5 Brilliant Tips to Make Small Business Blogging Easier
Regardless of its size, every business needs to focus on marketing, but a successful marketing strategy is of much more importance for a small business or startup than an already established operation. This is primarily because small businesses are often constrained by time and capital; they only have limited cash for getting the desired results that can encourage the next round of funding. In addition, they have to rush to prove their products or services to their target demographic, because they may already face tough competition. Ultimately, digital marketing is the most cost-effective marketing option for a small business.
Digital marketing comprises of tactics such as blogging that doesn’t require a business to have an existing audience to build a brand online, earn traffic and increase revenue. While blogging may not generate revenues directly, it’s a great way to promote your brand and control your online presence because you don’t have to spend huge sums of money on it. Likewise, blogs are a great way of setting up your business as the innovator or authority of the industry. Also, as long as you execute a comprehensive content marketing strategy, it will create leads, consistently drive traffic, grow your customer base and generate revenue.
Listed below are some great tips to make blogging easier for a small business website:
Tip 1: Research your competitors’ blogs
Differentiate your products or services from others in the market with a unique selling proposition, and the same principle has to be applied to business blogging. Therefore, you need to take a look at your competitors’ blogs and judge their formatting and content style, website design and user experience, the keywords used and targeted, and their user interaction. Compare it with your own blog and see what is lacking, especially if your rivals’ blogs are doing better than yours. There are different tools you can use to help fix these issues like keyword research tools for finding the best keywords.
Tip 2: Set blog goals and identify your audience
First things first, you need to set goals for blogging because this can have an impact on the kind of blog you have. Are you looking to poke fun at competitors or do you want a serious blog? Maybe you want a blog from the perspective of your employees. You can use the blog for complete transparency and publish your achievements and incomes through it. When the goal is clear, it will be easier to identify your target audience. Knowing your audience is essential, so you can plan your content accordingly. Do you intend to serve a tiny niche market and become experts there or do you wish to offer a well-rounded product that can appeal to everyone? You need to figure this out before moving onto the next step.
Tip 3: Plan and publish your content
Now is the time for a small business to start planning the content for its blog. Decide if you want to answer the problems or questions of your clientele or want to address certain needs. You also have to choose the tone of writing, whether you want it to be casual or formal. Furthermore, decide if your audience will prefer tutorials, how-to guides, or even visual representation or long informational articles. Bear in mind that only quick and short posts are not enough to reel in customers. You have to do considerable research and write great content for luring the audience and retaining their interest. This requires in-depth observation and research to ensure the content is insightful and meaty.
Tip 4: Work on promotion
When you have published the posts on your blog, it is time for you to think about promoting them. Social media has become the default option in regard to promotion because it can help your content go viral through a single share by the right person. Post it on different networks and encourage your audience to read it. Diversify your efforts and also include SEO and other popular content marketing strategies for blog promotion such as guest blogging. This means getting in touch with other blogs and posting your content there as a guest.
Tip 5: Make use of your email list
Even if everyone spends more time on social media, it is a given that they will have an email account that they check on a daily basis. As a matter of fact, your email subscribers are a more potent source for promotion because they are not affected by Google’s algorithm or other factors. Email is actually a direct line of communication with your audience and has a higher return on investment per dollar as opposed to any other form of marketing for your blog.
As long as you follow these simple, yet effective tips, your blogging efforts are going to do wonders for your small business.