Have you ever thought about starting a blog for your business? You might not know but having an online presence is key and fundamental for any business in 2022. It is necessary to maintain a blog because it supports your business presence on the internet, creates natural leads for you, helps you with customer engagement, and can lead potential customers to your site. In this article, we gathered some amazing experts and asked them for their advice.
Why can blogging help a small business grow?
Blogging can help a small business grow by generating leads and new customers. Writing blog posts that explore your topical area or field is a good way to establish your expertise and attract the right kind of audience for your business. Think about what problems your customers have and how your business helps them solve those problems. Then, write about those problems and solutions. Make it about the customer, not your products and services. A blog can be a tremendous strategy, but I’d caution against writing to write or writing about your company. You could become different and unique if you offer valuable content that people can’t get anywhere else.
Abdel from EmarketingHacks
But what is a blog?
A blog is a website where you need to choose the right niche, post quality articles, and check your SEO. It’s dedication and hard work, but if you follow all the steps, you can make it your primary job.
How to start a blog for your business?
Blogging is a great option to earn money online. Many people are doing blogging as a full-time career. Few of them became successful and earned a lot of money. Here I’m sharing my experience of starting a blog for your business. You should answer the following questions yourself first before starting a blog:
- Why do you want to start blogging?
- Can you give enough time to your blog?
- What is your blog monetization plan?
- What is your expertise?
If you have enough knowledge and experience to share with others, you can spend enough time on your blog, you have a good plan to monetize the blog, and you should start blogging. You can earn money from a blog in many ways, such as; AdSense, affiliate commission, product or service reviews, sponsored content publishing, etc.
Mustafa Sakib from OS Digital World
How does blogging help to build your brand?
Businesses often use portfolio websites that showcase their products and services. In the past decade, social channels have helped brands interact with customers directly. However, blogging provides a platform to publish long-form content to engage customers, showcase your expertise in the business and build trust.
Businesses that offer complex or critical services can educate their customers through a series of blog articles and build an educational approach to generating leads and boosting brand value. While B2B businesses can develop Thought Leadership with their business blogs, For Consumer-centric brands, a blog can address customers’ problems and recommend their products along the way.
Providing Value First is the idea to approach the current times, and to achieve this goal, every business should blog to build its brand.
Amol Wagh from Tech Blogger at Digital Conqueror
How can blogging help with your sales conversions?
- Research typical blockers to buying your goods or services. Support and sales team are in constant contact with the consumers and I’d recommend listening to phone calls for learning more.
- You can turn these phone calls into blog posts to address issues early in the buyers’ journey.
- Don’t look just at the keywords volumes for building your content strategy. It’s important to write also about what consumers need. This strategy is also in line with the recent Google Helpful Content update which recommends bloggers write for people, not search engines.
A well-maintained business blog is an excellent way to increase sales conversions by developing trust, providing valuable information, and engaging potential customers. Through consistent and insightful blog posts, businesses can demonstrate their expertise, establish credibility within their niche, and earn the trust of their audience. By addressing common pain points, offering solutions, and demonstrating a deep understanding of customer needs, you can start a blog that positions the brand as a reliable authority, thereby influencing purchasing decisions.
A great business blog allows companies to nurture leads throughout the sales funnel, guiding prospects from initial awareness to eventual conversion, by providing educational content and addressing objections.
Business Jem
How does blogging increase online visibility for your business website?
Blogging is a great way to increase the online visibility of your website. It helps you to increase brand awareness, website traffic, and authority. Moreover, if you do everything correctly, you can get lots of leads from blogging.
Blogging increases website traffic
Blogging is a fantastic way to bring extra targeted traffic to your website. If you create helpful content with keeping in mind the user’s attention, then it can increase organic traffic. In addition, these contents can easily crawl and rank in the search engine, ultimately creating more traffic for your website since the search engines pull up your website more often.
Blogging helps build brand awareness
A critical factor in increasing your website’s visibility is building brand awareness. Blogging can be a great way to get the word out about your brand. You can do this specifically by using your blog to engage with your customers. This engagement will help create a sense of trust and openness between you and your customers. This can make your customers feel more comfortable with your brand and lead to a greater desire to purchase your product.
Blogging can also help to create a greater sense of brand recognition. This is because when you blog regularly, you make more content for your visitors to engage with. By creating this consistent content, you’re increasing your website’s value to your visitors. This helps to build brand recognition as you’re consistently creating new content for your brand.
Blogging increases website authority
A website with higher authority will rank higher in search engine results. Blogging helps increase your website’s authority by increasing the content on your website. This is important because search engines will rank websites higher if they have more content to crawl.
Newer websites will often have a lower authority than more established sites. Blogging can help to build up the website’s authority by creating more content for the search engines to crawl. This will help to rank your website higher. It’s important to remember that building up the authority of your blog will take time.
Sawaram Suthar from The Next Scoop
How does blogging create brand awareness for your home professional business?
