16 Sep Does Your Business Need a Blog?

If you want to grow your online presence, then blogging can move your digital journey in the right direction. A blog on your website can increase web traffic, improve your SEO strategy, boost conversions and help establish your brand voice. Businesses of all sizes can benefit in many ways from starting a blog. Blogging is a key pillar of content marketing and search engine optimization. 

Does your business need a blog? The answer is an emphatic yes!

Let’s take a closer look at how your business can benefit from having a blog or how you can improve your blog if you already have one! Effective blogging is achieved by understanding how blogging can build your audience, learning how to establish your brand by telling a story, and knowing the right way to get started.

Blogs Can Build Your Audience

If you have a website, you naturally want people to visit it. Web traffic benefits both your search engine rankings and your overall business conversions. Regularly publishing blog posts can help improve your website’s visibility and improve your web traffic. According to HubSpot, businesses that keep a consistent blog see 55% more website visitors than businesses without one. Your business needs a blog to grow your audience through organic web traffic.

When blogging, it’s important to make sure your content has the right focus for your business and audience, but that’s not all you need to be doing. SEO practices are crucial to creating a successful blog that users will find online. With SEO, you can make sure your content is optimized for making sure your target audience is finding your blog through search, and you can make sure that you are posting the most relevant content your audience wants to read right now based on keyword and industry research. You can boost the reach of your blog content even further by sharing your blog posts on social media. Customers can also engage with your fantastic blog content by sharing it on their own social media accounts with the help of social media sharing buttons, thus further expanding your reach and growing your audience.

Above all, make sure the content that you’re writing and sharing is meeting your target audience’s needs and interests. Seek to both entertain and provide significant value with every blog post you write and publish. If the content is no good, visitors simply won’t be interested.

Tell Your Story

So, how do you make your blog content engaging? You need to tell the story of your brand. This doesn’t mean you should always be covering the history of your business, but rather that every blog post needs to drive the mission and ongoing story of your brand how it uniquely serves your customers or lives up to your core values. This is called branding, and it’s an ongoing process every business should always be developing.

Blogging helps your business establish your brand identity by emotionally connecting and engaging with your audience. Such elements as language use and visual theming can make your blog a place for your brand voice to shine and feel like a living entity online. And, as a living entity, your blog can position your business as an industry expert. Customers value the thoughts and opinions of those close to them, and brands that feel real will hold similar weight to the individuals your target audience also highly regard. Blogging about relevant news, products and topics in your industry will help your brand stand out, leading to an increase of trust in your business from your audience and a correlating increase in sales and customer loyalty.

Tell the story of your brand in relation to your industry, mission, values and how you serve your customers with not only your products and services, but also the advice and expert knowledge your business is committed to sharing with them through your blog!  

How to Get Started

Now that we’ve covered why your business needs a blog, you may be wondering, “How do I even get started?” Here’s what you need to know about creating a business blog:

• Research your competition — First, see what your competitors and other businesses in your industry when it comes to their blogs. This gives you a chance to see what they are doing right and how your own blog can improve on their strategies. Take note of blog post lengths, overall web traffic and the keywords they use. Of course, use all of these elements as inspiration, not for copying.
• Identify your target audience — Outline your target audience in terms of demographics, interests, values and how they even use the internet. Every piece of blog content you write should be directly connecting with this outlined target audience, otherwise no one will read or engage with your blog.
• Make sure you have a domain name — A domain name is your website address. If you already have a website, you can easily add a blog section to it without needing to create a whole new website. If you’re just getting started, however, you’ll need this step done before posting any blogs.
• Select your blogging platform — Your current website will likely have the ability to enable blog posts. If it doesn’t, you can choose a blogging platform or website builder like WordPress to add on to your website as an extension. 
• Begin writing — After your website and your blog section is all set up, you can start doing the actual writing! Be sure to use relevant keywords, appropriate subheadings, write an appropriate length for your content and audience, and optimize your images.

 

Successful blog writing isn’t as simple as it may seem, however. It’s both an art and a science. You need to blog with a purpose, or else your blog won’t engage readers or feel cohesive. Set goals for your blog that directly connect to your overall business objectives. This could be increasing specific conversions, boosting sales, or simply generating more web traffic to raise brand awareness. Make sure every blog includes a relevant call-to-action, or CTA, that directly connects each post to your desired outcomes.

Other blog writing techniques to be aware of include sticking to a schedule, researching and using the right keywords, including visuals, and making full use of headings and subheadings. Keeping a consistent schedule will boost both your SEO, as Google’s algorithm gives preference to regularly updated websites, and your audience engagement. Use tools like SEMrush and Google Keyword Planner to make sure you’re using the right keywords. Visuals like photos, GIFs and videos make your content easier to read, but they can also boost your SEO if tagged with the right keywords in the image alt tags. When it comes to headings, make sure they use the proper tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) so that they will be easier to read for audiences and easier for Google and other search engines to understand.

Finally, don’t forget to monitor your blog’s performance. You can check out your blog’s performance on Google Analytics. This can help you improve your blog’s performance by seeing clear data about what seems to be working and what you might need to change in your blog strategy.

No Time to Blog? Not Sure How to Blog? We Can Help!

If reading all that you need to do to have a successful blog makes your brain hurt, there’s no need to worry. Blogging for your business isn’t a task you need to take up alone! Our content writers, SEO specialists and overall expert digital marketers from Virtual Stacks Systems UK are here to help. As part of our SEO services, our team will work to create a consistent, engaging and fully optimized blog that will build your brand image, boost your web presence and truly connect with your audience. Contact us today to learn more about our digital marketing services, including blog content and SEO.