So you started a business blog. Now what? As we’ve mentioned in the past, businesses with blogs get more leads. A blog isn’t a set-it-and-forget it endeavor, however. To make it successful, you have to keep your blog updated with relevant content and promote those posts effectively. Start by following these business blogging best practices.
The Top 3 Business Blogging Best Practices
1. Post Regularly
It’s not uncommon to go through the effort of creating a blog only to update it so infrequently that your followers lose interest. How often is “often enough” when it comes to blogging? There’s no one answer, but the numbers reveal that the more frequently your company updates its blog, the more traffic and leads you’ll get. HubSpot found that companies that publish 16 or more blog posts a month get 3.5 times more traffic and 4.5 more leads than companies that only publish one post a week.
How do you generate enough material to publish four blog posts a week? First, keep in mind that every blog post doesn’t need to be a feature-length article. Short posts and updates work well to keep your followers educated, entertained, and engaged. Use the “Is It For Us or For Them?” Challenge to make sure that every post is fine-tuned to give potential clients the kind of content they want. You can also fill your posts with visual content such as videos and infographics to communicate with your audience in a less-wordy way.
2. Create an Editorial Calendar
The next step is to create an editorial calendar. According to Curata, 69 percent of companies use editorial calendars to help generate content ideas and schedule the development of articles to ensure they’re delivered in a consistent and timely manner.
You’ll build your company’s editorial calendar around several different topic categories that potential leads would want to know about. As you create these topic “clusters” or “buckets,” focus in on keywords that will help you optimize your blog posts for search engines.
Next, think of topics that can go into these various clusters or buckets. This will give you a good foundation to start on — a diverse list of subjects to discuss with your target audience.
Finally, lay out a calendar and plan which topics you’ll post and when. Remember to also include posts that are relevant to important calendar dates (a big industry conference, new product release, or holidays, for instance). You’ll add topics over time, based on questions and comments from your audience, including those you receive through social media and email.
3. Promote Your Posts
One of the best things about blogging vs. traditional advertising is that you don’t have to put up a post and sit back and wait for people to find it. You can – and should – actively seek out your blog audience by connecting your blogging and email marketing, as well as promoting your posts on social media.
Be sure to use your email marketing tools to send your blog posts to your contact list. When you do this, you take advantage of a ready-made audience that has already expressed an interest in your company, products, or services.
Similarly, focusing on social media will put your company’s latest blog posts in front of an audience of your company’s followers. Social media also has the added advantage of the share button — if readers like your content, they will share it with their followers and expand your reach. As people begin sharing and interacting with your posts, the discussions will inspire new topics for articles addressing questions potential buyers have regarding your company, industry, expertise and more.
Now, Go Get the Ball Rolling!
Creating a blog, designing an editorial calendar, and posting regularly may sound like it will take a herculean effort to execute. Frankly, if blogging four times a week isn’t feasible for you, that’s okay; commit to what you can consistently do. Once you get started, the process will move along faster and more smoothly and you can increase your frequency.
By following these business blogging best practices to create an effective blogging strategy, you’ll not only increase interaction with your current audience, you’ll help boost your SEO, generating more looks, more leads, and more sales.
Need help developing a business blog? Contact us today!
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