You may have heard that having a blog for your business can help drive traffic to your site and get more customers, but that doesn’t mean you know exactly where to start. You’re already an expert on your business, so here are a few tips that can help you create a great blog for your business.
Make Your Blog Roll Accessible
The first step to having a good blog for your business is to add a blog roll to your business’ website. Depending on the way your website is set up there will be different ways to set it up, so make sure to look up how to set it up. The key is to make sure that there is a link to it somewhere easily accessible on your site. If not, it will make your posts more difficult for customers to find.
Research Keywords
One of the main reasons that many businesses have a blog is to help with SEO, or search engine optimization. When you’re optimizing your blog for a search engine, you’ll want to target specific keywords that someone would be searching to find your business. If you’re running a flower shop in Memphis, one of your keywords might be “flowers in Memphis” or “valentine’s flowers Memphis.” There are more specific ways to do keyword research, and you can look those up to help you find the best keywords for your business.
Once you have your keywords, you should plan on using them in your blog posts. Try to have one main keyword that you use three or more times in your post as well as in the title. Your other keywords you can use but don’t have to target as much. Alternate through what keyword is the main keyword for your posts to help target all of your keywords over time.
Know Your Customer-Base
When you’re creating content, you want to think about who you think will be reading your posts. If you have an idea of who your customer base is already, then you’re on the right track to knowing who you’re writing content for. For example, if you’re selling clothes with jokes that people who play popular video games would get, you might want to write content that targets people who play a certain game, like Minecraft. Minecraft has sold over 200 million copies, so there isn’t one thing that every person who plays it has in common in terms of age, nationality, or other basic information, but all of them will be interested in Minecraft. You could make a post that relates to a recent game update or a certain server and put a link to the page on your website that has your Minecraft-related designs on it. Linking to an internal page on your website via your main keyword is a good practice to adopt in general on your business’s blog.
Create Quality Content
Making quality content that is relevant to both your customers, your business, and your keywords will become easier the more practice that you have. If you’re running a jewelry store and you want to create relevant content about the sterling silver designs that you’re coming out with, you can make a blog post about the history of silver jewelry and talk about how the material has been used to create jewelry for over six thousand years.
Another great way to get ideas for good content for your blog is by addressing questions that you usually get from your clients. For example, if you’re a roofing business, you can create content about why it’s important to get regular roof inspections or how to know it’s time to replace your roof. This can help you because not only will you have an organized and already thought-out answer to the questions you usually get, but you also have content that can attract other people to your site, which can lead to future sales.
Be Consistent
You don’t have to be posting a blog every day, but you should try to have some consistency when it comes to your posting schedule. One post a week or even once every other week is perfectly fine, but try not to post too many blogs all at once and then not post for weeks at a time. If you only have time around the middle of the month to write blog posts, schedule them out instead of posting them all at once. This way you’ll have content to tide you over until the next time that you have time to write more posts.
Include Pictures and Videos
When you’re posting content, you should try to include a visual component to your blog posts. If you are using images, make sure that you have complete permission to be posting them and that you aren’t posting any copyrighted images — posting an image that you don’t own can mean thousands of dollars in fine and legal fees. A safer path is to embed relevant videos into your post so that you have a visual aspect and can also increase the amount of time that people spend on your website.
Use E-mail and Text Lists
If you have an email or text list for your business, you can use it as a way to get the word out about new blog posts. If you have a posting schedule, it can make it easier to remember to alert your customers of the new content that is posted on your blog. If you only have an email list, it’s a good idea to start an SMS list as well since the click-through rate is four times higher than email.
Starting a blog is a great way to help the SEO of your business’ website, and although it can be hard to know where to start, once you get started it will be easier. Remember to create content that you think your customers will want to read and you’ll be on the right track to having a high-quality blog for your business.
What kind of business are you making a blog for? Let us know in the comments!
