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Of all the things I do in my business, blog writing happens to be one of my favorites. I write about marketing and business tips here on the Digital Darcy blog, and I also have a lifestyle blog where I write about natural living, healthy cooking, and food preservation at PreservingMySanity.com.
If you don’t already have a blog in your marketing plan, I highly recommend adding one. In today’s blog post, I’m going to tell you all about the importance of a blog for your business.
First, I’m going to share a few basic definitions that I’ll be discussing throughout the post.
A Few Quick Definitions
What is blogging?
A blog is a website or website section that features a collection of informative articles that are relevant to the company’s audience. Having a blog on your website is a great way to consistently get fresh content into the search engines to draw more organic traffic to your website. It’s also a great way to position yourself as an industry expert.
What is content marketing?
Content marketing is a collection of content that is produced by a company to share information about their products and services. It’s usually a “free” form of marketing – aside from the cost of the time and money it takes to produce the content. Content marketing includes things like social media content, video marketing, and blogging. The cost to publish these formats is generally free, and over time a good content marketing strategy will increase your organic website traffic.
What are search engines?
Search engines exist on the Internet to give users a way to search for the information they are seeking. Examples are Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These platforms have crawler software that searches websites for relevant content. As you publish new content to your website, it gives the crawlers more data to find, and over time will make your website show up in relevant search results.
What is SEO?
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. There is a lot more to it than what I’m going to discuss here, but basically it is a variety of things that are done on your website and/or blog that help you increase your website’s search engine ranking and effectiveness. It includes elements like your blog post title, subheaders, images, image labels, site speed, keyword use, and grammar – among other things. If you are going to have a blog on your website, it’s important to be familiar with the best practices for SEO (or make sure the person you hire to help you is aware of them.)
Why Blogging is Good for SEO
Blogging puts FRESH content on your site on a regular basis, which is good for the search engines. They like to see new content being added to your website because it shows them that you are a relevant business. If you launched a website five years ago and haven’t touched it since then, you aren’t going to have as much exposure in the search engines as if you are publishing a new blog post monthly. Think about some of the websites you’ve been to lately. Don’t you look for a recent date somewhere when you go to a website, to make sure you are in the right place and the information is current? Search engines do the same thing!
You might think that blogging is a waste of time because your customers have told you they don’t read them. That may be true, but if your posts are written with proper keywords and SEO strategy, they will show up in search results and lead potential customers to your website that way.
An Example of Success Over Time
For example, say you are a vacation rental company in a beach resort town. One month on your blog, you write about beachcombing and seashells in your area. Though your visitors may not read that blog post at the time it is published, the search engines crawl it and note your site’s relevance for a variety of keywords including seashells, beachcombing, and your resort town’s name. So, three months after you published the post, someone who is wanting to vacation in your area searches “town name seashells” and your website comes up first in the results. They go to your blog post, read it, and via the call-to-action you have at the bottom of your blog post about booking a vacation, you get a new customer. THAT is how it works.
Another thing to keep in mind with your blog posts is that you can’t just publish a post and wait for people to find it. Though over time they will find it, you will see better results if you promote it on social media, in email newsletters, etc. You are spending the time and effort to publish that blog post – share it with the world!
Publishing Blog Posts Consistently
Just like you hear me talk about how important planning and consistency are on social media, it’s the same with blogging. If you commit to having a blog for your business, you need to create a strategy and schedule that you can implement and continue over time.
Are you going to blog once a month? Twice a month? Every week? To produce a quality blog post, start to finish including all elements, you should allow 4-6 hours per post. Some may be able to be done faster than that, but just know that they always take more time than you anticipate. So, with that in mind, create your blog schedule.
Writing the Posts
Blog Post Topics
You might be wondering what you will write about if you start a blog for your business. I promise that no matter what service or product you are offering, there are plenty of things you can write about. Start by considering who your target market is, and where they might be struggling. Think about what your company offers, and find topics based around your products and services that will provide value to your customers.
A few examples of topic ideas:
- Car Dealership – financing, car maintenance, how to choose the right vehicle, safety features, emergency kits, weather awareness, customer service, extended warranty offerings
- Gift Shop – gift ideas, holiday decorating, seasonal decor, trendy colors, DIY projects, artist/company features depending on what you sell, item of the week/month
- Grocery Store – meal planning tips, featured item of the week (fruit, vegetable, meat, whatever), holiday recipes, money-saving tips, food safety tips, department of the week
- Photographer – tips for choosing the right outfit, pose ideas, outdoor vs. indoor photography, coordination of family photos, business headshots, wedding ideas, at-home photo tips for in between professional sessions
You get the idea. If you need help brainstorming ideas for your own business, I’d be happy to help you in a marketing strategy call!
Blog Posts Shouldn’t Hard Sell … but Don’t Forget Your CTA
As you are writing your posts, it’s also important to keep in mind that you want to talk about your company and services/products, but in a non-sales way. The purpose of blog posts is for them to be informative yet informal.
You might be thinking, “What’s the point of blogging if I’m not supposed to sell my stuff?” I recommend always tying it back to your company with a call-to-action at the end of your blog post. The seashell article I mentioned above? That call-to-action would read something like, “Are you excited to get out on the beach and find some great seashells? Click here to search our vacation rentals, and we’ll get your toes in the sand soon!”
You Can Hire A Writer!
If you don’t have time to write and/or you don’t have staff that can help you with this, hiring someone to help you is always an option. There are other options for hiring writers too – college interns, high school students, teachers, or other great writers who might be looking for some extra income, etc. Your blog posts don’t have to be written by you or your employees. It can work really well to get an outside perspective to write about your company – they often will notice features about your company that you don’t even realize are items worth highlighting.
Email Newsletter Sign-up
If you don’t already have an email list for your business, I recommend reading this blog post that highlights why you need an email list. There are a variety of providers that help you collect subscribers and send your emails. I use and recommend MailerLite, which is free until you have 1,000 subscribers.
Once you have the account set up, you can start encouraging your blog visitors to subscribe to your email list. You can invite them to “get notified of future blog posts and company news,” and when they opt-in this gives you permission to send your promotional emails to them.
You can also incorporate lead magnets into your subscription sign-up form, where you offer them something for free with their subscription. This may be a free printable of some sort, a coupon code for a cost-savings off their next purchase, or something else of your choice. This can also help you increase those email list subscribers.
Logistics
If you don’t already have a blog and want to add one, it should be added to your main website domain. So, if your website is CompanyABC.com, your new blog might be CompanyABC.com/blog. You don’t want to buy a whole new domain for CompanyABCBlog.com for example, because the whole point of a blog is to help boost your website in the search results. So, make sure it goes up on the SAME primary domain that you already have. If you are using WordPress.org for your website CMS (Content Management System), the option to enable a blog on your website is a built-in option. I can’t speak to other platforms because I’m a WordPress.org user, but check with your website provider and/or webmaster and they can help you get a blog enabled on your site.
If you are brand new to getting a website and/or blog, make sure you get a self-hosted website. I buy all of my domains from GoDaddy.com and I use BlueHost as my hosting company. You can do everything through the same company if you want. I like to keep it separate instead of having one company control everything related to my sites. Once you purchase your domain and hosting, you can move forward with setting up your website and/or blog. Or, you can hire someone to do it for you. (I have some trusted colleagues listed on my resources page.)
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