In today’s competitive and digital world, if you aren’t blogging for business, you are simply putting yourself at the back of the queue.
Whether you are small business owner, running an eCommerce website or a simple business presentation website, blogging for your business will incredibly open up new customer acquisition channels.
It’s a flat-out mistake to not integrate content marketing in your business development strategies. I know blogging is just part of it. But it accounts for a massive chunk of the rush.
In a recent post by Neil Patel following a content marketing survey conducted, 24% of customers first found out about the company through their blog:
Blogging for a business not only creates entrance for new customers. It’s a way to keep existing customers up to date on current industry trend and product updates. This gives you an edge over your competitors.
What is business blogging?
Business blogging is the act of blogging about your business. It’s simply setting up a blog for your company and constantly publishing content for three main purposes:
- To keep your market abreast of the latest developments in the industry and increase customer loyalty.
- To attract attention to your Unique selling proposition (USP)
- To acquire new customers.
Your business blog is a marketing channel that helps you increase your visibility online and boost brand awareness.
6 Blogging for business content ideas
If you are blogging for a business, what’s it that you write about? How does knowing what to write about help your small business marketing?
It’s a serious temptation to let your business blog go for weeks without a single blog post. I have also come across several business blogs with very thin content. That’s generally because many marketers are often confronted with the question of what to blog about.
To avoid lackluster business blog, you must spread out your content ideas, while maintaining focus and driving value in content publication. Here are some topic category suggestions:
1 – Post company news and announcements
One of the things that show your company is alive is frequency of news about company activities. No matter your staff strength, your social policy should keep your employees active in distractions and other social involvements.
Constantly publishing on in-house events builds and maintain trust and confidence in the minds of your client, while enforcing brand leadership. Corporate news can improve business activities and operations.
2 – Post industry related content and business news
Keep your market educated on what’s happening in the industry. Note however that your business blog isn’t a news website. It is an information outlet for valuable and helpful content aimed at enhancing business development and growth.
As a business blog operator, publish industry materials with the purpose to help your existing customers gain more confidence in you and trust your expertise.
Focus more on educational rather than news content. Help your customers know about changes in the industry and how your business is adjusting to the changes.
3 – Post product/service related content
You may have a page or pages on your website dedicated to product information and how-tos. But creating fresh and consistent content helps market your business far beyond the limit of existent coverage.
The more fresh content you publish, the more your chances of getting more visibility. According to this source, websites with a blog tend to have 434% more indexed pages. This could mean more search ranking and natural traffic.
Writing more about your products/services exposes you to more opportunities. As mentioned in this post on Hubspot, 78% of Internet users conduct product research online. That means your business blog stands a good chance of being a prospect’s “first impression”.
4 – Post answers to commonly asked questions
I know you have a FAQs page on your business website. But your blog gives an extension to it and allows you to get to greater depth.
While your FAQs page may not help with additional traffic and natural exposure, a particularly and accurately treated case in a blog post may get picked up by search engines and attract backlinks from related industry blogs.
Develop your Frequently Asked Questions into blog post ideas and create exhaustive responses with the aim to drive more sales from new market expansion.
5 – Infographics
41.5% of marketers say that original infographic content perform best and people share infographics 3x more than any other type of content.
If you want to promote your business blog and expand your readership, add visual content types to your strategy.
6 – Webinar Marketing
Webinar Marketing is still far from being yesterday’s news. Sharing your knowledge, educating your audience and bringing vital industry information to your customers in Webinars is still an easy way to position yourself as an industry expert.
Use your blog to announce Webinar events, recruit participants and spread the news far beyond internal news outlets.
How to grow your business blog
If you want to expand your business, acquire new leads and maintain your leadership position, your business blog should receive a considerable portion of your resources.
Fortunately today, it’s practically easy to take your run-of-the-mill business website to a thriving growth tool by simply attaching an active blog to it. Here are some 6 ideas to give strength to your.
1 – Post consistently and more regularly.
