Trends tend to come and go. You need to carefully determine which ones are worth the time for your business and which ones are not. You’ve likely noticed that many people are opting to create blogs for their business.
Is a blog a good choice for your business? If you are looking to grow new customers and better engage with the market (and who isn’t?), the answer is clearly yes. Blogs are an important content marketing tool, and a recent survey showed that marketing leaders view content marketing as the second-biggest priority for investment.
In this post, let’s take a look at why you need a blog, best practices, and how your blog can integrate with other content marketing efforts.
Reasons You Need a Blog
Bring in Customers. Blogs are an important tool in many ways. They help bring in new customers to your business. They are also effective in building loyalty with existing customers. These are the two biggest direct benefits of a long-term blogging strategy. A 2020 survey found that 78.9% of bloggers found it delivered positive results.
Showcase Personality. A great way to build relationships with clients is to let them know not just what you do but who you are. Identifying with a brand is very important for modern customers. A blog is a great way to communicate with your audience while also providing important information.
Long-term Context. A blog will always exist and its algorithm will not change. In fact, as your blog presence grows, adding in a method that allows users to search by topics will enhance its functionality. Since blogs stay on your site long-term, they serve as somewhat of a historical record providing long-term context for your business. Blogs help you build your reputation online.
Building SEO. With a successful blog, your SEO will grow over time. This means you’ll reach more and more new customers as you appear near the top of search engine rankings. The greater your content, the more opportunities you’ll have.
Assist with Navigation. One important thing is for visitors to find the appropriate pages on your website for their needs. Blogs can help with this by leveraging internal linking. This gives you the ability to direct visitors exactly where they need to go to get more information about the services you provide, hopefully helping convert more sales.
Best Practices for Business Blogging
Blogging is about much more than sitting down and typing out your thoughts. When you operate a business, blogging needs to be carefully cultivated in a manner that helps create long-term engagement. Let’s look at some important considerations for creating your blogs.
Type of Content. The first decision to make is the type of content that you will leverage. Some businesses may seek a common type of content such as educational information about your industry. Others may diversify, highlighting success stories, trends, FAQs, and other things. Identify what you feel your audience most wants to see. However, don’t make the mistake of going too broad. Focus on at most 3-4 categories.
SEO. You can’t engage your audience if they cannot find what you write. Thus, search engine optimization (SEO) is important. Learn about concepts such as longtail keywords and weave them into your blog. The goal here is for search engines to properly index you. Ask yourself, “What would I search to find my blog?” Learning about SEO will help make your blog more successful over time and increase the new customers you reach.
Highlight Expertise. While a blog is an effective way to promote your business, you want to avoid writing through a method of self-promotion. Instead, focus on highlighting your expertise. Blogs are a great way of establishing yourself as a knowledgeable expert. Referencing services provided are fine but should not be the purpose of a blog. Blogs are not a place for the hard sell. Blogs are not the place for pitches, however you may nurture your reader’s into a lead magnet via your blog.
Streamline Reach. Social media is a powerful way to advance your content, particularly is it really resonates with viewers. Utilize sharing buttons on each blog post that allow readers to easily share on their social media.
Write about What Is Important. You want blog content to be fresh and to resonate with your audience. Thus, you need to understand what is most important to your clients. Focusing on a mix of trends as well as content that will be relevant a long time will help maximize the benefit gained from blogs.
Integration with Other Content Marketing
Like anything you do, your blog should not be designed as a standalone entity. It is important to integrate your blog into existing content marketing efforts in order to best leverage the resource. How do you do this?
Develop a Content Marketing Plan. A 2020 survey found that 84% of businesses have a content marketing strategy. Create a monthly, quarterly, or yearly content marketing plan. Focus on finding different hooks to develop content around, such as holidays or annual events. Plan blogs, social media, and e-mail marketing to synergize your content.
Promote Your Blog. You will not gain a large blog audience organically, especially at first. Be sure to promote your posts. Share individual blog posts on social media for your existing audience. Highlight your blog in e-mails or newsletters. If people don’t see your blog, it will not have a return on investment.
Include Blogging with Campaigns. If you are pushing a major advertising campaign, structure the topics of your blog to support it. If you provide wellness coaching and are creating a New Year’s campaign about helping clients meet their fitness goals, create blogs about staying motivated, finding time to exercise, and other things relevant to the campaign.
Best Practices for Your Blog
Blogs are an important tool for any business. They help better share your identity with the audience and personalize business relationships. However, it is important to utilize effective strategies in creating blogs and integrating them with existing content marketing.
It’s your turn – do you have a blog? If so, drop a link in the comments below!
