7 Benefits of a Company Blog and How to Do It the Right Way
Source : 7 Benefits of a Company Blog and How to Do It the Right Way
Published On : July 08, 2020 at 12:51PM
By : Ankit Singla
Is your company ready to go digital?
You may already have a working business website. But without a blog, chances are you’re not getting the traffic you deserve.
In this post, you’ll learn about the benefits of a company blog along with the steps to building one.
We’ll cover the company blog best practices and how to create a content strategy that resonates with your brand.
Let’s talk about these things, shall we?
Table Of Contents
- 1. Why Have a Company Blog?
- 1.1 Build your brand exposure through search engines
- 1.2 Establish your brand authority
- 1.3 Get more qualified leads to your funnel
- 1.4 Gain useful audience insights
- 1.5 Build a social media presence
- 1.6 More ways to monetize your business website
- 1.7 Expand your network
- 2. Building a Blog for Your Business
- 2.1 Researching blog topics for company websites
- 2.2 Building your content writing team
- 2.3 Types of blog content you should publish
- 2.4 Promoting your blog posts
- 3. Conclusion
Why Have a Company Blog?
This is a good time to mention the difference between a blog and a website.
A website, for all intents and purposes, is an online property that’s accessible via the internet. It can be an online store, social media website, message board, and so on.
Blogs are a specific type or section of a website that offers content to a target audience.
All blogs are contained within a website, but not all websites contain a blog.
With that out of the way, the following questions remain:
Why does your business need to invest in a company blog? How does a blog impact the sales of a company?
There are actually plenty of studies that answer these questions.
How business blogging can increase your revenue
In one particular study, blogging increased a business website’s traffic by 75 percent despite being in a “boring” industry.
The marketing agency, Whittington Consulting, also reported that blogging directly resulted in a 216-percent increase in business leads.
I used Whittington Consulting’s example because they highlighted the importance of developing a solid blogging plan to succeed. But you should be able to find similar studies published by other organizations.
I’m willing to bet my bottom dollar that they have similar results.
Additional data shows that brands that use blogging are 13 percent more likely to have a positive ROI.
I could fill an entire article with data on how blogging can affect a business’s bottom line.
But that’s just one part of the picture.
Other than increased traffic and sales, here are seven more advantages of starting a blog for your business:
1. Build your brand exposure through search engines
In the modern world, the internet is where most people get their information from.
With a steady stream of blog traffic, your brand will naturally be exposed to more people.
This is especially true if you have a consistent content strategy that includes SEO or Search Engine Optimization.
How blogging affects SEO
If you commit to publishing relevant, high-quality posts, you increase your website’s likelihood of earning natural backlinks.
That is the key to improving your search engine rankings and getting recurring organic traffic.
To give you an idea, one of my highest-ranking posts is about a popular proofreading tool called ;Grammarly.
Now, there are tons of people out there who don’t even know I exist. But since they know about Grammarly, they can discover my website by typing the right keywords into search engines.
Want to know how I managed to reach Google’s first page with that post?
Yup — lots of quality backlinks from other authoritative websites.
Your business website can also get high search engine rankings with blogging — that and repeatable link building strategies.
Learn more about SEO link building here.
2. Establish your brand authority
Providing the online community with valuable content will also help establish your authority in your niche.
A blog filled with informative content proves that you know your stuff. More importantly, it signals to your readers that you’re making an effort to help accomplish their objectives.
Building your brand authority has a handful of perks:
- Get more traffic through referrals and word of mouth
- Establish a reputation that can resist negative press
- Work with popular influencers who can spread the word on your brand
- Make your online audience pay more attention to your promotions
Bear in mind that you’re not just another company hoping to make a sale. Rather, you’re an authoritative brand that cares about making a positive impact on the niche you chose to serve.
Building your authority is the same as winning your target audience’s trust.
That essentially improves the likelihood of converting them into paying customers the future.
That takes us to the next reason why blogging is good for business.
3. Get more qualified leads to your funnel
To get more sales from your website, you can’t count on random visitors who click on your homepage by accident.
Even if they click one of your ads, there’s still a considerable chance they’ll leave your site without taking action.
A blog allows you to passively nurture and convert your existing leads.
Instead of shoving your sales pitches on their faces, you reward visitors with useful content that keeps them coming back. Eventually, they’ll trust your brand enough to move down into your sales funnel by themselves.
It usually starts with actions like subscribing to your mailing list or joining your forum.
