Business Blogging 101: Top 10 Tips to Create a Successful Business Blog
Writing a business blog is more than a tick box exercise. It can be highly valuable to your marketing strategy and push you well ahead of your competition.
The term ‘blogging’ may bring to the mind well staged photos and topics relating to food or travel. Whilst that is still relevant to a lot of blogs out there, organisations have caught on to the fact that having a blog focused on their business can really boost online presence and be an excellent marketing tool.
“Companies that blog have 97% more inbound links.” — TechClient
However, you don’t want to post any old article for the sake of having a blog — content really does matter. If done correctly, having a business blog can be one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your brand and engage with your target audience which will inevitably lead to more sales.
So if you are new to the business blogging process, the following top ten tips will help you get started.
#1: Be relevant to your audience
Think about your business, its clients and customers. Focus on writing topics that will be of interest to them. Share insights into your business, introduce new products, promote your company culture or even use your blog as a platform to answer frequently asked questions. All of this information allows your current and future customers to get to know all about your business on a more personable level.
#2: Create a content calendar
It can be difficult to come up with interesting topics at a moment’s notice so like most areas in life, to be successful you need a plan!
Plot out important dates in your content calendar, public and personal, and then create relevant business news to run alongside them. You can get ahead by drafting the content well in advance and post it whenever need be.
#3: Quality over quantity
Keep blog posts to the point and don’t waffle on simply to get your word count up. Content consisting of 250 words can have the same impact as content of 2000 words, but is less likely to bore the readers.
You also don’t need to blog every day, but having some sort of schedule, such as once a week or even once a fortnight, would be good practice. Consistency is key.
#4: Get creative with your title
Try to capture what your article is about in a few words to grab the attention of your target audience. Use action verbs and even ask a question to draw readers in.
Think about what your customers or clients may type into a search engine to find what you are writing about, or consider how your title could make someone browsing the web want to stop and read more.
#5: Write about what you know
The best way to start writing is to cover the topics you understand completely or are passionate about.
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If there are subjects relevant to your business that you’re not so knowledgeable about, outsource to someone who is an expert in that area (and a good writer) to cover that post for you. It’s good to involve others in the blog writing process to gather different perspectives and test out alternative writing styles.
#6: Be inspired by your competition
There’s nothing wrong with researching your competitors to see how they engage their customers.
You can see how much attention their articles are getting and take inspiration from the content, but make sure you are keeping your articles 100% original.
#7: Make your point and summarise
It’s great practice to incorporate facts, statistics and quotes to back up the point of your blog, especially if it is an informative or constructive piece.
You should also end your blog by summarising your findings and ensuring you have answered your own question!
#8: Add visuals
It’s reported that articles with images get 94% more views. Adding photos, especially info-graphics, is a great way to add another element of communication to your article whilst making it more visually appealing to the readers, more so if it’s a longer piece.
You can either use your own photos or find images online that give you commercial license to use them.
#9: Engage and interact with your followers
End your article with a ‘call to action’ sentence, such as asking your readers for feedback or further contribution and opinions to your blog post.
Always respond to comments received in a professional manner. Remember that future customers will be able to see anything that you publish online so it’s important to maintain your brands great reputation.
#10: Analyse the data
And finally, remember to keep track of your blogs performance. Check the analytic insights, views, shares across social media and reader interaction to understand what topics are the most popular to your audience.
Analysing this data will enable you to improve future articles and become the business blogger you were destined to be!
So there you have it; the top 10 tips to help you set out on your blogging journey and enhance your marketing strategy.
If you have any additional tips and advice regarding blogging that has worked well for your business, then please get in touch!
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