When you come up with your business website, it is necessary to run a blog about it, so your website will expand and get more quality traffic by raising your website in the search engine feed and raising the awareness of your brand.
One tip here: use appropriate sizes of fonts, and tables, make all your text organized and visualized, and add infographics designed especially for your blog. It is important to make all your visuals on brand, use your branded colors, while making every article, use the same template (willingly not common but something specific and elegant at once). This way, only while reading your content, readers will associate the information with the picture their brains took, and there’s your website on it.
One more thing is needed to be mentioned is how important is to add some relevant links to your other articles or service pages. The longer clients stay on your website, the better they will remember you. Also, you can use examples of your work done, when you are writing an article. In the real cases where your company was involved in a great resource of information for posts, it will illustrate your words and make the information more relevant and reliable and, as a plus, readers will remember your brand. Write a unique, well-formatted, and highly readable article. Check it for plagiarism, and get sure there are no grammatical issues. When you are choosing your style, you should consider the niche of your website. The more attractive your blog pages are, the better.
Maria Shelaieva from CMO at SpdLoad
How to find the right niche for your blog?
Finding the niche for your blog is not always as simple as it sounds. What you will write about needs to be something you are interested in or want to learn more about. Of course, you can pull off some good articles on niches that are not of particular interest. However, in the long run, if it is something that you feel is by no means a matter that you could relate to yourself, then it will become very hard over time to keep this endeavor sustainable. Understanding what is actually interesting to you is sometimes not as much of a challenge as most people make it out to be. I have a few tips I could give regarding that, and you might be surprised how easy it can be. Just have a look at your Facebook/Instagram/Twitter feed. You often follow pages and look for content there that you like. Take this into account, think about it and dive deep. The devil is in the details. The more in-depth you go, the more topics you will be able to pull out.
Could blogging help you to attract new customers? Why?
Blogging is great for attracting new customers! First, blogging is one of the best ways to create content that will speak directly to your ideal clients. Your blog posts should talk about the transformation you offer in your business, answer questions or objections people may have, and generally educate potential customers on why you’re an expert in your field and can help them. It also helps with SEO because your blog posts will naturally include keywords and phrases related to your business and it gives interested visitors more to engage with, keeping them on your website longer. Finally, a blog on your website is much longer lasting and further reaching than social media. You don’t have to worry about algorithms or trends but can really concentrate your effort on long-form content that brings people into your business and allows you to repurpose it to other platforms.
Samantha Mabe, Creative Director and Designer at Lemon and the Sea
Can I use AI to create blog content?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT are adept at creating really good quality content. However, it is not a good idea to use them to create blog content.
One of the primary reasons for this is that Generative AI does not offer unique insights. It uses existing literature to produce its articles. As such, it is difficult to create your own perspectives and content angles using AI tools.
When your content reads just like the dozens of other articles on the same topic, it is difficult to establish the authority and trust which is what you want from your own business blog.
In the absence of unique perspectives and authority, such content does not get ranked high on search engines which can rob you of valuable inbound website traffic.
Scott Chow from The Blog Starter
Why do blogs build trust?
Blogging is an excellent way to show your customer that you’re not just in it for the money. A blog can show that you actually care about them and want them to succeed. By providing free information in your area of expertise, your customers learn to trust you and also get a better understanding of what you’re all about. Any time you can create valuable information that solves the problems your target audience is experiencing, you will be able to display your expertise, making you the authority and reliable trust of information in your field. Like in any relationship, trust is built over time, so if you can write numerous valuable articles about your topic, spreading them over time, so they can consume the content at their time, it will be evident to web visitors that you’re someone who knows what they’re doing. This is the beginning or continuation of the customer journey; this is building trust.
Oscar Quesada from Lifedge
Why is blogging important for engagement?
Today’s customers really dig into their research before making decisions. They want to buy from and partner with businesses and organizations that are reputable. If you have very little information on your website that will benefit and motivate them, they are going to turn to your competitors instead. A big part of convincing someone to trust in your business or organization is going to come from staking your claim as an industry thought leader. In order to gain the level of customer engagement that you wish to achieve, clearly demonstrate your knowledge as you create written content. Keep in mind that the more useful your written content is, the higher your website is going to rank.
Blogging is a great form of content to do this with. You get the opportunity to write about topics that your audience genuinely cares about. Do your research about the questions that customers are actually asking. This way, you capture their attention right from Google search results. By creating more blog content over time, you build your business or organization’s authority while helping a greater number of prospects discover your brand. It even encourages people that took a look at your website previously to return with new questions. When you use SEO best practices, like internal linking and relevant keywords, blogging has a very high potential for engagement. After all, Google and customers alike love receiving fresh, helpful content that is made by humans, for humans. Plus, you don’t have to limit your blog content to just the blog itself. Push your latest posts on your social media channels. Make sure that all of your supporters (and potential supporters) know about the content that you are producing so that you can continue to get their eyes on your website.
Megan Marshall,Customer Success Coordinator & Content Specialist at WEBii
How to plan your blog’s functionality?
