Even though blogging has been around since the beginning of the internet, these days, blogging for businesses has become a staple for most digital marketing strategists. Business blogging is kind of like the modern-day phone-book – and you’re seriously missing out if you haven’t started blogging for your business yet. Blogging is probably something your competitors are doing, so you should get started right away!
In this blog post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know about blogging for business so that you can get started straight away! This includes some of the benefits of starting a business blog, things to consider along the way, potential blog topic ideas and a quick-start guide.
Why you should think about starting a small business blog
As a small business, you need to get your name out there! Starting a business blog can act as your every own broadcasting platform for things related to your business. You can talk directly to your potential customers and show them what your business is all about and what it can do for them.
We said ‘show’ and not ‘sell’ directly to your audience for a reason. By teaching instead of preaching, you display your brand as more trustworthy and relevant to your visitors than sales content would be. You’ll also start to position yourself as an authoritative business in your field, with oodles of knowledge to share!
It’s all about increasing your brand awareness
Brand awareness is something you can gain from blog-posting, and is a crucial part of marketing. Through your blog, you allow your followers to see a personal and professional side of your business at the same time. A great example of this is a wedding photographers blog – it can show off their specific photography style while allowing a touch of their personality to shine through.
Taking time out to educate people about your business shows that you have placed yourself in your customer’s shoes and have prepared for any questions they may have. It also means that you understand who your customers are and what some of their personality traits may be like. Blogging also gives readers an idea of your standards, business character, message and tone of your company.
Blogging for businesses also gives you the chance to answer common questions so that you only create one response. You can easily refer to your prior response with a link to your blog in your conversations. This is especially useful for customer service or sales representatives who often need to answer customers’ questions, not to mention simply being helpful and honest.
Don’t forget about the SEO benefits
Some of the most popular blogs will focus on keyword topics or specific long tail keywords that are relevant to your business or broader field of operation. It’s all in the name of SEO blogging!
What you should do in this case is write in-depth, personalised and well-researched pieces of content that add value to your audience and are unique in how they approach the subject involved. Making sure to optimize for SEO – but still keeping your human voice. The benefit to doing this is that you can generate traffic to your website consistently over a longer period of time.
One of the most sought-after benefits that can be gained by blogging is that is creates an opportunity for others link to your blog (read about the importance of a linking strategy).
This can create potential for viral traffic and rapid growth. Today, with many different social media and sharing platforms accessible at the click of a button, visitors can share your blog’s link on social media or email it to a friend. This can become a lucrative form of free marketing – also referred to as organic marketing.
Things to consider when blogging for small businesses
Here are some considerations to consider when starting blogging for businesses.
Keep a schedule
As a business blogger, you’ll want to continually improve the results you’re achieving. One of the easiest ways to do this is by building a content calendar. You could consider a schedule that works for you and your field, such as monthly or even a few times a week. Anything less than this may be too inconsistent.
Ultimately, it’s vital that you’re publishing high-quality content instead of pushing out quantity over quality. Read more about long-form vs short-form content.
Business Blogging 101
You might be wondering what kind of content you should be posting? Here’s a quick answer – it should be ‘evergreen’. Which means that it will remain informative with expert information that is relevant to your audience.
You won’t want to spend a lot of time and resources writing an article that becomes outdated within a few months! And if it does, make sure to keep up with re-optimizing your content to keep it fresh and relevant!
Your blog needs to stand out among competitors
It won’t be easy in the beginning, because a lot of businesses have been doing this for a long time. The key is to post actionable and relevant content for your unique audience. There’s also a lot that can be said about the importance of storytelling when it comes to blogging.
It’s a good idea to mix up your blog topics to keep things interesting for your audience. Your articles should be up-to-date about topics that your customers care about when you’re writing about your industry. If you’re doing a FAQ-type post, your article should solve a few customer pain points. If this is not thought through, you could face poor readership.
How to start blogging for businesses
You now know that you need to keep a blog going – but you may not be sure where to start, especially since you’re running a business, too.
Here are some actionable steps to get small business blogs up and running in no time!
- Choose your platform. Are you going to integrate your blog into your existing company website, or will you choose a different dedicated platform? If you don’t know anything about blogging and want to try it out without committing, WordPress is a popular option that is free to use.
- Choose a theme. This applies even if you’re making a dedicated blog page on your website. It could look different to your stock webpages, with a different layout or theme. If applicable, you’ll also need to register a domain name and purchase a hosting page if you don’t have this set up already.
- Start writing! Grab your pen and paper or laptop and make a few preliminary notes or titles. This is a good time to start planning your content schedule as previously mentioned. You could start with a few short-length blog posts before you commit to a long-form piece.
Topics to cover when starting a business blog
Here are some topics that small business blogs could start out with:
- Share your own Industry news/commentary. By providing your own opinions about issues in your industry/field, you can build up your authority among your audience. You will also be gaining some valuable SEO ranking ‘points’ in doing so. This is a great example of evergreen content, which can be updated as you see fit, and you can choose to delve deeper into a topic when necessary.
- Interview a leader in your field.
- Be honest. Showcase your failures and things you’ve learned during your business journey. It’s a fact that your audience values transparency, and they’ll appreciate you even more for sharing your story.
- Behind the scene glimpses can break up the monotony. Visitors love looking at your office/work-from-home life, and this gives you a great opportunity to put faces and qualities to your brand. Casual posts that exemplify your company’s culture and attitude, as well as eye-catching pictures, videos or even GIFs can help your brand stand out among a sea of competitors.
- FAQ/guide posts are a good starting point. These posts can be easy if you’ve already got similar content visible on your website. You could do a series of posts or tackle one particular issue in-depth. This is really useful content that can directly educate your viewers.
- Curated lists or roundups are a great way to change things up. Consider collecting a list of interesting blog posts into a weekly or monthly roundup to add value to your readers while still providing ample information to them.
- Host a competition for your blog readers, which you can market on social media and email.
- Infographics or other data-driven blog posts provide a nice method of providing information or answering questions. This is a good way to add variety to your regular blog schedule, if applicable to your business.
There is no set formula for small business blogs, so you should purely use these as a starting point! The sky is truly the limit when you’re coming up with new blog topic ideas.
Make it fun!
Blogging for small businesses can be a lot of fun if you take the time initially to set yourself up for success.
Some things we’d recommend starting with are creating a blog post calendar, brainstorming blog-post ideas and topics, setting up the technical aspects of your blog (whether it needs integration with your existing website or a standalone website) and putting fingers to keyboard as soon as you can – even if you start with a shorter blog post to first get a feel for blogging.
Do you need extra assistance with writing blogs for your business? Our SEO blog writing at Sparrow Digital can seriously boost your digital marketing strategy. Get in touch and let’s chat about how we can help you start a useful and SEO-friendly blog for your business!