We’ve heard and read this several times. That’s because in every aspect of life, there is need for fresh breathe.
Whether you are blogging for small business or huge corporation, consistency in content publication is the practice that relegates your competitors.
Fresh content or blog posts keep your blog active in search engines and on people’s mind. This triggers continues social shares and traffic from different channels.
2 – Step out and network
Businesses succeed more when in partnerships and connection. The best way to connect in blogging is to seek to offer something to others.
Positioning yourself to help attracts relationships in the industry. Don’t just create and publish content. Linking out to other related content is a way to seek to network.
Here are some ideas to network with like-minded folks in your industry:
- Read their blogs and drop selfless comments
- Share their content on Social Media
- Engage with them on Social Media (likes, comments, votes, etc)
- Guest post on their blogs, sharing top-notch epic content
- Promote and promote others
3 – Have Search Engine Optimization SEO in mind
Search engines remain the most exciting source of traffic. If you want more clients and expand your visibility, you must optimize your content to get traffic from search engines.
SEO in content marketing is a completely different ball game. While this is ever-changing and somewhat confusing, it must not be thrown to the trash.
There are three main areas of SEO you must watch out for:
- Technical SEO (including your server optimization, blog themes, plugins, images, etc)
- On-page text optimization (mainly writing for user intent not keyword stuffing. This is all about Semantic SEO)
- Off-page optimization (mainly about Backlinks – dofollow and nofollow)
4 – Linkedin
Linkedin is a business social platform with over 500 million members with over 250 million logging in daily. According to this this source, 91% of marketing executives list LinkedIn as the top place to find quality content.
Blogging allows you to constantly share fresh and consumable content on Linkedin without boring your community with monotonous posts.
5 – Think about outsourcing
One of the ways to help your small business marketing through blogging is outsourcing content creation.
I mentioned above that not being regular won’t help blogging as part of your business marketing strategy. Sometimes it gets really tough to meet up with the challenges of running and maintaining a business blog.
But to have and maintain that competitive advantage, you should think of outsourcing content creation and promotion as part of your growth strategy.
6 – Build an Email list
It’s important you build an email list for your business blog. This allows you to reach out to subscribers each time there is an update on the blog. There are several ways to build a responsive list of subscribers. While you may want to use tools like Uplead to search and build a list based on different criteria, you should give attention to capturing leads directly from your blog.
Blogging for business can help increase conversion rates
Whether you are B2B or B2C entrepreneur, we’ve understood that you need blogging in your business marketing plan.
One of the core reasons is that blogging will help increase your website conversion and Roi. Blogging allows you to build a stronger relationship with your clients through authentic information and constant interaction.
A strong business relationship expands your customer base, enforces branding and plays positively on overall profitability.
The more you are able to provide accurate product information and educate your audience, you clear doubt and uncertainty, pulling your readers closer a buying decision.
Where to host your business blog
If you already have a website for your business, that makes it a good start point. I think it’s more simple to set up a blog on own domain name.
There are technical advantages driving traffic to one single domain. Basically, it helps your search engine ranking.
And there are many different blogging platforms but if you have to run your blog on the main business domain name, simply create a sub domain and install WordPress in it.
A self hosted WordPress blog is simple to maintain and grow. Leverage this free CMS to take your business blogging to limitless growth.
There are many webhosts out there with premium services. I encourage you try out BlueHost. Click here to find out more
How to make money blogging for business
The first thing is promote your business as that’s the main reason behind your blogging business. Don’t let monetization through you overboard.
However, you may try some sort of advertising. Google Adsense is generally used on my business blogs. Affiliate Marketing is one of the ways to make money online so think about it.
While your business blog can help generate some passive income, its main purpose should be promoting your main business.
Don’t give your competitor room to overrun you. Create a content strategy that allows you build a successful business online
Conclusion
Marketing your business in today’s Internet world is with a lot of challenges. However, blogging gives you market stability, customer acquisition, lead generation, brand promotion and business continuation.
If you do not have a business blog, start today.
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