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Guest Post by Ariel Lee of http://www.writing-bytes.com
Blogging is a truly underrated strategy for gaining clients and customers. Many people think that blogging is strictly for a handful of niche markets, but that is untrue.
Every company has a story to tell and that story is the best way of showing your market why they should invest in you.
Blogging for Business and Why It’s Important
Blogging generates revenue whether directly or indirectly because it drives people to your website.
Even beyond that, however, there are multiple reasons why having a blog for your small business is incredibly valuable.
- Establishing Authority. By having a blog in your niche market, you can establish yourself as an authority in that market. Not only are you demonstrating your knowledge in a particular topic to potential customers who will be willing to invest – google also recognizes content that is referred to often by people on the internet.
- Content. A blog is an easy way to generate content for your website, email and social media platforms. You can post links that lead to your site (thereby directing traffic there!) build infographics, video snippets, audio clips, podcasts, graphics and so much more off of a single blog post. These are all pieces of content that you can use for marketing your small business across several places.
- Teaches Value. The more valuable content that you have on your website, the higher your site will rank in google searches of relevant queries. Valuable content is defined as being up to date, relevant to the site topic and audience you intend to attract via SEO and links, and content that is useful to your niche market.
If you’re just getting started on making a blog for your small business, or simply want some tips to update it, check out the list below.
Five Strategies Small Businesses Can Use for Their Blogs
Blog Consistently
Obviously, your time should be spent running your business, but dedicating a bit of time each week or month to create blogs for a time period will be beneficial in the long run. Often times, you can schedule your blogs on your site in advance, and spend the rest of your time running your business. Of course, don’t forget to go back and engage with any comments.
A Blog Should Have Focus
Have a focus on what you intend to blog about. It might be tempting to buy into the hot topic at the moment, but maintaining a niche will keep you aligned with your brand and what your prospective customer is seeking. But don’t be afraid to branch out in your industry, either. Teach your customers your story, and your product’s story.
Use Engaging Visuals
Use these blogs to add in images of your product as it is relevant. Most importantly, however, we as people are visual creatures and often retain information better when it is presented to us in a visual format. Having pictures also helps break up long pieces of content into bite-size bits for readers to better consume.
Don’t be Sales-y on Your Blog
Blogs should be about educating your audience and helping to solve the pain points of your customers. This kind of content should be for your audience, not for you. Once in a while isn’t bad, especially if it’s linked to what the post is about – but don’t overdo it.
Every Blog Post Needs a Call to Action
Never end your blog with a simple ending. Include some kind of call to action, whether it is prompting them to download some sort of freebie, or a look at services that you offer that makes sense for the blog post. You want to keep them on your website as long as possible with touch points in order to turn them from visitor, to customer.
The Best Blogs Have Purpose and Strategy
So now you have all of these ideas. So where do you start? Begin with your purpose and your strategy.
- What is your main objective? Do you intend to showcase yourself as an expert in your industry? Are you more focused on getting leads? Do you want to build your email list?
- How often are you going to blog? Two to three times is ideal, but even once a week is better than nothing. Really sit down and think on how much time it’s going to take you to make a post, and decide how much time you have in any given week to allot to this. If you’re a fast writer with a lot of ideas, it might take you less time and you can do more. If not, maybe you’ll commit to once a week.
- What is the voice of your blog? Do you intend to be authoritative? Sassy? Fun? Do you want to be personable with your potential readers, and engage in a conversation with them? Or does it make more sense in your industry and for your future readers to present the facts as is?
- What things will you talk about? Figure out what you know, and how you can present unique ideas and solutions to problems that are being addressed by people in your same market. Don’t rehash the same things over again, like everyone else. Offer something new to your readers.
- What is your target demographic? Who do you want to serve? These are the people you will need to market your blog to, so that they will in turn become customers if your business. Where do they hang out? Are they on Instagram? Facebook? LinkedIn? Twitter? How do they consume their content? Answering these questions will better serve you, your blog and your business.
Once your strategy is in place, then you can write. Bring value to the table for your readers, so that you can convert them to customers. But just like running a business, it takes strategy. Research, planning, creative ideas and consistent execution all play into generating a blog that delivers impactful and insightful content while boosting awareness of your brand and converting readers into consumers.
All the same, blogging shouldn’t be painful nor avoided. It can drive traffic, generate sales and position you as an authority in your field.
A blog is a powerful, effective marketing tool and you shouldn’t be missing out.
Creating a Blog With These Tips Can Help You to Grow Your Business. Do You Use a Blog in Your Business?
- Why should start a blog if you are in network marketing?
- How batch content creation can help your blogging game!
- What you really should be focusing on as a new blogger
Where creativity, aesthetic and passion combine. Designing brands, uplifting authors and marketing small businesses. Ariel is the one woman army behind Writing Bytes. She has been in marketing for nearly a decade, designing social media content, blogs, stunning images and far more. Her passion is in helping authors and small businesses step into the limelight with amazing content.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, Writing Bytes offers blog writing services for any topic, and more content creation. Each piece is well-researched, and includes graphics. Feel free to check out my services here.
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Great tips on blogging for small businesses! I write for small business blogs all the time and while some of them have a strategy, a lot of them don’t. But blogging can be a great way for small businesses to establish their authority and atttact their target audience.
Absolutely, Rebecca! Building a solid plan and strategy for your blog is so important when planning for a successful future. Thanks for reading! 🙂
These are some wonderful suggestions! I agree that a blog is an excellent way to gain authority and to gather a community around common interests, which is why our entire brand is built upon our blog (which also begot a podcast and then a YouTube channel). Some people ask if it’s too much, but different people discover us on each platform and as of now—with a little less than 3 years in—we’ve gone from 0 to 16k monthly followers between all our platforms. When we were just selling our music, we didn’t have this kind of engagement, so we are proof that blogging works. ?
What a great case study, Vox! Branching out into different platforms is such a great way to find new audiences and it sounds like you have definitely taken advantage of that! So awesome!
YES YES YES!!!! LOVE this article and I’m going to implement some of these strategies. I had never even thought of a call to action on each blog post
I’m so glad that you found these tips helpful, Mellisa!
This is a really great blog post. I got a ton of value! Thank you.
Thank you, Petra! So glad you enjoyed the post 🙂
It’s great that you mentioned the importance of a call to action for every blog post. That is crucial for creating a blogging strategy.
Totally Joel! It’s something that a lot of bloggers forget to add.
These are all great tips. I really hope to start a small business in the future and will keep them in mind.
Thank you, Romina! Hopefully, these business tips will help you when you are ready to start 🙂
This post is spot on. I think every business needs a blog because it can bring so much free traffic. Plus it gives your customers more of what they want so win/win.
Absolutely! Blog content marketing as a strategy can help you to connect with your audience and potential customers so much faster. Hope you are having an incredible day!