Sure, they may not make a purchase tomorrow or the next day. But it’s only a matter of time before another blog post or a flash sale convinces them to buy something.
You can get in-depth Funnels training from Russel Brunson (who is the father of Funnels) through his One Funnel Away challenge.
4. Gain useful audience insights
An effective blogging strategy starts and ends with your target readers.
Remember, your content must address their pain points and include practical solutions to their problems. In exchange, you can earn their respect and build their confidence in your brand.
Once your blog traffic starts coming, you can turn to analytics tools like Google Analytics to learn more about them.
Google Analytics is, as the name suggests, an analytics platform that utilizes data from your website traffic. It dissects information such as your top-performing keywords, best traffic acquisition channels, website bounce rate, and more.
Knowing these metrics is crucial if you want to make data-driven decisions for your blog. How else will you know if your promotion campaigns and website optimizations are working?
Remember that the more traffic your blog gets, the more accurate your Google Analytics reports will be.
You can then interpret and refine the data into actionable insights, like:
- Your most successful traffic generation strategies
- The preferred content types of your audience
- Their browsing device of choice (mobile or desktop)
- Which “exit pages” cause you to lose the most visitors
There’s a lot more to learn on how to use Google analytics. For the rest of the nitty-gritty, read this guide.
Communicating with your audience
Another way to extract feedback from your blog audience is to actively engage them in your content.
Encourage them to leave comments, ask them questions — do anything and everything to give them a voice.
That’s something I regularly do whenever I publish posts here in Master Blogging.
Understanding your audience will help you tailor your marketing, branding, and product development to their preferences.
Use what you learn from data to get more blog traffic, then leverage that traffic to get more data.
This becomes a cycle that will allow you to grow and evolve into the big-name business you deserve to be.
5. Build a social media presence
What’s another way to get insights from your audience?
Easy: run a social media poll.
You can do this with the built-in tools found in major networks like Facebook.
Running polls is just one of the many ways to leverage your social media presence.
Active social media accounts can also be used as content distribution outlets, customer service channels, and relationship building tools.
Also, take note that social media networks like Facebook and Pinterest have built-in analytics tools. That should give you an even deeper understanding of your audience, like their content preferences and activity pattern
Don’t have enough social media followers?
Great blog content can be used to springboard your social media marketing.
A simple strategy is to integrate clickable social media icons into your website and blog posts. That way, you can funnel traffic from your website into your social media accounts.
Here’s an example of this in action from a company called Steve’s Roofing Inc:
The better your blog posts are, the more social media engagement you can generate. You just need the right strategies to push your blog content to more people.
There’ll be more on blog content promotion strategies later.
6. More ways to monetize your business website
Boosting your web traffic through blogging will unlock more opportunities for monetization.
I’m not just talking about leveraging your blog to close more sales.
There are plenty of other ways to leverage your blog traffic and make money. You just need to pick one that makes sense in your niche and for your website audience.
For most businesses, a typical strategy is to make money by displaying ads.
With an ad network like Google AdSense, there’s very little setup involved in this monetization strategy. You can also sell ad spaces directly to related brands if you want bigger profits.
Below is a list of monetization strategies you can implement in your business blog:
- Offering gated content — If your blog content quality is good enough, you can start charging your readers for them. Just be sure to offer some content for free to give your audience a taste of what they’ll get.
- Launch a paid podcast — More and more businesses are creating podcasts about topics like the state of their industry and their own products. This can be offered for free or as a subscription service to your audience.
- Receive payment for brand mentions — Speaking of podcasts, you can also make money by mentioning other brands in an episode or two. You could even have an entire podcast episode sponsored by another company.
- Publish sponsored posts — Blog traffic is a commodity that other companies will gladly pay for. If your blog gets a considerable amount of traffic, you can offer to publish sponsored posts for a price.
Of course, you shouldn’t focus on turning any of the monetization strategies above into your primary source of income. At the very least, you can rely on these tactics so your blog can pay for itself.
But if you can turn your blog into another money-making engine for your business, then why not?
As long as there’s traffic, there are always opportunities to profit off of it.
7. Expand your network
Making some noise in the blogosphere is a great way to earn valuable connections.
By valuable connections, I’m talking about potential partners and influencers who can elevate your brand image.
With partner brands, you can land collaborative projects that will allow you to benefit from each other’s authority. These projects can be collaborative marketing campaigns, products, and events — online or offline.
