The Key Role of Blogging in Building a Successful Business

This blogpost is extracted by Charing Kam from our new eBook, How To Use Digital Marketing To Grow Your Business.

A blog makes your website more dynamic by automatically injecting new content every time an article is published. Search engines reward higher rankings to websites that consistently add fresh content, and these higher rankings translate into new visitors and leads for your business.

When blogging, take off your hat as a business owner or marketing manager and try to think like a magazine publisher. The goal of your business blog should be to publish valuable, non-promotional posts, much in the way a column or an article in an industry magazine would. 

Also, think about the words you are using. Avoid industry jargon that only your employees would understand as this might alienate your target audience. Instead, think of the words your customers use to describe your business and apply those phrases to your blogging language.

What Do I Write About?

Most business blogs start with a purpose. What are you trying to educate your industry and potential customers about? This education is not about your product. It’s about common industry issues, the problems your potential customers face and, sometimes, the solutions your product or service offer to tackle these challenges.

A great way to start blogging is to answer the ten most common questions you get asked by prospective new customers. Do this once a week for ten weeks and you have the foundations of a successful blog.

Once those first ten weeks are over, check out your blogging analytics to see which articles resonated the most with your audience. You can measure this through free tools such as Google Analytics or a Content Management System (CMS) such as HubSpot. If two or three of the posts received a significantly higher number of views and inbound links, try to expand on the topics at hand. Consider interviewing a coworker to reveal their thoughts on the subject. Remember to let your expertise and passion shine through in your blog content. 

Generating Leads with Blogging 

Business blogging presents a fantastic platform for attracting organic traffic and engaging with your audience. However, the primary goal of your business blog should be to move your website visitors to the next stage in their buyer’s journey (e.g. making them a subscriber or a lead).

To achieve this goal, add calls-to-action (CTAs) to your posts and have them link to landing pages that provide downloadable access to more in-depth learning materials, such as ebooks or webinars. Make sure to include CTAs both in the sidebar of your blog as well as on every individual post you publish.

In addition to image/button CTAs, you can also include text CTAs within the body of your blog content. Of course, blogging isn’t the only way to generate leads using content. Next, we’ll dive into other content formats for generating leads, as the more diverse your content types are, the more people you cater to.

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