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LMB BLOG BUSINESS ADVICE, TIPS AND SUPPORT

Why you Should Use Blogging to Promote Your Business

By Jamieson Lee Hill, Head of Copywriting and Content and Videogame Storywriter

What is blogging?

Blogging is writing articles relating to the industry which you operate in to attract visitors to your website and develop your brand image. The idea of blogging is to offer free, valuable content that engages your target audience. It is not about being salesy, it is about building a relationship with your prospects.

Blogging is a key part of what we call the Customer Value Journey which is the process of building a relationship with potential customers. The best kind of blogs offer solutions to your prospects' problems. In answering these types of questions you build a relationship with them where your brand is the authority and expert.

Why use blogging?

For Lead Generation

“Businesses using blogs as part of their content marketing mix get 67% more leads than those who don’t.”*

Lead generation is a major reason for blogging. Well written blogs with content focused on solutions for customer problems will bring traffic to your business website. Those visitors to your website can become paying customers.

*Sources: Hubspot and Tech Client

For SEO and Ranking

“You have a 434% higher chance of being ranked highly on search engines if you feature a blog as part of your website.”*

Blogging is part of an SEO approach. As you receive more and more visitors to your blog posts your ranking will increase in search engines like Google if they stay on page and read your content. Also, as external authorities share your blog articles, you will get backlinks to your website and blog which also improves your SEO and ranking with search engines.

*Sources: Hubspot and Tech Client

To Build your Brand Authority

Blogging builds your authority as a brand and it creates trust between you and the reader. A prospect that trusts your brand and finds your content useful is more likely to become a paying customer. In the digital age, most businesses are creators of content for their own marketing as well as selling their own products and services.

The key element to remember is that your content should be authentic, relevant and engaging. Putting out poor quality content is harmful to your brand, so make every effort to produce the most useful and compelling content possible for your audiences. Give solutions to their problems.

Blogging is Part of your Sales Funnel

When a person reads your blog article, it may be the first time they have encountered your brand and business. This is what we call ‘Top of the Funnel Content’ because the blog post draws them into your sales funnel.

Your content should be linked back to the landing pages of your websites. The blog content should build your brand reputation with prospects and as part of the Customer Value Journey. The more the prospect comes to value your blog content, the greater the trust they feel. So a blog post at the top of your sales funnel may create awareness of your brand and products.

Then if they return to your blog again to read something else, your blog content may help them to evaluate whether they trust your brand and want to buy from you. This is called the Middle of the Funnel (MOFU).

Blog posts could also be included at the Bottom of your Sales Funnel (BOFU) with a Call to Action and a link to buy one of your products or services in the article.

Don’t underestimate the power of blogging to drive lead generation and sales conversions. It is such a powerful tool available to you.

Blogs Drive Long-term Success

When your prospects find solutions in your blogs to their problems, issues and challenges, you become an authority for them. This in turn builds trust and respect and they are more likely to buy from your business. So your blog literally brings them into your sales funnel on the authority of the blog content. It is like going into a shop and asking a sales assistant for advice. If the sales assistant gives you a decent answer to your question, you are more likely to buy from their store. This is why blog posts are so important for your business. They might be the first encounter a visitor has with your business online. Quality blogs are likely to drive the long-term success of your business.

Building a Knowledge Centre

A Knowledge Base or Centre is a large collection of articles which inform your customer about your products and services and issues relating to your sector. The idea is to be a veritable fountain of knowledge for your prospective customers, so that you build trust and respect and they eventually become paying customers.

A Knowledge Base is also excellent for optimising your website for search or SEO because with quality articles containing numerous keywords relevant to your sector, increasing amounts of visitors will come to your website.

A Knowledge Base is like a blog full of useful information, How to articles and content that provides solutions for your customers

Read this article by Hubspot about building your own knowledge base.

Blogging Can Lead to Inbound links

Inbound links are what drive conversions and ranking on a business website. An inbound link is a link to your website from another one. This tells Google that your content is valuable and thus your ranking in the search engine increases. The more inbound links your website has, the higher it rises up the ranking with the ultimate goal of being on the first page of Google which is the El Dorado of blogging and SEO.

Figures suggest that companies who blog receive 67% more leads than businesses that do not. That in itself should make you start your first blog today if you don’t have one. Inbound links and leads are the juice that drive your business onwards to success and sustainable profits.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of blogging?

