1. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic
A good blog that is optimized for what your personas are searching for will bring new and qualified traffic to your website. As we all know, that is one of the biggest hurdles that many businesses face. Reach potential customers that may have never heard of your business, product, or service through an effective blog!
2. Become a Thought Leader
Routinely blogging, and blogging well, will help establish your business as a thought leader in your industry. People obviously like doing business with companies that appear to be leaders in their industry. We recommend blogging 2-5 times per week to help establish your business as a thought leader.
3. Turn Strangers into Leads
It's great to get traffic to your website, even better to get targeted traffic to your site, but if you're not capturing information from your visitors, they're unlikely to ever become a lead. EVERY blog post should include a call-to-action at the end that allows your readers to become leads. This takes an understanding of who (which persona) is likely reading your blog, what they're looking for, and what they may also be interested in. Content offers such as eBooks, whitepapers, videos, etc. that your reader will find useful in exchange for information are great ways to convert visitors to leads.
4. Search Engine Optimization
Search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo LOVE blogs and love consistent and frequent blogs even more. Taking time to understand which keyword(s) your blog is targeting, optimizing for that keyword and consistently providing content will help establish your business as an authority in the eyes of these search engines and help your ranking in search results. Everthing else being equal, a business that blogs twice per week consistently will rank higher than a business that blogs only once in a while.
TIP: Make sure every post is more than 300 words and that you're utilizing your focused keyword in your blog title, url, and throughout your blog post.
5. Be Helpful
This one is overlooked by many when blogging for business. Many businesses worry about giving up too much information that their competitors may steal or even that their potential customers may try to do it on their own. It's important to remember everyone has competition and very little is secret. You cannot live in fear of your competitors getting your information. And if someone is looking for information on how to do something on their own, they're probably not a great lead anyway. Aim to always be helpful and provide useful information. By doing so, you will create a blog that is frequently read and creates consistent leads.
TIP: Lists are highly recommended as they're easier to read and skim and break up your content well.
One final TIP: Do your keyword research and find some of your low hanging fruit (low competition, high search volume) and then build your blog posts around those keywords. It may seem a little backwards, but it's a great way to create a successful blog post.
Blogging should be part of every business' marketing plan, but there has to be a real committment to it. It's not something that can be done once in a while and be effective. Hire someone to do it, spread it out amongst your team, invite guest bloggers, and/or schedule time in your calendar each week to set yourself up for success.
Now that you're (hopefully) committed to blogging, learn how blogging fits into a successful inbound marketing campaign! Did you know that inbound marketing leads cost on average 61% LESS than outbound leads? [HubSpot] Learn more below!
