For one, many people misunderstand the purpose of blogs. Blogs go far beyond the mundane – they’re used for everything from showcasing personal writing to offering actionable tips that can help people solve problems and make their lives better, raise brand awareness, and in many cases (like ours) drive a huge percentage of online leads to their business.
10 Key Reasons to Start Blogging For Business (Now)
To me, blogging is like the surety of an umbrella on a rainy day. As long as we consistently blog (along with a formula of high quality content + promotion of what we create), we keep our SEO rankings up and thriving, and our visitor numbers flourishing. No matter how “rainy” the day gets, these leads will come in. If you’ve ever considered starting a blog for your business, here are the top 10 reasons you should do it right now.
The Power of Content Today (Case Study) – Published back in July 2015, this is still relevant to our post today. I discuss how content is the cornerstone of online marketing.
Seriously, though, how do people typically find your website? If they come to it via paid aids, it’s likely that you’re spending a lot of money that you don’t have to. If this sounds like your situation, it’s probably wise for you to start dividing your time differently.
Instead of spending tons of money on paid ads, you can start blogging, beefing up your social media presence, and optimizing everything you do for SEO.
Here’s why it works: if you don’t blog, your website is a little stagnant. It’s likely that you don’t have a ton of pages and, of the pages you do have, very few of them are updated that often. In a setup like this, you don’t have many pages indexed in Google, which means that you’re only marginally visible to people who may be searching for a company like yours. This, in turn, means that one of the only real ways to grab traffic for your site is to pay for it. When you blog, though, all of this changes.
Every time you write a new blog, you provide a new page to be indexed in Google. By creating content that your readers and customers love, you ensure that people can find your page. Plus, when you share your blogged content on social media, you create an entirely new outlet for traffic and social shares. (And content is HUGE for Google. Their recent 160-page doc, which we analyzed, discusses how their standards rely on the quality and expertise of the written content.)
2) Blogging can help you make conversions
Once you’ve begun to drive traffic to your site via content, you’ll need to find a way to convert that traffic, right? Enter the power of the blog. Because every page you write is a new page that Google gets to index, every page you write is also an opportunity to create new leads and help those leads convert into subscribers, sales, or shares.
Blogs work best for conversions when you focus on including a high-quality CTA at the end of every blog post. By doing this, you tell your viewers exactly what you want them to do and help ensure that nothing is lost in translation. It’s really that simple.
3) Blogging helps establish you as an authority
What’s one of the most important aspects both of ranking well and drawing in new readers, done with blogging for business? If you answered “authority” you’re right on. Page authority is incredibly important and it’s not something you can buy. The only way to create authority on the web is to create content that is genuinely useful, helpful, and interesting to readers.
Nowadays, the majority of people (about 81%) conduct nearly all of their product research before ever speaking to a company or its customer service representatives. One of the primary places that people turn to conduct this research is the web. When you build and maintain a business blog where you publish valuable, educational, helpful content, you can be the person who provides the answers to questions your would-be customers ask during the research process. By doing this, you establish your company as a leader in the industry, as well as helping ensure that when the customer is ready to purchase, they’ll come back to your site.
4) Blogging for business is a long-term plan
There are many marketing tactics that produce short-term results. While those things can be effective to drive huge bursts of traffic, they’re seldom cut out to be a long-term solution. Blogging, on the other hand, is designed for the long-term.
When you sit down to create a blog, you create a valuable piece of content that long outlives your efforts and your investment in it. By generating shares, drawing views, and producing conversions, each blog you write has the potential to draw traffic long beyond the day it is published. In fact, HubSpot reports that upwards of 70% of its monthly traffic and 90% of its overall leads come from blogs that were published in previous months, some even as long as a year ago.
5) Blogging is low-cost, high-return
Have we mentioned that blogging only costs what you want to invest for writing and imagery? The ROI is way, way worth the small investments. Blogging is both one of the cheapest and one of the most effective ways to drive traffic, views, and attention to your business website and, while it has the potential to produce a huge return investment, it doesn’t cost anything to get started.
