Starting a company blog can be a good way to give your bottom line a boost. Businesses with blogs attract 55% more traffic and 126% more leads. If you’ve always wanted to create a small business blog, we have some tips to help get you started.
Set goals
Before you start, ask yourself what you want the blog to accomplish. Answers might include:
- Solving customer pain points
- Demonstrating your expertise on industry topics
- Improving search engine optimization for your website
- Creating brand awareness
Knowing what you want your blog to do will help you generate content, determine if that content is working and decide what kind of call to action (CTA) you want to include on blog posts. Your CTA could be to ask the reader to buy a product, sign up for a newsletter or share your blog post on social media.
Generate ideas
One of the most challenging tasks can be deciding what to write about. Develop ideas by asking what customers want to know. Include answers to frequently asked questions, discuss upcoming products and share customer success stories or testimonials. Considering writing about your industry as a whole, including new developments and tools or apps that you have found useful.
You can also go straight to the source and ask your customers what they want to read about. Ask them for feedback by email or social media. Offer fun prizes like a card and dice set or useful items like a cooler bag or T-shirt as a thank-you giveaway.
Build a content plan
Once you’ve picked a topic, build a content calendar to keep yourself on schedule. Whether you blog once a month or once a week, having deadlines for first drafts, editing and posting will keep your blogging efforts on track.
Choose keywords
Determine which industry terms people are searching for and put those terms in the header, body copy and conclusion of your blogs so people can find you. Remember—words you use in the industry may not be the same words your customers use. Searching on Google Ads™ keyword planner, Google Trends™ or other free keyword analysis tools will help you find the right words.
Write, edit, repeat
When you’re first starting out (and sometimes even if you’ve been writing for a while), writer’s block can happen. To combat the problem:
- Schedule a time to write.
- Start with your conclusion: What do you want people to take away from this?
- Minimize distractions so you don’t break your flow.
- Write first, edit later—you can look up facts and fix typos in your second draft.
- When editing, read the draft out loud to check for flow and find errors.
- If writing is going well, consider writing multiple posts while you’re “in the zone.”
Share content
Of course, the point of your blog is to get people to read it. Sharing your posts via social media or email can be a great start—and a great reach builder. Ask people to share your blog posts and put those who do in a drawing for a chance to win a duffel bag or a hat.
Build that blog
Now that you’ve learned how to start a business blog, it’s time to get writing! New customers are sure to follow. Good luck!