5 Tips to Follow When Blogging for Your Small Business

As you are (hopefully) aware, blogging for your small business is one of the most effective ways to spread awareness about your company, prove your knowledge in your industry (to establish yourself as top dog), and build out great content on your website that keeps visitors coming back for more. However, simply throwing up blogs on your site so you can say, “Yep, we do that!” is a surefire way to make people steer clear of your company’s website. Why? Your content might not be the most engaging.

Visitors don’t just want bland content they could find anywhere—they want content that’s interesting and helpful! Yeah, we know: that sounds easier said than done. But, whether your company tries to tackle it alone or hires a marketing company for help, creating great content is possible. And, with great content comes a greater number of visitors. How? You’ll need to start by following the blogging tips below.

Tip 1: Don’t Be Too “Sales-y”

Personally, I find few things less annoying than a blog that’s all about the company who wrote it and not about the information I was looking for. Imagine that a consumer is looking for a blog about drain cleaning tips, and he thinks he has found gold on a plumber’s website. But, in between providing those helpful tips, the blog also spends a lot of time talking about the company and how awesome they are at drain cleaning. The user could have found the best drain cleaning tips out there, but the consumer might not know that—or might not care—if he’s frustrated by all the salesy content throughout the blog.

Readers don’t want to heard about you, you, you. At least, not at first. They’re most likely looking shopping around for an answer to a question or for more information about a product or service. If you can prove to them that you’re the king when it comes to providing that information, they may just want to hear more about you.

Tip 2: Share Your Content

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: share your content on social media. How else do you expect your readers to find all of those blogs that are hanging out on your website?

Sure, if your content is SEO (search engine optimization) friendly, you may be counting on users to find your pages through a typical Google search. While, this can certainly bring you some visitors, it’s not the only avenue you should rely on. After all, you spent time and effort creating that content—or you paid someone else to. Get it out there! Share it on your company’s social platforms and even boost those posts to get the most eyes possible on them. Talking about your content on social media also gives users another opportunity to engage with your brand through likes, clicks, and sharing!

Tip 3: Include Visuals

As a general rule, you should include at least one image in your blog. At the very least, this breaks up your content and gives you a visual element to include in your social posts when you share your content. However, for the blogs that you’re able to, include charts, graphs, and other relevant visuals for the information you’re sharing. Sometimes, it’s nice for readers to be able to quickly grab the information they want, and it makes your content more interesting to read.

Tip 4: End with Calls to Action

You should never just end a blog with, “And, that’s all, folks!” Instead, entice your readers to do something with a call to action (CTA). Offer readers something else they may find helpful such as a link to another blog on your site, a free download you have, or a chance to get a sneak peek at the services you provide. Always lead your readers back to something else on your site—the longer they stay, the more touch points they have with your brand, and the closer they are from moving from visitor to lead and lead to sale.

Check out the example below from a previous blog I wrote on the dangers of AdWords Express for small businesses. Instead of warning readers against AdWords Express and then walking away, I offered them a chance to get a free analysis of their pay per click advertising campaigns to see how well those campaigns are really working for them. (P.S. If you’re interested in your own free PPC analysis, learn more here.)

Tip 5: Post Frequently and Consistently

Don’t let users forget about you! Create a calendar or schedule that you follow to ensure you are sharing content consistently and as frequently as you can, depending on your capacity. If you write a great blog one week that brings tons of traffic to your site, but you don’t share another blog for over a month, all that brand awareness you created has already faded away. Keep your name at the top of users minds by posting great content consistently.

Look at the graph below (click the image for full size) from Google Analytics, showing the blog traffic of one of our clients, month by month, over the last four years. As they became consistent in their content creation, their reader base grew from around two visitors per blog to anywhere from 30 to 50 readers per blog. A large percentage of those are new users, meaning new people discovering this company and their services.

Beef Up Your Blog

Yes, there are a lot of steps when it comes to creating great content for a purpose. That’s why we shared another set up blogging tips with you back in November. However, if you’re not following the crucial tips above and in our previous post, your blog could be failing you and your website. If you feel like you company doesn’t have the capacity or the skill to put all of the attention towards blogging that it needs, Blue Corona can help. Find out how we can ensure that your blogs optimized for SEO, and learn more about how we can get bring new leads to your website through well written blogs and service pages. Contact us today!