Do you have a blog for your business?
In today’s content driven era, business blogging has become an effective Internet marketing strategy.
Sadly, many companies and individual business owners are still struggling to yield good results from their blogging efforts.
Some have initiated blogging but haven’t gone far with it, due to poor planning. Those who have taken their time to learn everything they can about blogging are overwhelmed with the amount of information and don’t know where or how to begin.
The good news is that, blogging doesn’t have to be difficult. Particularly, if you have a good plan in place.
Turn your business blog into a success by following the blogging practices below.
1. Develop an Editorial Calendar
The common challenge of blogging is the regular creation of content. Ideally, you need to update your blog regularly with articles on various topics. This can be discouraging sometimes. With an editorial calendar, blogging can be a lot easier.
An editorial calendar is a form of plan in which you outline your blogging activities. The tasks may be content creation, publishing, and promotion. These can be divided into daily, weekly and monthly tasks.
The beautiful thing about an editorial calendar is that once you develop it, you wouldn’t have to worry about what to blog about anymore. Also, as time goes on, you’ll often get new ideas that you can add to your calendar and therefore, increase your blog content.
To create a simple editorial calendar, list the topics you intend to cover on your blog, divide them into categories. For example, take a look at the sidebar of this blog to understand how categorization is done. Alternatively, your categories could be based on your content format such as videos, articles, podcasts, infographics, and any content format that you deem relevant to your blog.
2. Showcase Your Expertise through Relevant Content
One of the factors that influence Internet users when they first land on a web page is the relevancy of the content. A relevant content is focused, and solves a specific problem. Strive to solve a certain problem in every piece of content that you create, and make it engaging.
Engaging in this context means that you should be conversational in your writing. Avoid technical jargon. Use simple and easy-to-understand language. If your blog is about mothers, for example, your content should revolve around everything a mother will use to become efficient, and have a healthy kid(s).
If you’re a dentist, and you have a blog on your website, the blog’s content should revolve around dentistry, and relevant to your potential customers. In other words, create content that will help your potential clients solve their teeth problems.
Write articles about ways your readers can make their teeth healthy and strong. How they can prevent certain dental diseases, and tips for treating some mouth issues. Give advice for preventing some dental infections. Review dental products. Study and analyze reports, research, findings, and statistics about the dental industry and share your outlook about the future. As a business blogger, there’s no limit to what you can blog about.
3. Captivate Your Readers
The Internet is plagued with content on various topics. One of the factors that will make your content stand out from the crowd is your headlines. Also, the first thing that your target audience will see when they land on your blog is the headlines. Your headlines can make or break your blog readership.
To attract your ideal clients, write attractive titles that resonate with the needs of your target audience.
To craft persuasive titles, make it relevant and benefit driven. In other words, mention the problem your target audience is trying to solve, and the benefit that they will get if they go a step further to consume your content.
Let’s put the above concept into practice. For example,
(I) Breastfeeding Tips: Discover How to Feed Your Baby to Become a Healthy Child
(II) Breastfeed Your Baby for a Healthy Future
Now, looking at the two headlines above, the first one is targeted and relevant – it targets new mothers and promises tips for a healthy child. That’s how to create attractive and persuasive headlines that get clicked.
4. Encourage Readers to Take Action
Now that you’ve learn how to craft attractive headlines, and how to create relevant and engaging content. What is it that you want your potential clients to do after consuming your content? In other words, what action would you like them to take? This is where calls to action become imperative.
A call to action is what you ask your prospective customers to do after reading your articles. This may be to leave comments, click a link to a certain page, share your content on their preferred social media sites, email you for inquiries, subscribe to your newsletters, or call your phone for more information about your products or services, or any action that you’d like them to take. For every piece of content that you create, incorporate a call to action at the end.
5. Discover What Your Readers Want and Give it to Them
When your target audience is seeking information for their needs, they use certain search terms. Your content will rank better on search results if you strategically embed some of the search terms in your content. This makes keyword research crucial in business blogging.
Content that do not target specific keywords may not show up on search results. One of Google’s goals is to provide it’s users with search results that are relevant to their inquiries. Increase your business’s visibility by adding targeted keywords to every piece of content that you create. If you don’t know how to do it, hire a blogger to handle this for you.
Keyword research requires proper analysis in order to understand the type of problems your target audience is desperate to solve. A popular and widely used keyword research tool is Google Adwords Keywords. And guess what, it’s free.
6. Convert Readers into Subscribers
When ideal readers land on your blog for the first time, their chances of coming back again is very little. For this reason, it’s essential that you convert them into subscribers. It will enable you stay in touch with them, nurture them, and consequently, convert them into customers.
Once you’re able to convert readers into subscribers, you wouldn’t have to worry much about traffic again. Why? You’ll be able to notify them of any update on your blog by sending out newsletters. The beautiful thing about this concept is that there is the possibility of converting most of the subscribers into clients.
7. Implement Proper SEO
SEO is a critical element of a successful blog. Search engine optimization has to do with better ranking on search results. A well optimized website or web page has the potential to drive targeted traffic to your blog.
Keyword usage within a piece of content is the first step to better ranking. You can achieve this by creating SEO friendly content. Link building is another important component of SEO. The more links – from various sources — that point to your blog, the higher your chances of ranking better on search results. Guest blogging on relevant blogs will not only help you build quality links to your blog, but will also drive targeted readers to it.
Business blogging is an integral part of effective Internet marketing. If well planned and executed, you’ll be able to turn your blog into a powerful tool for marketing your products or services. The tips above will help you achieve just that.
Author’s Bio:
Saeed Sikiru is a prolific freelance blogger. He’s the editor of a content marketing blog where he offers his freelance blogging service. If you have a blog that needs regular content, hire Saeed to write quality and persuasive articles for you.