It's no secret that a well-written blog can have a significant impact on your business' growth. While most of your website will remain static, a blog is a growing vehicle that allows you to educate your customer. Blogging helps develop you as a thought leader, attracts traffic, and helps you engage with your customers.
While blogging can do all of these things, sometimes, business owners often say, "I've been blogging for months now, and it's not doing a thing for my business!" If that's the case, there's one thing that's probably missing from your blog: a strategy.
A blog without a strategy behind it is like driving your car without a destination in mind. Sure, you'll get somewhere, but you'll never get exactly where you want to be because you didn't have an idea as to where you were going.
Most blogs don't fail due to quality but rather because of a lack of strategy. If your blog doesn't have a strategy, take a step back and create one! Here are three things that should go into your blogging strategy:
Establish goals for your blog
If you're not seeing results, it could be because you don't know exactly what you're trying to achieve through blogging. When creating a blogging strategy for your business, it's important to map out your goals for the blog. Are you looking to build thought leadership? Are you looking to generate new leads? What about increasing your visibility on search engines? Or maybe you're trying to do all of these things. Regardless of what you're trying to achieve, make sure you map out specific goals prior to starting your blog.
Know who you're writing for
What are your audience's pain points, and how does your business help solve them? What is your audience interested in? What do they want to learn about? Before writing a blog post, you should be able to answer these questions.
Knowing who you're writing for makes all the difference when developing a blogging strategy. In inbound marketing, we call these our buyer personas. To create engaging and helpful content, you need to understand your audience's concerns, problems, and interests. If you don't already know this information, talk to your clients, and ask them a variety of questions. Once you have a better grasp on what your audience is looking for, you'll see better results from blogging.
Create remarkable content
As I writer, I know that ideas happen when you least expect it – on a run, while eating dinner, watching TV, or listening to music. Although it's awesome that you're coming up with all of these ideas, make sure that what you're writing about fits into your overall strategy. If your goal is to become a thought leader in the technology field, you probably shouldn't be writing about becoming an expert in social media marketing.
Plagiarism didn't work in school, and it doesn't work in blogging either. People know when you're using content that isn't yours. Maybe the tone is different from your other blogs or maybe it just doesn't sound genuine. When you're blogging, make sure you come up with original, remarkable content that appeals to your audience. If you don't know what to write about, ask your customers for ideas or have brainstorming sessions with your employees, coworkers, and other people who understand your business.
"Rome wasn't built in a day," and just like the saying goes, your blog won't be built in a day either. It takes time to build up your content, and there's no magic wand that will give you a blog full of content overnight. By developing a well-defined strategy and creating remarkable content for your buyer personas, your blog will be on the road to success in no time.