Four steps to making your business blog successful

Business

Want to start a blog for your business but don’t know how? Read four simple steps you need to take to make it successful. 

A blog can add some serious clout to your business – if done correctly. However, if your site (and especially your blog) isn’t getting the response you were expecting, it may need a bit of TLC.

It might be time to see things from a different angle and realise the full potential of your blog’s power. With the right approach, success can be yours – if you’re up for a bit of graft.

Four steps to making your business blog successful

Overnight blogging success is very rare, and with the amount of businesses out there competing for attention you need to persevere. To help you get started Manchester-based content marketing specialists Tecmark share four simple steps.

1) Work out your niche

While it’s nice to have a blog that covers your business, whether it’s retail, finance or education, think about how many other websites there are out there supplying the same thing. Then consider what it is your business really specialises in.

If you run a catering business, for example, you could hone in on specialising in great food for all types of dietary requirements – sharing great gluten-free recipes or reports on how you catered for a vegetarian wedding.

You could work in a business that has a printing press that specialises in high quality giclee printing – perfect for reproducing artwork, and a valuable resource for artists.

Filling a niche will mean you are easily identifiable to tens – even hundreds – of thousands of people who are after precisely what you offer. Explore your passions and your strengths and let everyone know about them.

2) Understand who your reader is

Try and picture that person reading your business blog. Are they on their laptop relaxing at home? Reading it on their mobile on the commute home? Are they taking five minutes out of their day from cleaning up and looking after kids?

Have an idea who your business is aimed at and who you’re writing for. It might be handy to have a customer avatar – what their lifestyle is like, what makes them laugh, what annoys them, what interests them. By keeping to within this profile, you stay on brand and have a consistency throughout your whole blog.

3) Get as much reach as possible

Simply writing your blog and pressing ‘publish’ isn’t going to attract hordes of fans to your site. To ensure that your business’s blog is seen by as many eyeballs as possible, it would be beneficial to do some simple keyword research before diving straight in.

Keyword research will help find relevant terms or phrases that people search for related to your chosen topic. It is helpful to incorporate a few of the most popular phrases throughout your blog enhancing the chances of it being seen by the relevant audience.

The Moz Keyword Explorer is a simple tool to use that will provide you with a plethora of search results, ordered in relevance. Keep in mind that just placing a keyword into your blog doesn’t mean your job is done. You need to make sure that your blog still flows nicely and makes perfect sense.

4) Use social media

Social media is brilliant for reaching a lot of people. By having accounts on different channels, you’re building an extension for your business.

If your blog is visual (particularly if you’re in retail, or producing art etc), then Instagram – with their loyal followers – is brilliant. If you’re providing opinion, Twitter and their very effective ‘retweet’ function should be implemented. If you’re writing blogs that warrant discussion or debate, use Facebook and find out how ‘shares’ can build that social media following up.

There are plenty more platforms – these three are just some of the most popular.

Need more business blog advice?

You can read more tips to help you write and share a blog your customers will love in these articles:

Tecmark are Manchester-based content marketing specialists. Visit their website to find out how they build digital assets, drive traffic and influence those visitors to convert.