If you’re blogging for your business, keep in mind that more is more. Don’t do it if you’re not going to do it well. It’s like any other effort you’ve made on behalf of your business: if you do it half-heartedly, you’ll get weak results. Consider these 5 facts:
The more frequently you blog, the more traffic you’ll get.
This one is purely logical. The more content you publish, the more the search engines will crawl your site and list your content in their index. The more links to your site in the index, the more people will find you. This doesn’t happen instantly. You may blog regularly for a year or more without seeing a significant increase in traffic. But if the quality of your blog posts stays pretty consistent, and you’re publishing the kind of content that your target audience is looking for, you will gain attention (and links to your site) that will pay off in increased targeted traffic.
Keep in mind that the only traffic you want is the kind that can turn into customers. If your business has a specific geographic service area, getting a million visitors from outside of your service area will definitely inflate your traffic numbers, but it’s not going to result in more leads.
The more targeted your blog posts are for your target audience, the more people will read and return.
Put some thought into identifying your ideal or typical customer. What is he or she looking for from you? Where do they live? What are their concerns, relative to your services? Do you have the answer/solution to their problem? Do you know their most frequently asked questions? Make sure that you are writing for them, answering their questions, explaining the issues they are interested in, showcasing the products they are looking for and they will come back to your blog again and again.
A great way to find out what your target audience is looking for is to write a blog post that is a poll, asking a question or two. And look at your site analytics to see what keywords your visitors were searching for when they found your site. Keep track of your most popular services and products and make sure those are the things you are writing about.
The less self-serving your blog posts are, the better you look.
Resist the urge to make your blog posts sound like advertising. You can advertise your business on the rest of your website. You should have pages where you can tell everyone about your accomplishments and certifications and you can describe your awesome services, your stellar reputation, the history of your company, etc. On your blog, you need to forget about all that and just provide interesting, engaging, informative content that is targeted to your ideal customer. Show them (don’t tell them) how great you are by providing content that sets you apart from your competition and addresses their needs.
The more you draw on your own expertise in your blog posts, the more authentic they sound.
You already know you shouldn’t be “borrowing” content from other sources on the web, but you also need to be sure you’re only writing about the things you know best. Consumers are very savvy and they can tell the difference between a blog post that is “filler” or is trying to capitalize on some keyword, from content that you are an expert in. And if you’re not the expert on everything your business does, then get the expert to write a guest blog post. Or interview the expert and publish his or her genius. Just don’t be lame because your readers will see that and they won’t come back. Which means they’ll never turn into customers. Write what you know.
The more knowledge you share on your blog, the more people will want to hire you.
You may not want to write an entire How-To manual, with step-by-step instructions and diagrams, but only because that’s too much info for a blog post. You could turn something like that into a white paper or an ebook. Don’t be afraid that you’re giving away too much information because a curious thing happens when you share your knowledge and experience. People want to hire you. They realize they don’t have to do it themselves; you can do it for them. They recognize that you know your stuff.
Don’t have a blog for your business yet? Read How to Start a Small Business Blog the Right Way to get you going.