It’s up to you and your prospective partner to come up with the terms of your collaborative project. Here’s an example from two seemingly-unrelated brands — Spotify and Starbucks.
Does that mean blogging will help you get on a mega-brand like Starbucks or Spotify’s radar?
That depends on how big your company is.
For breakout businesses that are still getting their feet wet in digital marketing, you’ll get better results targeting smaller game.
Regardless of your niche, there’s bound to be other businesses you can collaborate with. It all boils down to the creativity of you and your marketing team.
Influencers, on the other hand, are all about helping you reach a wider online audience.
Who are online influencers?
Simply speaking, influencers are people who have an online following. They also have the power to influence their followers’ purchase decisions and their perceptions of other brands.
There’s simply no way you haven’t heard of at least one influencer at this point.
Marketing gurus, motivational speakers, Instagram models, other bloggers — they all fit under the influencer category.
If you want an influencer marketing campaign that directly affects sales, you can have influencers as affiliates.
That is a topic for another day, but you can read the gist of it from this post.
For now, let’s take a look at an example of a sponsored post by influencer Ketlen Weber:
There are specific blogging strategies that can help you get the attention of potential influencers. We’ll get to those in a minute.
For now, let’s talk about the steps on how to start a company blog.
Building a Blog for Your Business
Starting a company blog is easier now than ever, especially for business websites running on WordPress.
If you already have an existing WordPress website, you can get a new blog section up and running in no time.
In fact, your content management system already has a blogging engine waiting to be used. You just need to create a new post using the WordPress editor — “Gutenberg” editor if you have the latest version.
Even if you don’t use WordPress as your main website’s platform, installing the CMS should be really easy.
Installing WordPress
Thanks to WordPress’s popularity, there’s a good chance your web hosting service already has an automatic installation tool. You should be able to find it in your hosting account’s “cPanel” interface.
The entire installation process should be very straightforward. You just need to pick your business website’s domain as the installation URL and specify a sub-directory name.
A sub-directory name can be anything that will separate your WordPress content from your main website. Typically, business owners simply go with the sub-directory “/blog” for simplicity’s sake.
For example, if your domain is “www.mybusiness.com,” your WordPress installation directory could be www.mybusiness.com/blog.
Now, the interface of WordPress installation tools depends on the hosting service you use. Most WordPress auto-installers, however, will ask for the following information during the initial setup process:
- Desired WordPress version — If the WordPress auto-installer has a “recommended” option, go with it. Otherwise, do some research to find the most recent, stable version of the CMS.
- Automatic update settings — During the WordPress installation, you may be asked to select the automatic update features you wish to use. These can apply to plugins, themes, and the CMS itself.
- Administrator settings — To complete a WordPress installation, you’ll be asked to create the necessary login credentials for the site’s administrator. Some WordPress installation tools come with features like two-factor authentication and login attempt limiters.
Why WordPress?
Why go with WordPress?
Here are the biggest reasons why:
- Free — The WordPress CMS can be used by anyone at any time for free. You don’t need to pay extra to unlock tools or features — everything is included right off the bat.
- Easy to use – WordPress has a lot to offer under the hood, but it’s still incredibly easy to learn and use.You can practically build a fully-working website from the ground up without ever touching code.
- Multiple users — Have in-house web developers, editors, and content writers? WordPress makes it easy to create users and user roles for everyone in your team.
- Tens of thousands of themes and plugins — WordPress boasts a massive library of themes and plugins to help customize your blog as you see fit. It also supports tons of premium plugins and themes from third-party providers.
- Endless supply of learning resources — If you have questions about specific WordPress features and functions, it’s probably already answered in the official WordPress Codex. There are also countless blogs out there dedicated to WordPress learners like WPBeginner.
Creating a WordPress blog for your site is easy, right?
The real challenge is learning how to craft authoritative blog posts that will garner an audience.
For that, you must first understand the definition of “authoritative.”
A quality blog post must check the following boxes:
- Relevant — As a business, you’re free to publish posts that focus on your organization — be it product-related articles or company news. However, the bulk of your blog content should be about topics that matter to your audience.
- Keyword-optimized — The next step to ensuring the relevance of your post is looking for SEO keywords. These keywords must also be inserted in the right places.
- Contains custom visuals — Whatever you do, don’t rely on stock images for your blog’s visual content. Have your in-house design team cook up custom, branded visuals that will make your content pop in social media.
