Today practically every brand has a web presence. If you haven’t taken your company’s marketing online yet, it’s high time you explored all the wealth of opportunities for connecting with your target audience on the web. One of the best ways to advertise a business and grow a community of loyal followers is blogging. Content marketing is all the rage right now and there’s no better method for becoming an authority in your field than by sharing valuable content. Now the question is how and why to blog for business? Here are 5 tips to help you grow your business through blogging by 300%.
Set your objectives
Before you create a blog and start thinking about post ideas, you need to establish your primary objectives in creating this kind of presence for your business. Blogs are great if you’d like to introduce a new product to the world, put a face to your brand and personalize your business.
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Some business owners blog because it allows them to become recognized experts in their field, helping them to boost their credibility and demonstrate specific knowledge. Blogs can be a great source of valuable information to your visitors – providing posts full of actionable tips and solutions for solving different problems is the best way to relate to your audience.
Blogs can also be entertaining, helping you to enter the lifestyle of your customers with content that relates to their interests. Blogging helps brands to communicate with their audience and gather user feedback to improve their customer service and grow their business. It can drive sales to e-commerce ventures by intriguing users without directly pushing products on them. Finally, blogging allows you to offer fresh content on a regular basis and it simply does wonders to your SEO.
Now that you know that blogging is definitely worth the trouble, choose a few options from the list above and stay focused to deliver the best content you can.
2. Establish your target audience
Writing blog posts without really knowing who you’re writing for is simply a loss of your time. You’re not there to write about things that interest you and your friends – blogging is done for the audience. Otherwise your posts will end up in a vacuum and never really bring your business any benefits.
Identify your audience and learn about this group of consumers as much as possible. Create your buyer personas to know who you want to reach. Base them on your target demographic and spend some time getting to know them. If you already have customers, you can interview them through polls or special contact forms – reward them for leaving their opinion with special promotions or bonus cards.
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Once you know your audience, you’ll be able to lead your blog to the right direction and write about topics which are relevant to this target group. Knowing what are the main interests, problems and passions of your audience is key to proving just the right type of content to get them interested and excited about your brand.
3. Blogging and branding
Even if you blog as an individual, you should understand a few basic things about branding online. Branding means that you know what your business represents – what are its main values and principles, what you care about and how you want to change the lives of your audience. Good branding means sending clear and consistent messages in everything you do – including what you post about on your blog and how well your blog is customized. You can also learn to customize your blogger template.
The core of your messaging is the name of your business and the title of your blog. Naming your blog, make sure that you’re building and communicating the right core message and that you stick to it in every single blog post. This message should be reflected in the blog’s visual content and design as well.
How to make sure you’re on your way to effective branding? Ask yourself the following questions:
Who is my target audience?
Why do I want to attract them?
How does my knowledge/product/service help address their need or solve their problem?
What will my blog offer to them?
If you can answer each of these questions clearly, your core message is ready to be broadcasted to your audience. Be consistent in your blogging and keep your eyes on your final objective.
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Always look for new ways of communicating this message to your audience. Leave comments on other blogs to show your expertise. Guest post and link to content of others – it’s excellent for brand exposure. Promote your blog posts through social media channels. Make sure that your core message is received by the audience – it should be appealing and easy to understand.
4. Build consumer trust and brand authority
Blogging provides an excellent outlet for sharing your expertise in the sector. But just because you’re writing about topics which your target audience finds interesting doesn’t mean that your blog will boast high traffic. In fact, you need to constantly work on promoting your blog as a reliable source of information.
One way to do it is by joining online communities in your niche. If you join large groups which aren’t exactly relevant to your topic in hope of attracting a larger crowd to your blog and generating more conversions, forget it – it’s not going to happen. Take the time to find communities that might take a real interest in your knowledge.
Once you find those ideal online communities and forums, spend some time on reading what others are posting to get a sense of what values are of interest to this group of people. This is how you’ll be able to add real value. Listen to conversations and once the occasion strikes, share a comment that is meaningful and supported by experience or evidence.
Promoting your blog, you’ll naturally turn to social media. Target only relevant groups and make sure you fully understand the style and culture norms before posting or sharing links to your content. Being perceived as a spammer who just wants to promote their blog or website is the worst possible outcome of inexpert handling of social media interactions.
5. Engage influencers
Once you establish your presence on social media, you’ll probably notice that these social networks are the favorite place of many influencers. If you manage to engage them enough to share your content, you’ll seriously benefit from their support.
How to engage with the influencer network? You can try by reaching out, but before you openly ask them for help in spreading the word about your content/brand/product/service, you should add value and engage with them. You cannot assume that people will be willing to help you without even knowing who you are and what values your brand represents.
You can use social media to network with influencers or reach out to them directly on their blogs. A good way to start a conversation is by pointing out that they share a link to a piece of content and showing that you’ve got a post dealing with a similar issue.
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Or you can just start a conversation and allow them to get to know you better. If you and influencers share an interest and care about the same cause, there’s no reason for you not to team up and help each other in reaching new audiences. If you mentioned them in a post, be sure to tell them – they might return the favor.
Blogging is easily the single best strategy for getting your brand out there and creating a meaningful connection with your target audience. Blogging helps to reach out to new people and build a community of loyal followers who appreciate your product and its core values.
About the Author: This post is contributed by our premium Guest Blogger Torri Myler who is part of the team at a UK bank branches locator. She combines her background and experience in content marketing with her passion for writing. We are hoping some more great articles from him.
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