Let’s now summarise some of the main advantages and disadvantages of blogging:

Advantages

It builds the authority of your brand and trust with your target audience. Great content shows your business as the expert in your sector.
It brings traffic to your website and that traffic can be marketed to via email marketing if you offer valuable free content (known as a lead magnet) in return for their name and email address.
Blogging can generate revenue for your business by linking posts to your products and services. You can also be an affiliate for other companies’ products or services to earn commission on sales.
Blogging is generally quite simple to do because most website platforms have an inbuilt blogging function.
It allows you to have a conversation with your target audience. Posting your blog articles to your social media allows your prospects to react and comment and get involved in your business. By replying to their comments on your blog content it builds trust and rapport and also allows you to get valuable direct feedback. You can also respond to customer service questions that arise as a result of your blog posts.
As stated before blogging can improve your Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. Over time if your content attracts more and more readers, the blog posts will start to climb up the rankings in Google and other search engines. This makes your business and brand more visible to the public online.

Disadvantages

If you are not particularly gifted at writing, even a 500-word blog post might seem like a chore. In which case you could hire a content writer to create the blogs for you but the most important factor is commissioning high quality writing to build your brand. Either way, writing good quality blog articles takes time or investment if you hire someone else. If you are a small business owner you probably do most jobs for the business yourself and time is limited anyway.
Putting out low quality blog posts can damage your brand reputation, so make sure you only publish engaging and valuable content which your target audiences will rave about.
Compelling blogging requires a constant stream of creative ideas. This can be time consuming. Obviously, one way around this is to keep your eye on trending topics and emulate the best blogs your competitors are putting out.
Blogging is usually the long game because it takes time to see the results of your efforts. You have to be patient and wait for the results. You will not usually see an immediate increase in traffic unless you manage to create a blog for a trending topic and strike it lucky!
It is not enough just to blog, you also need to promote them. This can be done by sharing them on social media and also by using paid promotion through content distribution agencies and other organisations that publish your content across the web for a fee.

If you don’t spend the time promoting your blogs, you may not see the increase in traffic that you had anticipated.

A Starting Point - The Customer Avatar Profile or Persona

Before you write a blog article you need to understand the type of prospective customers who you are trying to reach. You can use a Customer Avatar Profile or Persona to create a profile of your typical customers. You will probably have more than one profile or persona for your market. This research is the foundation of any content creation whether it is written or visual.

Whenever I am commissioned to write copy for a website, it is essential that I know all about the target audience. That way the voice and content which I create will be most effective in connecting with the intended audience. This is why I need a Customer Avatar Profile or Persona before I start writing.

Look at this Customer Avatar Worksheet from DigitalMarketer and fill it out. You need to consider their challenges, values, goals, sources of information, background and so on. Then, the content will be relevant and targeted at them.

Here is another useful resource by the excellent Marketing plaform Hubspot to use focused on Customer Personas.

Planning a Blogging Strategy

Your research should start by reading and listening to the current trends, topics and consumer desires within your niche or sector. It is important to provide blog articles which give innovative solutions to customer problems and also content which is unique, creative and engaging.

In the planning stages of our blog you should brainstorm answers to these questions:

Who is your target audience? What are the demographics of your target audience?
What are their challenges, concerns and problems?
What solutions can you offer to their issues?
What is the purpose of your blog and how will it serve your target audience?
What type of blog posts will work best for your target audience? E.g. How to articles, interviews, reactor posts etc.
What will be the style and voice of your blog? I.e. informal, chatty, serious, informative, lighthearted, etc?
What kind of images and graphics will you include and create? E.g. photos, infographics, graphs etc.
What type of company news will you share and how frequently? E.g. product and services updates, team news, innovation etc.
Who will be in charge of creating content for the blog? Will you have more than one person? Who will write the content? Who will edit the content? Etc.
Are there any topics outside of your sector which you can include for interest to draw in a wider audience?

Content Plan for Your Blogging

An effective blog needs to be well-thought out and relevant to your target audience. It is a good idea to plan at least 3 months in advance for the topics which you will write about on a weekly basis. One blog post a week of at least 500 words is a decent bar to set yourself.

As you progress, you may start to post more often and almost certainly you should try and create longer content because 1000+ words of quality content should rank well if it is relevant to your target audience and has a good variety of keywords.

Keep an eye out for those trending topics and don’t be afraid to add new blog ideas to match market trends. This is part of an Agile Marketing approach.

Lastly, I would recommend that you take a free course by The University of California Davis and Copyblogger called The Strategy of Content Marketing. It is a very useful introduction to creating content.