- Contains internal links — Internal links are simply links that point to a page or post found on the same website. Adding internal links to your posts will encourage your readers to discover more of your content.
- Has outbound links to other authoritative sites — SEO link building is a two-way street. To appear authoritative in the eyes of search engines, you must also have links that point to other relevant sites.
If you’ve never published a blog post before, all the things above may seem like a lot to take in.
But trust me — blogging is definitely a skill you or your team can learn and master over time.
You can start with my step-by-step guide to writing quality blog content.
Researching blog topics for company websites
Alright, let’s say you agreed with all the points above and decided to build a blog.
The next step is to look for content ideas that will pique your target audience’s interest.
There are several ways to do this:
1. Perform keyword research
Keyword research is a great way to expand a broad term into potential content ideas.
There are keyword research tools specifically designed for content idea generation. One of my favorites would be AnswerThePublic, which works by pulling up questions that people ask around a keyword.
Take note that keyword research is also a crucial aspect of SEO.
To boost your chances of ranking highly in search engine results, target long-tail keywords. These are phrases that contain three or more keywords, like “how to start a blog” or “best blogging platform 2020.”
Read this post for more information on long-tail keywords.
2. Do competitor research
Another way to get lucrative keyword ideas is to spy on your competitors.
You can use tools like SEMrush to unveil a competitor’s top keywords.
Remember, refined keyword ideas translate to potential content topics that can guarantee traffic.
A long-tail keyword like “cheap places to travel,” for instance, can be an article title as is.
It’s also proven to get a grand total of 22,200 searches per month.
However, a keyword’s monthly traffic is only one of the many factors you should consider when performing keyword research.
You should also take a look at the following:
- Keyword difficulty — New businesses with barely any search engine presence may struggle to rank with high-competition keywords. Aim for keywords within the low-medium difficulty range if you want to see results in a few months.
- Search intent — A high monthly search traffic doesn’t automatically translate to more sales or leads. Understand the intent behind each keyword to determine if your content will match the expectations of search engine users.
- Search Engine Results Pages or SERP — Lastly, check the actual SERP to identify the kind of businesses that rank for a potential keyword idea. Also, look at SERP features like the Google local pack and knowledge panel to identify ways to maximize organic traffic.
Not familiar with keyword research terminology? I suggest giving my keyword research guide a quick read.
Using SEMrush, you can also check out your competitor’s most popular pages directly. That way, you can effortlessly scoop up content ideas that work and would rank well for high-demand keywords.
That’s it — feel free to “borrow” some ideas from your competitor’s content library.
The advantage of using a tool like SEMrush is that you’re sure to get ideas that get reliable traffic. But if you want, you can visit competitor websites directly to look for ideas you can use as inspiration.
Here’s a more in-depth guide on competitor keyword research.
3. Look at Q&A websites
Familiar with Q&A websites like Yahoo Answers and Quora?
In recent years, Q&A websites aren’t just about people looking for answers to their questions. They’re better described as open marketplaces of information in the digital world.
Q&A websites are now platforms that stimulate discussions around topics their users care about.
Quora, for example, allows users to share links to pieces of content they find interesting.
To harvest content ideas from Quora, use the built-in search bar to find other users’ posts. That should help you discover in-demand information that can bring traffic to your blog.
4. Ask your social media audience
A surefire way to get topic ideas that will interest your audience is to ask them what they want.
I already mentioned social media polls earlier. Apart from that, there are other ways to ask your audience what they want to read about.
For example, there’s an interesting post format circulating around Facebook lately:
There’s just a couple of caveats to keep in mind when asking for content suggestions from your audience:
- The size of your audience — The bigger the size of your audience, the better the content ideas you’ll get. Asking for topic ideas from a small audience may not yield content that will attract thousands of readers.
- Your followers’ most active times — If you ask your question at the wrong time, it may get buried under piles of updates without being seen. Try to time your post so that it’ll be the first thing your followers will see in the morning.
- Your followers’ preferred social media channel — Most businesses can generate responses on Facebook, but other networks can sometimes result in better engagement. For example, if your target readers are digital marketers, you can ask your question on LinkedIn and marketing forums.
5. Join social media groups
You can also browse social media groups and other pages for questions that users are asking. And, just like Q&A websites, you can put your brand forward by responding to those posts — promoting your brand in the process.
You can easily look for groups you can join using the built-in search feature of social media websites like Facebook.
Just type in a relevant keyword and switch over to the “Groups” tab.
