So you’re buckled up, on the bandwagon of Business Blogging. You’ve joined the masses, but you may be asking yourself: what are the ways to make sure your business blog generates revenue? How do you make sure your blog makes a difference to your bottom-line and not just your creative writing skills? How do you make your Business Blog the Business Blog for your industry, knowing it is a reliable lead-generating marketing strategy?
Business Blogging Revenue Fundamentals: The Chauffeur
Bad luck, this isn’t a scenic Sunday afternoon drive. You need to be up in the driving seat of Business Blogging. For today only though, BiznessApps are kindly going to be your tour guide.
The reason you need to be leading the way as the chauffeur: a staggering 61% of US consumers have made a purchase based on a blog post. An eye-watering 77% of internet users read blogs. And, don’t be left behind, companies that blog have a whopping 80% more visits.
Check out this Infographic (link: http://www.quicksprout.com/2015/01/16/how-blogging-affects-your-bottom-line/?display=wide) by Quicksprout if you need any more convincing from the Stats. Put bluntly: you blog, you win. Blogging makes a real tangible difference to leads and ultimately sales. In 2016 it’s simply not optional.
There are 4 fundamentals to making sure your business blog generates revenue:
Your blog drives traffic to your site
Your blog increases SEO/SERP
Your blog positions your brand as an industry leader
Your blog is a tool for Developing Customer Relationships
The How & Why of Business Blogging: The Road Map
It’s all very well being the chauffeur but you need to know the route. If you don’t know where you’re going and what you hope to achieve then you’ll be one of the thousands of blogs that don’t work due to poor execution and, simply, become internet noise. But you’re at Chauffeur Training School, so here’s your route for successful business blogging:
Stop 1: Minimal Outlay, Continuous Rewards
Marketing Budgets have a habit of getting eaten up in one swift bite of an advert. Worse, once the advert has swallowed that chunk of cash, the leads stop. This is therefore a short lived expensive plan, necessary at times, but not a continuous low-cost stream of advertising. Blogs on the other hand, they are pretty cheap to generate, and just love to go on giving. Once it’s out there it’ll go on quietly generating you clicks, traffic, leads and sales without demanding a bit of your doughnut. In time you get a predictable amount of traffic and leads without additional resource investment.
Stop 2: Hassle-Free Audience Building
As a business marketing professional in 2016 you’re used to spinning plates. You’ve no doubt got social media in your back pocket, literally, Apps at your fingertips and email lists that rival the Yellow Pages. You need to use blogs to utilise and build on what you’ve already got, and, importantly, link them. With very little effort you can set up a wonderful spidery map of routes posting your blog posts from industry forums, Yahoo answers, LinkedIn groups, Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and more. These all feed together in to a holistic marketing strategy that sees links to your business going hither and thither driving traffic, leads and sales.
Stop 3: SEO Loves Blogging
You post a blog and it is an investment that keeps going. Posts never disappear from Search Engines, and in fact they can rank better in time. The efficacy of your blog compounds over time. To make them super-duper high quality posts that just keep on giving they need to be both keyword-rich whilst eminently readable, as well as dotted with worthwhile link-building, particularly links back to you.
Stop 4: Know What You’re Doing
No one’s going to feel confident with a chauffeur who doesn’t know where they’re going. In the world of Business Blogs this means that your blog needs to be consistently high-quality authoritative reading. You need to become the industry leader by being the blog people turn to for advice. So if you’re an App building company like us, you blog (link: https://www.biznessapps.com/blog/) about everything you need to know about Business Apps. If you’re an IT company you offer some free IT tips. If you’re selling health supplements you offer some free health advice. By offering high-quality free resources you build trust and ultimately sales. Answer common questions, address pertinent issues, and offer solutions.
Stop 5: Feed Your Audience
Don’t become noise. Whilst it’s important to post as regularly as you can in order to keep up there in SEO terms, it needs to be high quality. Whilst Blogging is sound marketing sense it can be time-consuming if you want to ‘do it right’. It’s not enough to just post your thoughts, but you need to style your posts in a way that keeps your reader interested, shares it, and comes back for more whilst ticking off the SEO checklist. Whilst some of this may be possible in-house, freelance writers can be an affordable reliable option for keeping up with your own demand and ensuring you have regular high-quality blog presence.
Stop 6: Take Your Tips
If you want a blog that generates business revenue, all posts must contain a call to action. They don’t need to be overt, or brazen, but somehow you do need to link back to your main business and encourage engagement, even if it’s just to leave a comment. It might be a free offer or an opportunity to get some more advice.
Blogs have Longevity – The Chauffeur of Time Travel
As we discovered on our tour route at Stop 2, blogs are fantastic for being a marketing strategy that just keeps on giving. They continue to drive traffic and leads days, weeks, months and years later. One trip as chauffeur and you’re collecting the dividends long in to the future. This alone makes blogging an exceptionally powerful low-cost marketing tool.
So, don your blogging chauffeur’s hat and start leading the way. It’s not complicated, the route’s straight-forward, and the sights along the way are pretty rewarding too.