If done right, business blogging can help you generate more website traffic, more leads and a more authoritative voice for your customers.
Because blogs are typically updated more often than your website, blog posts help with your posting frequency – a big plus for search engines – and every new blog post counts as a new page to be indexed by search engines, so you’re more likely to be found. According to HubSpot’s Marketing Benchmarks From 7,000 Businesses report, the average company sees a 45 percent growth in traffic when increasing total blog articles from 11-20 to 21-50 articles.
Blogging can seem overwhelming at first – with the extra work, research and writing, but there are some easy ways to start creating content.
Start first with a plan. What kind of tone do you want your blog to have and how often do you plan to post? Will one person be responsible for creating blog content, or will there be multiple bloggers? Be sure to think about these things before you start typing away and posting to your blog.
Once you have a plan in place, you can start thinking about content. Blogs should give your customers answers to their questions and ways to avoid their biggest problems, as well as ideas, helpful information and fun tidbits.
There are several types of blog posts that do particularly well with readers. Here are a few to try out:
- The List post
Though it might be the easiest to write, the list post often gets the most attention because they are quick reads and easy to digest. List posts can include everything from a list of wrong ways to do something, to a list of best examples, ideas, industry hacks or smartphone apps that are relevant to the industry. There is no perfect number for a list post, but a good rule of thumb is to have five or more items in your list, and to vary the number each time if you do a lot of list posts.
- The How-To post
The how-to post should solve a problem for your customers, or it should make one of their everyday tasks easier to manage. Come up with a list of action verbs, such as start, grow, overcome, create, eliminate or stomp, and start building your how-to blog posts around those words. The words “How To” should always be included in the title of these blog posts.
- The Answer post
Aside from searching “how to ____,” what and why are two of the most-searched for terms online. Think about recurring themes in the questions you get. For example, LERN gets a lot of questions about eliminating the print brochure, so we answered them with “Why you should not eliminate your print brochure.” These posts should always start with “Why” or “What.”
- The Look at this other post post
If you come across a great article that is relevant to your customers you shouldn’t hide it, you should share it. Sharing other relevant content referred to as content curation, and it helps establish your authority. Write your own paragraphs on how the article pertains to your organization or industry, include a quote and the author’s name from the mentioned article, and be sure to link back to it in your story. These posts can get more shares via social media if you Tweet or Facebook the author of the original article when you share your post.
- The Industry Secret post
Are there misperceptions about your organization or the industry as a whole? If so, people will appreciate reading an insider’s take on the issue. Good titles for these posts include: “What no one tells you about _____,” “The truth about ______,” and “Things you thought were true about ______ but aren’t.”
Other popular and fun posts to try:
- Success stories from customers
- A post from a guest blogger
- Customer spotlight
- Useful links
- Infographics
- Quizzes or surveys, with a second blog post summarizing the results
Blogging best practices:
- Don’t mislead. Your blog post content should deliver on the title’s promise.
- Use an image with every post. Images help drive traffic and increase share-ability on social media.
- For Search Engine Optimization (SEO) purposes, blog titles should be no more than 70 characters.
- Include keywords in the title and in the body of the blog post to ensure search engines can find you.
- Include links in your blog posts to other related blog posts, or other relevant content on your website.
- Post on a regular basis. Even if you start at one post per week, that’s one more than you had before. Don’t go weeks without a post.
- Let the content dictate the length of the post. There is no magic number when it comes to how long your post should be.