Creating content for your business blog is one of the most powerful ways to generate leads for your business. This means your business blogging goals are different to someone who is blogging to build an audience, or to grow a community. Your “blogging for business” goals should be:
- Post detailed blog entries, and share often. These don't have to always be your own thoughts. The writing that you share can be a combination of helpful articles (using the list format for easy scrolling), personal opinions, product recommendations, advice column content, cute, funny, and interesting videos, and other types of content.
- Get people noticing and clicking through to your blog posts from links that you and other people share on social media. You must be consistent with this, as well as consistent with posting fresh articles on a frequent basis. Daily is ideal, but bi-weekly could be good if you're just starting out as a one-man brand.
- Persuade folks to sign up for your mailing list. You should have permission-based email management software set up so that you can put a form up on your site. Visitors enter their info and are added to your email list of contacts. I have a free course here showing you how to do this in Active Campaign.
- Attract the attention of people who want to learn new things. They have questions, they want to know-how. You have answers. This is simple, really. You pose the question in the title of the blog post. Then you answer it by sharing details in the body of the post.
- Keep your readers coming back for more. How to do this? The best way is to become a bit of an internet sensation. If you fill your headlines with intrigue, you're likely to get people clicking on through, hitting your blog article where you can entice them to sign up. So if you're posting about your dog and what his different tail wags might mean, you might come up with a clever lead-in about Telling Tails: Discover the Meaning Behind Your Dog's Nonverbal Communication.
- Wondering how to capture and keep attention on the blog articles that you post? One way is to reveal a bit of your personality. Your “brand” needn't be a contrived thing, or plotted out way of speaking. These days, most bloggers just write in their natural voice, and this brings out their personality, opinions, and interests, for like-minded people to flock to. The more you share in the same way that you would if you were posting on Facebook sharing with friends, the more likely people will be drawn to you and want to come back to visit again and again.
You can keep them excited to hear your next blog update by making sure to grab them on the way out by inviting them to subscribe. Just offer a simple PDF download of an ebook that covers some topic or other that you know a lot about, and that other people would want to learn more about. So for example, you're a licensed yoga teacher looking to launch a wellness and self-care blog, then just put together a nice package of instructions on how to do basic yoga poses, with pictures. Infuse a bit of your own, natural personality in the writing and pictures you choose. Choose a tool like Thrive Leads (Part of the Thrive Suite of tools) and adjust the settings so the invitation to subscribe only shows when someone is about to leave the site.
The blogging world is competitive, but if you're consistent and persistent you’re your content publishing strategy, it's sure going to yield positive results for you.
Sarah