If you think of your blog as a digital vehicle that can take your business anywhere it wants to go, then blog design is the exterior while blog functionality is what’s “under the hood” of your vehicle. While it’s important to get the “look and feel” of your blog right, it’s essential to focus on the right hosting environment and planning for functionality when setting your blog up, as this will determine how well your vehicle is going to run once you start driving it.
Over one-third of the world’s blogs run on the WordPress platform. One of the things that makes WordPress so powerful and popular, is that it provides blog owners with virtually unlimited functionality and expansion capabilities through “plugins”. A WordPress plugin is a kind of like a mobile phone app. You install it and it automatically becomes part of your device, allowing you to do more than the original device’s built-in capabilities.
With WordPress, anything you can imagine doing with your blog, there’s a plugin that’ll let you do it. Think about it, find it, install it, and grow your blog with it. Some plugins provide essential functionality, like site security, page optimization, and data backups. Other plugins, like analytics, contact forms, and tools that detect broken links on your site allow you to manage your blog more efficiently. Some plugins add functionality that allows you to grow your business faster by improving SEO and capturing leads, and then there are plugins that can transform your blog into an eCommerce store, membership site, portfolio gallery, discussion forum, business directory, virtual live streaming events center with built-in ticket-selling, automated bookings and registrations system, and its own social networking community…you name it!
The great thing about using WordPress and plugins is that you can start with a simple blog and add new functionality as you go, when and if needed. As stated earlier, however, it is essential to research and plan the right hosting environment and functionality for your blog when setting things up, as you’ll want to keep your vehicle streamlined and efficient at all times, especially once your blog is running at full steam. This will help to avoid conflicts with server environments, bloating through having too many plugins installed, or even having to switch from one plugin to another because the plugin you started with lacks the features and functionality that another one offers.
Martin Aranovitch, Blog Editor at WPMU DEV
How has the blogging world changed since you started? If you could give advice to a beginner, what would it be?
The competition for bloggers is getting fiercer. There is almost no niche where not already a huge amount of content is out there. You have to consider this competition when you are starting a new blog. Why should people read your blog?
To be able to compete, you have to focus on providing something unique, something that will make people choose your blog over others. You have mainly two options to stand out: Quality and personality. Many people look for the best content out there, but many people love to read blogs for the personality of the blog owner/writer. Keep that in mind. Plus, you should have a content promotion strategy. A couple of years back, great content may have found an audience on its own. But with rising competition, you have to go the extra mile to make your blog known.
Susanna from The Social Ms.
What platform (Wix, WordPress, Shopify, etc) would you recommend for creating your blog and why?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, as the best platform for creating a blog depends on a number of factors, including the specific needs and goals of the individual or organization creating the blog. However, since I am a control freak, I’d any day pick WordPress as the ideal platform to start a blog. WordPress is a popular option for creating a blog because it is free to use and easy to set up. If you are tech-savvy, have a basic knowledge of website design, and know how it works, there’s nothing better than WordPress. However, you’d have to still pay for your domain name and website hosting. Another great advantage of using WordPress is that it offers a wide range of features, themes, and plugins to choose from. This allows users like me (and hopefully you) to create a customized blog that meets their specific needs.
From choosing a fast-hosting server to using a basic plugin to add a unique feature to your website, WordPress has it all. That being said, if you do not want to get into technicalities and complex stuff, Wix is another popular platform for creating a blog. Like WordPress, Wix is easy to use and offers a variety of features and customization options. One advantage of Wix over WordPress is that Wix will provide you with a drag-and-drop interface, which makes creating a blog even easier.
Lastly, if you want to create an eCommerce store, Shopify is a good choice. Shopify provides users with powerful e-commerce features, which can be useful for those who want to sell products or services through their blogs. But if I am being honest, the same could be achieved with WordPress + WooCommerce (an eCommerce plugin) combination, and that too with more flexibility. To sum it up, if you want to customize every aspect of your blog, WordPress is the best choice.
Aditya Dongre, Founder at Digital Marketing Tipsy
WordPress is a popular blogging platform that comes with many features, community support, themes, and plugins. Even without any coding knowledge, you can build a website and put your creative ideas into action. However, for many people, WordPress can be overwhelming. They may also lack some basic technical know-how. In that case, I recommend the Ghost platform. It is well-funded and constantly rolling out new features to be the ultimate blogging-specific CMS. It is also well-funded CMS that is built on modern JavaScript frameworks that make sure your website loads quickly. In fact, I’m seeing many people switch over to Ghost because they want a more streamlined platform and faster page speed scores. So if you’re looking for an alternative to WordPress, then I suggest checking out Ghost.
Akshay Hallur from BloggingX
Would you recommend using Wix to start blogging? Why?
Wix is a good platform to start blogging, especially for beginners. Its user-friendly interface makes it easy to create and manage a blog without needing much in the way of technical skills. For example, Wix offers a variety of customizable templates, allowing you to design a blog that matches your style and needs. Its drag-and-drop editor simplifies content creation and layout adjustments.
