Creating a blog for your business offers an opportunity to expand marketing strategy. A blog helps you build an audience of prospective customers, increase industry reputation, and convert more sales. Here’s a brief overview of how to create a blog for your business.
Choose a Platform and Hosting
Build your blog using WordPress. This free platform provides you with templates, themes, and free hosting through the WordPress site. Free hosting isn’t ideal for a business, but a self-hosted solution only costs a few Dollars a month. Watch a tutorial and get started, it’s possible to get your blog ready in a few hours.
Research Your Niche
Use Google Analytics to identify tending keywords in your niche. Target these keywords in every blog post you publish. Add them to the meta-descriptions and titles of your blog posts. Analyze your sources of traffic and identify areas for improvement, are you getting enough traffic from social media and industry authority sites?
Tools for Your Blog
WordPress offers plug-ins for added functionality on your blog. If you don’t like the standard templates on offer, you can choose a customized template and theme for a small fee. Consider purchasing the SEO tools that allow you to target keywords and create meta- descriptions.
WordPress Plug-ins even cover e-commerce functionality, allowing you to convert traffic directly from your blog. When it comes time to promote your blog, use a free scheduling tool like HootSuite to push your content through multiple channels.
Create Compelling Content
“On the internet, content is king.” Bill Gates made this statement to emphasize the importance of creating quality content. No-one wants to read dry, boring content that’s not relevant to their interests. Take your time with every post and remember to include videos and images with your text.
The primary rule for creating excellent content is quality over quantity. Every post published on your blog must produce as much engagement with your market as possible.
Promote Your Content on Social
After publishing your first post, promote it through your social media channels to your followers. Linkedin, Facebook, and Twitter provide a significant source of traffic to your website. Once your post is live on your site, drop the link in as many groups as possible on your social platforms.
Create engagement with micro-influencers in your niche and ask them to critique your posts. Some influencers charge a small fee to promote your post to their following, but the results are well worth the investment.
Manage Your Engagement
After promoting your post on social, it’s time to maximize the response to your engagement strategy. Check your blog comments section every other day and reply to any genuine questions. Try to offer solutions to people’s problems and be thoughtful with every reply. Direct further questions to your customer service department, or move the conversation over to social media.
Spam is an issue with blog comment sections. Ensure that you remove any spam links from your comments and blacklist the senders.
Monitor Traffic
Before you write any post, take the time to analyze your Google Analytics report. Look for your sources of traffic and ensure that you see growth from all sources; social, authority sites, and industry influencers. Adjust your strategy to focus on the areas where you are weak.
Your traffic should grow organically with every blog post you publish. Ensure that your site is capable of handling an increasing volume of traffic.
Monetize Your Site
Persistence pays off. Eventually, your blog will drive a steady stream of traffic to your site with every post that you publish. Analyze your competitors and when your traffic exceeds theirs, your presented with further opportunities to secure your position as the industry leader or a top influencer.
Monetize your site through guest posts. Accept writing from others in exchange for a fee and the opportunity to place their link in the guest post. Always review any guest post content for quality and relevance before publishing it to your blog.
Wrapping Up
Adding a blog to your online efforts is an excellent way to grow the reach of your business and capture the attention of your target market. Take action and get started today.
