Does your business have a blog on your website?  Are you sending out informational and educational news?

Regularly posting blogs and sharing news and education can benefit your business in numerous ways.  If you help people solve a problem related to your industry, or teach them something they did not know, your name is front of mind when they need to hire someone. This isn’t automatic, but the effect is real.

For purposes of this article all content writing including social media posts will be addressed as “blogging” unless I am referring to one specific type of writing.

There’s a growing misconception that blogging isn’t important, or that it’s not as important as it once was. Somewhere in the last few years, blogs began feeling a bit old school.

But that’s not the right way to look at it. The real question isn’t whether they’re new or old, it’s whether publishing blogs gets results. And the truth is that writing blogs and posts remain highly effective marketing tools.

Blogging regularly is not only a low-cost marketing strategy, it allows you to position yourself as an industry expert. It builds trust with your audience and immediately establishes your expertise.  Your blog posts should be tied to your other marketing efforts and should build your industry connections.

When done right, a business blog can market your company, attract new customers, and position you as an industry leader. Unfortunately, many businesses start blogging without a clear idea of what to write about or how to use it to market their company. As a result, business blogging often takes up time and energy without producing any benefit.

The main thing to keep in mind is that your site content, marketing materials, social media, news, articles, and blogs must all be consistent yet for each media, must be written differently.  It sounds overwhelming but can be accomplished.

Improving Your Writing

1. Define your audience

You would never run a magazine ad or a TV commercial without knowing the intended audience. Similarly, you should never create a blog or post without knowing for whom you are writing.

These are your target customers - -  the people most likely to be searching for and interested in learning about your business. If you don’t yet have a defined audience, create a reader profile based on what you know about your ideal customers. Include the following information:

• Who are your readers?
• Why do they care about you?
• Their related interests
• Questions they are likely to ask
• Problems your business can solve for them

Gathering this information will help you choose topics to write about and create a blog that your customers will care about.   And, if you really have multiple audiences, make sure you write different things to address all of them separately.

2. Create an editorial calendar

Customers, blog readers, and search engines all like predictability. If you start writing, but then don’t post for several weeks, readers are less likely to come back and see what else you’ve written. A website that publishes infrequently won’t rank as high in search engines, making it less likely that customers will find you through online search.

It’s hard to publish regularly if you are struggling to think of things to write about or forgetting that your blog exists. To prevent this, create an editorial calendar that lays out a plan for what you will write and when it will be published.

The frequency of your posts doesn’t matter as much as the quality and consistency. One well-written, relevant blog post every two weeks will market your business better than daily poor-quality posts or a blog that hasn’t been updated in months.

3. Brainstorm keywords for each post

If you want customers to find your website when they search online, your blog posts must include related phrases that customers might type into a search engine.

Before you write each post, brainstorm long-tail keywords and include them in your writing. For example, if your company provides accounting services to small and mid-size businesses, your customers may search for “small business accounting tips.” Aim for one main keyword and two or three secondary keywords that are relevant to the topic you are writing about.

4. Optimize your posts for search engines

To optimize your blog posts for SEO, add signals that tell search engines what your post is about. When search engines read these signals, they can direct relevant traffic to your website.

Incorporate keywords as naturally as possible. Do not add keywords randomly or in sentences where they don’t fit organically; this is known as “keyword stuffing” and signals to search engines that your site isn’t trustworthy.

The written post isn’t the only place where you should use keywords. They should also appear in the following places:

• The URL of your post
• Your blog post title
• Image names
• Image descriptions
• The meta description of your post’s content

When you optimize all these places, you send multiple signals to search engines and make it easier for them to direct customers to your blog.

5. Tie your blog to your other marketing

Although blogging’s effect is often indirect, it is still a form of marketing and should be tied in with your overall marketing strategy to have the strongest possible impact.

If you are advertising a sale on your social media or email marketing, include that information on your blog as well. If your business is mentioned in the media or you appear on a TV spot or radio show, put that in a blog post and include a link so that visitors can see those appearances.

If you rebrand your business or change your website, your blog should change too.

6. Network within your industry

In addition to building relationships with customers and directing new visitors to your website, your blog can also help establish your reputation within your industry and help you network. The following types of blog posts can create networking opportunities:

• Interviews with industry leaders
• Findings from customer surveys
• Share your colleagues’ (credited) posts and images
• Information about industry-wide events
• Relevant news stories or trending topics
• Collaborations with other businesses

When you create and share content that is relevant to your broader industry, other businesses are likely to share it as well. That creates the opportunity to build professional relationships. It also increases the reach of your blog, putting your business in front of a new audience.

7. Blog with care and intent

Customers want to know that you care about your business. More importantly, they want to know that you care about solving their problems. This means that, no matter the topic of your business blog, your posts should communicate your investment in your business and customers.

When you plan out relevant, helpful posts, you show that you understand your customers’ needs and concerns. A carefully written blog communicates that you value their time and want to help them.

A poorly written blog, however, indicates that you don’t value your readers’ time. Posts that don’t address the interests of your customers show that you haven’t thought about how your business can help them. Haphazard posting makes your business look scattered or disorganized. Bad grammar or poor editing makes you look unprofessional.  I have been in situations to share information by re-posting and chose not to because the original post contained poor grammar.  I have also left a website within seconds of seeing misspelled words on the Home Page.

Tip:  There’s nothing wrong with getting a website audit if you are concerned about poor grammar or confusing design.  Click Here to Learn more about audits.

For writing assistance and marketing strategies, please contact Maria L. Novak, Marketing Solutions & Business Development, 610-405-0633, Maria@Maria-L-Novak.com