There has never been a better time for businesses to incorporate blogging into their marketing strategy, with nearly 4 billion people worldwide connected to the internet. Not only does blogging increase website traffic and promote your products and services, but it also aids in the development of trust with potential customers. In this post, we'll discuss the numerous advantages of blogging for business and how you can get started creating relevant content that drives inbound links and traffic to your website. Let's get this party started.
What is a Business Blog?
A business blog (b-blog) is a blog of published, informal online articles that are either included in a company's internal communications system (intranet) or made public on the Internet. Business blogs have a more personal tone than corporate websites and are primarily used for public relations. A business blog is also known as a corporate blog or corporate Weblog.
Benefits of a Business Blog
Perhaps you've wondered why your company requires a blog. Every month, over 409 million people visit WordPress and view over 20 billion pages. As a result, creating a high-quality blog can be a powerful business tool. The benefits of blogging for business include increasing clientele and sales while reinforcing your brand and identity as an industry expert. Interested? Then continue reading.
1) Demonstrate Your Company's Ability to be a Thought Leader
Sharing your area of expertise via a blog allows you to establish credibility with your audience. Writing pertinent information will benefit your readers. As a result of this simple action, you will become an industry expert or thought leader. You are halfway to gaining the customer's loyalty if you have their trust. As a result, becoming an industry leader is a huge advantage and unquestionably one of the advantages of a business blog.
2) Website Visibility
To blog for business is an excellent way to increase website traffic. You must first understand your target audience to do so. Make an effort to learn everything you can about your target market. What are the most common questions in your industry? Determine why they should be interested in what you have to say. Finally, you want to draw people in at various points along their customer journey. Following your audience research, you should conduct keyword research to identify your blog topics and remember to optimize your posts with SEO basics. Your blogs will be the first point of contact. Connect these posts to the landing pages and services in the next step.
3) Target Individual Clients
You can capture the attention of your target audience by using a business blog. Your service landing page might only appeal to people ready to buy. On the other hand, a blog will allow you to reach out to people at various stages of their customer journey and convert them into loyal customers.
4) Improve Sales
You will naturally see higher returns because you will be attracting a broader range of relevant buyers. Blogging for business allows you to get inside your customers' heads and answer their questions. Not only will you capture potential buyers' attention and engage them with your content, but you will also increase the likelihood that these page visitors will return. As a result, you will benefit from the blog and see an increase in sales.
5) Strengthen Your Brand
Image is taken from Strikingly user’s website
Blogging allows you to reinforce your company's brand. It's an excellent opportunity to showcase your company's personality. Keep your color palette, style, and tone of voice consistent throughout to achieve the best results. What is the point of building your brand with a business blog? The goal is to fortify your personal connection with your customers. Clients will become loyal to your company once they form a connection with it. Finally, blogging for business helps your company's revenue!
6) Publicity for Free
Blogging for business allows people to link back to your website, share your content, and recommend you to their friends. It is also an excellent way to attract the attention of journalists, especially if you include a section dedicated to industry news and press releases. This is also a chance to create viral content.
7) Create Relationships
Image is taken from Strikingly user’s website
Another important advantage for businesses that use a business blog is forming new relationships. Connections are frequently made with your customers as well as with other businesses. Finally, you are making a contribution to your industry's community. If your line of work is extremely niche, you may have the opportunity to build the community from the ground up.
How to Create a Must-read Business Blog?
When writing a business blog, there are more factors to consider than when writing a simple magazine article. There are a few things you can do to ensure that your blog is exciting and effective as a marketing tool.
∙ Write for Your Clients
Your website, like your blog, is not for you. It's for your customers, so write a business blog with them in mind. Your blog should ideally aim to solve a problem for your customers or provide new insights into your industry.
∙ Prepare Your Content
Because they don't have enough time or ideas, many small businesses claim they don't have a blog. You can, however, come up with enough ideas to keep your site running for weeks, if not months, with a little planning. Your posts can respond to the most frequently asked questions by your customers.
∙ Produce Useful Content
Providing valuable content to your readers is essential for a successful business blog. This is how you establish the authority of your website in your industry. Additionally, if you provide valuable content to your readers, they will return and spend money with you. You could outsource your blog to a blog writing service if you are short on time or lack writing skills. These do exactly what they say on the tin – they write a business blog to meet your customers' needs while also driving sales for you.
∙ Frequency
It's debatable how much time you should spend updating your blog. Aim for a regularity that you can maintain. It's fine to do it every two weeks or every week. The key is to be consistent. Don't start a business blog only to abandon it after a few posts. Fresh content is preferred by search engines, so the more frequently you update your blog (and, by extension, your website), the higher your chances of rising in search engine rankings and gaining visibility among your target customers will be.
∙ Create Your Own Blogging Style
Image is taken from Strikingly user’s website
Allow your blog to reflect the human side of your company, as blogs are meant to be informal. Make it unique while keeping the sales pitch to a minimum. As a result, people are more likely to respond to you and buy your services.
∙ The Number of Words
As a general rule, a blog post is somewhere around 400 words long. If your post is longer than this, consider modularizing it. Make every word count because people scan web content.
∙ Interaction
Just because your business blog receives no comments does not imply that it is not being read. Take into account how many articles or blogs you read. Do you always leave a comment? Many people do not. However, you will notice that as your readership grows, you will receive more comments.
∙ Make Your Blog Easily Shareable
Make it simple for your readers to share your blog because links are the internet's lifeblood. Using share icons is the most straightforward way to accomplish this. These social networking icons (as shown in the example to the right of this article) make it easy for people to share your blog, which means additional traffic and possible revenues for your website.
∙ Analyze the Performance of Your Blog
If you haven't already, install a web stats tool to track the performance of your website. Google Analytics is the most widely used. It's completely free and only takes a few minutes to set up. As you add more posts to your blog, you will better understand how people find your business blog and, more importantly, which of your posts are popular, enabling you to determine what type of content your readers prefer.
How to Begin Your Own Blog with Strikingly
Strikingly has made blogging more enjoyable and interesting. They not only have a plethora of options, but they also provide free business blog templates! Even if you are just getting started or a seasoned pro in this field, blogging with Strikingly is a sure bet. Strikingly has just released Simple Blog, a really beautiful blogging platform that makes writing really intuitive and easy. Strikingly will guide you through the process of starting a simple blog.
All you have to do is follow these simple steps to enter the blogging world for free! Let’s learn to create a Simple Blog using Strikingly.
Image is taken from Strikingly
Step 1: Sign up for a Strikingly account (it's free!).
Step 2: For the site where you want to add the blog section, click the "Edit" button.
Step 3: Right in the toolbar editor, click "Add a Section," where you'll find the option to add a blog section to your website. You have the option of scheduling your post for later or posting it immediately. You can also enable the comment feature to interact directly with your audience. You can also include a subscribe button in your blog section to generate more leads and followers.
Conclusion
Always take note that the primary purpose of your business blog is to market and drive new traffic to buy from you. While you want to educate and entertain your audience, the goal of increasing your company's visibility and sales comes first. You can also combine related blogs into an online magazine using a magazine maker to collect information in one place. You can consistently create something that works for you and your customers if you recognize both primary and secondary goals. A good business blog can also improve your customers' experiences and serve as part of your knowledge base to educate people about your products.