So, you’re thinking about starting a blog for your business? How exciting! Creating regular, engaging blogs can have a very positive impact on your business’s online reputation. This blog is our beginner’s guide to blogging for business.
Blogging goals
Before starting a new digital marketing strategy, it’s important to take time to consider your goals. What do you want to achieve? More website traffic? To build on your search engine optimisation? Or even to build your brand awareness?
The good news is that if these are your goals, blogging can help you reach them. Having your own blog can also help you with following.
- Increase sales and leads on your site
- Increase search engine rankings
- Help you to position yourself as an expert
- Create a better flow for your site
- Answer the questions of your end user
Make sure that your goals are measurable and that you record data before starting the strategy. This will enable you to track your success more easily.
Choosing a blogging platform
There are many blog hosting providers that you can use to start a blog for your business, and some are better than others. WordPress is a fantastic content management system that allows you to have a blog on your own website. It’s always best to have a self-hosted blog so that you can maintain full control over it.
Having a self-hosted WordPress blog will also allow it to appear more professional and means that you can position yourself as an expert more easily.
WordPress is a fantastic website and blogging platform that is search engine friendly. You can easily customise your blog domain and complete other SEO best practices within the WordPress site. These will help your blog and website to be found higher on the search engine results pages.
The WordPress dashboard is easy to understand, and you can have your blog pages ready in just a few clicks! You can also add internal links easily on the WordPress blogging platform, which can help you attract readers from other blogs on your site.
There are various free WordPress themes, or you can have a custom blog theme for a more unique site. Read our blog on what a CMS is in web design.
Deciding what to blog about
Once you’ve found a platform that you want to use, it’s time to think about what you can write about! Your blog topics will depend on the type of business you have and the industry that you work in. Think about what could be your blog niche, as this will help you to show up in the search engines.
When thinking of blog topics, you need to establish what it is your customers want to know about. This is your chance to show that you’re an expert and promote what your business offers.
You also need to consider your writing style. Blogging is known to be a colloquial form of writing, which means you don’t always need to follow all of the rules! You should consider your audience and the type of content that resonates with them and establish your own writing style. This can help your brand to become more memorable.
Ensure that you utilise this writing style across all platforms, such as in blogs, website copy and social media captions, to ensure consistency.
There are many ways to find blog titles. Here are just a few.
- Consider the questions you are often asked about your product or service – could you turn these into a blog so that users can find the information themselves?
- Monitor your analytics and identify opportunities through audience engagement statistics.
- Use social media to establish what your audience is talking about and interested in.
- Complete competitor analysis – this can help you find blog titles that you can adapt to your own offering.
It can be useful to create a content calendar with blog post ideas and when you expect to publish them. Share your editorial calendar with staff so everyone knows when to share the blog online. You might even want to consider guest blog posts on your new WordPress blog.
Successful blog types
Now you’ve found some interesting topics to write about, you’ll need to consider the style of blog posts you’ll write. Here are some popular options for creating content.
- Guide blogs (like this one!)
- How to…start a blog
- Listicles – 10 ways to make money blogging
- What I learned from…web hosting companies
- Mistakes to avoid…with your personal blog
- Vs blogs – SEO vs PPC
- Question blogs – how do you start a blog? How do you find the best blogging tips?
There are many options for blog post titles, and some might work better for you than others. It’s a good idea to do some trial and error and see which titles perform best. Make sure that your titles are intriguing and show that you can help your client; otherwise, you’re unlikely to receive clicks.
How often should I create new blogs?
It’s entirely up to you how often you create new blogs for your website. After all, it depends on how much time you have. Creating regular, engaging content does take time, and that’s something that many business owners already don’t have a lot of!
We offer a high-quality SEO service to clients. Our SEO experts complete in-depth keyword research so that we can create regular and engaging content for your website blog. Check out our SEO and copywriting services for more information.
Some businesses may create a new blog post every week, every couple of weeks or every month. Remember that it’s about quality, not quantity when it comes to search engine rankings. This means it’s better to upload higher quality, optimised blogs less frequently than it is to post short blogs with little substance more often.
How can I promote my blog?
Nowadays, there are so many ways to promote your business and your blog! Firstly, you’ll need to ensure that your blog is easy to find from your website’s navigation under a title such as ‘latest blog posts’. This means that users will be able to find what they’re looking for when they visit your site. All of this also contributes to a better user experience on-site.
Social media is another fantastic way to promote your blog post. On many platforms, you can utilise a range of content types, such as posts and stories. Sharing a link to your blog post will increase the chance of your content being seen by more users.
Ensure you create striking graphics, write engaging captions and add relevant hashtags. Taking these steps will increase your reach and hopefully lead to more followers for your business.
There are best practices to follow regarding post types, caption styles and timings for each platform, so you should look into these before you start. It’s also worth noting that you don’t need to utilise every social media platform. Instead, find out where your target audience is and interact with them there.
Share new blog posts from your own profile to build your personal brand online!
How to monitor your blog
You can utilise your website analytics to assess how your blog is performing. Read our blog on why you need to track your website analytics.
Tools such as Google Analytics are a great way to track your site analytics and blog content. You’ll see how much traffic is coming to each blog page and where your blog audience is coming from. You can link your Google Analytics account easily.
Remember that it takes time for content to rank on the search engines. Check out our blog on how long it takes for SEO to work. Try to make sure your content is evergreen and can be updated depending on the current trends.
Search engine algorithms are updated regularly, and it can be challenging to keep up with the best practices for content writing. Our experts are on hand to support you with updates and are always looking for ways to keep your content on top.
Would you like more information on blog writing? Contact our friendly team – we’re happy to answer any questions you have. We hope you’ve found these blogging tips useful! Good luck with writing your first blog post and the rest of your blogging journey! We hope this article has been useful on blogging for business.