• link building to boost your domain authority (DA)
• analyzing your web data
• repurposing your content across social media platforms
• updating old content to remain indexed on Google
• using email marketing as an extension of your blog
• collaborating with your industry peers

Not to worry! Hiring a writer (specifically, an SEO-friendly ghostwriter) is a great way to stay on top of all the puzzle pieces without getting overwhelmed. Businesses easily find ghostwriters on LinkedIn, freelance websites, and social media.

Or if you don’t want to go digging, just stay right here. I’ve got your back!

KQ Writing Studio offers monthly blog content packages, which provide you with SEO-friendly blog posts that save you time and grow your audience.

By booking one of these packages you are hiring me (Kat) as your ghostwriter. Let’s work together to make your digital marketing strategy sustainable.

The post How to Grow Your Business Blog in 2024 appeared first on Kat Quintana.

Lesson 1: Trust your gut.

Here’s how it started.

At that time, my role as brand manager involved writing tons of social media posts and editing copy for an online coaching program. The business owner had already built the brand and was now entrusting me with crafting words that would represent the brand.

No, that brand didn’t 100% match my vibe. In terms of lingo, aesthetics, and tone of voice, we were similar but different. Still, I appreciated the work we were doing. And I realized the more I put myself in the brand’s shoes, the easier it was to create sales-oriented copy that aligned with the business owner’s vision.

Lesson 2: Empathy works.

As I wondered what I could do to enhance our social media presence, our sales page, etc., other questions popped up:

“What if blog posts helped us become more searchable on the web?”

“What if we could balance our sales copy with [non-sales] organic content that helped our audience feel connected, educated, and empowered?”

I quickly wrote these inspirations and more in my notes app. Ironically, two days later I was laid off.

Lesson 3: Losses are gifts.

So, the question became:

“Should / How do I market myself as a blog content writer for small businesses?”

Here’s how it’s going.

Somehow, my eyeballs are still in tact after spending countless hours learning about SEO, marketing, blogging, and branding.

Lesson 4: YouTube is your friend. 

Beyond the studying, these past six months have reminded me of this:

Like it or not, my career path is unconventional. It’s artistic. Frustrating. Lovely. For the past 15 years as a working woman, all signs have pointed to “THIS AIN’T NORMAL!” Today, I celebrate this as a blessing.

So, what do I have for you creators and small business owners? I’ll call it a real-time educational journey of increasing online visibility through SEO-friendly content.

Need organic marketing tips? How about keyword research and batch writing? I hope to help you in my own scrappy and homegrown way.

If just one creator or small business owner can take what I’ve learned and use it to their advantage, that’s quite enough for me!

The post 4 Lessons I Learned After Being Laid Off in 2022 appeared first on Kat Quintana.

Know Your Brand

Mindfully creating your brand allows you to sift through all the possibilities of how your business will show up for your audience. It helps you prioritize only the ideas that truly reflect who you are and where you’re going.

Warning — don’t fall into the vanity trap. Branding is more than choosing a color palette and designing an aesthetic logo. The reality of who you are as a business comes first, and the visuals come after.

How Do You Create a Memorable Brand?

Here are 4 thought-provoking question categories to help you know your brand:

Note: Think of your brand as “we,” “our,” and “us,” even if you’re the only person working in your business.

Who Is Our Target Audience?

• Who is handing over their credit card?
• Who is letting us (the business) into their lives?
• If we could serve only one client/customer for the next five years, who would it be? Why?

What Is Our Highest Mission?

• If we could leave one single mark on our community (whether digital or local), what would it be?
• If ten years from now, the only evidence of our business were a 20-word sticky note written about us, what would we want it to say?
• How are we changing the world around us?

What Do We Value?

• What sort of business behaviors do we defend, and which ones do we avoid?
• What makes the hard work of growing this business all worth it?
• If everyone on social media started following us today, what’s the first message we’d want to post?

What Is Our Voice?

• What kind of slang, abbreviations, or vernacular do we use?
• How do we convey tone of voice through our writing?
• Which unique personality traits come across through the way we say things everyone else in our niche is already saying?

Grab a journal or your favorite note-taking app to work out your answers to these questions.

Pssst — Hey, hi there! Are you struggling to get to know your brand?

I gotchu! I created an awesome bundle of digital downloads to help artists and small business owners build an audience that’s excited to pay them. Included in this Highly Visible Brand Bundle is my Creating a Memorable Brand Online workbook. All of these resources combined will help you expand upon the branding questions above. Get your copy of Creating a Memorable Brand Online.

The post 4 Questions to Help You Know Your Brand Inside and Out appeared first on Kat Quintana.

To keep acquiring new clients or customers at a reasonable cost, start focusing on organic (unpaid) marketing. In my little corner of the internet, I don’t mean just any type of organic marketing. I place a huge emphasis on long-form blog content.

(It’s one of the core reasons why KQ Writing Studio exists.)

Let’s look at the contrast between blog content and paid content.

When your blog content lives on a self-hosted website (like mine), you don’t have to continually pay the web hosting company (i.e. Bluehost) each time you publish a new post. You’re positioning yourself in front of the right audience organically, without extra costs.

On the other hand, when you go the paid ads route, you’re continually sending money to a media channel (whether it’s social media or otherwise) and risking your ad landing in front of the wrong audience.

Organic content can be life-changing, especially for small businesses with little-to-no financial wiggle room.

Why I Discourage Paid Ads

Paid ads often work based on a particular demographic you input into the ad system. Unfortunately, ads don’t necessarily tap into the psychographics of the people you want to become your clients or customers.

While you might get more eyes on your business, brand, or social media profile, they’re not necessarily the right eyes.

For example, you find an Instagram account through one of their sponsored (paid) posts. You click on their profile and see they have 50,000 followers. You click on their three most recent posts, and they have weak engagement (likes and comments).

This is often – not always – a sign that a company’s paid ads aren’t as effective as they had hoped.

(I recognize I’m making a lot of assumptions in this imaginary scenario.)

The caveat here is that not every audience hangs out on social media. So for certain businesses, social media engagement becomes an irrelevant metric.

The bottom line for this type of business is this: I’d rather have three clients buy my services than have 1,000 likes on Instagram and no clients.

This opens up another conversation about vanity metrics. I’ll save that for another time…    

This is where organic marketing comes into play. And this is where we shift away from paid ads and social media marketing, which you don’t really own… Toward marketing pieces that you actually own.

In other words, put more energy toward content that lives on a domain that can’t randomly be deleted or blocked like an Instagram account that is suddenly upsetting the Instagram gods.

I wouldn’t suggest completely eliminating paid ads if it truly fits into your marketing strategy. (I’m also not anti-social media!) But I would also suggest shifting your focus toward organic content in the form of videos and written words.

Rant over!

The post Organic Content for Your 2024 Marketing Strategy appeared first on Kat Quintana.