Did you know that companies that have a business blog, hold 80% more new visitors than companies that do not blog? In addition, companies with more than 200 blog posts receive about 4.5 times more leads than companies that have fewer than 20 blog posts. In other words, the benefit from Blogging for your company is crucial and an essential part of your business. But unfortunately, blogging is not easy for everyone.
Blogging is about content, and the content includes so many factors. To create quality content, you must be able to play on the word for word. Unfortunately, the ability to process text is not owned by everyone. Practicing articles might help you, they are a key condition for a business blog to achieve success.
Follow these steps and publish your own business blog in no time!
Step 1: Determine the audience for your business blog
First of all; you must, of course, know who the audience is that you address your business blog. And the following applies here: the more detailed, the better. Because the more you know about your audience, the more you can make your content personally relevant to them.
Do you find it difficult to accurately describe your entire target group now? No problem. Then start more general with your subjects. And gradually you get to know your target group by monitoring what kind of people are reading your blog and what content they are viewing.
This way you can adjust your content further and further. You can also find out what your target audience wants by actively searching for their questions: ask your customers directly or visit forums and social media sites where your (potential) customers ask questions.
Step 2: Move yourself into the perception of your target group
Customers first search extensively online for general information about a particular subject. Only 3% are looking for a specific product. The point is therefore that you know how to link the information your target group searches to your product or service. For example, if you sell purple ballpoints, it is tempting to write purple ballpoint pens straight away. It is better to focus your content on information that people were already looking for, and that is probably ballpoints in general.
Step 3. Plan ahead for a longer time
Do not think every week: “What will I be blogging this week?”, But plan ahead. You can even do this half a year ahead. So make a list with all your ideas for topics you are about to blog about. Put these topics in a list, for example in Excel or the Google Drive spreadsheet. Here’s how you proceed as follows: In the first column, you place the title or description of the idea. In the second column, you make notes of the things you thought about when you invented the concept. In the third column, you place the delivery date, and in the last column the publication date.
Step 4. Follow this formula for business blogs
You have found the right topics to blog about. You know that your target group (probably) finds this content interesting. You have placed all your subjects in an editorial calendar. It’s time to really start writing!
But how do you proceed with your business blog?
Here is a great formula for business blogs, and it’s all right:
- Determine the purpose of your blog post. Is there a call to action? Or is it purely to get a click with your readers by giving them something useful?
- Formulate the problem of your customers or what they want to know (and why they are going to read this blog post).
- Process questions in your blog post. Questions you address your customer and where you can offer the solution. By asking you can make your solutions and content even more relevant for the customer. This way you actively involve them, you invite them to respond to them, and you immediately know where their problems and questions are. Two birds with one stone!
- Place your chosen search terms strategically in the text. This way your target group will find you faster in Google. To find out what the best search terms are to use in your blog posts, you can research a keyword. There is a wide range of (free) tools for this.
Managing Your New Business Blog
Visitors to your website are the main reason you should start blogging for your company. New relevant content will provide Google bots with a good reason to visit your site and include it in their searches. After creating a website, the following five tips will help you manage it.
1. Post Consistently
There are no standard rules when it comes to blog posting. You can choose to post once per day, twice per week, or even once per month. However, you have to ensure that the posting is consistent so that your target audience can know when to expect new content from you.
2. Research Keyword Phrases Before Blogging
You will have to research every keyword or key phrase before using it in your blog. This will allow you to write for key phrases that people would search for. You may spend many hours writing on topics or keyword phrases that may not bring more traffic to your company website if you fail to do that. So, you have to optimize every blog post for phrases that your target audience is searching for.
After finding the right keywords and key phrases for your blog, you have to ensure that they are in the markets you are targeting. For example, if your company sells shoes locally, you will have to research until you find a keyword that your company can compete in. Use the offered free keyword planners to select the best keywords.
3. Publish Long-Form Blogs for Your Company
Some individuals consider blog posts over 700 words to be long-form content while others believe that any content below 1,800 words is short-form content. For the sake of our arguments, let us assume that long-form blog posts are those above 1,200 words.
Despite what most content marketers believe, most readers crave meatier content and publishers are choosing it because the search engines reward it. Long-form blog content allows you to incorporate many keyword phrases into your content. That increases the keyword density of your content and increases organic traffic from the search engines.
4. Include Logos, Pictures, and Infographics in Your Blogs
Images and infographics have a great effect on the reader. Unfortunately, most people believe that the words are the most important when creating blogs for their business.
A Social Media Examiner report published showed that when images and infographics are paired with relevant information, they help people retain 65 percent of the information for at least three days. That is compared to 10 percent of the information retained when the blog content does not contain any infographics or images.
Images will make your blog posts visually appealing so that the readers can keep scrolling. A good image or infographic will convey a stronger message to the readers and help simplify the meaning of the content for easier understanding. And when it comes to blog posts shared on social media, articles that contain images are more likely to get reshared.
That is more important if you want to drive more traffic to your company website. Also, your business logo should be placed on top of your posts.
5. Consider the User Experience
The user experience should be always in your mind when creating a new blog post. User experience is the perceptions and responses that result from the use or the anticipated use of a service, system, or product by a person. User-experience blog design employs a combination of science and art while using various rules that experts developed after studying the behaviors of users.
When designing your blog, you have to ensure that it is simple, intuitive, clean, and flexible. Simplicity makes it hard for customers to misinterpret the information while intuitiveness eliminates the need for training when it comes to accessing the content. Ensure that the blog has minimal visual clutter and it adapts to the devices of the users. Furthermore, you have to ensure that it responds to the input of every user.
You have to know that the style of blog content is different from that of a book. Your target audience will be accessing the content on their iPods, smartphones, and desktops.
