Content in the form of words has long been important on the web. We surf websites daily in search of information. Our search intent varies - at times it is to learn more, to shop, to connect with others, to be inspired or at others, to just be entertained.
Why you need a small business blog as a business owner: to attract visitors and increase traffic to your website. Search engines reward fresh, unique and regular content that’s relevant and valuable to readers. It’s a great opportunity to also establish your brand, build credibility, authority and trust with your customers.
How to start a small business blog
Deciding what to write about can be a daunting task. Where do you start?
At this stage in your content marketing and business blogging plan, you likely know your potential or existing customers well. If not, this 5-step process to finding your business buyer personas will help guide you.
It’s important to write on topics that engage them and address their needs at all times. Use the following to shortlist your content themes and topics.
Content Gap Analysis: If you’ve been in business a while and have existing content (on your website, social pages, as eBooks), run a content gap analysis. This allows you to spot gaps to fill with content that aids your customers in their purchase journey with you.
Internal and external website analysis: Take the opportunity to scrutinize your own website for keywords and see how they are ranking. Also, run an analysis on your competition’s website content with a platform like SEMrush.
Are there keywords they are going after that work well for you? Better yet, are there some they have missed that are extremely relevant to you? How about your competition’s calls-to-action or CTAs? Are there any you’ve missed? Think of ways you can make your CTAs even more impactful.
Buyer’s Journey Mapping: As a startup or growing business, you need to revisit your buyer’s journey periodically as it’s bound to change. Tailor your content to each stage of the process from awareness -> consideration -> decision. Assess which formats of content would be most useful to your customer within each stage.
Search and Market Research: Use search listening tools like Answer the Public. It gives you a sense of what people are searching for in certain niche topic areas. Conduct market research surveys to directly find out what your target audiences need - Survey Monkey’s solutions are worth a look.
How to run a small business blog and SCALE
To really benefit long-term from your business blog, you need to develop a strategy to scale as you grow. It takes considerable time, effort and energy to create content regularly. You also have to keep up with ever-evolving SEO best practices and search engine algorithms.
Determine the scale of your blog: The exact audience you’re targeting with your blog posts, frequency of posts, length of posts - deep or shallow dives into topics and the media to go along with it.
Establish Blog Objectives: Rank for relevant keywords that bring search traffic, build readership among your audience, earn backlinks from thought leaders in your space, engage on social and convert readers or visitors to customers. Prioritise what's most important.
Content creation: Start with keyword research and topic brainstorm sessions. Create a content brand guide that includes your tone of voice, style, use of keywords and formatting guidelines. This is so that writers both within your team or externally have a handy reference to turn to.
Create a collaborative content calendar (a simple Google spreadsheet could do). Make use of collaborative project management tools like Trello to keep on top of content projects. Add a spelling and grammar check to your content production process. Determine the content format for each topic e.g., eBook, infographic, blog post etc.
Automation: Distribute your content widely across social channels. Find out which days and times work best in terms of engagement on each platform. Use a social management tool like Hootsuite to schedule all your posts in advance.
Partnerships: Reach out to micro or nano influencers within your niche with an extremely relevant following. Collaborate with them on posts or pitch to have them share your content for you for greater reach. A lot of the success of a piece of content stems from the effort put into distributing it.
Finally, writing a business blog post
For a company blog to ring true; every business owner must know how to write. You know your business best and can speak with passion and conviction. There’s no reason you can’t write with the same.
It’s good to establish your blog’s voice yourself first. As you grow, there will definitely come a time when it’s in your best interest to outsource business blogging to SEO content marketing services instead.
The anatomy of a perfect blog post and Tik Tok writing advice are two inspiring resources to help you put pen to paper aka get typing. I wish you well in your blogging endeavours!
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