Estimated reading time: 4 minutes
As a small business owner, you juggle many tasks, but writing blog articles is probably not one of them. However, having a blog on your website can increase your search engine traffic, get your business noticed online, and help you build authority in your industry. A business blog can even help generate sales leads and new business opportunities. Knowing this, how can you afford not to start blogging?
Getting a blog up and running does not require that much work. You can put on your creative hat and do it yourself (time permitting, of course), or you can hire a freelance content writer to get it done. This guide explains how to start a business blog; our on-staff digital content manager wrote it. So read on to learn how to turn your ideas and knowledge into blog posts for your website.
Decide on a business blog setup.
A big part of the blogging process is already complete if you have a website. First, have your webmaster add a blog link on your site, preferably in the top navigation bar. Also, ask your webmaster to create a blog template that matches your website’s look and feel, which allows a banner image and smaller pictures to be included. Having your blog as part of your website is highly recommended because it presents you with some search engine optimization (SEO) benefits.
If you do not have a website, you can create a self-hosted business blog on a free or paid platform, but this will be less effective when building your brand online. A blog is a collection of posts presented in chronological order. In contrast, a website is an eye-catching source of information about your business and its history, value proposition, product, service offering, etc. In short, a blog is an excellent complement to a website, but it has SEO and lead-generation limitations.
Make a blog plan and schedule.
Here comes the fun part. Before you start, however, you need to come up with a strategic plan for your blog. Typical objectives include creating email lists, generating leads, and increasing brand awareness online. Then, once your strategy is finalized, determine how often you want to blog.
There is no set rule regarding blogging frequency, but once a week is preferred. Nonetheless, you can post one high-quality blog post each month and still generate lots of traffic. By the way, the major search engines prefer newer blog posts because they view fresh content as more relevant and newsworthy. Post links to your blog articles on the various social networks you use, too. Doing this can help generate referral clicks to your website.
Put pen to paper.
If you decide to take a stab at writing your blog posts, you might end up staring at a blank computer screen and thinking, “I can’t think of anything to write about.” If this happens, do not worry. Experienced business blog writers and journalists with Master’s degrees experience writer’s block from time to time.
The key to getting over it is relaxing, taking a deep breath, and starting writing. You talk to employees, customers, and equipment vendors, so you already have a unique way of communicating with people. The words will come naturally and tell the story in an easy-to-understand and informative manner.
Hire a freelance writer for your business blog.
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, you might not want to handle your business blog writing needs. However, assigning this task to your on-staff marketing manager, or working with a freelance writer, can help produce a steady stream of blog posts for your readers. Just make sure they completely understand your brand and its verbal identity. If not, they might write articles with a completely different tone that does not relate to your readers.
Lastly, whoever writes your blog posts needs to understand SEO thoroughly. For your blog posts to be compelling and populate in search queries, they need to be original and have title tags, meta descriptions, and URLs that follow best practices. In addition, pictures need to be optimized for the web and have the appropriate alt text and file names.
Conclusion.
Blogging is one of many low-cost marketing ideas that can benefit your small business and help drive traffic and sales to your website. Once your blog is up and running, post articles regularly to keep readers interested.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.