6) You don’t have to be a tech expert
Blogging isn’t a pastime reserved only for the uber-techy. Instead, it’s a simple, accessible move that virtually everyone can make. Platforms like HubSpot and WordPress are designed to be hugely people-friendly and not require outstanding design skills. While it’s all well and good to know HTML and CSS, you certainly don’t need to have these things mastered when you start your blog.
Just remember to get a good writer who knows what he or she is talking about in your industry, and you’re set.
7) Your blog provides you with a source of content gold
Content creation is tough, isn’t it? When you have a blog, though, you supply yourself with fodder for all of your other social media platforms, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and all of your marketing copy like emails, newsletters and eBooks.
A blog provides an important source of original content and helps you stay on schedule in terms of content creation and distribution. This is especially true when you hire a team of writers to handle your content creation for you.
8) Blogging keeps you on your toes
If you’re not creating content, there’s an argument to be made that you’re not keeping up with the times. Because blogging requires content, it makes you perk up and pay attention to what’s going on in your industry, including where new developments are coming from, who’s winning at the game, and what’s helping other marketers succeed.
Keeping an ear to the ground in these topics will help ensure that you’re on the cutting edge of your industry and will help you provide your users with awesome content that they find illuminating and helpful.
9) Blogging is a great place to tell your brand’s story
Nowadays, consumers want brands they can relate to and support fully. There’s no better way to produce this for your company than to tell your brand’s story. But how do you tell your brand’s story? There are many ways, of course, but ta blog is one of the best.
When you have a blog, you can dedicate time to developing a unique POV that helps you further your brand’s mission, stand out from the crowd, and provide important insight for your users. This, in turn, promotes bonding with your customers and keeps your brand fresh in their minds.
10) Blogs provide insight into your customers
Once you start posting blog content and people begin to interact with it, you’ve gained yourself a valuable look into your customers’ behaviors, preferences, and sharing habits. By analyzing your blog analytics, you can learn more about what your readers read, click, and share, which allows you to plan your marketing efforts better and to better cater to your unique users. All of these things are important to attaining business success and, when done well, can help you ace your marketing and produce better conversions and more sales.
Conclusion
When it comes to blogging for business, if you’re not doing it, you should be. Creating a blog for your business is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to boost your SEO, gain more leads, make more sales, drive more traffic, and stay on the cutting edge of your industry. Plus, blogging is a fantastic way to gain inspiration and have fun in your industry.
By seeking to create great content on a daily basis, you put yourself in the ideal position to learn, expand your horizons, and make new connections, which is great for your company and for you as an individual!
And we’re not the only one bringing in the bacon through our blogging. Michelle at makingsenseofcents.com is a blogger I follow who travels the world and makes six-figures monthly through affiliate blogging. And Jon Morrow at SmartBlogger is a smart marketer who uses his blog to earn over $100k/month.
So, whether you’re attempting to start your own blog or looking to create content for other businesses, the opportunities are there.
And while there’s quite a bit of competition in this space, becoming an expert blogger is something that can set you apart from the field.
If you’re able to nail the strategies outlined below, you’ll be well on your way to becoming an expert in the blogging world. Let’s get started.
[bctt tweet=”Learn how to become an expert #blogger in our 10-step guide. ” username=”ExpWriters”]
10 Strategies to Becoming an Expert Blogger
Ready? Let’s get into them!
1. Learn How to Write Well-Structured Blogs
Arguably, writing is 80-95% of the weight of a highly-successful blog.
Just look a few examples of top-ranking, top-shared, conversation-driving blog posts:
The structure and readability of these blogs are critical examples. This is the style you need to follow when you write a blog. For example, look at the readability and short, impactful-sentence structure of Morrow’s blog, linked to above:
Learning how to write a great blog is definitely an art and a science.
As you can see in the image above, content-centric blogs are those where the writers create content and then try to find an audience that will read and appreciate it.
Writers of audience-centric blogs, on the other hand, establish the audience they’re writing for and work to create content that’s designed specifically for them.
The more important point to take away from the image above, however, is that audience-centric content enables you to reach your maximum audience.