Wix also has robust SEO capabilities, providing tools to optimize your content for search engines, which is essential for increasing visibility and attracting readers. These features, combined with the ability to add social media integration and other functionalities through Wix’s App Market, make it a versatile choice for starting a blog.
Moreover, Wix offers analytics tools to track your blog’s performance, helping you understand your audience better and refine your content strategy. Plus, its responsive design ensures your blog looks great on both desktop and mobile devices.
Why is it important to have a domain for your blog?
- “.com” domain names are still considered the best. That’s because these are the easiest to remember.
- Your domain name should be short and memorable. For example, “unitedhealth.com” is better than “unitedhealthinsuranceexperts.com.”
- It should be super easy to pronounce. For example, if you’re telling people about your website on the radio, they shouldn’t have to second-guess it.
Hitesh Sahni, Marketing Director from Smemark
Why is it important to choose a Hosting for your blog?
The hosting you chose is one of the most important aspects. There are “obvious things” such as features available and of course, another important aspect is speed, but I’ll look at another usually overlooked aspect of hosting – website security.
Most users tend to not give enough importance to the security aspect of the hosting service they chose, but what is not commonly known is that most websites get various types of attacks multiple times, EVERY single day. This means that if your website security has not been taken into consideration it’s only a matter of time until your site falls victim to a hack attack.
How does hosting affect this? Most cheap hosts will not put many security features in place. More high-end servers will on the other hand employ several different layers of security mechanisms that will protect your site from different kinds of potential intrusions. We are of the opinion that security should be an important consideration when it comes to your hosting choice because the alternative is a nightmare to rectify.
David Attard Founder of CollectiveRay
Should you optimize your blog for mobile and tablet?
As of August 2022, 62% of all internet traffic comes from mobile devices. More than half of Google searches also come from mobile traffic. For online marketers, that number speaks a lot of volume and metrics to consider when planning a marketing campaign. Including mobile (smartphone and tablet users) users in the overall business strategy is more important than ever. From website designing and content planning to marketing strategies, every step of a business marketing journey must include tactics for mobile traffic acquisition. If it takes more than 3 seconds for your website pages to load on mobile devices, you need to fix it.
The first step in mobile optimization is having a responsive web design. Your landing pages must be usable on all devices including mobile, tablet, desktop, and laptop computers. Your web host plays a crucial role in how optimized your website is. No amount of optimization tactics can make a significant difference on a low-quality server. So, before trying to optimize mobile page speed and performance, check the quality of your hosting services.
Shamsudeen Adeshokan from CyberNaira
What are some benefits of creating high-quality blog content for your business?
The main reason to publish quality content on your blog is to help customers discover your brand, build trust, and help prospects decide to make a purchase. Content marketing, in its many different forms, can help you achieve all kinds of things. This includes:
- Spreading brand awareness
- Building trust in your brand
- Maintaining relationships with existing customers
- Nurturing leads and prospects into customers
- Encouraging repeat purchases
Writing quality content for your blog helps to add value to your audience. The higher the quality of your blog posts, the more effective they will be. High-quality content will also help you to attract backlinks – which is essential for effective SEO. Quality blog content is focused on meeting customers at their stage of the buying journey and targeting them with content that matches this. By achieving this, you create a stronger connection with your audience, which can help you make more sales. These days, brands need to do more than just try to sell products – they need to take on a media role. Writing quality blog content is essential for achieving this.
Tom Kotze from Wishpond
In blogging, quality content creation is fundamental for growth and all marketing efforts. One piece of evergreen quality content can be repurposed into several formats to get ongoing traffic and audience from different channels. Isn’t that amazing? And that is what I love to write and teach aspiring bloggers on my blog too. Here are a few great benefits for creating high-quality blog content for your business;
- A high-quality blog post is more effective and can drive better conversions than a regular blog post. The main reason is that it appeals to the right target audience, solves everyday questions, and builds trust with new site visitors. This also means that a standalone article on the blog can successfully lead visitors to multiple product pages, thus bringing in more website traffic, clients, and sales.
- Blogging for business requires extra effort and investment into creating valuable articles. A well-constructed content piece backed up with successful examples, research, and facts is an asset for your blog and online business. It’s true that it costs money, but it continues to drive long-term results for your business. As soon as it ranks, it starts to get profitable results for days, weeks, months, and years to come.
- Your blog content also shows you as an expert and authority in your work area. If your content is educational and solves everyday questions of your audience, then it’s most likely that they will trust your words more than anyone else in the industry. And there’s nothing better than having a trustworthy and engaging relationship with website visitors.
Arfa Nazeer from SheMeansBlogging.com
Why is it essential to name your blog?
Choosing a good name for your blog is crucial because you want your readers and followers to remember it and instantly associate it with your niche. Your blog name should be short, easy to type in, and reflect your main topic. No need to hunt for keyword-focused domains. Instead, find something that will be easy to brand and fun to promote.
