7 Ways to Improve Your Business Blog

How to improve your business blog

Below are some best practices you should regularly follow to make the most of your business blog.

1. Define your audience

You would never run a magazine ad or a TV commercial without knowing the intended audience. Similarly, you should never create a blog post without knowing the kind of reader you’re writing for.

These readers should be your target customers — the people most likely to be searching for and interested in learning about your business. If you don’t yet have a defined audience, create a reader profile based on what you know about your ideal customers. Include the following information:

• Who your readers are
• What they care about
• Their related interests
• Questions they are likely to ask
• Problems your business can help them solve

Gathering this information will help you choose topics to write about and create a blog that your customers will care about. 

2. Create an editorial calendar

Customers, blog readers and search engines all like predictability. If you start writing, but then don’t post for several weeks, readers are less likely to come back and see what else you’ve written. A website that publishes infrequently won’t rank as high in search engines, making it less likely that customers will find you through online search.

It’s hard to publish regularly if you are struggling to think of things to write about or forgetting that your blog exists. To prevent this, create an editorial calendar that lays out a plan for what you will write and when it will be published. 

The frequency of your posts doesn’t matter as much as the quality and consistency. One well-written, relevant blog post every two weeks will market your business better than daily poor-quality posts every day or a blog that hasn’t been updated in months.

3. Brainstorm keywords for each post

If you want customers to find your website when they search online, your blog posts must include related phrases that customers might type into a search engine.

Before you write each post, brainstorm these phrases (known as long-tail keywords) and include them in your writing. For example, if your company provides accounting services to small and mid-size businesses, your customers may search for “small business accounting tips.” Aim for one main keyword and two or three secondary keywords that are relevant to the topic you are writing about.

4. Optimize your posts for search

To optimize your blog posts for online search (also known as search engine optimization, or SEO), add signals that tell search engines what your post is about. When search engines read these signals, they can direct relevant traffic to your website.

Adding keywords in the right places optimizes your blog post for search. The main keyword that you select should be found in the post’s title, at least one heading, and once or twice in the body of the blog posts. Secondary keywords should appear in headings and the body of the post.

Incorporate these keywords as naturally as possible. Do not add keywords randomly or in sentences where they don’t fit organically; this is known as “keyword stuffing” and signals to search engines that your site is not trustworthy.

The written post isn’t the only place where you should use keywords. They should also appear in the following places:

• The URL of your post
• Your blog post title
• Image names
• Image descriptions
• The meta description of your post’s content

When you optimize all these places, you send multiple signals to search engines and make it easier for them to direct customers to your blog. 

5. Tie your blog to your other marketing

Although blogging’s effect is often indirect, it is still a form of marketing and should be tied in with your overall marketing strategy to have the strongest possible impact.

If you are advertising a sale on your social media or email marketing, include that information on your blog as well. If your business is mentioned in the media or you appear on a TV spot or radio show, put that in a blog post and include a link so that visitors can see those appearances.

If you rebrand your business or change your website, your blog should change too.

Are you launching a product? Write several blog posts on related topics and publish them in the weeks leading up to the launch to generate interest and help customers understand how the new product will benefit them.

6. Network within your industry

In addition to building relationships with customers and directing new visitors to your website, your blog can also help establish your reputation within your industry and help you network. The following types of blog posts can create networking opportunities:

• Interviews with industry leaders
• Findings from customer surveys
• Links to round-ups that share your colleagues’ (credited) posts and images
• Information about industry-wide events
• Relevant news stories or trending topics
• Collaborations with other businesses

When you create and share content that is relevant to your broader industry, other businesses are likely to share it as well. That creates the opportunity to build professional relationships. It also increases the reach of your blog, putting your business in front of a new audience and making it more likely that you will be noticed by the media.

7. Blog with care and intent

Customers want to know that you care about your business. More importantly, they want to know that you care about solving their problems. This means that, no matter the topic of your business blog, your posts should communicate your investment in your business and customers.

When you plan out relevant, helpful posts, you show that you understand your customers’ needs and concerns. A carefully written blog communicates that you value their time and want to help them. Sticking to a regular schedule shows that you are thoughtful and attentive. Customers want to see these qualities in a business.

A poorly written blog, however, indicates that you don’t value your readers’ time. Posts that don’t address the interests of your customers show that you haven’t thought about how your business can help them. Haphazard posting makes your business look scattered or disorganized. Bad grammar or poor editing makes you look unprofessional.

The importance of a business blog

Maintaining your business blog is important for the following reasons.

• SEO and marketing: When you publish blogs relevant to your target long-tail keywords, your website is more likely to rank highly when people search for these terms. Higher rankings reflect that you’ve successfully optimized your web content for search engines, which is key to online marketing. The more easily people can find your content, the likelier they are to see that your business can solve their problems.
• More engagement: Content marketing can increase audience engagement by about 77 percent, according to the Content Marketing Institute. Each of these visitors is somebody who could wind up buying your products or services, with more than 50 percent of content marketers surveyed reporting that blogging increased sales. 
• Lead generation: Each blog you post presents an opportunity to include a form where readers can sign up for your email marketing list. This is a prominent form of lead generation. A well-maintained blog can become the start of your sales funnel — and some of your strongest customer relationships.
• Low-cost marketing: Blogging doesn’t cost you much money besides what you’re already paying to host your website. It’s a way to take your SEO and online lead generation into your own hands. Paying a professional writer is also an option, and that too is typically less expensive than hiring a full-on digital marketing or SEO firm.

A blog is more than just words

Creating content relevant to your business can feel like a heavy lift when running your company involves so many other tasks. But a blog is more than just words on a page — it’s a low-cost door to new opportunities with customers. If you regularly invest time into your blog, you might spend less time and money on your overall marketing in the long run.

Additional reporting by Max Freedman.