Blogging helps a business engage with its customers and make their lives easier. The more engaging and informative your blog is, the more likely your customers are to become loyal. So what are you waiting for? Now is the right time you should start blogging for your business.
A blog can be used in ample ways to promote your business.
“The number of bloggers is expected to rise and reach 31.7 million by the year 2020.”
A big figure, right? The constantly increasing number of bloggers besides pointing out the increasing demand of bloggers also kingpins them as an important part of digital marketing. Content is the king of SEO and SEO is an important subset of digital marketing.
If used in the correct way, then blogging can be an important tool for promotion. Let us understand how.
1. Educate your readers. Give them reasons to trust you
A blog is a platform where you can publish your business and speak directly to your prospective customers and educate them about the nature of your business.
Educating your website visitors is more powerful and more trustworthy than just selling your business or traditional marketing content. Write some mind-boggling blogs about your business and see your business soar up and above your competitors.
“B2B marketers that prefer blogging get 67% more leads as compared to those who not.”
Education means that you have put deep thinking and time in them and anticipated the questions that they might have. It also signifies that you understand who they are and what they expect.
Developing a content marketing persona can help.
Each person or a group has a different persona. One can be a group of solo entrepreneurs while the other one can be a group of various trade associations.
Solo-decision makers require hands-on implementation from you whereas your other group, which consists of more complex buyer-committees with a CMO, CFO and CEO require significant discussion time.
You can give each group a specific name and role. Add a picture to make recognition easier. The benefit will be that everyone in your organization will have a visual reminder that will remind them of the persona during strategy discussions.
2. Answer readers’ questions with enthusiasm. Build an FAQ section
You might be aware of the fact that just going through the website doesn’t help a reader in getting a full understanding of your product or service. A blog will help you answer commonly asked questions so you only have to respond once.
It can be a valuable tool for customer service and sales associates who are frequently responsible for answering customer questions.
If you want to:
- Increase the usability of your site
- Improve your business authority
- Increase conversions
then having an excellent FAQ section can help. Think of your FAQ page as the one-stop solution for your customers.
One of the strongest reasons to have an FAQ section is to address the needs of readers. A person will visit the FAQ section only after getting a first impression. These are the potential customers. Provide the best possible content about your business on the FAQ page.
“60% of businesses with blogs earn more customers, said a HubSpot survey.”
3. Share your blog on social media and e-mail it to your customer list
Sharing a blog on your social media page is an easy task. But you can reap its benefits if the content is good enough for the readers. If you think the blog you published on the website will be a hit and hundreds of people will see it, you are wrong.
Competition has increased and the internet now has billions of websites and articles, so the chances of your article being found on its own are quite low and much low if you started blogging just now. The best way to share your message out there is to share it with your social media accounts.
Facebook and LinkedIn are great places where you can promote your blogs and if your Instagram following is huge – Instagram paid promotions will allow you to post links to these posts. Promoting your business on social media by sharing blogs is a great route. Practicing this regularly will result in more visits to your website. Blogging goals achieved, right?
For blogs, post new, relevant content at least once or twice a week. Your readers should also be aware of the day you typically post in order to keep to that schedule. Alert them via e-mail about any new posts on your blog and promote these posts on your social media channels.
4. Put dependability and trustworthiness on display.
Your business looks trustworthy if you deliver your services on time and at an expected interval. Likewise, by publishing regularly and consistently over time, you demonstrate trustworthiness. A virtue indeed!
Develop content on relevant topics and demonstrate solutions to the problem that you know the readers might face.
If your prospects find your content truly exceptional, you can count on that article generating traffic and you can also update that article regularly.
Combining it with the passion and the willingness to interact with readers via comments or e-mail exchanges, you create a powerful testament to the character of your business.
On a blog, you can be more conversational than on the web pages. You can take help of blogs that include questions that readers may ask along with their precise and interesting answers.
This contributes to your blog in having a more human and approachable voice when you write.
Regularly published blog content will keep your website fresh. It is a gesture that your business is alive with new ideas and solutions.
Aim for a minimum of one or two new articles per week.
5. Promote competitions and offers in blog content.
Every online store needs an ample amount of traffic and conversions. But even after putting together a basic strategy, it can still be a challenging task to finalize the marketing strategy. If you are organizing any contest on your website or local store and have some amazing gifts in store, then each blog article is an opportunity to promote the competition or offer. It can be a great tool that can convert visitors into leads.
6. Apply SEO to get your blog noticed.
There are many ways to improve SEO. But there are simple ones for business owners who are writing their own blogs.
- Put your keyword in the blog title – (for example if you are talking about a project management software – project management software is the keyword). An example title using this keyword is “What are the qualities of a good project management software?”.
- Call your page the same as your blog title – if you have to shorten a long title – make sure you keep the keyword
- Use the keyword in the blog, but don’t overdo it. You need to make sure that your writing makes sense.
- Use short sentences, bullet points, and step guides to illustrate your point.
- Add some tags containing the keyword.
7. Support offline activities through your business blogging.
- Your business may not always stay online. Everything doesn’t happen online right? You attend TV shows, become part of some informative debate or trade shows, participate in personal interviews and also endorse TV shows or the radio.
- If you are into such stuff, then blogging can be a great tool to promote these things and hence promote your business. You can provide show notes and background scene on presentations and interviews, or address the discussion questions that came up and include links to relevant resources. Share a link to your supporting blog with your attendees of the event.
8. Mention and give credit to those who make your business successful in your blog.
A business that takes care of its workers and customers is loved by all.
With a good spirit of giving back, your business blog gives you the opportunity to highlight those who help make your business a success. Your customers, suppliers, associates, related businesses, etc. all of these play an important role in making your business a success.
A blog interview will be perfect to showcase what has made them successful in your industry.
To sum up:
To make sure your blog regularly gets updated and new content is uploaded designate a time in your diary each week or month to work on your blogs. Manage your blogs more frequently as the better it gets, the better the results will be. The more frequently you manage writing blogs, the better you will get at it and the better the results will be. If you are super indulged in your business and don’t have time to write your own blogs, you can find marketers and content writers that can work with you to prepare a schedule.
The author Jimit Shah works as a marketing manager at e-Intelligence. He believes in providing digital marketing services for greater impact. E-intelligence provides digital marketing and web design services in India. They are equipped with the right innovative strategy, technical knowledge and a professional team to help achieve business goals.