For the last few years, the most common buzz around the business scene has been the benefits of having a blog. It’s supposed to work wonders for generating leads, improving
However, there’s more to having a successful blog than simply starting one. You have to spend time promoting your content well after the original platform has been set up. If you want to see success with your business blog, here are some actionable tips for making it a success.
#1. Define the Purpose and Topics
Businesses have blogs for different reasons. Some blog to boost their search engine rankings. Others do it for passive income and advertisements. It can also be an effective way to promote products and services. Whether your blog was built for one or many of these purposes, it’s important to define it.
Along with defining the purpose of your blog, make sure you know your topics well. “It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of hosting and WordPress themes and color schemes, but that’s not the most important part,” cautions Neil Patel, internet marketing guru. “The most important part is your subject matter. What are you going to blog about?”
For a business blog, it’s important to stick within your niche and develop content that will support your subject matter while promoting your business. Make a plan and an editorial calendar to carry out your plan, and remain true to your ultimate goals.
#2. Invest in Quality
A lot of businesses try to outsource their blog posts to content mills because it’s cheap. However, the quality is always very low, which doesn’t help your search rankings or your blog.
When you can create quality content, Google will not only rank your posts higher, but it will also improve the quality of your traffic. Visitors will stay longer on your site and make a more lasting impression on those who stop by. It also improves your credibility within your industry.
#3. Publish the Best
A big factor in improving your business blog is publishing only the best content possible. Write several blog posts on various topics within your niche and choose the best one to publish. This might require throwing out some of the content you worked hard to create. It’s not always easy to do, but you can’t have sub-par content on your blog. Low-quality posts will drag it down and reduce your effectiveness.
#4. Write Audience Personas
Being relevant is essential to a great business blog, and the most important aspect of being relevant is writing to a specific audience. You might share helpful insights and original knowledge, but if your business audience isn’t interested in that sort of content, your words will fall flat.
Writing buyer or audience personas can help you direct your content towards those who are most interested. “Buyer personas (sometimes referred to as marketing personas) are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers,” says an article from Hubspot. “Personas help … internalize the ideal customer we’re trying to attract, and relate to our customers as real humans. Having a deep understanding of your buyer persona(s) is critical to driving content creation, product development, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.”
As noted in this article, understanding your customers is really the key to success. Your business blog can drive interactions in every aspect of your business if you understand how to motivate your customers.
#5. Create Some Visual Content
Human beings are incredibly visual. It’s easier for the brain to process visual information, particularly when it’s accompanied by quality text. If you haven’t been regularly adding unique and valuable images to your content, now is the time to start.
Infographics, videos, memes, high-quality photographs, charts, and other forms of visuals can enhance any blog post. They can also improve search rankings, since Google now uses images as part of its ranking algorithm.
#6. Make It Personal
You’ll get far more engagement when your readers feel like they’re reading a person’s writing rather than a nameless robot’s writing. Many business blogs take on that automatic, robotic sense that makes readers feel like they’re listening to a wall.
There are a lot of ways to make your blog feel a little more personalized. We already talked about using imagery, so another important feature is giving your blog a voice. Instead of using perfectly structured sentences all the time, interrupt with fragments that reflect the way people talk. Use descriptive nouns and action verbs to pull readers in.
Jeni Eliott of The Blog Maven recommends being yourself, not trying too hard, and letting your favorite writers influence you in order to give your blog a solid voice. “There’s also a danger in trying to have a certain blogging voice: if you focus too much on what you sound like, you’ll end up trying to sound like someone else,” she says. “If you’re going to develop your own style – your own blogging voice – you can’t just take another person’s voice. You have to take everything, everyone that influences you and filter it through your own personality.”
#7. Use an Editorial Calendar
It’s easy to get off track when you’re working on your blog. It’s your entity, so there are no obvious punishments for procrastinating on your posts. An editorial calendar keeps you on track and keeps you accountable for actually posting your content.
It also keeps the ideas flowing. It’s hard to post excellent content on a regular basis, thinking of amazing ideas with just a few days or hours of notice. Creating an editorial calendar means planning out all of your posts and publication dates in advance. You could plan as far as six months ahead if you wish, completing research on topics and allocating your budget along the way.
It’s great to plan your posts in advance, but it’s important to include relevant and timely content as well, which is a lot harder to plan out ahead of time. Make room in your editorial calendar for a news-type post. For example, every Monday, you might choose a piece of news or op-ed content that’s trending. This will help to keep your blog relevant and market your content to a wider audience.
After you’ve worked on the quality and content of your blog, all that’s left is thorough editing and a strong call to action. Without these features, you’ll struggle to see strong returns from your blog. It can be worth the investment if you’re willing to put the time and effort into making something happen, but always remember that your blog is only as what you put into it.
