The ever-changing marketing landscape has meant that it has become vital for businesses to have a meaningful online presence in order to keep customers and audiences engaged, and blogging is a great way to tick all these boxes.
1. What are the benefits of having a blog?
A. It’s pretty inexpensive
Blogging, over other marketing tactics, can be an inexpensive tool to communicate your brand message and what you’re all about. Many small business owners are passionate about their product and brand, and blogging is a low-cost way to shout about what makes yours so great.
B. Brand storytelling
Tell your brand story from a reliable source – you! You can use blogs to inspire, persuade, motivate and tell your audience all about your products and services. Customers love hearing about the story behind small businesses and the people who make them so special.
C. Extra value for customers
Blogging will enable you to separate yourself from your competition. You can supply your audience and customers with added information, making them more knowledgeable, confident and in turn, loyal.
D. Expert in your field
This is your platform – make it count! Nobody knows your business as well as you do. It’s a fantastic way to share your knowledge, make predictions and speak out about your industry and its changes.
E. SEO
Getting people to your website in the first place can be tricky. But, by writing about topics related to your industry or business, you can get yourself seen more and generate more organic search and social traffic to your website. Plan out your posts to cover popular search terms related to your business, and include keywords which you’d like to be discovered for.
F. Shareable content
Blog content is highly shareable. If you have social channels that require a constant flow of content, repurpose your blog content. Cut it down into quotes or tips on graphic posts, and always remember to direct people to the full blog post on your website.
2. What should I blog about?
The world is your oyster! Ok, maybe not quite. But, there are many different forms of blog content you can tap into. Articles, infographics, thought pieces, how-to’s, announcements, lists, Q&A’s, testimonial, tips and inspirational pieces – to name just a few! The main things to remember are:
Keep it short
No one likes a rambler. Introduce your point, make it, back it up and conclude it. Generally, online audiences don’t read articles online that will take them over 5 minutes to get through. If you’re covering a big topic, why not break it up into parts or sub-topics and spread it over several separate blog posts?
Make it relevant
Make sure it is something people would actually like to read about and make it relevant to the customer. Also don’t forget about your relevant keywords for SEO. Use Google Trends – a free tool which you can use to help you to plan out posts and check how relevant your posts are in relation to what people are speaking about and searching for.
Write often
Consistent blogs have more impact because if your content is popular your audience will look forward to newly published content. Your website’s SEO quality will be stronger because you’ll be tapping into current event consistently. You could even create monthly recurring blogs, such as monthly round-ups or product of the month’. This gives your audience something to look forward and creates nice content groupings.
Everyone loves a visual
As much as the copy is important and the focal part of your blog, make sure to break up the text with images. It has been found that audiences respond better to images than words, o make sure you have a nice combination. You could even insert GIFs!
3. How do I get it out there?
Having a great blog isn’t the end of the job. You have to make sure people see it. Reach those people who wouldn’t organically come looking for it. Promote your blogs when they are published on your marketing channels; mention them in your email newsletters, tweets, social posts and even by featuring them on rotation on your website’s homepage.
You can even repost or reshare older blogs from time to time when you feel it is relevant. For example, a trending topic on Twitter related to an old blog post you have written could be the perfect time to unearth it and get it back out there while people are talking about the same topic! When you’re posting it out on social media, try to include one or two hashtags per tweet which you think people may be actively searching for.
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