Creating a Stellar Business Blog
Building a successful business blog isn’t as simple as writing a post and seeing what works with your audience. To get the best results as quickly as possible, you should first create a business strategy and be sure you are implementing best practices. The traffic your website generates from your blog will be one of the more essential parts of your online marketing campaigns.
Before we dive into how to create a stellar business blog, let’s first take a closer look at some of the reasons why you should be blogging for your business.
- Your Blog Helps your SEO Efforts: Each piece of content you publish gives you a chance to target keywords. Not only this, but it also alerts Google and other search engines to the fact that you have fresh content – something they can’t get enough of.
- It Establishes Expertise: Your blog gives you a platform to show people you are a leader in your business verticle.
- It Gives You a Direct Communication Channel with Your Audience: When your audience can reply to your content with comments, you have a direct connection to them that you may not get elsewhere – especially if they don’t sign up for your email list.
While there are many other reasons you may want to consider starting a blog for your business, these are the primary motivators for most companies. Now that you understand some of the benefits it has to offer, how can you make sure it is the best of the best and creating value for your readers?
Check Out the Competition – and Do it Better!
You can have the perfect layout, images, and posting schedule. You can have a growing subscriber list. But, if you don’t create quality content, then it’s a waste of everyone’s time and your resources. Your content needs to help your readers, either by teaching them something they didn’t know or helping them solve a problem. The best content comes from understanding your audience, of course, but chances are, there’s already someone out there who’s written a blog post on your topic. That’s where competitive research comes in handy. By taking the time to see what the competition has already done, you can find ways to make yours better.
- Can you go more in-depth with examples?
- Add more images? Create your own charts/graphics to support the topic?
- Can you add a video or another interact asset to make your content more interesting?
Write Content for All Stages of the Buyer’s Journey
When you’re first creating your editorial calendar, it can be difficult to know what to write, because you don’t have any frame of reference. By thinking about your content as it relates to your buyer’s journey, you’ll be able to ensure you’re creating content that speaks to them.
- Awareness: When you’re launching your new blog, you’ll want most of your content to fall here. Content in this area focuses on educating your readers on the various problems they could face, and the available options to fix it. Awareness helps to build relationships with your readers because it shows them you know and understands their concerns.
- Consideration: In this phase, readers know what issues they have and what they want to fix. Using “How-tos” are perfect for this stage. The key here is to minimize your company mentions because you’re not trying to make everything a sales pitch. You’re trying to earn trust, and you won’t do that if everything is about you. (This post is an example of a consideration post – we’re teaching you how to create a solid business blog.)
- Decision: Blogs written for this point in the journey are intended for the readers who are ready to decide what to buy. The posts that fall into this area include more information about your company and how the solution you offer separates you from the competition.
Let’s take a look at some topic ideas for each stage of the journey.
Awareness: 5 Reasons Your Cat isn’t Using the Litter Box
Consideration: How to Train Your Cat to Use the Litter Box
Decision: Best Cat Litter Options for Your Cats
Once you’ve built out at least one blog post from each stage, it’s time to start moving your email subscribers through the journey with your newsletter. Once you’ve sent your engaging welcome in, begin with the awareness piece to get them started. Then, use your email automation to move them through to consideration, and eventually the decision posts.
As you continue to build out your blog content, send them emails with links to topics you know they’ll like (that’s where email segmentation comes in, which we’ll cover in a future blog post) based on their history and any other customer data you may have. A more targeted and personalized approach will pay off in the long run.
Format the Content for Easier Reading
Reading online is massively different from reading traditional books and magazines. Format the content with plenty of headings, bulleted lists, and line breaks to make it easier on the eyes. Your readers will thank you.
That said, nothing but text can get a bit boring. Consider adding GIFs, infographics, and other images to catch the eye and hold attention.
Create a Schedule – And Stick to It
You don’t have to post every day, but often you post, you should create a consistent schedule, so your audience knows when to expect new content. WordPress makes it easy to schedule posts ahead of time so that you can batch your content.
For a little guidance about how often you should blog, let’s turn to a Hubspot study.
To get the best results regarding traffic, you should aim to post at least 11 times a month, or an average of three times a week.
Include a Call to Action
All your blog posts should have a call to action to encourage your readers to continue to engage with you. If you’ve been around a while, you’ll notice most of our posts inspire you to get in touch with us here at SEO Inc. to learn more about how we can help you grow your business. That’s our call to action, and we certainly hope you’ll use it!
