Three strategic steps to a successful business blog
Nemo / Pixabay
Does blogging help your business? Is social media worth the effort? Do businesses need to have an optimised website? These are the debates being hotly contested in a Linked In conversation I have been closely following.
It started innocently enough, with one bloke asking if people in the group had a business blog, and whether they thought blogging for business is worth the effort.
The conversation soon turned to other forms of social media and it become very apparent very quickly that one of the participants had strong opinions about the worth of blogging and/or social media for business, and his opinion was that it was “a waste of time” and that “blogging was a recreational activity for those with too much time on their hands”.
Well, as someone who blogs, and who certainly doesn’t have a lot of time on my hands, I take umbrage to that!
I have written before about why blogging for business works, and it has certainly helped build my audience (and convert that audience to clients), but I now realise that post should have included the caveat: If you do it strategically.
In other words – know what the purpose of your blog is, how to leverage it into leads and, most importantly, who your audience is.
Purpose
The first thing to think about when you decide whether or not to blog for your business is what the purpose of blogging is. In my case, my blog serves dual purposes – search engine optimisation (I can throw in the odd key word and internal link) and so potential clients can gain an understanding about me and about my writing style. Not every post is written for SEO purposes, nor is every post written as proof of my writing ability. But these are always top of mind when I plan my blog posts. (it’s also a great way to get stuff off my chest – but that’s not about business!)
Other valid purposes for a business blog are varied and include such things as driving traffic to your website, converting visitors to sales and setting yourself up as a subject matter expert.
Leveraging your blog
While the main goal of this blog is not necessarily to drive sales (although that is a nice side effect), it does lead to the occasional phone call/email about a potential project. And I know this because the client tells me they have been reading my blog for a while and are now ready to talk business. Or they are new to the blog, but have read a few posts and like what they see.
In other words, a single blog post is very unlikely to lead to a sale, but a consistent series of posts can help turn a casual visitor into a client or buyer. A lot of people give up on blogging because “it’s not working”, but persistence is key. Which is pretty much the same for every marketing avenue – I would suggest there are not many people who would buy a product after just seeing one TV or newspaper ad, or receiving one flyer in the mail. Like these more traditional forms of advertising, a blog is no magic bullet and, if you decide to blog for your business, it needs to be part of a wider marketing plan.
By using internal links, and strategic “sales” language; and by sharing posts on social media, you can leverage your blog into part of your wider sales funnel.
Know your audience
This bloke on Linked In talked about the risk of alienating people if they don’t like the opinion you voice on your blog. This is true, which is why it is so important to have a good understanding of your audience. If your target audience are straight-laced business people, you probably don’t want to use excessive swearing, or slang, on your blog. But if you are targeting a younger audience, then both swearing and slang are just fine. And it is probably best to keep your political and religious views to yourself on a business blog, but that is just common sense, right?
If you decide that a blog would be a great marketing tool for your business, then keeping these three points in mind with help make the blog a “success” (however you define success).
That’s not to say every business owner should blog, but if you are one of the countless Australian businesses that relies on web traffic, you would be foolish not to.
Till next time
Nicole