When you first envisioned your business idea, or even your first website, how much time did you spend thinking about your business blog?
A blog is one of the most important parts of your digital marketing efforts.
Blogging can help improve how your website ranks in search results and can help attract new visitors. Like any content marketing effort, though, you can’t just blog for the sake of it – it needs to be well thought-out and suitable for your business. The beauty of a business blog is that you can adapt it to serve whatever strategy you choose, whether its brand or product awareness, customer acquisition, or increasing traffic to your website. You can use your business blog for sharing educational content and tutorials, thought leadership articles, press releases, and even letters from your CEO. There are no limits to what you can do.
In this article, we’ll explain why you need one and how to get started, with a few tips from industry experts to keep your readers coming back for more.
An introduction to business blogs
Most people still think of blogging as an online diary, posted by anyone with a website. This isn’t the case anymore – blogs are a major part of business marketing and have been for some time. A business blog is a channel where you can share information about your business, as well as insights and perspectives related to your products, services, and industry.
Blogging is an essential part of content marketing. It involves using your blog to enhance the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your website and help attract new visitors.
The goal is that once potential customers have found your website, your content will convince them that you’re a trusted expert in the field. As a consequence, they’ll be more likely to take key actions such as signing up for your newsletter, sharing an article, or making a purchase.Despite the ever-changing online landscape, this technique remains effective and relevant. Surprisingly, the rise of social media has actually helped, rather than hurt, blogging. Why? Because social platforms provide an additional outlet for sharing blog posts and promote user engagement.
How a blog benefits your business
Blogs serve several purposes. First, they’re an effective SEO tool for businesses of all sizes. Every time you publish a new post or update an existing one, it sends a signal to Google (and other search engines) letting them know your site is active.
It’s not just about SEO, though. Some additional benefits of blogging for your business include:
- Additional content for your social media accounts, which gives you another way to funnel visitors to your site.
- Customer creation through a well-placed Call To Action (CTA).
- Established authority in your area of expertise. When you publish content that’s accurate and useful, your readers will come to see you as knowledgeable and dependable.
The best part is that your existing blog content will continue to work for you while you’re busy focusing on other areas of business. Deciding to publish a post is just the beginning – blogs continue to help drive traffic and connect you with customers well into the future.
There is a lot of fluff advice out there regarding publishing blog content, like publish consistently and just write amazing content, and the readers will come. If this is you, you will be on a hamster wheel spinning for months
It’s not fun, and it’s not easy, but if you want to gain organic traffic to your business blog, get the word out there that you exist.
The importance of engagement in blogging
‘Engagement’ is a popular word that gets thrown around a lot in the marketing world – and for good reason. It is the key to growing a successful business blog.
Spend 20% of your time and effort on creating enriching content – spend the remaining 80% going all out on promoting that piece of content
Engagement refers to how readers interact with your posts, and it comes in many forms, including:
- Reading the entire post (or at least long enough to get to the CTA)
- Clicking on the CTA
- Sharing the post on their platforms
- Leaving or responding to comments
- Subscribing to your newsletter
The more people engage with your content, the more visitors you can attract via social shares and search engines. It’s free advertising for your business, and it’s more genuine as it’s shared by your customers.
Blogging is the bridge between you and your customer. This bridge is built on strong content that connects with your audience, speaks to their desires, and caters for their needs. It is supported by pillars that reinforce its strength, like high-quality design and imagery, a strong voice, your brand personality, and consistency. These elements affirm your credibility. If you approach a blog in this manner rather than just broadcasting your needs and agenda, you will soon acquire a loyal following who come to you when they need assistance because they trust you.
How the right web hosting can boost your blog
Every web hosting provider will have different plans that cater to different needs. If your blog is going to play an important part in your digital marketing efforts, you’re probably expecting it to receive a lot of traffic.
When choosing a web hosting provider for your website, look for the following:
- Unlimited traffic allowance
- Generous storage (for all those images and video you’ll be posting)
- Security, like a free SSL certificate
- Stability and uptime
- Proven support (You can check review sites like Hello Peter to establish this)
At the end of the day, you want your blog to be accessible, reliable and able to manage the demands you place on it. Great web hosting provides this solid foundation for you.
How WordPress and Yoast SEO can help you build an engaging business blog
WordPress is a powerful Content Management System (CMS) that makes creating content easy. Interestingly, WordPress was originally designed specifically for blogging. Creating and publishing a post is simple, and there are many built-in tools to enhance the experience.
More importantly, WordPress is highly customisable. The plugin system enables you to add a huge variety of features to your site to encourage engagement, boost SEO, and optimise content.
Managed WordPress Hosting combines the usability of WordPress with the benefits of web hosting to make life for busy business owners simple. It also features professionally-designed Starter Sites with existing pages and content to help you get your business blog up and running quickly.
Yoast SEO is one of the more popular plugins for this purpose:
Yoast provides suggestions for improving the readability of your blog posts while you’re writing them. It also offers powerful features for enhancing SEO and engagement: suggestions for other posts you could link to and the option to preview what your post will look like when shared on social platforms.
If you’re looking for ways to improve SEO and attract new visitors to your business, a business blog could be the right choice for you. Not only is it one of the best ways to boost your search rankings, but it can also enhance your brand’s image and build authority and trust among customers.Whether you’re creating a business blog for the first time or looking for ways to streamline your efforts, we hope these tips have helped you enhance your business blogging.
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