If you look at a name and can instantly imagine how you are going to visualize it in a logo or even a mascot, that’s always a good sign! Creating a memorable name is more important than SEO because if you do it right, it will stick! The more effective your branding is, the less dependent you are going to be on search traffic which is too easy to lose these days. People will recognize you in social feeds and email inboxes and will be happy to click and engage.
Anna Fox, Owner of HireBloggers
How to set the tone for your blog, and why is it important?
You must understand your reader’s persona, read up on similar articles on your chosen topic, and connect your brand’s values with the target audience to determine the best style and tone for your writing. When reading something, have you ever felt that the author is trying to either convince you of something or is sharing a strong opinion on a topic? Or sometimes you’ll come across a piece that’s too bland but has a lot of useful facts and information. All these are the different blog writing tones a writer adopts, keeping in mind their target audience. It’s not necessary that you’ll resonate with their opinion, but writing with the right tone is important to convey the exact message to the readers.
- Informative: An informative writing tone is used when the writer wishes to impart knowledge through facts or spread awareness about a particular issue. The sentences in a blog with an informative tone are completely factual and objective. The writer obtains information through extensive research and experience, and they don’t include personal opinions.
- Formal: A formal writing tone is typically used in academic, scientific, technical, or business articles. The writer is completely thorough and direct, emphasizing facts and figures. Here, too, personal opinion is kept to the minimum. An article with a formal tone usually has longer sentences, extremely proper grammar, complex word choice, and no slang.
- Humorous or witty: Creating content with humor that your audience can easily connect with is quite difficult. Nevertheless, it is the type of content most people prefer reading, especially when the article is on a relatively boring topic. Understanding your audience thoroughly is a must if you plan to write in a witty tone because everyone perceives humor differently.
- Inspirational: You’ll find a lot of inspirational content on the internet that offers encouragement and support. Blogs with an inspirational tone generate hope and optimism and are written quite informally. The writer is usually seen citing personal experiences in these blogs.
- Friendly: A friendly writing tone is more conversational, wherein the reader finds themselves actually engaging in a two-way conversation, rather than getting advice or instructions from a stranger. This tone elicits trust and can have a mix of formal and informal writing styles. A friendly tone also usually shows a lot of compassion and humor.
- Curious: When the writer creates curiosity among the readers to engage them on a particular topic, they are using a curious tone. Such a writing format has a lot of open-ended questions, unsolved mysteries, or unanswered queries, prompting the readers to dig a little deeper.
- Pessimistic and optimistic: Some writers use an optimistic tone, often provoking the readers to take action or encouraging them through personal opinions. A pessimistic writing tone, on the other hand, often warns the reader against something, citing all the negatives around it. For instance, “Waking up early will help improve my productivity” and “I am not productive, because I wake up late” both convey the same meaning. However, the first one motivates the reader to wake up early, the second one just lists out a negative fact without telling you how to improve.
How to use storytelling to engage your audience?
And then I tried to grow the audience on Instagram in 2018. That was a game-changing experience because I’ve gotten immediate reactions. This experience made me review the whole process of storytelling. So now the process looks like this:
- Know your audience. You must imagine the person you are communicating with. Don’t try to have an ideal text. The same story will be described in a very different way to your granny or to your co-workers.
- Useful content. Figure out why someone would like to hear this story one more time. Is it funny? Useful?
- ‘Character’. Your audience needs to understand who you are and what you are usually talking about. That’s why the same story posted on your Instagram page and on the public platform can have very different results. You definitely need to introduce yourself if this is the first contact.
- The plot. The most common scheme is “introduction – events – conclusion”. You can change the order, but you need all these 3 parts to be included.
Andrii Kalashnyk, CMO at trendHERO
Is audience experience improved by good visual design on your blog?
Absolutely. There’s actually a recognized phenomenon in the design world called the aesthetic-usability effect, where users tend to consider aesthetic websites as more intuitive than their non-aesthetic counterparts. By incorporating good visual design alongside your UX, you not only encourage users to stay on the page and begin reading but can also create smooth flows between the information on the page and the “next step” that you might want your users to take.
Your content does not exist in a vacuum. The information you deliver is always perceived in the visual design “clothes” it wears: typography, spacing, imagery, and the website as a whole. The more you elevate the design of your website pages, the more credibility you lend to the content within
Maria Myre, SEO Specialist at Designlab
Why are analytics tools important for your blog?
Analytical tools are essential to have for building a reputation and keeping your customers happy after you have provided them with your services. If you decide to put in all the effort and work but have nothing to show for it – then how are your customers going to be able to evaluate your value? In fact, there are many analytical tools that are available for free so you can provide your clients with the metrics without having to break the bank.
At our agency, we keep it simple with some of the most basic and important tools. Google Search Console is a necessary component for all of our SEO clients, and we like to connect that along with Google Analytics to the Google Data Studio platform – which allows us to create unique reports. The Google Data Studio platform allows you to connect data from a variety of sources and you can save templates based on the services you provide. This has been the easiest and most cost-effective way to provide our clients with the important data to help their businesses succeed.
