Optimize Your Business Blog’s Marketing Strategy
According to HubSpot, 25% of marketers say that their company blog is “critical” to their business.
You need to optimize your business blog’s marketing strategy. Business blogs engage and attract potential clients as well as current customers because they address their interests, needs and problems.
What better way to reach your target market than to give them the information they’re looking for?
But the question we get all the time is: How do you get these people to read your business blog posts?
1. Write for people
Having your business blog be found on-line (SEO) is a balance between getting ranked by the search engines and getting read and shared by your customers and prospects. What this really means is that your blog strategy should be centered around content that is written for people. People, after all, are the ones reading and sharing it, and this is ultimately what gets the search engines to pay attention to you.
Ask yourself—who is your business blog speaking to? What kind of content will answer their needs? What keywords are these people using to find you on the web? How can you tell your brand’s story in an engaging and compelling way?
When you demonstrate interest in helping your readers with their questions and challenges, they will start to read and share your posts.
2. More than keywords
Optimizing your business blog involves more than just adding keywords. Most inbound marketing pros understand how to add keywords, and it doesn’t necessarily make their blogs successful. If you really want to boost readership (and the website traffic that comes with it), keep these key points in mind:
3. Don’t forget social media
Blogs that are social media-friendly are characterized by content that is:
- Updated
- Easy to share
- Reader-centric
We might add that blogs optimized for social media are also responsive to user feedback. If, for instance, you’re linking to your blog on your social media accounts (and of course you are), you can easily take the comments you get from fans and followers and incorporate them into your next blog post. You can use your readers’ responses, thoughts and questions as inspiration for your next blog topic. This is a great way to create content that your readers want, in real time.
4. Look inward for ideas
One of the best ways to optimize your blog is to tap into the endless stream of ideas from inside your company. Why? The stories that come from your day-to-day operations are your brand story—your authentic voice. What happened this week that you can share with readers that will reinforce your message? Examples might be experiences with customers, internal memos and meetings, and interactions with your local community. All these things can produce interesting and compelling content.
5. Look outward for ideas
What are your clients asking you about? What questions are are being asked and answered by members of your target interest groups on LinkedIn? These are simple ways to get a feel for what’s important to your readers. You already know the answers. Just include them in your blog articles.
6. Set the pace
Simple steps make a big difference. While it’s important to post regularly, don’t set a schedule you can’t maintain.
Nothing is worse than a client coming to your blog and finding that your last post was from six months ago. Set aside some time during the week (even Saturday mornings) when you’re schedule is not overwhelming.
Write at least 300 words (usually a couple of paragraphs) answering a question that you heard that previous week. Then post it. Do that once per week and make it a habit.
Before you know it, it gets easier and easier and you’ll be more popular with Google and your customers!
