Over the past few years, businesses and marketers have increased revenue, brand awareness and conversions due to a rise in valuable written content. With 55% of marketers using blog writing as one of their top inbound marketing strategies, there is no doubt that having a blog or news section is valuable. Saying that a business blog must include only the highest quality content, taking into consideration features such as keyword research and market trends. There is little to no point in creating blog content if none of it is getting seen or producing results, so, here is a guide on how to create a successful blog strategy for your online business.
Benefits of having a business blog
- Increased website traffic
- Improved search engine rankings
- Establishing authority and expertise
- Increased brand awareness
- Engagement and customer satisfaction
- Lead generation
- Internal links
- Improved SEO
- Showing products and services
- Competitive edge
How to start an online blog
Choosing your topic and purpose
The initial steps of creating a blog include defining the topics and primary purpose. Analysing questions such as what is the company trying to achieve? What materials support the content? What will customers take away from these blogs? Topics should be broad enough to cover a range of questions and ideas, but specific enough to answer relevant questions and stay relevant to the business.
Register and hosting
Organise and structure elements such as domain names, subdomains and subdirectories.
Design and layout
When designing a blog, make sure to create a template or layout that really engages with the audience and entices readers to regularly come back to your content or even share it with others. Plain static content is no longer impressive so designing a blog which includes images, infographics, video or interactive content is a key way to attract and maintain attention.
Chosen copywriter and blog maintenance
In addition to standard daily tasks, keeping on top of a blog takes a lot of time, research and resources. When it comes to a business blog, it’s important to have a team or person who writes, manages, edits and plans content. These copywriters not only have to write a lengthy blog but will also take on tasks such as topic planning and schedules, SEO and keyword research, thought leadership, editing and proofreading, advertising, outreach and graphic design.
6 Tips for successful copywriting
Creating a content schedule
Different businesses and industries will prioritise their blogs on different scales and one of the most important questions you need to consider is how often are you wanting to share a blog post? Whether it’s once a month or 1 a week, maintaining a schedule will ensure research can be gone in good time, clients can be kept in the loop and your copywriter knows exactly what they’re writing about in the upcoming months.
Create compelling, valuable content
A business blog must be engaging and compelling but also valuable. The chances are, someone has come to your blog in the hope to find the answer to a certain question or they want to research a specific topic. This means the content included must provide high-quality, practical answers that meet the reader’s requirements.
It also takes more time and recourses to obtain new readers than it does to maintain current ones, so ensuring content is valuable and high quality will mean the same readers will keep returning. This provides an opportunity to research these readers and create content around more personal data such as their age, location or profession.
CTA’s
In order to turn a reader into a conversion, a blog must include at least one CTA. This CTA might share more in-depth content and information or could lead to a discount code, service page or quote form. Whether it’s in the shape of a URL link or visual interactive block, a CTA will ensure that readers have an easily accessible place to find what they’re looking for and progress further into your website.
Tracking and analysis
Once a blog goes live, it’s crucial to keep an eye on it and assess its success over time. Once you understand how certain metrics contribute to positive outcomes, you can then amend current blogs, plan a more successful strategy and include new features. Some of the features you might want to check include the number of readers and subscribers, page news, conversions, backlinks, referrals and traffic.
SEO strategies with Imaginaire
Specialising in digital marketing and SEO, Imaginaire believes in helping companies like yours to get in front of customers when they have a strong level of intent to buy something or receive a service.
Whether you’re a traditional company that’s looking to make the phone ring more, or you’re an e-commerce business looking to implement a marketing strategy, we’re here to help.
We offer our digital marketing services to clients across the UK including Nottingham, Derby, Leicester and London, but if you’re located close to us then we’re always open to new possibilities.