Tyler Rice, Founder and CEO at Animas Marketing LLC
How to notify your audience when blogs are posted?
Your blog is ready and you have hit publish! Now what? But your traffic remains, how do you solve this? It was way back in 2011 when Mark Zukerberg came up with the Law of Sharing. He explained that according to Facebook data, social sharing functions exponentially! And with the growing number of channels present for marketing, I think it’s fair to say that it’s more than important for brands to start investing in content distribution now.Depending on the levels of audience engagement, the first step for the right distribution is to identify the channels that will bring in some money, the channels where your competition is not there or deemed as too risky (hidden opportunities), and the channels that don’t provide any direct impact on your ROIs, and lastly, the channels that are outdated or too expensive.Besides the usual Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn, there are some other channels that do function well. And, these channels are push notifications, WhatsApp notifications, web push notifications, in-app notifications, forums, Slack communities (external), Medium, Slideshare, LinkedIn articles, newsletters, stories (Instagram, Facebook, and the likes), and lastly, but not the list YouTube. Getting the mix that works might take some time and research – and even some late hours – but once you have the right recipe, you will achieve success every time a new content asset is published.
Aditi Biswas, SEO Content Manager MoEngage
Why is it important to create a newsletter for your blog?
Are you trying to build relationships with people, but don’t know where to start? Do you have a website and are not sure how to market it? Have you ever built an email list but don’t know what to do with it? The solution is simple! Create a newsletter! Newsletter marketing can help you get the word out there about your business. If you have a blog, you should definitely be considering starting a newsletter. A newsletter is a great way to stay in touch with your readers and let them know about new blog posts, events, and other news.
Here are a few reasons why it’s important to create a newsletter for your blog:
1) Increased engagement with your readers – people who receive spam emails often unsubscribe from mailing lists just because they don’t want any new material delivered their way.
2) Easier access – when readers have immediate access to all relevant information they’re more likely not only To read your latest posts but also To stay subscribed despite busy schedules.
3) Greater reach – building subscriber lists through email marketing allows you greater reach than if you were only published in print form.
4) More engaging content – dueling against large print magazines and other printed publications in the online space has become increasingly difficult.
5) Better customer service – with better customer service it’s easier for bloggers who want their readership evenly divided between positive and negative Feedback (or even just average feedback!).
The blogosphere has been buzzing with the debate on whether to create a newsletter and where to find mailing lists. Over 10,000 blogs have indicated through their links that they are interested in receiving an email from their readers. This is just one indication of their trust in the importance of newsletters.
Why is it so important to post content frequently?
As we all know, content is king, but if you want to be the king of content, you must create content consistently. Content that is frequent and with great value for the readers.
- The main argument is that it builds authority when you create new content frequently, which means that you are up to date with what is happening and you are a fresh website with new ideas that cares about your audience.
- Helps you to attract more visitors by ranking for more keywords and overall increasing your ranking in search engines as a fresh content creator. The more relevant and appealing your content is, the better you will rank for specific terms and queries.
- Keeps your audience engaged. If you have an audience, having frequent and interesting content will keep them coming back to your website. Building a strong and engaged audience is the best way to grow your brand.
Why it is important to create a community for your audience?
Most people enjoy engaging with like-minded folks online. People love to congregate in communities where they can discuss common interests, from movies to marketing to making money. When you create a community around topics you specialize in, you’re basically laying out a red carpet for your biggest fans and followers, who could turn into paying customers down the line. Here are some benefits of creating a community for your audience:
- Laser-target potential customers by appealing to their interests
- Understand their pain points and what they’re looking for
- Avoid the guesswork and create products or services based on what your community wants
- Have a ready forum of beta testers for any product or service you create
- Nurture your community and build a relationship with members
- Be seen as an authority and the go-to person on your topic
- Build a list by offering a lead magnet to your community
- Save money on advertising by marketing repeatedly to your community without having to pay for ads again and again
To build an engaged community, be engaged with your audience and learn how to create content that engages them and gets them to respond and take action.
How to use social media to grow your blog traffic
Leveraging social media can be a great way to reach more people and can be effectively used to drive organic traffic to blogs. If you want your blog to be visited by thousands of people, then just sharing the content on different social media websites is not enough; you need to work with the proper strategy.
- Understand your audience. Create the ideal profile of your visitors for better targeting so you can quickly evaluate where you will find such an audience and specifically target those types of groups and communities.
- Start your profile and page on all social media sites where you think your potential audience is available and share engaging content daily, including the blog post you publish on your blog.
- Understand the growth factors of the particular social media website. Like on Facebook and Instagram, your post will get more views when you use proper Hashtags, and on Reddit, your post will get more user interaction when your content is highly relevant.
- Be super active on social media, this way it could grow with 2x speed; you need to interact more and more with your audience.
