Importance of Blogging in a Business

How useful is a blog for business? And is it worth keeping one at all? The opinions of entrepreneurs are divided. Some believe that it is a waste of time and resources. Others are convinced that the benefits of this marketing tool are simply enormous.

To be fair, it should be said that those in favor are in the absolute majority. A content marketing strategy cannot be considered fully thought out without creating a special blog, attracting traffic to the company's website, and actively working on its reputation.

This article will discuss the importance of blogging in a business.

Business Benefits of Blogging

The main purpose of blogging is to make your company more recognizable. Most people are familiar with blogs such as Neil Patel and HubSpot, which have contributed a lot to the business development of their owners. These are quite vivid examples of such content. Not every company can organize something similar, but even a small blog can affect the growth of the business.

In this case, the blog does not directly lead to increased sales. According to Demand Gen Report, 44% of buyers typically consume three to five pieces of content before engaging with a vendor. That is, the blog makes the audience more loyal and pays for itself even if you need to invest in content creation. This is especially true for companies that are engaged in the realization of expensive goods and services.

The second important reason to start a blog is the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise. This is especially true for those who offer themselves as specialists (stylists, designers, fitness trainers, teachers, etc.) whose business revolves around selling their knowledge and skills. 

In this case, a personal business blog aims to show the target audience your competence, thereby awakening in them the desire to apply for a service. In such a situation, it is important to post content relevant to your audience's interests and consider its complexity and depth.

In addition, a blog is a good tool for getting traffic from search engines to your website. People use search engines to find information about a product or the way to buy it in the most favorable and easy way. This way, they can visit the blog and learn about your product or services.

Creating useful and marketing-competent content can increase the audience's loyalty to your product and company.

Personal and Corporate Business Blogs

There are 2 main groups of blogs: personal and corporate.

A personal business blog is a platform for promoting one's services. In this case, the person is a kind of brand. Blogging is completely under the control of the owner. He or she comes up with content and ways of promotion.

A corporate blog belongs to the company. It is needed to form its image, attract customers and partners, and increase audience loyalty to the brand. Several specialists can create blog content using special tools: copywriter, editor, SEO specialist, and designer. The staff depends on the size of the company itself.

3 Situations when a Company Must have a Blog

Despite the great usefulness of blogs, there are cases when their maintenance makes no sense, as the costs are not justified and time is wasted. And vice versa, sometimes, a blog becomes a powerful promotional tool:

• Company offers a complex product where it is necessary to demonstrate its expert level. We are talking primarily about the B2B industry, but B2C can also be concerned. Advertising agencies are a great example. They need to show their competence to attract partners.
• Company needs to work on its image. This is especially true for those who have just entered the market and want to form a positive attitude toward themselves. It is important for an enterprise to be talked about, and a blog will cope well with this task.
• You need to create a community of customers who are loyal to the brand. Often this need is related to a company operating in several areas at once. As a result, it needs loyal clients who can help combat possible negative customer reactions.

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7 steps to create a blog for your business

For a blog to be of real benefit, you need to know the rules for creating and maintaining it. Let's look at the 7 basic steps of creating a blog for any business.

1. Define your goals
2. Choose the right platform
3. Research your audience
4. Devise a content strategy
5. Decide on a topic for your blog
6. Define the types of content
7. Constantly promote your blog

Let’s learn how to follow each one of these in greater detail-

1. Define your goals

You need to realize that a blog is a long-term commitment. You must invest your resources: money, time, and energy. At the same time, you will have to maintain it continuously because any downtime threatens oblivion. The competition is too great. It makes sense to ask yourself:

• What can be a useful blog in your industry?
• What do you want to get from it?
• What valuable information can your audience get from it?

A company may have different goals: to create and develop new business or to increase sales and the number of customers. Defining the goal as clearly as possible and specifying it in the tasks is important. Blog content depends on your goals. Everything you write about or make videos about should correlate with your main plan. You should also employ the right tools to track your goals and make sure you’re progressing in the right direction.

2. Choose the right platform

It is essential to choose the right platform for blogging. To do this, you need to understand where your target audience is concentrated and what content they are most interested in. You can choose Medium, Hackernoon, or your own website for blogging.

3. Research your audience

It's important to understand who your potential customer is, what they are interested in, and what their needs are. You cannot successfully blog or develop your business without knowing these basic things. The most important thing in blogging is to give your audience the information they want or are interested in. At the same time, you should realize that it is almost unrealistic to please absolutely everyone, so it is better to focus on a specific layer of people.

