If you want people to discover your small business, you need to help them find you on the Internet. The majority of customers now search for products or services online before visiting the actual store, which means that you should spend time creating valuable content that grabs users’ attention and curiosity.
Blogging is the primary business promotion mechanism for many companies because it guarantees exposure and increases online visibility. According to the report, an overwhelming 77% of Internet users regularly read blog posts.
Online articles are obviously popular among users, but what can a blog do for your small business? The main benefits of blogging include:
• Brand awareness
• Building relationships
• Improving professional reputation
• Increasing customer loyalty
• Lead generation
• Driving conversions
The pros of running a blog are evident, but how do you start a successful blog for promoting a small business? It’s a step-by-step process, so keep reading to learn the top seven tips.
1. Launch A Blogging Website
If you don’t have a blogging website already, then the first thing you need to do is to launch a brand new site. Although it sounds complex, modern tools make it easy to set up a blogging platform within hours.
First of all, you should choose the best domain for your blog. It is the official name of the site such as yourblog.com. The domain should contain keywords that reveal the subject of your future posts.
Secondly, find a reliable content management system. Most businesses use WordPress because it is designed primarily for blogging purposes. Besides that, the system is cost-efficient and requires only minor upfront investments.
Thirdly, you’ll need a web hosting provider to power your site. A solid hosting plan will keep the blog fully operational and available 24/7, so make sure to choose a known platform like Bluehost. Now that your site is alive, the only thing left is to support it with plugins and select a theme that matches the branding requirements of your small business.
2. Define Your Goals and Identify Buyer Persona
Before you begin writing articles, you need to understand the business goals of your blog. There’s only one question to ask here: What do I want to achieve with my blog?
One option is to raise awareness and reach as many prospects as possible, but there are other objectives like lead generation, customer engagement, and similar. In each case, your task is to quantify business goals and keep track of your achievements on the go.
Besides that, you must clearly define a buyer persona. It’s a typical reader with highly specific personal characteristics. When you discover the traits of your average buyer, you can adjust content strategy and write articles that solve problems of a given type of consumer.
3. Mind The Quality
Do you know that bloggers publish a new post every 0.5 seconds? Users can find millions of similar posts online, but you need to stand out from the crowd by publishing top-level articles. What does it mean?
Jake Gardner, a blogger at the assignment writing service, says you need to write posts that are educational, entertaining, and informative: “Readers enjoy data-rich articles that focus on practical problems. They want you to explain how things work and offer useful solutions.”
Another thing you have to take care of is the article structure. A well-written post is usually 1000+ words long, which means you should divide it into chapters and design a logical content structure. Of course, it’s always a good idea to augment posts using visual elements such as images or videos.
4. Add a CTA
Every piece of content must have a highly specific purpose. For instance, you want to encourage visitors to read another article or purchase a product. In such circumstances, your posts will not be complete without a call to action (CTA).
This is simply an encouragement for readers to take action according to your business goals. Some of the most popular CTAs are:
• Sign up to receive email updates
• Try for free
• Learn more
• Read a related post
• Join free for a month
• Let’s start a new project together
• Buy now
Each of these CTA buttons has a different purpose and it depends on the content your visitors are reading at the moment. The only thing that matters is to include a CTA to every article and give your audience a chance to engage accordingly.
5. Proofread Before Publishing
This tip goes without saying, but we still see way too many amateur blog posts on the Internet. Instead of publishing your posts right away, you must spend some time looking for spelling or grammar errors.
It’s the only way to protect the authority of your small business and keep the blog relevant in the long run. Luckily enough, there are many proofreading tools you can use to simplify the process. Our favorite options include:
6. Be a Consistent Publisher
Blogging can only take you so far if you don’t publish new articles consistently. Small businesses that want to be remembered have to make a content schedule and publish fresh posts at least once a week, but it would be even better to do it two or three times a week.
We recommend you to focus on important dates and events in your niche. For instance, you can create a long-term calendar of posts based on industry events, social gatherings, holidays, product launches, and so on. If nothing important is going on in your field of work in a given period, you can add evergreen topics to the content schedule.
7. Promote Your Small Business Blog
The last thing you should do is to promote your small business blog. You can’t just expect readers to discover your blog on their own, so do your best to utilize major digital marketing mechanisms. Almost every marketing team takes advantage of:
• Search engine optimization to maximize discoverability in Google searches
• Email newsletters to keep the existing audience informed about the latest posts
• Social networks to keep in touch with followers from all over the globe;
• Guest posts to approach new target externally
The Bottom Line
Blogging is a popular business promotion tool that helps companies to raise awareness, generate leads, and improve professional reputation. In this post, we discussed six steps you ought to take in order to launch a successful small business blog.
It’s not a super-quick job, but the benefits of blogging are so substantial that you simply have to take action. We wish you luck and invite you to write a comment if there are any other blogging-related details you’d like to hear from us!