By identifying who you’re writing for, and what they want to hear, you’re giving your content the best opportunity to earn the interest of readers and be successful.
And isn’t that your goal?
Takeaway: Identify your audience and create content based on what they want to hear.
3. Stay Up-to-Date With Your Industry
Ten years ago, not many people were familiar with content marketing.
“Research is the first and most vital step when developing and executing a content strategy. Without complete research, the steps of Ideation/Planning, Creation, Connection, and Measurement will be based on insufficient data.”
So, you know that research is important. But how do you actually do it effectively?
What’s the Best Way to Research Effectively?
This is where things can get a little tricky.
Because, while there are many ways to go about researching, you’re going to have to take the time to determine the strategy that works best for you.
Researching and creating an outline can be time consuming. But by writing down ideas and researching them as they come to you, you can significantly reduce this part of the creation process.
References are essential to creating useful content. Be sure to gather any references you can that will help you make your point when writing.
Takeaway: Work to develop an approach to research that works for you and ensures you’re able to consistently create useful and relevant content for your audience.
5. Develop a Content Differentiation Factor (CDF)
While it’s true that becoming an expert blogger has a lot to do with gaining knowledge from others, that doesn’t mean you should just follow in their footsteps.
The ability to carve your own path, and differentiate yourself from the pack, is equally important on your quest to becoming an expert in your field.
But to truly separate yourself, you have to provide a compelling reason for someone to read and devour YOUR content instead of a competitor.
If a potential reader or customer were to ask,
“Why should I read your content over your competitor(s)?”
What would your answer be?
Creating a Competitive Advantage by Developing Your Content Differentiation Factor (CDF)
If your goal is to develop a competitive advantage, and give potential readers a reason to choose your content, then it’s essential that you develop a Content Differentiation Factor.
While establishing your CDF can be a complex and time-consuming process, it’s absolutely necessary if you want to succeed in the world of content marketing.
To create your CDF, you need to clearly answer the question of:
“What is your unique, standout perspective in your content niche that makes you an expert that needs to be heard?”
Takeaway: Take the time to develop your Content Differentiation Factor so you can provide potential readers with a compelling reason to view your content over your competitors.
6. Make the Readability and Usefulness of Your Content a Focal Point
As you begin to study other expert bloggers, you’ll find that almost all of them talk heavily about the short attention span of today’s internet users.
And it’s true. Modern day attention spans are undoubtedly shorter than they’ve ever been.
But that doesn’t mean you CAN’T capture their attention.
Legendary comedian Jerry Seinfeld has a different take on this topic than most. As he says:
In a lot of ways, Seinfeld is right. If you’re producing high quality content that captures the attention of your audience, people will read it.
To make sure they read it, however, you have to focus readability and usefulness.
Honing in On Readability
Making your content readable isn’t difficult, even if you aren’t a great writer.
Let’s take a look at a few tips that can help you with this:
Write short, to-the-point sentences
Include no more than 2-4 sentences within each paragraph
Break up your content with images, subheadings, and bullet lists
If you’re looking for a tool that can help you discover the readability of your content, Readable.io is a great free option.
Let’s take a look at the results when we plug in the article you’re currently reading:
As you can see, it gives us an overall grade while also providing more detailed statistics about things like keyword density, syllable use, reading level, and more.
Yoast SEO, which is a WordPress SEO plugin, is another great readability tool if you’re looking for something even more advanced.
Making Your Content Useful
Making your content useful is simple if you’ve already committed to creating audience-centric content.
So long as you focus on what your audience wants, and ensure your content serves as a useful and actionable resource, you shouldn’t have a problem with this.
Takeaway: Attention spans are only short when your content isn’t readable or useful.
7. Stay Consistent
Consistency and persistence is important in just about every part of life.
But it’s really, really important in the world of blogging.
And there are many reasons for this.
For one, as Forbes tell us:
“Without consistency, it’s difficult to build brand loyalty.”
If you aren’t able to develop a core audience that regularly reads your content, you’re going to have a very difficult time succeeding in the blogging world.
