5 Steps to Creating a Business Blog
Update your approach to sales and marketing. Inbound marketing is all about creating quality content that is tailored to appeal to your target buyers.
Create a business blog and continue to share fresh, new content that your prospects will find useful and valuable. Here are five steps to creating a business blog.
1. Make a Plan
Before you start writing blog posts, you should spend some time developing a plan. A business blog is a long-term commitment. Think about why you’re starting the blog and ask yourself what you want to get out of it. What do you want your audience to get out of it? You need to set strategic business goals to guide your blog.
You also want to identify your blog’s purpose. Why are people going to want to visit your blog? What value can you add to entice people to visit your blog again and again? What is so special about the information you will be sharing?
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2. Define Your Buyer Personas
Next you’ll want to research your audience. Identify and define your buyer personas. Who is your dream customer? Create profiles of your buyer personas. This is an incredibly important step in the planning process as you will be tailoring all of your content to appeal to your buyer personas. If you don’t take the time to clearly define your target audience, your blogging will be sloppy and inconsistent. Your blog writers will need to know whom they are writing for and continually write for this audience.
3. Determine Who Will Be Writing Your Blog
Decide who will be responsible for creating content. Can you handle the writing yourself? Can your sales and marketing teams generate content? This is an ongoing commitment. It’s a good idea to iron out the details in advance. Remember, whoever is writing will need to keep it up long term. You might want to outsource your business blog writing to a freelance writer so you and your employees can focus on your other responsibilities. Over time, it will be worth the investment.
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4. Create Content
It’s time to start writing! You’d be surprised how important the blog titles themselves are. Take the time to come up with effective blog titles that include relevant keywords. When people search for these terms online, you want your blog post to pop up in the results. Blog titles should be no more than twelve words long.
When it comes to your blog posts, there are several factors to take into consideration. Decide how often you will post new content and determine how long you want your blog posts to be and be consistent. Remember to include your keywords throughout your blog posts. Use a keyword analysis tool online to measure keyword density. Content length and keyword density will affect your SEO results.
5. Include Calls to Action
At the end of each blog post you should include prominent calls to action to encourage readers to engage further. Offer a free downloadable ebook or white paper in exchange for their contact information. You’ve worked hard on your business blog to attract relevant buyers to your site. What do you want them to do after they finish reading your blog? The goal is to generate qualified sales leads so your sales team can then follow up to nurture the leads.
If creating a business blog is beyond your area of expertise, engage a professional. Over time, you will be pleased with the results and will surely see a return on your investment.
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