- Use attractive illustrations and catchy headlines so that people this way might click more on your post.
- Always build your brand authority, and try to establish yourself as a brand so that people can trust more brands.
When you consistently do those things, your social media handles automatically start growing organically, and ultimately more people will visit your blog. For better social media growth, remember one thing: content is king; when you create engaging content, people will interact more with the post, and your social handles start growing.
Here is the quick formula for ultimate social media growth:
Target Right Audience >> Create Social Media Handles >> Understand Growth Factor for Particular Social Media Site >> Always Be Super Active >> Use Attractive Illustrations & Catchy Headings >> Be Consistent >> Growth Begin.
Sunny Kumar from TheWPX
How to promote your blog on Facebook?
Back in the day, I could count on a certain amount of blog traffic from Facebook just by posting regularly. Once the algorithms came into play, Facebook traffic slumped. I joined engagement groups to click, comment, and share other people’s posts. I would wait until just before the group closed their engagement post for the day, quickly create my Facebook post, and share it with the group. Many of the bloggers would race to complete the clicks, comments, and shares immediately. This way Facebook would be tricked into seeing my post get some immediate action and show it to more of the people who liked my page. This was a ton of work, and I quickly realized that it wasn’t the best use of my time. My options were to hire a VA to do the group engagement or pay Facebook to show my post. So, long story short, I target my audience with boosted posts or ads.
How to promote your blog on Pinterest?
Pinterest is a traffic source you don’t want to miss out on as it’s actually a search engine. This means that people come to Pinterest to find inspiration, a solution to a problem, or any type of content that you create on your blog. So, let’s find out how to promote your blog on Pinterest in 4 easy steps.
- Create a Pinterest business account and create a keyword-rich profile. If you need help, make sure to grab my free guide.
- Create 15-20 Pinterest boards that are relevant to your blog topic. Using keywords in the board titles and descriptions, repeating keywords in titles, descriptions, and also pin titles will make sure Pinterest knows what your content is about.
- Now you have to create some beautiful pin images with click-worthy headlines.
- Start pinning! Pinterest loves consistency, so it’s important to pin a similar number of pins every day. I pin around 6 pins every day and 2 of them are new pins for my own content.
Lisa van der Velde from Sassy Boss
Why should business owners know about SEO Strategies?
Business owners should understand the benefits of blogging. While most people think of it as a fun hobby for stay-at-home moms, we know that blogging can generate predictable and long-term leads and customers for your business. In order to fully understand how a blog can benefit your business, you’ll first need to learn more about SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and the search engine we are referencing here is Google.
When you show up in Google search results, you are driving readers to your business website. These readers that come to your website are potential customers. You can think of your blog as a virtual billboard that you own forever. Additionally, you can write blog posts that target your ideal customers. For example, perhaps I own a restaurant in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. To leverage my website and draw attention to my business, I would want to write blog posts about topics that people who are visiting the area might be searching for.
Business owners pour money into Google ads in order to show up at the top of search results and gain exposure for their businesses. But the secret is out, ranking at the top of Google search results and expanding your business’ reach can be free and easy with the right SEO and blogging strategies.
Laura Peters, SEO expert and owner of Scale Your Travel Blog
Can you use blogging for organic SEO?
Yes, blogging is a great way to boost your organic SEO efforts. It is an effective way of improving your website’s visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). By regularly creating content that is related to the products and services you offer and by using relevant keywords throughout your blog posts, you can increase your chances of appearing in SERP rankings. Additionally, blogs are a great way to build relationships with potential customers and boost engagement on your website. When people find value in the content you share, they’re more likely to return or even share it with others. This helps create backlinks that give a positive signal to search engines that boost your ranking even further. Ultimately, regular updates through blogging will help make sure your website remains visible and competitive among your peers.
Does blogging improve your Google ranking?
Blogging is a method to increase reach through search engines. If you’re talking about search engines, Google is an important one, and it’s hard to ignore it. A good Google ranking can mean a good target audience reach. My experience shows that blogging can improve audience outreach through search engines that result in sales. Nonetheless, businesses need to be savvy to implement blogging for such purposes. Business and blogging are a good combination to always be relevant to your target consumers. Blogging gives your business the flexibility to discuss various things in the industry so that your target consumers are constantly updated and engaged with your business. In contrast to static website content, blogging can always be updated with the latest topic. If you want to blog to improve your Google Ranking, be smart in selecting blogging topics that are relevant to your business and in demand from your customer. This way, your business will not only get outreach from Google but also increase the customer base which is important for business development.
Why are keywords of your blogging important for SEO?
What are some tips to do your keyword research when blogging?
How does blogging help to capture organic leads?
With over 4 billion people connected to the internet today, blogging can drive a startup to drive a lot of traffic and potential leads for their business. Research suggests that nearly 70% of people today prefer to learn about a company through its website rather than traditional means of advertising. Companies with a blog tend to attract more audiences than those without a blog.