And, unless you’re consistently publishing content, it’s going to be impossible to develop that core audience and brand loyalty.
Consistency is also important for SEO reasons.
As HubSpot has found, blogs that publish 16+ blog posts per month generate about 3.5x more traffic than those that publish between 0-4 posts.
While there are other factors, such as content quality and promotion, that will have a positive impact on SEO and traffic, creating and posting consistently offers a clear opportunity to get ahead.
But if you don’t currently have the time or resources to publish 4x per week, that doesn’t mean you can’t succeed as a blogger.
Blogging, after all, is a long term game.
As DeMers also tells us:
“Posting at least once a week is usually sufficient to establish a regular core of readers, and these readers are typically the ones who will form the core of your brand community.”
Once the core of your brand community is developed, you can start focusing on developing more content in an effort to boost traffic and build a stronger SEO profile.
And, as your resources expand, you can begin to hire freelancers or content creation agencies to write some of your content for you.
Takeaway: Know that blogging is a long term game and that your ability to stay consistent will have a major impact on your success.
8. Make Promotion a Priority
Of all the ways that blogging and content marketing have evolved over the years, possibly the biggest change has been with the incredible increase in the amount of content being created.
In 2015, Marketing Profs reported that there over 2 million blog posts are written and published every day.
Not surprisingly, however, most of that content goes unnoticed.
Because while content creators are writing and publishing plenty of blog posts, many of them are failing to realize the importance of actually promoting that content.
How to Promote Your Content
This is a topic that’s FAR too in-depth to cover within this post. But, as we’ve mentioned, understanding how to do it will be incredibly important to your success.
So instead of giving you a brief summary, here’s a few great resources that can help:
Find the Right Groups. Find the social networks and groups where your target audience is active. Facebook and LinkedIn both offer great opportunities for this.
Keep Your Image Consistent. While it’s important to cater your content to the social media platform it’s being posted on, it’s also crucial to control your audience’s perception by maintaining consistency with how you represent yourself across the web.
Engage as Often as Possible. Create a consistent posting schedule and be sure that you’re communication with your audience as often as possible.
Give, Give, and Give Some More. Make personal connections with your audience and ask them what you can do for them. And, above all, avoid being salesy and promotional.
Become Involved in Discussions. Show that you’re human and connect with others by getting involved in discussions. Not only is this great for visibility, but it’s an opportunity to offer your unique insights on a topic.
Takeaway: Social media and content marketing form a powerful team. Leverage this combination to build authority in your industry.
10. Don’t Forget About SEO
While it’s true that creating audience-centric content plays a crucial role in becoming an expert blogger, you still need to understand how to write content for SEO.
By doing so, you enable your content to be found via search engines and therefore reach its maximum viewership potential.
And while there are some technical aspects of SEO that can contribute to success with SERPs, most of the strategies necessary to succeed are fairly basic.
Here are five rules of thumb for great SEO content:
Focus on 1-2 Long-Tail Keywords. Don’t overdo it with keywords. Focus on 1-2 that have the least competition and include them in your title, headers, meta description, and body copy.
Design Your Post to be Mobile-Friendly. More and more people are viewing content from mobile devices. And, as Google is beginning to emphasize mobile-friendly design as a part of their algorithms, you’re significantly reducing your potential reach if your content isn’t mobile optimized.
Optimize Your Meta Description. While the meta description doesn’t have a direct impact on search rankings, the words within it help searchers decide whether to click on your content or a competitor.
Optimize Images. Search engines crawl for images based on their alt text. For this reason, you’ll want to be sure that you’re optimizing images (especially custom images) for search.
Link Internally When Appropriate. By linking to other posts on your site, you’ll help keep visitors on your website while also sending signals to search engines about the relevancy of your content.
Takeaway: Be sure to optimize your content for search engines to maximize your potential reach.
Bonus #11. Develop Your Own Unique Voice and Style
I couldn’t end without tossing in an extra bonus point.
Question: Do you know of any cover bands that are more popular than the actual band that they cover?