Most social media groups encourage and allow healthy conversations around their focus topic.
What they often discourage are self-promotional posts along with those that don’t add any practical value to discussions.
That said, remember that your goal is to look for topics that your target audience wants to learn about. There’s a different time for you to promote your brand or whatever product you have to sell.
6. Tap into ongoing trends
Publishing blog posts about current trends and events can definitely help you get on top of people’s news feeds.
There’s no shortage of trending topics to talk about in virtually every niche. You just need to know where to look.
Rather, you just need to know which tools to use.
Google Trends is one of the go-to tools for finding trending topics in any industry.
Just like basically every tool we’ve covered thus far, you just need a keyword to get things going.
There’s also a never-ending supply of new topics to talk about in the Twittersphere.
Other than posts from Twitter users, take a look at the accounts of publications and journalists for relevant updates.
Twitter should bring you the most recent stories around any keyword you enter.
If you want a more streamlined trend-scouting workflow, you can use content research and curation platforms like BuzzSumo and Scoop.it.
The drawback is, trendy blog topics rarely provide evergreen value for any blog.
It’s also important to cover them as soon as you can. If you blog about a story days after it trends, there’s a good chance your audience already lost interest.
Trends, however, give a budding business an influx of traffic that will help establish their online presence. You just need to be in-the-know, proactive, and quick to act.
7. Get information from other blogs
In some niches, there are marketing-related blogs built to help marketers and brands with their campaigns.
Master Blogging is one such example.
Here, I occasionally talk about specific blogging niches and supply my readers with guides on doing content research.
A perfect example would be my post about 621 lifestyle blog post ideas.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to give you a list of blogs to check for content ideas in your niche.
What I can do is help you find them in less than a minute.
It’s all about attaching the right “footprints” to a Google search phrase.
Suppose you’re in the carpet cleaning business.
On Google, simply type “carpet cleaning blog post ideas” to find useful resources from other blogs.
The “blog post ideas” there is the footprint, and “carpet cleaning” is your keyword.
Nice and easy.
Replace the keyword with something relevant in your industry and you’re golden.
If there are no posts that specifically talk about topic ideas in your niche, look at “top blogs” listicles instead. That should lead you straight to competitors with a long list of articles already published.
8. Use content ideas flashcards
In need of more ideas for your company blog content?
You may want to look at my Content Ideas Flashcards to keep your content production in high gear.
These printable cards will make sure you never run out of blog post ideas. Just pick a card, fill in the blank, and you’re all set.
Building your content writing team
With the tips above, your team should be able to put together a spreadsheet filled with blog topic ideas.
All that’s left is for your team to learn how to write a company blog post that sparkles.
What’s that — you don’t have in-house copywriters to lend a hand with your blog?
That’s completely understandable, especially for startups and local businesses who are yet to gain a foothold in the online space.
The good news is, you don’t need to invest weeks in an elaborate recruitment process to find the right people.
With freelance marketplaces like Upwork, you can easily connect with talented content writers and graphic artists for your blogging needs.
You’ll be surprised at the number of multi-talented professionals out there — eager to help small businesses like yours.
Of course, building a content team for your blog isn’t mandatory.
If you’re passionate about your business, you are more than welcome to create blog content yourself.
Believe it or not, content writing skills are something that can be acquired.
Sure, it’s not an easy road, but it’s definitely doable. Being the main contributor to your company’s own blog also comes with some benefits:
- Establish your personal brand — Do you feel enticed by the idea of being a public speaker or getting interviewed by other bloggers? Contributing to your own company’s blogging strategy will establish your credibility as an industry expert that people will listen to.
- Humanize your business — Introducing the people behind your business will do wonders for your customer relations. Social media users, for instance, are more likely to listen to other people than posts from business pages.
- Opportunities for networking and growth — Being recognized as a blogger in your industry will make you eligible to receive invitations to various events. This will expose you to opportunities to connect with other thought leaders in your niche.
Types of blog content you should publish
Congratulations — you should now be equipped with the knowledge necessary to publish your first blog post.
The next question you should answer is this:
What kind of blog post should you write?
There are different types of blog content you can develop for your business website:
1. “How to” guides
Ever heard of the quote: “don’t sell drills, sell holes”?
To succeed in business, you don’t just sell the features of your product.
You need to focus on what your product will do for your customers.
Writing “how-to” guides that teach customers how to achieve results with your product is an example of this.