Making your business visible to your target audience in 2022 will require thinking outside the box and using means of marketing and promotion that your competitors aren’t paying attention to right now. This is where blogging can add tremendous value to your startup. Let’s take a look at blogging and how it can help spur the growth of your startup by capturing organic leads. Read on to the end for our take on the impact of blogging on startup success in 2022.
How can it benefit your business?
- Increase organic search traffic: Startups that want to grow their audience faster should integrate a blog into their website. The only reliable way to stay relevant is to continually create unique content. The reason startups fail for this reason is that they rarely post new content on their website, and their blogging competitors start outstripping them. The blog helps you to get organic search traffic to your website with higher chances of conversion. But for this, you need unique and plagiarism-free content.
- Get the best positions in the search engines: When you blog consistently, it helps you get better search engine rankings. Research suggests that around 95% of search traffic goes to the results that appear on page 1 of Google. This should be your goal with your blogging strategy. The more aggressive your blog is, the greater your chances of impacting and getting better rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). As you rank higher in search engines, you start getting organic traffic. This increases your chances of selling your products and services. It all starts with a quality blog.
Improve customer engagement
Blogs attract their audience significantly. Instead of posting random content, when you do proper keyword research and write content about topics people search for on the internet, you improve customer engagement. But for that to happen, your blog content must be value-oriented. If readers don’t find your content valuable and it doesn’t resonate with them, it’s hard for them to trust your products and services.
The key to blogging is to create specific content that helps readers solve a problem. If your content doesn’t, you won’t get real customer engagement on your website. The more aggressive your blog is, the greater your chances of impacting and getting better rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). As you rank higher in search engines, you start getting organic traffic. This increases your chances of selling your products and services. It all starts with a quality blog.
Make a positive brand positioning
There is a reason why people choose to go to the same brand they have always used for their services, and that is “trust”. They trust the brand and feel comfortable buying it repeatedly. Now, building that trust isn’t an overnight miracle. It takes time and effort to build that level of trust for your brand in the minds of your target market. You can make the most of this concept of trust through blogging. If you keep posting valuable articles on your blog for your visitors, you will become an authority in that field.
Create a list of subscribers
The biggest problem with building a subscriber list is that you don’t know if you have the right people on your list. These should be your target market with the greatest potential to buy from you. You can use the blog to build a highly segmented list of subscribers for yourself. When you publish a new post, you can add a link to your newsletter there.
Inamurrahman Durrani founder of Mix With Marketing
How can guest blogging and digital PR make your business more established and visible?
- Guest Blogging Boosts User Engagement: This helps you reach more readers and a wider audience that will be interested in your business and what it has to offer. Even being published in newspapers or niche magazines can hugely boost your brand and website exposure and lead many more users to your online presence.
- Digital PR Helps Your Brand Build a Reputation: With digital PR pieces such as press or news releases or specific features, you can specifically target your brand’s reputation in the media. You can share special events, developments, and announcements regarding your business, which position your business in the spotlight, especially when it’s something impactful, e.g., funding to create more jobs, an award, etc.
Manuela Willbold, Online Media & Digital PR Strategist at ClickDo Ltd. and SeekaHost Ltd
Why is networking important when blogging?
Networking is important when blogging because it helps you grow your blog faster and achieve the desired business goals. We regularly call up companies to exchange experiences about running a business blog. For example, we’ve exchanged experiences with Netpeak and learned how to find excellent authors for our blog. The network helps to solve business problems. For example, when our business runs a promotion, we reach out to our contacts to support this campaign. This often goes beyond the blog and makes use of mailing lists or social networks. Networking is a two-way process. We are also glad to be helpful to our contacts and help them to achieve their goals. Knowledge sharing, campaign support, and new opportunities are why networking is important when blogging.
Andrew Novoselov, Head of Content in Travelpayouts
Can blogging create a loyal customer base?
What does it take to convert a customer into a loyal customer? The answer is: value addition. Loyalty is a result of the value you, as a business, add to the users before, during, and after a purchase. And that could be a fairly challenging process to scale. This is where blogging comes into play, as it is a means to provide value at every stage of a buyer’s journey. Blogs inform at the awareness stage, educate at the consideration and decision stage, and solve queries at the post-sales stage.
Some types of blogs you can create to build loyalty are how-to tutorials, case studies, thought leadership articles, and brand updates. To go one step ahead, you can embed engaging content like quizzes in your blogs to add instant value to your users. Lastly, loyalty is a pull strategy rather than a push strategy. The quality of your blog content will determine if customers will continue to trust your brand. So, create high-quality content that keeps them coming back!
Shreya Sinha, Content Manager at Outgrow.co
Internet and wireless devices
To have a successful process for your blog, you need to make sure your internet provider is fast and secure, as it could slow down your process of creating your blog and publishing it. You could compare and ask an internet specialist if you still do not count on reliable internet. If the space in which you are going to work on your website is small, like an office or an apartment, then you would not have trouble with the coverage but there are options when working on your home and big spaces in which you need more coverage.
