Writing Blogs for Readers, not Google

If you’re marketing using a blog, or if your blog is a large part of your business, then chances are you’ve heard of keywords.

Keywords do what they say on the tin – they’re the essence of what you’re writing about, and they’re also what Google uses to decide how and where to rank your content.

Now, the old way of thinking was very much “the more keywords the better” … but this doesn’t make for very good reading for humans, and Google has started to realise this. It’s already made changes to its algorithm to prioritise blogs that write for their users, and not for search engines.

Here are 5 tips for keeping your blog content keyword-rich, without ruining the reading experience and landing yourself a hefty penalty:

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When is the Best Time to Blog?

Blogging sometimes feels like you’re just shouting into the void. You write some super awesome content, get some fancy-looking images together, hit publish.

And then nothing happens.

And you wonder, what did I do wrong?

Well, in theory, nothing. But there are two things you need to think about before you hit that tempting, tempting ‘publish’ button and check it off your list.

Is it the best time to blog?

You might be up writing at 2am on a Tuesday morning, but chances are people aren’t reading blogs at 2am. Or if they are, they’re over the other side of the world (and probably not your client base, your audience, or the people you want to reach.)

So you need to think about when to post your blog.

Now, WordPress can do some of this work for you. It has a neat feature in ‘Insights’ that tells you exactly when the best time to blog is. So head on over to ‘Stats’, and then ‘Insights’ at the top and scroll until you see this beauty:

Voila! You have the time and the day you should be posting your blog. So if your current schedule doesn’t match up to this, consider changing it.

The important thing is: check this every week! Because it changes

When is the best time to promote your blog?

Now you’ve sent your blog out at the perfect time of day and maximised all of the chances that people will stumble upon your site, what about the people who already know you exist? Those you have on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, the people you see down the shops?

You need to promote your blog. And that means sharing it on social media.

More than once.

You can set up WordPress to auto-tweet for you, and it can also auto-post to your other channels, but that’s not all.

You want to keep drip-feeding your content.

So once you’ve written something awesome, be prepared to share it once a week for the next 5 or so weeks, providing you’ve got enough tweets/posts in between to cushion that (otherwise it will look like all you’re doing is yelling about your awesome blog post, which most people will then spitefully ignore.)

You can use a tool like audiense to see when your Twitter followers are online and post it at the best time for them too.

Social media is all about good timing. And don’t forget to check out our previous post about social media tools that will make your life easier, because these will help you with the whole timing thing, too.

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Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

What The New Data Protection Laws Mean For Small Businesses, Individuals and Freelancers

This May, new Data Protection laws will be coming into place, specifically, the Data Protection Act will be replaced by the General Data Protection Regulation.

What’s the difference? The GDPR will have new rules around the storage and handling of personal information and there will be stricter punishments in place for those who fail to comply.

Why the new law? The short answer is because hackers are more easily able to access data from small to medium businesses than they are to hack huge, well-protected corporate networks.

Changes in Consent

At the moment it’s sufficient to ask someone to tick or even to untick a box in order to consent to the storage of their data.

Under the new laws, consent means active agreement. This means you cannot pre-tick a ‘subscribe me’ button.

Not only this, but companies need to be able to show a clear audit trail of consent, including screen grabs or saved consent forms.

Individuals also have the right to withdraw consent at any time, and it has to be effective and efficient. When someone withdraws consent all of their personal data must be immediately and permanently erased. It is not enough to remove them from the mailing list.

If you are subject to a data breach, you also have to inform the relevant authorities immediately and you must notify all individuals affected within 72 hours of the initial breach.

What does this mean for people that use e-mail marketing (and am I one of those people?)

If you have a newsletter that people subscribe to, or if you send e-mails to a database of people on whatever basis, this concerns you.

And it doesn’t just concern all the new data you might collect. It concerns all the data you currently have.

Any kind of personal data you keep has to follow these rules and you and you alone are responsible for being able to prove that someone has consented to have their data kept on file by you.

This means you can no longer capture e-mails through a competition and then add them into your mailing list, or you cannot auto-subscribe (for example) people that have bought a ticket to your show to your newsletter.

Does the GDPR apply to my personal blog?

The GDPR applies to all enterprises. So if you run a business from home, or if your blog/website is engaged in “economic activity” i.e. you use it to make money – this applies to you.

It does not apply to people processing personal data in the course of a purely personal or household activity. I.e. if you have your plumber’s email address on file, that’s fine. If you’re sending your plumber an email telling him that you have a new kind of product available for sale, that’s not fine.

So what do I do now?

For every e-mail address in your system, you need to go back and seek explicit permission from the person to continue to send them whatever communication you are sending them.

If you cannot provide evidence of consent, you cannot send them emails and you must delete their data permanently.

This means you will need to launch a re-permission campaign and bring your entire database up to GDPR standards.

What are the consequences of non-compliance?

Fines. These are tiered based on the level of non-compliance and the severity of the violation, and they are capped at 4% of an annual turnover of €20million.

Ouch.

Check out our next post on how to run a GDPR compliant re-consent campaign.

Disclaimer: None of the above constitutes legal advice. If you are in doubt, we recommend you seek professional legal guidance.

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is a group of creatives with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping our way into the arts industry and helping other creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact us any time for penguin chats via email:info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to our website: www.penguinintheroom.com

Top 5 Blogging Tips from “Blogging for Business” by Business Training Made Simple

Hot of the press: here are the top 5 tips I picked up from the brand new “Blogging for Business” course run by Business Training Made Simple

Top 5 Tips:

1. It’s free – you can create a free blog to showcase your skills, writing, expertise and to help and inform your clients and followers. “The best things in life are free, ba ba ba ba”.
2. Spacing – People have less time to read on the net so format your blogs to make them easier to read. Use that spacebar! Create small paragraphs, headings, bullets to make your posts look pretty.
3. Keywords – Make sure you are using those searchable words ie. the words you would pop into google, so people can find your blog! That includes location, topic, company name, your name.
4. Commitment – Stick with it! You won’t get a billion subscribers and comments over night (unfortunately) but stick with it. Do a little blog diary (yes that means new stationary – hurrah!) and make a schedule of how many blogs you aim to publish a month and try to stick to it.
5. Promote it! – There’s no good writing a fabulous blog and keeping it for yourself. Let other people join in with your blogging joy by promoting your posts via twitter, facebook, LinkedIn etc

There we are! I hope you found these tips as useful as I have.

Till next time, keep on blogging.

Penguin in the Room @prartsmarketing is one penguin with an arts marketing dream: penguin stepping my way into the arts industry and helping creatives flourish! Specialising in online marketing, social media, branding, copy writing, media coaching and web design for actors, artists, casting directors, agents, production companies, theatre companies and creative individuals.

Contact me any time for penguin chats via email: info@penguinintheroom.com or Facebook.com/penguinintheroom or waddle over to my website: www.penguinintheroom.com