Here’s a simple example from Ground Shark Coffee:
2. Customer success stories
One of the best ways to build buyer confidence is to publish blog posts about the success of previous customers.
A customer success story is a step up from the reviews and testimonials you probably already have on your site. It delves into the details — from the customer’s background all the way to their future plans with your brand.
If you already get positive reviews, reach out to the same customers, and ask them for an interview. Ask them questions like:
- What problems were they facing before discovering your business
- How they found your company
- How they use your product or service
- What goals they achieved with your brand
- What are their personal recommendations to other potential customers
For inspiration, check out this library of success stories from Monday.com.
3. Listicles
Let’s face it, the entire blogging world is getting a ton of listicles in recent years.
The reason is simple: they work.
Not only are listicles easy to make, they’re also easy to consume for readers. Not to mention they’re also powerful tools for link building if you play your cards right.
Imagine you made a listicle about products or services that could be of value to your audience.
If you cover those companies and their product or service in a positive light, you can notify them about it. Be sure to produce a polished, informative post that’s on par with what big-name websites publish.
In return, there’s a high probability that they’ll mention your post on social media or their own blog.
Free exposure and traffic right there.
I, myself, publish listicles with products and services that my readers care about.
You’re more than welcome to check them out in my blog:
3. Expert roundups
Expert roundups are a type of listicle that requires two things: a relevant topic and the input of industry experts.
No matter who you are, you’ve probably come across an article like this one from Buffer:
You can do the same if you want your business blog to turn heads.
Unlike your average listicle, roundups involve significantly more planning and days or weeks of outreach to create.
First, you need to come up with a hot topic or question that industry experts can talk about.
That’s something that should be easy for you if you’re constantly in tune with the state of your industry. If not, you can refer to the steps I mentioned above on finding trending topics in your niche.
Next, you’ll need a list of expert contributors who can chip in ideas to your roundup post.
There are several tools that can help you discover experts as well as connect with them. BuzzStream is a good example.
You can also look for potential contributors with a simple Google search. Just enter a relevant keyword and plug the word “blog” in the end.
There you have it — an endless supply of known experts in your industry.
All things considered, finding a good question and potential experts who can answer are relatively easy.
Your PR team should also be more than capable of handling your outreach campaign. But if you’d like to know more about the process, you can learn the basics of outreach here.
4. Product comparisons
Standing out from the rest of the competition has always been a tough challenge for businesses.
With a product comparison post, you can easily highlight the advantages of your brand over existing alternatives.
It doesn’t matter if you’re selling food or consultancy services. There are always factors in which you can outshine your competitors.
You can start small with a text-based post that enumerates the things you do better than other brands. If your company has the bandwidth, you opt for visual content like infographics and videos.
SiteGround highlighted their advantages through a webinar, which is now accessible as a blog post.
5. Write about news and current events
Publishing industry news is the direct application of leveraging current trends and events for blog traffic.
I often find these pieces on B2B websites that cater to a savvy and knowledgeable audience.
In the trucking industry, for example, companies like KeepTruckin always make sure their visitors are aware of the latest news.
Again, most trend-related articles don’t offer evergreen value, which means their traffic potential will eventually deplete.
Still, they can provide your blog with a quick surge of traffic while the topic is still fresh. In addition, they can also stir up discussions in the comments section of your blog or social media pages.
6. Write about company milestones
Did your company recently win an award? Hit a new high in terms of sales?
Things that make you feel proud of your organization deserve to be shared with your community.
Just be mindful of your content’s tone when talking about your company’s latest achievements. Don’t just gloat about it — thank your audience and make them feel like a part of your success.
Here’s a tip: be sure to include at least one sentence similar to any of the following:
- We thank you for your tremendous and overwhelming support
- We couldn’t have done it without you
- Thank you to everyone who made this happen — including everyone reading this
If you have a lot of followers on social media, be sure to give them a quick update as well. I did the same when my first eBook recently punched through the 1,000 sales mark.
7. Take your audience behind the scenes
Finally, you can give your blog audience an insider’s look at your business operations.
Make them familiar with your company culture, introduce your employees — perhaps give them a glimpse of upcoming products and events. Doing so will definitely help you capture the interest of onlookers and foster loyalty in your existing followers and customers.
A popular strategy is to write posts about events like seminars, office renovations, team building activities, and even birthdays.
It’s true that these things don’t occur often. But if you blog about them, they will provide evergreen value by helping your audience get to know your company.
