a healthy diet. This allows you to establish your company as a thought leader and helps your reader become a brand loyalist, too.

Step No. 3: Include an Option to Subscribe
One of the biggest assets of a blog is getting to know who your customers – and potential customers – are and what they care about most. Offer them an option to opt-in to receive automatic emails to their inbox when a new blog is posted in a category they have expressed an interest in. You could also post free webinars on your blog, and require readers to subscribe to view them by filling out a contact form. The more you can learn about your customers, the better you can help serve their needs – and convince them to buy.

Step No. 4: Provide a Clear Call-to-Action
While including a call-to-action at the conclusion of every post might be perceived by your audience as overly “sales-y,” you should try to include a “next step” when it makes sense to do so. Encourage readers to leave a comment on the blog post they’re reading, share their opinions about the post on your company’s Facebook page, or add tips of their own by posting them on your company’s Google+ page. Blogs shouldn’t just be a one-way conversation, and if your content is interesting enough to make them want to engage, they are more likely to also take the next step and buy. Also, if your company’s blog lives outside of your company’s website, make sure to include a link to one from the other.

Interested in learning about how you can also turn social media followers into customers? Read our blog post, “Take Your Social Media Relationships to the Next Level.” (See what we did there? We’ve got Step No. 2 down pat.)

When many businesses first start a blog, it seems like the possibilities are endless. Finally! You’ve found a place to address all the other content that speaks to your target audience, but didn’t necessarily fit into your business’ website. But, although the topic ideas are plentiful at first, after writing new blog posts a few times a week for several months, you inevitably hit a wall. Or you want to hit your head against the wall. Either way, you’ve run out of ideas and now your head hurts, too. So how do you get past the writer’s block to generate new ideas? Follow these five steps to get the creative juices—and new blog post ideas—flowing freely again.

1. Read other blogs. Start with a competitor’s blog or a blog from a business in a similar industry. Then branch out to a few blogs that are outside of your industry, but that have great content. Sometimes taking a step back from a project you’re close to can be the breath of fresh air you needed to get creative again.
2. Utilize social media channels to see what your target audience is talking about. If your business’ blog is about women’s fitness, what better place to look for new ideas then the Facebook page for Women’s Health magazine or the New York Marathon? What types of questions are they posting on their Facebook page that people are “Liking” or commenting on? Follow other brands with complementary services to your own on Facebook, Twitter or other social media platforms to see what people are buzzing about.
3. Set up a Google Alert. Choose five to ten words you feel are relevant to the types of content you want to cover within your blog. Then set up a Google Alert to receive emails in your inbox of news, blogs or other content that mentioned these keywords. This is not only a great way to come up with new blog post ideas, but also a way to keep your finger on the pulse of what’s going on elsewhere that could be relevant to your target audience.
4. Look back at what worked in the past. If you use any measurement tools to track blog post traffic (we recommend Google Analytics), look back over the last several months to see which posts received the most views on the blog or interaction through comments or social media shares. Then brainstorm three to five new posts you could cover that fall within the same category as the well-received post. For example, if you created a quiz titled, “How Creative Are You?” you could springboard off of that idea and write a post on “What Type of Creative Are You?” Sometimes, being creative isn’t about reinventing the wheel. It’s about finding different ways to use it.
5. Bounce ideas off of others. If your office is set up anything like ours (i.e. it has people who work within it), chances are, there’s someone nearby who would be happy to take a couple minutes out of their day to hear some of your ideas, and maybe even suggest a few of their own. Even if it’s someone in a completely different department or role, sometimes being creative is all about getting a fresh perspective. It’s much easier for someone who hasn’t worked on the same project day-in and day-out to look at it from the outside and say, “Hey, did you think about [insert grand idea here]?” A great idea is a great idea, and it can come from anywhere. You just have to ask.

Guest blogging is a great way to get quality inbound links to your site. And inbound links, we all know, are a cornerstone of SEO. But, like many ways to market your brand online, there are good ways and bad ways to go about it. Here, we’ll look at some of the Dos and Don’ts of guest blogging.

Do – Use your expertise in a way that can grow your audience – and your influence.

This is the main reason behind guest blogging.

There are blogs that do not directly compete with your business but that relate to your business in some way. If you sell shoes, for example, you might want to look into creating quality content for wedding blogs, fashion blogs or, depending on what kind of shoes you sell, blogs aimed at parents, gardeners, environmentalists, etc.

Don’t – Contact blogs that have nothing to do with your business.

The purpose of guest blogging is to find your audience – or potential audiences – where they live. The key word here is synergy. Creating posts for blogs that have no synergistic connection to your business is a waste of time for all involved.

Do – Create quality content.

The content that you create for each blog should be unique, and should depend upon the look and feel of the blog you’re writing for. If you want to produce content for a blog that tends to be photo-heavy, for example, you will need to produce photos that illustrate your blog post.

Don’t – Pepper your guest blog post with unnecessary links.

Guest blogging is all about cultivating relationships, not building link farms. Link once or twice to extremely pertinent information on your own site, and leave it at that.

Do – Find your audience where it lives.

Use a demographic tool like Google’s Double Click Ad Planner to determine what kind of audience a blog attracts.

Don’t – Waste your time.

Don’t waste your time producing blog posts for blogs with little traffic. Evaluate a blog’s traffic with Double Click Ad Planner to make sure a blog is worth your time.

Do – Write your blog posts ahead of time.

When you approach a publisher with a complete package, rather than an idea, you make it much more likely that the blogger will accept your content.

Don’t – Be impersonal.

Think of guest blogging as relationship building. Don’t send out mass email blasts, or the same content to more than one publisher. Your goal is to make friends. So be human and put your best face forward.