For the first three years, VA Partners had a static website and then about a year and half ago we added a blog. Like many companies that add a blog we had a two or three the first month and then it started to drop off. Our blogs then became more sporadic over the next few months. With the addition of Stephanie, to our team and an updated website we now see our blog as a key marketing tool to support our sales. Blogging for startups is very beneficial as it has the power to bring people back to your site quite regularly.

We are now blogging consistently twice a week and have seen some great results including:

• Pageviews per month have tripled since December
• Blogs have been featured by Communitech, Techvibes, and SW Hamilton
• Inbound leads have improved from a few a year to several a month
• Improved our social media reach

I would not say that our blogging is perfect, but we are very happy with the results and are getting better at it as time goes on. Here are some of the strategies we have used to support blogging

Know Your Target Market

Our customers are growing companies, not Financial Post 500 companies. Our blogs focus on items that we think would be interesting and beneficial for those organizations.

Blog on What You Know

The VA Partners blogs focus on sales, marketing, social media, startup events, and the industry in general.These are things we know from the past and work on everyday.

Learn vs. Tell

Instead of writing about your company and its solutions write from an educational perspective.

Be Consistent

We blog twice a week and will post every Tuesday and Thursday. This has helped us stay on track and it creates a routine that we follow.

Share the Blogging Effort

Writing frequent blogs is difficult and by sharing the blogging amongst our team it makes it much easier. Everyone is responsible for a few blogs each month.

Use Social Media to Share

We have seen a large increase in visitors to our site through Twitter and LinkedIn. The VA Partners and individual members of the team have also seen their followers and connections grow over that period of time.

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