Promoting your blog posts
Regularly publishing posts in your company blog is a crucial step towards building an authoritative online presence.
But that won’t be enough to generate recurring traffic to your business website.
For that, you need to match your content development with relentless promotion efforts.
To help you make the most out of your company blog, here are six content promotion strategies I recommend:
1. Encourage social media sharing
As I said before, publishing quality blog content should encourage your audience to share your website with their peers.
You just need to make the process easy and convenient for them.
SocialSnap is a simple WordPress plugin that can make this happen. It makes it easy to place social media sharing buttons anywhere on your website.
I use the SocialSnap floating sidebar myself to make social sharing buttons visible to readers wherever they are.
Learn 11 creative ways to get more social media shares here.
2. Share posts yourself
Of course, you shouldn’t rely solely on your audience for social media shares. You should also make an active effort to promote your content on social media using the right tactics.
For starters, you should learn about social media best practices. It’s all about knowing where your target audience hangs out and what they want to know about.
It’s also important to develop a solid social media publishing strategy based on the following factors:
- The best posting times — To maximize the visibility of your content, be sure to schedule your social media posts around your audience’s usage patterns. Sprout Social published a definitive social media scheduling guide you should see.
- Platform-friendly content type — Not all content types do well on all social media websites. Blog posts are for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, whereas infographics and short videos are for Instagram and Pinterest.
- Brand alignment — You can’t afford to make the mistake of sharing something that conflicts with your brand’s values. Always ensure that your posts, infographics, and other marketing assets align with your company’s mission and vision.
3. Run takeovers to spur social media engagement
If you just published a blog about a company event, be sure to encourage employees to talk about it.
A popular strategy is to have a social media takeover with employees spearheading the campaign.
Basically, you hand over the keys to your social media accounts to your employees. This allows them to post whatever they want — from Instagram stories to stolen shots in your office during working hours.
It sounds like a risky strategy, which is why you need to establish guidelines and an approval process for posts.
Consider investing in a social media management platform like Sprout Social to manage and scale takeover campaigns.
4. Broadcast a newsletter
To use your blog for lead generation, roll out lead capture forms with an email marketing platform.
I have here a list of the top 11 email marketing services you can choose from. All of them have subscription form builders baked into the platform.
Once you have an active mailing list, broadcast newsletters to your subscribers to bring targeted traffic to your blog.
That should be one of the primary features of your email marketing platform.
5. Link to your content in Q&A websites
If you obtained your blog post idea from a Q&A website, it makes perfect sense to promote your content there.
Brands and marketers have been doing it for ages — sometimes with the help of their own staff.
While the scene has become a tad more competitive, you can still get significant traffic with the right approach.
Let me show you a few pointers to keep in mind:
- Create an authentic, personal profile — First and foremost, your Quora profile should be about you — not your company. Pick the right interests to make it considerably easier to find questions and posts that matter in your industry.
- Build a Quora topic for your own brand — Quora allows brands to create an official topic for themselves, which will be used for conversations. Do this to make your company more discoverable and recognizable on the site.
- Treat Quora answers like blog posts — Instead of shamelessly promoting your brand to users, provide them with comprehensive answers that look like articles themselves. Insert visuals, use proper formatting, and add links to relevant resources — not just a link to your blog.
Refer to this guide for the nitty-gritty of Quora marketing.
6. Mention other brands and notify them
You don’t need a roundup post as an excuse to mention other brands in your blog.
If an external resource or site can add value to your content, by all means, link to it.
As long as they’re not direct competitors, linking to other websites offers a world of advantages. They help search engines understand what your content is about and provide readers with a richer experience.
It’ll also give those brands a reason to share your content with their own audience. You just need another outreach strategy — like the one you did when planning a roundup post.
Want more ways to get blog traffic?
You can read about more proven content promotion strategies in this post.
Conclusion
So — do businesses need their own blogs to strive in the modern world?
Absolutely.
Hopefully, the article above did more than just convince you to start your own company blog. I’m confident you’ll find the tips and strategies above invaluable to your blog’s success.
If you have questions, suggestions, or feedback, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below.
Looking forward to your response!
You Might Also Like:
- 25 Strategies to Generate Blog Post Ideas Today
- Your A-Z Guide to Learn Blogging (Step-by-Step) in 2020
- Benefits of Blogging: 7 Reasons You Must Start Today
For More Go to : Master Blogging
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