ERP Consultants: 4 Ways a Blog Strategy Helps You Grow: Part III

Why Do Successful ERP Consultants Bother with a Blogging Strategy?

Writing effective blogs start with a goal in mind - a blog strategy. Experienced ERP consultants are experts in their field and have a lot of knowledge that would be of interest to readers, customers and other ERP consultants. It is possible that some of these readers of your blog will turn in to potential customers if your blog demonstrates your expertise. Your blogs serve as an opportunity to educate and promote your expertise without being too promotional. Blogs are meant to be informative and relevant to your target audience.  There's more to read in our previous blog "Attention ERP Consultant: 3 Reasons Why You Must Blog: Part I"

The best way to get started with blogging is to first develop a blogging strategy. This helps prioritize what you want to accomplish with blogs. Do you want your blogs to help your ranking for a keyword or reach an audience of potential new and existing customers? You can do both with a blogging strategy – here’s how.

Here are 4 Essential Points to a ERP Consultants Blog Strategy 

1. Keyword emphasis:  Effective blogs are often used to rank high in search engines for your keyword focus. Doing your reach beforehand is essential to find out what keywords have high monthly searches and whether or not you have a chance to rank for them based on the sites that already have ranking.  To help with this, your keyword is easier to rank for if it is a long-tail keyword. So if you want to get new ERP software business consider going after a long-tail keyword.  For instance, the keyword “ERP software” has high monthly searches but would be very difficult to get on the first page of Google.  You would have a better chance for ranking if you try to go for a long-tailed keyword like “ERP software implementations.”  This helps narrow down your selective target market.  Your keyword should be long enough to be specific to how you want to be found in search engines.
2. Blogs help reach out to your target market: What questions are your customers asking your ERP consultants?  There are questions your ERP consultants awnser all week long that could easily be turned into a blog with a few instructive screen shots.  Consider your future blogs as a way to trickle information to the public about your business is all about.  Ask what are your strengths, what are your industries that you have experience, where does the ERP software that you sell and support fit best? This is the beginning of your blogging strategy.  Whether it’s to write content on your website for SEO purposes, to present yourself and your business as the expert.
3. Part I, Part II, Part III: What is the power of writing a blog series on a similar subject from a SEO standpoint?  Let’s say you find a good subject for a blog that has your target audience identified. If you have a lot of experience on the subject, chances are that your blog could be broken into a series of separate blogs. Each blog is considered to have enough compelling. Typically, each blog should have a minimum of 500 words.  Now break up your blog in several parts and expand on each part with follow up blogs. There are several benefits to this approach. Here's an example of our own.  You can read more about best blogging practices in our previous blog "ERP Consultants: 4 Ways Blogs and Social Media Helps Part II"
4. The Power of Linking:  Once the first blog is written, you can link subsequent blogs to your first blog.  Why bother linking your blogs together? The first blog acts just like a webpage on your site as a keyword anchor letting search engines know that your blog or webpage has information about this keyword and should be given attention in the rankings. When you link other blogs to the original blogs it indicates to SEO that you have more information about this topic.  To do this make sure you reference your first blog to the next blog with a link.

At ERPVAR, we have a goal to blog every day. Most of our blogs come from other ERP consultants who are experts like you. Some ERP consultants are fortunate enough to have a marketing person to do most of the heaving blog lifting. However, many still do not and find the time to blog. We are happy to discuss with you WHY blogging might make sense for you in further detail. Please feel free to contact us online or give us a call:  888-253-6705.

About ERPVAR.com
Established in 2012 and headquartered in Orange County, CA, ERPVAR represents the collective expertise of Sage 50 (formerly Peachtree), Sage 100 ERP (formerly MAS90 and MAS 200), Sage 500 ERP (formerly MAS 500), Sage ERP X3, Epicor, Microsoft Dynamics GP, Microsoft Dynamics SL, Microsoft Dynamics AX, Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, NetSuite, Intacct, Infor, Acumatica and QuickBooks Enterprise third party developers - ISV's combined with the expertise of local implementation ERP consultants. These local ERP consultants provide end users with a thorough needs analysis to determine which ERP software functionality is required to address their unique needs. If a business process assessment is required, the local channel partner is enlisted to provide a comprehensive examination with end user company departments to insure the correct ERP software is selected implemented and the staff is properly trained. For more information, please visit http://www.erpvar.com.

by Kathy Graham at ERPVAR