Headlines

The headline and the subheadings of the blog are very important. If the headline is not gripping, then they will not proceed. If you learn how to do SEO keyword research, you should also layer keywords into your headlines, subheadings and paragraphs.

A headline should be compelling, not too long and make the reader want to read on or click through. Here are some blog posts to help you with your headline writing:

Read this great blog post: How To Write Powerful Headlines by the very successful Neil Patel.
Checkout these Headline Templates from DigitalMarketer to inspire you.

Topics to Blog About

I have already mentioned that it is important to keep an eye on trending topics in your sector by reading the news and looking on platforms like Twitter. But you should also consider some of the following article types:

a.Solutions Based Blog Posts

What are the issues and problems your prospects are facing? Make a list of them and then plan blogs accordingly. These types of blog posts are like gold online. People love to read them to find out answers to challenges they are facing.

b.Tips and Tricks

Giving practical advice related to products and services is an effective way to bring traffic to your blog. Last year I wrote a blog article for a plumbing company and the article was about the main problems customers face during the winter with their heating and pipes. ‘How To’ posts can be particularly successful as people often tend to search for these.

c. Adding Value

By writing useful articles about your products and services and how to use them, you are giving value to them. This concept of added value is one of the reasons why blogs are so important for businesses. A good example is I wrote blogs for an organic sun cream company. The blog posts were all about looking after your skin and how regular sunscreen can damage your skin. It taught the customer why they should use organic products and how to protect their skin during hot weather. The blog posts added a sense of value to their main products.

d.New product launches

Whenever you have a new product or service launch, create a blog or press release and post it to your website. The language should be enthusiastic and engaging to create a sense of excitement in the reader.

e. Press Releases

Press releases can be used for launching new products and services, but also anything exciting and compelling relating to your business. It might be a community or charity event or showing your commitment to being sustainable with a new project. Whatever the topic of the press release, make sure it is clear, simple and impactful. Also, post your press releases on your social media platforms as well as your website blog.

Here are 21 examples of press releases to get your ideas going. N.B. A press release has a standard format, so make sure you learn the art of writing a press release first. The link in this paragraph offers a free press release template.

f. Trending Topics

I mentioned this before but it is so important that you stay in tune with the latest trends and topics in your sector. Then, you can create your own content relating to the trending topics. Look at the blogs other businesses are creating and emulate the best content you can find. Here are some ideas for sources for trending subjects.

g. Share Company News

Sharing news from your business can be very engaging especially if you have team photos and happy smiling faces. Positive content is much appreciated in these challenging times in the world with pandemics and wars. Show the public the caring side of your brand and you will build relationships with prospective customers.

Internal and External Links in your Blog

Internal links are links in the blog post to your own website. The reason this is effective is because you are showing your visitor the parts of the website which you want them to see. For example, I am writing this Knowledge Centre with all its articles to give value free to people wanting to run their own business and to increase our authority as a brand. During an article, I can recommend that you look at the online businesses which we offer. There you go, that hyperlinked text to online businesses is an internal link to our website.

External links are links to other websites. I have included many in this article to help you find other sources of information. This is part of our commitment to sharing knowledge to help people start their own business and to highlight some of the best content about startups and running your own company on the website.

Calls to Action

A blog without a CTA is like a bow without an arrow; you simply won’t hit the target if you don't have an arrow to fire. It is a must that you direct your visitors to take a certain action and send them to your landing pages to see your products or services. At the end of the day, although the blog posts shouldn’t be overtly salesy, the objective of the blog is to generate leads and sales. Other CTAs can be to fill out forms, subscribe to your blog or anything else to get them into your sales funnel, so you can start marketing to them.

Networking

To optimise your blog usage, you need to connect with other bloggers and influencers in your sector to arrange guest blogging and to share content on each other’s platforms. Building relationships with other bloggers in your industry can help you gain more backlinks to your website, chances to collaborate, opportunities to guest blog and to get social media shares of your blog content. Influencers are slightly different as the more well-known they are, the more likely they are to charge a fee for collaboration.

Inspiring Conclusion

End your blog posts with an inspiring conclusion. Give them a takeaway that will have them salivating and feeling all fired up. Again, this will build brand loyalty for your business and your authority as an expert.

Stuck for Ideas?

If you have a problem thinking of ideas or brainstorming creative blog posts, don’t worry. Here are a couple of links to help you out:

Check out this ‘Ultimate List of Blog Posts’ by the legendary DigitalMarketer.
Watch this video by DigitalMarketer about 5 Types of Blog Posts.

