Every month, over 409 million people read blog posts, according to WordPress. You’re here because you don’t want to miss out on reaching this vast audience.
You’re here to learn how to convert all these blog readers into paying customers.
The starting point to having a successful blog for your small business is deceptively simple: you need to start writing.
After that, you need to optimize your small business blog to make sure that people actually read it.
Why do you need a blog for your small business?
Having a blog where you write articles related to your line of business helps to establish you as an authority in your industry.
You want customers to come to your blog when they have questions related to your product. You can also start a conversation with your customers on through your blog.
Among the most common reasons businesses create a blog is to drive traffic to their website.
Businesses that have blogs receive 55 percent more traffic than businesses that don’t. A blog is a powerful tool for marketing your products or services and increasing your revenue.
A business blog will also improve your website’s search engine rankings. You want your business to be among the top-ranked on page one of search results.
The higher you rank on the search results, the more visitors you get to your site. Think about it: when’s the last time you went past page one of search engine results?
Once you decide you want to start a business blog, here are 7 great tips to help you get started.
How Do I Start a Blog?
There are several steps to take to set up your very first blog. The following are the steps you should take to create your new fantastic blog:
- Niche Blog Topic
- Choose a blogging platform
- Choose a domain name and a hosting package
- Set up WordPress
- Design Your Blog
- Research, write and publish your content
- Optimise your content for search engines
- Promote and market your blog to grow it
- Make money from your blog
Why Are You Starting a Blog?
Before you carry out the steps above, you need to think about why are you creating a blog? What makes it appealing to you? Is it to build an audience? or maybe it’s just another way to make money? It would help if you answered these questions so you could reach your desired goal.
1. Niche Blog Topic
Before building your blog, you must think about what your blog is about. You must select a niche to write content on. What are your interests? Is it tech, fashion, tv or something else? You should make a list of all your interests, both professional and personal. This is always a great exercise to select a niche that you’re most interested in.
2. Choose a blogging platform
You have now selected your niche topic to create your blog. Next, you need to choose a blogging platform to manage your content. There are many options, but we always recommend using WordPress no matter what level you’re at. To set up your blog, you’ll need a domain name and web hosting. Creating your blog this way means you will have total control of your blog and your content.
3. Choose a domain name and a hosting package
To set up a blog, you need both a domain name and a web hosting service.
Your domain name is what people will know your blog as online. Your domain name is how you will be found on the internet, and it should be easy for people to search.
Web hosting makes sure that your blog is available online at all times. They will store all your content for you. Pricing plans can vary on what service you want, and it will be reasonably priced per year if it’s a small blog, whereas a more extensive blog may cost more. There are several different hosting services.
4. Set up WordPress
Tips for starting a successful blog for your small business
1. Post content consistently
Be consistent. That’s not to say that you must have a perfect blogging streak.
Don’t post multiple blog articles one month and nothing for several months after that. Lack of consistently will make your blog stale.
Blogging becomes easier the more you do it so consider setting up a posting schedule to help you become consistent.
Studies have shown that posting more than 16 times every month is the best.
According to the research, businesses that published content more than 16 times per month received nearly 3.5 times for traffic that those that posted four or fewer times every month.
Obviously, you can’t dedicate all your time to creating blog content because that’s not your core business.
However, investing a good amount of time in generating material for your business blog can help grow your customer base.
Alternatively, you can have someone in your team update the blog post, or you can outsource the task.
2. Conduct research on keywords
In addition to creating blog content that is relevant to your small business, you should also make sure you reach your target audience.
After all, the point of writing blog articles is to have people read them. This is where keyword research comes in.
Keyword research involves finding out what people who are interested in your products or services type into search engines.
For example, if you sell ingredients for pastries, among the people you target are those that search “easy recipes for baking a cake.”
If you sell clothes online, you might want to target people who search “cheap ways to upgrade my wardrobe.”
As much as possible, include the keywords in your blog titles and subtitle to increase your chance of getting high ranking on search engines. Keyword research also gives you ideas on what to write about.
3. Optimize the length of your blog post
How long should a business blog post be? Long enough to convey all the useful information needed to answer your readers’ questions.
The blog article should also be long enough to fit all the keywords naturally.
You want to write detailed, high-quality article you can take pride in.
Ask yourself, if you were a customer, would you want to read the article? Better yet, would you want to share it?
In general, longer blog posts rank better on search engines. On average, the best-ranking articles are over 2000 words long.
That’s not to say that every blog article you write should be 2000+ words. It means that the more posts of that length you have on your blog, the better your chances are of getting a ranking on search engines.
Also important is the length of the titles of your blog posts.
In addition to catching your reader’s eye, the titles of your blog articles should be optimized for search engines. According to some sources, blog titles with under 60 characters are ideal.
4. Use visuals
Images and videos are highly engaging. Most people today have a short attention span.
When reading an article, we quickly look for the key takeaways to solve our problems. About 65 percent of people are visual learners so using visuals improves your chances of capturing a wider audience.
Useful visuals you might want to incorporate in your blog articles include charts and infographics that highlight the main points in the post.
Readers spend more time reading content that’s engaging, and search engines favour websites where visitors spend more time.
5. Answer customers’ questions
Customer’s questions are a great source of ideas for blog topics. Take note of any queries customers might have about your business.
They can inspire future blog posts. Answering these questions does two important things: it addresses important issues your current customers have about your products, and it captures potential customers with similar questions.
6. Invite guest contributors
Few things are as time-consuming as blogging. The good news is that there’s a way you can generate content for your blog while saving time: inviting guest writers to contribute to content to your blog.
Guest posters give your blog a fresh outlook even as they write about topics related to your business. They can even share a new perspective on something you’ve written on before.
You can invite an industry leader or an expert to be a guest contributor. Alternatively, you can interview them and present the interview in written format accompanied by the audio.
7. Do an industry news roundup
Weekly or monthly roundups of news related to your industry are also a good idea for content.
You can offer a summary or commentary on top articles that may interest your target audience. In the posts, you can explain how the information in the article can help them.
PR/Outreach
A great way to improve the SEO of your site is to start building organic links. There are numerous ways to build links to your blog, such as guest posting, creating a linkable asset, directory submissions, interviews and much more. To learn more information on link building, read the Link Building Book here by Paddy Moogan.
Utilise Social Media
Of course, once you have your blog up and running, the first thing you should do is share it on social media. You should be posting content daily to your social media to increase your audience and build some loyal customers. Canva is a great tool to help you create graphics and videos.
You should keep up with trends such as posting on TikTok as it’s rapidly growing and a great place for new businesses to create content.
Bottom line
Start writing as soon and as often as possible. Optimize your posts by making them long enough and including relevant keywords and highly engaging visuals such as infographics, chart and videos.
Make sure you answer customer questions and occasionally invite guest contributors to inject fresh perspectives.