Still struggling to generate a following for your business’s blog? Being that blogs are more personal in nature than a typical website, many business owners fail to attract a sizable audience with their blog. If this sounds like a familiar scenario, keep reading for some helpful tips.
Commit to a Posting Schedule
One of the most common blogging mistakes made by small business owners is failing to publish new content on a regular basis. They may initially publish a new post every other day, but as time goes on, they begin to slack off. Rather than publishing every other day, perhaps they’ll publish a new post once a week, and then once every other week, and then once a month — you get the idea. If you want people to actually read and follow your blog, you’ll need to fully commit to a posting schedule.
Keep Promotional Posts to a Minimum
There’s nothing wrong with using a blog to promote your business’s products and services, but you should keep promotional posts such as this to a minimum. If your blog consists primarily of advertisements — direct or indirect — it may deter visitors from following it. A good rule of thumb is to create an 80/20 mixture of blog posts, with 80% of your blog’s content consisting of informative posts, and the remaining 20% consisting of promotional content. This simple formula will keep your visitors engaged while still allowing you to market products and services on your blog.
Define Your Target Audience
To whom are you speaking to in your blog? Before you even think of launching a blog for your business, you need to define your target audience. In most cases, this will be the same group of people who purchase your products or services. However, there are subtle nuances between Internet traffic and “foot” traffic, which is why it’s a good idea to use a website metrics program like Google Analytics. This will give a better idea of how many visitors your blog receives, the keywords they searched for to reach your blog, how long the average visitor stays, their country/state of origin, and other important data. Of course, there are several different web analytics programs out there, so don’t feel restricted to using Google Analytics.
Put Your Best Foot Forward
What does it to mean to “put your best foot forward?” Your blog is reflective of your business; therefore, it should only contain the highest quality content possible. Tossing up generic, poorly written articles may have a negative effect on your business by sending potential customers in the opposite direction. They may assume your business handles all of its work in the same manner, choosing to take their money elsewhere. This problem is easily avoided, however, by delivering unique, high-quality content on your blog.
Have any other business blogging tips that you would like to share with our readers? Let us know in the comments section below!
Image attribution: https://www.flickr.com/photos/barnett/
The best tip is to offer quality to your consumers. Your content must offer them something of value, if you hope to build a following.
Using webinars and interviews to establish yourself as a SME can be very beneficial. Of course you’ll want to include info for your blog in handout materials.
Interact with your readers on a consistent basis. If they have a complaint or questions, address them immediately. Every business has issues but only the best confront those issues and build loyalty through how they handle them.