Your company may sell goods or services designed for a wide range of users. In this case, the presentation of information should be relatively simple and accessible to representatives of different social groups. If you are engaged in something highly specialized, try to place expert materials in the blog that may be interesting to professionals.

4. Devise a content strategy

A blog for business will be successful if you have a clear strategy for its development and a content plan. Imagine your customer. Think about:

• Who are they?
• What do they do?
• What would they be interested in reading and learning about?
• What problems are they concerned about?
• Whether you can help solve their problem?

The next step is to create a list of words that this person can use to search the internet. These keywords should be used when writing your blog text. And here, it is important not to include them in the text for SEO promotion mechanically. Your task is to create content that the client will study with interest and pleasure and perhaps share in their social networks.

Of course, the strategy of blog development and its content plan should be within the framework of the general marketing strategy of the company. If you actively use email marketing, your blog strategy should complement it and bring value to your subscribers.

It is important to determine the frequency of content posting. Much depends on its essence, depth, and, of course, on the specifics of the blog's platform. Focus on the industry you work in to develop an adequate posting schedule.

A blog can be run by a specially trained person or a group of qualified people. This is true for companies with a big staff and personal blogs: many individual entrepreneurs promoting their services have assistants. It is quite normal to delegate some of the duties to professionals. It is important to find people who understand the blog's specifics and know what content will be relevant and interesting to the public. After all, your reputation, business, and money are at stake.

The next step is to create an editorial calendar. Ideally, you should plan your content for several months in advance.

If you do not provide information on time, the audience will quickly find a substitute for your blog. So you need to consider publications in advance to avoid rushing in search of new ideas.

Do not be afraid of changes in the situation because if you have a content plan for a long period, there is time to maneuver and make adjustments. This is very important, as the blog should be relevant and correspond to the current moment and the audience's interests. However, some topics are always on the agenda. They should not be ignored either.

5. Decide on a topic of your blog

When looking for a topic for your business blog, consider these 3 options below.

• Specifics

In this case, the blog topic and content are directly related to the specifics of the business. For example, an advertising agency will only write about advertising and marketing.

• Near-targeted approach

This approach suggests blogging on various topics that can be indirectly related to your business, not just narrowly focused ones. Let's take the same example - an advertising agency. With this approach, you can write not only about marketing but also about business in general.

• Anything

The blog's subject matter, in this case, is quite extensive. You can write about anything. The main thing is not to forget that the content should interest people. For example, an advertising and marketing specialist can write about the economic situation in the country.

6. Define the types of content

In this case, we do not mean dividing content into entertainment, informational, and selling. We are talking about its types, which should always be present in a blog, no matter its main topic. Types of content:

• Case study- Such material is usually based on real stories and client experience. For example, you can mention a problem that your client had to face and tell about how you suggested solving it and how it ended.
• Customer testimonials- A real person's story about a company's product or customer testimonials can make any business blog more interesting. Reviews of different formats make it more lively.
• Answers to questions- In addition to being useful content for your audience, it's also a great way to boost SEO. Use the question words "how much", "how", "why", and "what" in the title of the article. These are the most common words people type into search engines.
• Lists- Users like it when content is presented as a list because it is convenient to perceive and memorize. Remember all those "10 ways how to..." or "15 popular...".
• Tips and advice- They are also popular among blog readers because they carry a personal touch and are positively perceived by people.
• Statistics- Such content, presented in the form of graphs and charts, is quite interesting to study, especially for those who are really interested in the blog's subject. You can thus tell about the growth of your business or the number of satisfied customers.

In your blog, you can post any types of content you want.

7. Constantly promote your blog

Today, writing exciting content is not enough for the audience to find you. The competition is so great that you must use maximum ways to promote your content. Here are some of the most popular ways to increase the popularity of your blog:

• Utilize all the features of social media
• Attach a link to your blog to your signature in email messages
• Use keywords
• Use popular hashtags that match the topic of the post and blog
• Start headlines with numbers
• Link to earlier posts

When the blog is ready and launched, you need to evaluate the results of your work constantly. It is important to track who makes up its audience, how these people get to the blog, and whether they like the content. Numerous analytics services can help you gather this information. Knowing all the data, you can work to promote the blog and business in general in the right direction.

Conclusion

If it is necessary to attract new readers to the blog, you should emphasize SEO, track the number of views, traffic from search engines, as well as the % of new users.

If there is a goal to increase sales, you should focus on how much time the user spends on average in the blog, how many pages/posts he views per visit, and what is the traffic from other sites.

If a business blog is community-oriented, tracking repeat visits, user comments, subscriptions, and links from social networks is important.

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