Long or Short blog posts/articles?

For many years the conventional wisdom was that blog posts should be short because people live busy lives and have short attention spans. Therefore, there is a huge amount of blog posts no longer than 500 words . However, this approach has led to a shortage of longer blog articles i.e. above 1000 words. To illustrate what I am saying I just typed into Google the following question: ‘How do I plan a blogging strategy for my start up?’

I looked past the sponsored content at the top which say ‘Ad’ at the start of the listings to the first ‘organic’ content i.e. not paid advertising. The organic content in Google ranks on the first page because it is regarded as quality content by Google. The Google algorithm determines quality by analysing blog articles to see how much traffic they get, how long people stay on the page aka ‘dwell time’, how many people share it and also the keyword phrases in the article which people are searching for and other factors as well such as backlinks from people sharing your blog posts. This particular search brought up this blog article as the highest ranking organic content: Blogging for Startups: 7 Tips to Jump Start Your Startup Venture.

I put that article into a Google Document and used word count to see how long it was. It is over 1700 words. The article is full of useful information to guide you how to use blogging for your business.

Also, the layout is well spaced out with clear headings, attractive pictures and clearly written points without waffling. Longer content over 1000 words with relevant keywords and valuable information for your target audience is destined to climb the ranking in search engines as more and more people find it in Google and elsewhere.

Emulate the Best Blogging by Competitors

Analytics is a big part of effective blogging. You should analyse the best performing content put out by your competitors in your sector. Read their content and see what they are doing well and try to emulate it. You can also read outside of your sector to see content by companies who have high levels of engagement in other industries. The important thing is to identify and notice why their blog content is so popular i.e break it down and analyze the images they use, the layout, the headlines, the keywords and topics etc.

Analytics of your Blog

Once you have a blog and you have populated it with blog articles, the important task you have in the long run is to monitor the analytics of your content. Notice how long people are staying on page aka dwell time, how many pages they read, which blog posts have the most visits and so forth.

Analytics is a discipline in itself and it shows you which content is performing well and which is not. Content that proves to be popular should be used again if it is ‘evergreen’ i.e. still relevant or create similar content to the most successful posts. Here is some information about analytics to help you get started.

Repurpose Blog Content on Social Media

Remember to use your blog content on social media. Splinter off parts of your articles and create inspiring images, captions, slogans etc for the social media platforms which you use. You don’t have to constantly create new ideas; use the topics you already have on your blog to populate your social media. Link these posts back to your blog to bring in more traffic.

Blogging and Email Marketing

It is not enough just to write your blog, you also need to promote it. Each blog post should have a CTA (Call to Action) asking people to sign up to your blog via email or to send them to a landing page with your products or services.

If they give you their email, each time you post new content you can send it to them and it keeps your brand at the forefront of their minds. However, make sure that the blog content is compelling and inspiring as there is nothing worse than email spam.

As you email your blog content to subscribers, bear in mind that your blog is there to build the brand and business as an authority and expert. It should not be overly sales, lead with value first, giving solutions to your target audience’s problems. That means you need to get down to some serious research to find out what your audiences are interested in!

What are You Waiting for?

Start today. Put the kettle on and start writing a content plan of blog articles you could write about topics related to your sector over the next 3 months. Go for it!

READING LIST FOR BLOGGING

1.Blog Marketing: What It Is and How to Do It:

https://www.thebalancesmb.com/blog-marketing-1794404

2.Use a Blog to Better Promote Your Products: https://www.mytotalretail.com/article/use-blog-content-marketing-to-promote-your-products-better/

3. 10 Reasons Blogging Should be Part of Your 2018 Content Strategy

https://blog.hubspot.com/customers/10-reasons-blogging-should-be-part-of-your-2018-content-strategy?fbclid=IwAR0afXYR8I-8z6PaeUSwHbp6nZ811HUmNBOxzp9Jq9B3MgMuZid6imcdJj4

4. An Enchanting Business Blog: https://neilpatel.com/blog/an-enchanting-business-blog/0

5. Why Blog? The Benefits of Blogging for Business and Marketing

https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-benefits-of-business-blogging-ht?fbclid=IwAR1FqAIN2BAOkmefhSzhdHtjf-CaDZQ3k4XgcKi-_R44YtGsZJE4xRCrtws

6. The Importance of Blogging for your Website: