Online marketing wisdom has long held that any business that is serious about its internet presence has to have itself a business blog. Whether it is on your own site, or links to your site from a third-party domain, having a blog has become something of a must for the successful business owner.
And that’s easy enough for us, the advertising agency, to tell you, but it’s not always so easy for you, the busy business owner, to wrap your head around enough to execute the practise effectively.
Two of the biggest questions businesses have of blogging are “how?” and “why?”
In this post, we’re going to focus on the “how?” and in two weeks you can come back for some insight into the “why?”
So, let’s get on with it, shall we
How Often Should You Post On Your Blog?
There is no honest answer to this question, other than “more.”
You can always blog more, and as long as the quality doesn’t slip there is no harm (and plenty of SEO benefit) in doing so.
But not everyone (re: no one at all) has the time to invest in an infinite increase of content production and, luckily, that sort of output is not necessary.
The truth is that consistent blogging is more important than frequent blogging.
Google will love you more for the regularity of your predictable, every-Wednesday, weekly posts than it will for you dumping 8 posts online – all at once, because inspiration suddenly struck – only to go on a 3 week hiatus from all things ‘blog’ because your muse went on leave.
And it’s not just about Google. If you are providing quality content that is useful to the audience you want to attract, then maintaining a regular schedule creates an expectation in that audience that is more likely to keep them prepped for your upcoming post when they know that it’s due.
At Wetpaint, for instance, we have just shifted from a weekly schedule to fortnightly blog posts. The logic being that it is better to definitely post every month than it is to maybe have a post every week.
Blogging less than once a month is almost not worth it but otherwise, as long as you develop and rigorously stick to a blogging schedule, worry more about the quality of your output than the quantity.
How Do You Get People To Visit Your Blog?
So, you’ve got a schedule, and you’re blogging every day because apparently you have a lot of spare time (or a bored in-house writer) on your hands, and…
…Now what? Just wait for the conversations to start, the blog to buzz, and the business to pour in, right?
Well, no. Not quite.
If you are diligent in maintaining and updating your blog with quality content, then, over time, the organic result will be increased traffic to your website which, as long as it is adequately optimised for conversion (which is something else you’ll want your marketing agency to look into) will lead to more business by simple virtue of the fact that more traffic means more potential leads.
That, like all good SEO, takes time though – so you have to nudge things along.
This is where content marketing comes in
You have to push your blog’s content on every available, relevant channel – particularly via the social media accounts that your brand maintains (your brand does have social media accounts, doesn’t it?). Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Your company newsletter. These are all potential sources of traffic for your blog, if you utilise them.
It is still not necessarily easy. You have to engage the interest of an audience whose attention is constantly being vied for, and you have to do it with your business as the topic.
How Do You Get People To Care About Your Blog?
There are business blogs out there that clearly don’t care too strongly about the opinions of their visitors. They exist purely to stuff keywords into, and bugger to anyone unwise enough to try and read them.
This isn’t to say that there is anything inherently wrong with utilising blog posting as a part of an SEO strategy, and therefore focusing it around targeting search engine users through the terms they’re looking for. In fact, if you’re not giving any thought at all to the SEO implications of your blog, you’re missing one of two very big points about blogging: alongside link-building it is, like, THE original SEO practice.
The other of those two points, though, is that users have to care enough about the page they land on to stay there for more than half a second, and that is what you create content for.
It can be a bit of a game of trial-and-error, and every industry (heck, every company) is different, but if there is a market for your services/products then there is a potential audience for your blog, and it’s just up to you to figure out what the overlap between your services and their interests are.
Mix up the content on your blog, and don’t limit yourself to written copy; start every article with an attention-grabbing headline and an image; post videos of interest with brief descriptions for SEO and curiosity-piquing purposes.
Get imaginative. Your blog is an extension of your business, and you want your business to be taken seriously, but that doesn’t mean your blog should be dry. Give your audience something to look forward to, do it consistently, and you’ll turn visitors into loyal followers.
How Do You Make Your Blog A Powerful Part Of Your Marketing Efforts?
If you’re providing helpful content according to a schedule that you strictly adhere to, you’re halfway there.
The other half is the difficult half; it’s all about diligence.
You have to maintain your blog. You have to keep it current, keep it fresh, and keep giving people reasons to visit it – even when it seems as though they never do.
In the immortal words of Kevin Costner, “If you build it, they will come.”
Every new blog post is a new web page on your site and, by extension, a new opportunity for potential customers to find you through the search engines. Put in the effort and the time, make your blog a part of your company’s “business as usual” and in time it will return the value you have put into it.
If you want to know more about blogging for business, and how Wetpaint can help you to implement blogging as a part of a powerful content marketing strategy, contact us today!