Blogging for business is not a fad that will soon fade. Blogging is an essential marketing piece that your business must-have. A 2017 survey by Content Marketing Institute found that 75% of business-to-customer (B2C) marketers use blogs as part of their marketing strategy and 51% agree that blogs are a cornerstone for content marketing success.
This article will focus on why your blogging for business is essential and how to blog correctly to get your clients to notice you.
Where did Blogging Begin?
Beginning back in the mid-’90s, blogging became a new trend. In 1999, a total of 23 blogs were on the Internet. In time, blogs began to rise up as society began to gain easier access to technology and craved a simple way to find answers to their questions. Nowadays, no reliable statistics exist on how many blogs are available in the world, but it’s around hundreds of millions.
4 reasons why blogging for business needs to be a part of your business strategy
1. You Control your Blog
Businesses have little control over their social media “followers”, but with a blog (and email list), the followers belong to the company. You can see in Facebook’s recent changes how true it is when they changed their algorithm to focus more on family and friends than a business. This isn’t a bad thing, this is what Facebook was built for, but businesses use it because they know their audience hangs out there. If you drive traffic from social platforms, organic searches on Google and your email this, your business will grow faster than if you are presenting it only on a social platform alone. This fact gives business owners the reason to incorporate blogging for business in their marketing strategy.
2. Traffic Jump
Businesses that blog receive 97% more links to their website. Why? The search engines know you are showing up, speaking to your audience, and delivering trust. Every time you write a blog post, your content is indexed, helping search engines find your business more frequently when someone is searching online. Blogging for business also helps elevate your business presence on social media because you can capture the audience who is not organically searching on a search engine, therefore gathering leads from everywhere.
3. Blogging for Business Pays Off
When runners train for their first race, it takes time. When a baby is potty trained, it takes time. When you jump into blogging for business, don’t expect overnight success, it takes time. Over time though, like anything you work hard at, it pays off in long-term results. You can have one blog post that delivers multiple results to someone, and as long as it’s not time-sensitive, that blog post can bring traffic and leads repeatedly.
Businesses that blog increase their leads by 67% per month. When writing content and implementing SEO and social media strategies, you will convert your readers and followers into paying customers. If you publish larger volumes of blog articles you will increase your lead generation even more. Learning to blog correctly will create increased visibility, brand, and expertise for your business over time.
Tip from the author: It takes a lot of strategy and time for a business owner to create a blog that focuses on results. To solve that, Write RN offers solopreneurs and small businesses blog management and content marketing services with social media packages. All info is available at WriteRN.net.
4. Blogging Helps Your Audience Trust You
Blogging for business helps authenticity show through. People like to hear your own stories or struggles so they can relate to you. In fact, 63% of consumers say they would buy from an authentic brand over a brand that isn’t as authentic. Authenticity shown through blogging and social media is the way to show it.
One of the best things about blogging is that it is easily converted to social media posts. Depending on which platform you use, you can make your content fit your Instagram with a “story” or Twitter with a few tweets extracted.
How To Write Business Blog Posts? It’s all about the SEO!
SEO is part of the strategy many business owners neglect, or simply just don’t have enough time to carry out into each post. Though, without SEO, your content will not be seen (so what’s the point of blogging?)! But, what exactly is SEO or search engine optimization? It’s the way search engines like Google find your business.
Why is SEO Important in Blogging?
As discussed earlier, blogging is important for your business, but SEO will help search engines find you through long and short-tail keyword rankings. Every business owner wants their content seen by consumers, that’s why business owners have a website and/or blog, to begin with. It starts with a big content strategy.
Content strategy is taking your ideas and putting them into “buckets” of content. Those buckets depict every blog post so that every piece of content is relevant for your business. Keyword research will help you know what your clients are searching for. When you write enough posts, your keywords will show up through search engines.
What Should Your Business Write About?
Business owners are often stuck on what to blog about (after their initial ideas). Take a step further for each of those topics you thought to write about. Answer questions that your audience wants to know about. It is as simple as answering the “Who” What” “Where” “When” and “Why” behind the business products.
Be real and humor your audience if it fits your business, but most of all help and serve them as much as you can (for free). You can easily think of content when you take the time to sit down and write it out.
View your blog as not a sales platform, but somewhere where your ideal customer will go to solve issues (around your services/product). In fact, 60 percent of consumers feel good about a company after reading custom content on its site. Another statistic? 81 percent of U. S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs.
Moving Forward with Blogging for Business – Where to Go From Here
I want to serve you as a reader, which is why I wrote this blog post. I hear the same “pain” points from business owners, and I wanted to cover them in this one epic article.
Moving forward, take a look at your business blog (if you have one). If you don’t have one, take some time before you post a first blog post to digest this blog post.
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Think of Topics – Research your competitors and see what they write about and brainstorm ideas for yourself. Try to answer the questions your audience has asked you.
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Make those ideas fit into 3-6 categories – Every time you come up with ideas, I want you to make sure they fit into these categories
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Set realistic expectations – Do you really have time to create 8 blog posts a month? Start small and work your way up with more content.
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Add images – Make sure in each post you add images that correlate with your topics.
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Share it on social media – After you post your content, make sure you share it in your specific social platforms. Ask people to comment and re-share.
Janine Kelbach, RNC-OB is an RN, mom of two, author of Entreprenurse –30+ Nurses Turn Into Business Owners and Share Their Secrets to Success, and owner of writeRN.net.
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