One of the most difficult things to learn as a small business owner using the internet for inbound marketing is how to create good content. Business blog content has to walk the fine line between being the same old advertising spiel and still being useful for marketing purposes. Here are 5 ways to ensure that your business blog will enhance your business.
1. Optimize Your Content. Every post you write needs to be optimized. That’s right…every post. Start off by determining how successful your content is. How many people read your post and how long did they stay on your page? How did they get to your post? Did they comment on it? Use this data as you create future posts. It can help you discover what kinds of content people found interesting. Finding out where they came from can help you discover what other kinds of information interests them as well. This information can be invaluable as you determine what kind of content you will create for your business blog.
2. Engage Your Readers. When you readers are engaged in your content, they will react. They will leave their own comments and then direct others to your posts via Twitter, Facebook, or their own blogs. You need people to react because their actions vis à vis your posts will dramatically increase the number of people who are exposed to your blog. If the 20 people who read your post simply read it and then click on to the next site they want to visit, you’ve reached 20 people. But if each of those 20 people then tell 20 more people about what you’ve written, you’ve reached exponentially more than that!
3. Balance Your Content. This is where things get tricky. You need to find a good balance between content that brings readers to your site and content that results in sales. Unfortunately, there is no magic formula to help you do this. You need to find the balance that works for your website and your readers using the metrics discussed in #1.
4. Find Your Own Style. Even if the extent of your writing experience is limited to a high school term paper, you probably still have style rules ingrained in your head. Forget them. Find your own style that works for you and for your readers. That may mean sticking primarily to bulleted content. On the other hand, it may mean using long, flowing prose. But throwing out style rules doesn’t give you license to be sloppy. Typos, bad grammar, and abhorrent spelling make you look unprofessional, not hip. Find your own style, but keep the quality of your writing top notch.
5. Toot Your Own Horn. If you’re not going to toot your own horn, then it simply isn’t going to get tooted. When you publish your content, don’t stop by simply publishing on your blog. Post it to your Twitter and Facebook accounts, too. Talk about it among your social network in real life. When visitors comment on your stories, comment back. This can take some doing since you’ll be getting comments on multiple sites, but people will be more apt to come back if they feel like you care what they have to say.
Engage your readers, balance your content between information that drives sales and information that attracts readers, find your own style, optimize your content, and talk about what you’re doing. These are 5 steps to successful business blogging. And while they might take some getting used to, especially if you’re already familiar with traditional marketing strategies, they will pay off in the end with increased sales and customer loyalty. Make them work for you and watch your business grow by leaps and bounds!
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