When writing a blog for your business, it’s important to set goals and stay focused on your objectives. Though you want your writing to feel natural, you also want to avoid “stream of consciousness” blogging like a teenage girl on Snapchat. Every article you write should have a targeted purpose, and all posts should work together to achieve big picture goals.
Let’s look at the three main goals you should be looking to accomplish with your business blog:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Ultimately, a blog is one of the best ways you can boost your organic SEO results. It will provide fresh content to your site that’s added (hopefully) on a regular basis. The content will be informative, insightful and interesting. It will include strategic targeted keywords and key phrases that potential customers might be searching for. Your posts should also contain back-end SEO tags, titles, links and meta descriptions. All of these things will add up to positive organic search engine optimization that will only serve to enhance any additional SEO or PPC (pay-per-click advertising) that you are doing. In other words, SEO improvement should be a natural byproduct of a well-executed blog. That alone should give you enough incentive to have a blog for your business.
2. Reader Engagement
When your blog content is informative, insightful and interesting enough, it should engage your readers. No matter how someone comes across one of your blog articles, you want to leave a good impression. The articles should be well-written (spell check + grammar check) and have something worthwhile to say. In the process, you can share insights and details about your business without having to get too “salesy.” Avoid overloading the blog posts with repetitive keywords to a point where the article has no flow. There is a trick to including plenty of relevant keywords without it seeming like you are just forcing them in there. When you engage your readers, you will create a more positive brand relationship.
3. Customer Conversion
This is where things can really get difficult. Using your blog to convert people into actual customers will depend on the product/service you are trying to sell and your definition of “conversion.” If you have very inexpensive and desirable products, then you may get away with a more direct sales approach on your blog. If the conditions are just right, people may want to click through and buy something immediately after reading one of your posts.
Otherwise, you should avoid thinking of your business blog as a direct response sales tool. Think of your conversion goal as either creating a positive brand relationship as outlined in goal #2 above or as a very basic lead generator. Creating a positive brand message is a much more attainable goal, especially if your content is engaging enough to keep people coming back and reading your articles from week to week. Generating leads is not as easy, but it can be done and it’s certainly more achievable then making a final sale right then and there. Use calls-to-action in your blog articles that may entice someone to call, email, visit other pages on your website or fill out a contact form. Then, they can be put in your sales follow-up or CRM system to eventually try and close the deal.
A lot can be accomplished with a successful business blog, but it is important to set your goals realistically and to stay focused on your overall objectives as you are posting articles from week to week.
To learn more about business blogging or to get started with a NextGear Marketing business blog package, contact us today.
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