5 Steps for Creating a Successful Business Blog

Blogging about your company can be challenging.

How are you supposed to make your new product, software, or service sound exciting?

However difficult it might be to come up with engaging blog posts, you’ve decided to do it anyway because you can’t ignore the stats.

You can’t ignore the fact that according to HubSpot, companies with blogs see 55% more visitors than companies without blogs. You also can’t ignore that blogs help to convert those visitors into leads.

The benefits of blogging for your company are clear. But there’s just one thing that’s not so clear – How do you do it effectively?

Always Think About Your Customer

Avoid the common mistake of thinking that your company blog is a platform for you to showcase how awesome your company is.

Before you think about that amazing new product you’d like to blog about, you first need to understand the most crucial element to a business blog – it’s all about your customer.

“Customer satisfaction is key in creating a long-term relationship with your customers.” Sarah Chambers

Since your customers are your readers, each of your blog posts should appeal to their needs. Your blog should help to solve your customers’ problems, not advertise how amazing your company is.

Understand that blogging is about creating trust between you and your reader. The more you provide valuable content, the more they’ll trust you and the easier it will be for them to spend their hard-earned money on your products or services.

What are some of my clients’ pain points and how can I help solve them with my expertise?

That’s the question to ask yourself before beginning to write each blog post.

If you can provide your customers with valuable content, they’ll not only subscribe and move down the sales funnel easier, they’re also more likely to refer a friend. As a business owner, you know the importance of word of mouth.

Now that you know who you’re writing for, let’s look at how to satisfy the needs of your customers through your business blog.

How to Create a Successful Business Blog

1. Plan Your Content in Advance

Blogging can be time-consuming. This is why “lack of time” is often cited as the number 1 reason why a company either doesn’t have a blog or isn’t posting as frequently as it should.

But don’t let this excuse get in the way of you reaping some of the above-mentioned benefits. You want that increase in traffic and leads, remember?

So, the best option you have is to plan your content in advance. Have a monthly content strategy that outlines each blog you plan to post.

When planning your content, remember what I’ve already discussed – solve your customers’ pain points. For instance, if you sell live chat software, you might want to blog about:

• How to improve your customers’ live chat experience OR
• Live chat integration challenges and how to push past them

Although these blog posts would make sense when you’re selling live chat, you don’t only have to blog about live chat.

You can also blog about:

• How can small to medium-sized businesses build company cultures that represent their brand
• What to learn from an unhappy customer
• How to keep a personal touch as your company grows

All these topic ideas are problems that your customers can be faced with. Help to solve them and you’ll earn their loyalty.

For your SEO, you’ll also want to use software such as Google Adwords Keyword Tool or SEMRush, to help you find out the keywords that your target market are using. This will let you know what keywords to target in your content in order to be found online.

2. Blog Often

Deciding on the frequency of your posts can be a bit tricky. Once a week? Twice? Every Day?

You’ve seen your competitors doing either one of these, but which is the best option?

A HubSpot study revealed that B2B companies that blog 16 or more times a month, have 3.5 times more traffic than companies that blog less. In the B2C market, the numbers are even more dramatic.

So, blogging once or twice or week isn’t going to cut it. Not if you’re looking to see real traffic to your site.

This can be challenging. How are you supposed to blog at least 16 times a month while also attending to the day-to-day tasks of your business?

Outsource! Get some help! You’re human and you can’t do it all.

Turning to a content agency or a content writer to ghostwrite your blog posts will help to ensure that your content is taken care of while you run your business.

3. Create Engaging Headlines

It would be a shame to spend all your time and energy on a blog post that ends up not getting much attention from your target market. With a poor headline, sadly, that is exactly what will happen.

It’s not the writing isn’t great. Nope. The blog post can be incredible and have really useful content for your target market, but they’re not going to bother reading it if your headline doesn’t grab their attention.

Headlines are important because you’re not the only one creating content in your industry. Your customers are spoilt for choice.

We also live in a fast-paced society and people are constantly on the move. For anyone to stop and give your blog post attention, you’ll need an irresistible headline.

You can use a Headline Analyzer like CoSchedule to help you get your headlines to be as effective and engaging as you need them to be.

After you’ve created engaging headlines, you’ll also need to familiarise yourself with best blog writing practices, such as including images, writing attention-grabbing introductions, and having short paragraphs.

Besides these technical aspects, it’s also important to understand how to speak to your target market through your business blog. Being personable and relatable will help you to connect with them.

Understanding these elements will help to ensure that you create blog posts that your target audience want to read.

4. Promote. Promote. Promote.

If you’ve had a business blog before and stopped blogging, I’m willing to bet that one of the reasons why you stopped was because there was no traffic.

You were spending hours of your precious time writing your blog posts and trying to give your customer invaluable content. And every time you posted, nothing happened.

The reason why nothing happened is not that your content sucked (Of course, not). The most common reason for the lack of traffic is a lack of promotion.

Content creation is important. Content promotion, is just as important.

So, how do you get the word out there about your new blog post?

• Tweet multiple times, at different times of the day
• Share it on LinkedIn. If you’re in LinkedIn groups that your target audience is in, share your post in those groups
• Share the post on other social media platforms, such as Google+, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, etc.
• Share your post with your email list
• Get everyone in your team to share the content on their social media. This will help to broaden the outreach

These are just some of the strategies you can use so that your post gets the attention it deserves.

Promoting your blog post on social media can also be time-consuming. This is why it’s important to learn how to manage social media while also running your business.

5. Engage in the Comments Section

Business blogs are great because you have the ability to engage with your target audience. They can instantly tell you what they like and what they don’t like.

Engaging with your readers includes thanking them for reading and answering some of their questions. The whole point here is to help them know that they can always reach out to you (your company), that you’re there, and that you care.

Dedicating some time to engage in your comments section will help you to understand your customers better and know what they respond to. This will help you not only in your content creation but in how you move forward as a company or organization.

Analyze, Tweak, and Repeat

It’s important to remember that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. You’re unlikely to receive the instant traffic you want from your first blog post. But that’s okay! That’s why it’s important to pay attention to your stats so that you know what’s working and what isn’t.

Analyze your stats to see what type of blog posts are getting the most attention and most comments and shares. Try to create more content like that. Also, pay attention to the lengths of your blog posts. Are your longer or shorter posts performing better?

You can also try to experiment by not only adding still images but maybe GIFs or videos.

Every time you try something new, pay attention to the stats and how your audience responds to it.

Armed with your stats, you’ll be able to tweak what you need to and repeat the whole process again, but with more chances of a better result.

Yes, I know it’s time-consuming, but remember those stats I mentioned in the beginning. More traffic and leads! Your company is worth it. You are worth it.

Remember to subscribe to learn more about how to create great online content for your company.