Thought Leadership 🤝 Blogging

Hello Reader,

I realized I screwed up when a client said something like this to me,

"I want to write about this, but it doesn't fit with my SEO."

How did I mess up?

I neglected to be abundantly clear that search-based funnels are just ONE thing that you can do with your blog on your business website.

Just one among many other ways you can leverage that small but mighty component of every properly set up website.

Some other use cases for your blog may be your case studies, a portfolio, and—my favorite—a home for your thought leadership.

Blog technology is special because it organizes content into a tidy collection, chronologically and typically uses links, tags, authors, and categories to keep everything nice and organized. It's got some coding in it that says to the bots that crawl the internet, "Hey this part of the site is dynamic content," which is helpful as well. Generally speaking, no other part of your website is so simple to organize in such a way, which is one of the reasons I've been such an advocate for this type of business communication since 2007.

So let's get this crystal clear: SEO strategy is one way blogs can help you. This is absolutely true and it's what I teach.

However, I never ever want you not putting a great idea, your though leadership, out in the world because it doesn't fit in with a search funnel.

Never. Ever.

In fact, search and thought leadership can live together in harmony—here's how.

1. Your search funnel content attracts people onto your website.
2. You link to your thought leadership content, which is less likely to be found organically.
3. Your thought leadership content engages the reader and perhaps even challenges them.
4. They get inspired to stay in your marketing ecosystem.

Think of that search stuff amplifying the stuff that's less findable with that simple act of linking. Cool, right?

This doesn't mean you should go wild and post behind the scenes stories and treat your website like a diary or journal (a personal blog is a better place for that). But, if it's something that makes sense in your overarching STRATEGY (yes I'm yelling that word), then include it.

Don't let the lack of a search use case hold you back from sharing something valuable.

Talk soon,

Sarah

P.S. Join the waitlist for this fall's popup workshop/mini-program, "Hit Refresh." It's going to be good—promise!

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