How to Earn and Retain Audience Engagement with Purposeful Content
A good business blog can drive traffic to your website, tap into new markets, support your sales funnel by generating leads, building trust, and boosting conversion rates, and can serve as a platform that positions your brand as a trusted authority in your field. Sometimes called content marketing, business blogs straddle a number of functions including marketing, sales, and branding.
In recent blog posts we’ve shared tips on editing and how to balance your resume and LinkedIn page. With its growing prevalence, competent business blog writing can also be an important skill needed in one’s professional life.
While there are no limits to the range of blogs that can be found on the internet, business blogs – blogs written, published and shared in support of a specific brand or business – are more particular in their aims and the ways they target their audiences. For many businesses, this is an extremely cost-effective way to promote themselves. Here are some tips to keep in mind to help you build and write purposeful business blogs that will bring your readers the most value.
Why Blog?
Blogging is an effective tool for marketers trying to reach potential customers and increase brand familiarity. One of the key functions that allows for this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO), keywords and phrases that are associated with your written content. By strategically choosing industry-specific words, also called SEO terms, you increase your blog’s indexed search engine ranking which helps people find your blog when they search for terms related to your product or service. In this way, your blog can better attract organic traffic and boost brand awareness.
Your blog is also an opportunity to present yourself or your business as a thought leader. A blog will help you earn people’s trust if you are able to share industry-specific knowledge. This allows you to showcase your expertise on a given subject and can make a distinction between your business and your competition.
An effective business blog allows you to strategically place calls-to-action such as links or input fields that suggest to your readers what to do after consuming your content. In multiple locations in your text, you might ask readers to join a newsletter or email list, direct them to a sales-related page on your website, or link them to more even specific blog content. Such calls-to-action introduce your readers, now prospects, into the buying process.
Develop Your Blogging Style
Blogging developed in the early 1990s out of diary-style online journals which people self-published through personal websites. Out of this practice evolved the blog as we know it today. Blogs are often presented informally and do not need to follow a journalistic or academic writing style. Let your blog reflect the human face of your company. Give it some personality and try to avoid sales pitch language. People are more likely to respond and engage when they believe they’re interacting with another person, as a more rigid and cold voice may be off putting. Of course, your voice and style will be dependent on your brand.
Your Audience Comes First
Make sure the content you produce serves a purpose for your target audience. When planning a blog post, be sure to keep them first and foremost in your mind. A good business blog should solve a problem or fill some knowledge gap. It should provide them with something they need and are searching for. This could be a direct need, like detailed product features, or an indirect need, like promoting a topic and interest that moves your customer.
Blog with a Plan
Sometimes we just don’t know what to write. For many businesses, hesitation to develop their blog stems from a lack of time or ideas. Planning ahead is vital to establishing a posting schedule that can keep your blogs flowing for weeks or months at a time. Rather than generating posts one-by-one, brainstorm a series of posts together. This way you will know what needs to be posted and how it relates to your content as a whole. Not only does this compartmentalize the creative functions of planning and writing, it helps ensure your content will be more cohesive.
Quality Matters
Blogs succeed by providing valuable content. This is more than just posts directly related to the product or service of your business. Oftentimes what may be of most value to your customers is tangential to your brand.
Perhaps your business manufactures stationery and school supplies. In this case, you might produce content near the end of summer about general tips for parents and students returning to school. Or, if your business is related to local travel or leisure, you may consider sharing content like the “Top 5 Affordable Restaurants” in a target city. Sharing content that is in line with the values and needs of your customers, even if it is not overtly beneficial to your business, can create a more engaged and loyal readership. It also allows you to explore new and creative forms of content.
Blogs like this one and this one are good examples of how the lifestyle or community built around a business can be ample inspiration for creative content that is of value to new and existing customers. This is because valuable content will engage with your readers in a way that resonates with their own interests. By giving your readers content they care about, they will reward you by trusting you as a source and authority for this knowledge, returning to your website, and showing brand loyalty.
Frequency
Unlike your website, your blog should feature new content with some degree of frequency. Opinion is divided on this, but for many businesses posting at a cadence of once a week is a good baseline. More importantly, aim for a frequency you can maintain. Consistency is key here as search engines prioritize content that is fresh and more frequently updated.
Word Count
Compelling and valuable content can exist in both short paragraph-long posts or long form stories. There is no guideline for how many words your business blog should have, but take into consideration that many readers scan web content rather than read closely. Thus, economizing your words and using sub headers can help improve the read-through rate. If a lengthy blog cannot be helped, consider serializing it. The added benefit of serialized content is that it gives your readers another reason to return.
Images
Last but not least, carefully consider any images you might use. Not all blogs have images, but many do. Choosing the proper images is just as important as finding the right title and sub headers. By selecting an appropriate image, you boost the chances of customers clicking on your blog, as an effective image will help reinforce the subject and themes of your post. The images across all your posts should also adhere to some set style. Consider limiting a color palette or sticking to a set style of image to build cohesion across your blog. There are several rights-free stock image resources like this one and this one, but be mindful of the terms and conditions for sharing any image.
[Conclusion]
As you can see, there are many crucial elements that go into a successful business blog. When executed with purpose, a blog can be an effective but affordable tool for online marketing. For more in-depth strategies on business blogging, or blogging in general, consider registering for a blog writing workshop, like the one offered here.