Nearly all business owners I have encountered over the years want to be seen as experts. They invest time, effort, energy, resources, and money into creating a fantastic website that will showcase them as the expert. The problem is, they don’t have the time or desire required to build their reputation as an expert beyond the initial work to publish the website.
They launch the website and wait for the leads to come in… and they wait… and wait.
In a past season of my life, I was a runner and while never fast I was able to put in significant distance each week with regular training. For several years, I joined the local 10-mile training group, and each year I’d see aspiring runners purchasing the best shoes, clothes, and other running gear to help them run that 10 mile road race — and every year, some of those same runners forgot about the part of needing to train. They failed to show up and put in the work and struggled to get faster and to run longer distances for the race.
Having the right gear didn’t ensure they could hit their goals.
Your website is similar — you need to work on it regularly to be seen as an expert. Just having a website isn’t going to produce the results you want. It can’t do all the work for you. You need to be actively marketing the site, growing the site, publishing new content, and earning links to build your reputation as an expert.
In Canada, there’s more than 4.2 million businesses [StatsCanada] and with roughly 78% of Canadian businesses having a website [CandiansInternet.com], that’s more than 3.3 million Canadian websites online. Unfortunately, only 18% of those websites are even active [Siteefy], most of them are sitting online never being updated.
When your website is inactive, it means that:
- People won’t be able to find you
- Potential customers won’t know to hire you
- Visitors will wonder if you’re still in business
- You won’t be top of mind and potential customers will hire your competition instead
- You might be promoting services that you no longer offer
How to make your website more active
Regularly posting content to your website is like training to run. The more you post, or the more you train, the more chances you have at winning the race — being seen as an expert, getting found in the search engines, and getting more leads into your business.
Runners don’t start with a marathon. Starting out, I went from walking 5km, to running between 2 light poles every block, running for 1 minute and walking for 2 minutes, up to eventually running a 10-and-1 (10 minutes of running, and one amazing minute of walking to rest up and recharge). Each progression was an improvement to my strength, stamina, and endurance and helped me to become a better runner.
Content marketing is the same — each piece of content is one step toward building your brand, being seen as an expert, and landing that client of your dreams.
Content could include:
- Blog posts
- Case studies
- Optimized landing pages
- Portfolio pieces
- Tutorials
- White papers
- Videos
- Podcasts
What are the benefits of publishing content regularly to your website?
When you regularly publish content to your website, it helps you to become more known to people outside your circle. You’re able to position yourself as a trusted expert and the best partner in more ways than a single Services page can. Let’s be honest here — when was the last time you found a company’s services page in the search results? You more than likely found them through other content marketing efforts on their site such as their blog, case studies, or optimized landing pages.
In addition to resonating with potential clients, it also keeps you top of mind — especially if you then push your content out to social media or your newsletter. As much as we think our ideal clients are hanging out on our websites daily… they’re not, but they are on social media and in their inbox daily.
Finally, content marketing also helps with SEO — as long as the content is well-written and published on a regular basis. The more often you publish, the more chances you have to rank in the search engine result pages (SERPs) over your competition.
Content marketing, like running, takes time and effort, but it will be worth it for your business and help you reach the finish line before your competitors and land the clients you want. As you put in the effort and keep pushing, you’ll start to see results.
Think of people finding your website because they searched for something related to what you offer like a marathon medal awaiting you at the celebratory finish line.
The best part is that each piece of content that you publish will build up over time, so even if you can’t publish as much content as you’d like right now… keep going, and eventually, you’ll win every race you enter.
You’ve got this!
If you need some help getting started with Content Marketing, I have several packages available to help you on your journey. Get in touch today.
