Every business owner wants to bring in more sales and customers. Am I right? Sure, you could sit there and cold call people all day, get hung up on and cussed at. Or go door to door and pitch your product/services to people who have zero interest in what you have to say and make them feel super awkward for being put on the spot. That sounds like so much fun, right? NAHHHHT.
What if I told you business blogging could help you close more deals without having to pick up the phone or show up to a stranger’s house? Spoiler alert… it can! And I’m gonna tell you how.
Read on to discover the secret sauce to business blogging and how it can help boost your sales.
Fun fact… the more you blog, the better you rank. Google rewards those who publish fresh, new content on their website, and business blogging is one of the best ways to do just that. Search engines recognize when websites are being updated and take note of websites that are being neglected, impacting the ranking positions. Google wants to send users to websites that are consistently being maintained and publishing evergreen content.
The goal is to increase your sales, right? How you gonna accomplish that if your website isn’t discoverable? There’s no question blogging is an important key to helping your website get the recognition and traffic it deserves.
So, how often should you blog? According to a study conducted by HubSpot, companies that published 16+ blogs per month received almost 3.5 times more traffic than companies that published between 0-4 times per month. The same study concluded that companies posting 16+ blogs per month received approximately 4.5 times more leads than companies only posting 0-4 times a month.
How do you blog when you don't have the time? Blogging services from an agency can help.
Business blogging is an essential, lead-generating machine and should be a non-negotiable in your marketing strategy. Don’t have the time or tools to fit this into your schedule? Visit our services page to discover how Impulse Creative can assist with blogging.
Blogging gives you the perfect opportunity to implement relevant keywords your ideal audience is searching for. You could publish the most amazing blog, but that blog won’t receive the organic traffic it deserves if it’s not properly optimized. Identify a few important keyword phrases you want to rank for and include these in your blog title, naturally throughout your text, in and around links, and image alt-tags.
Not sure how to identify which keywords you should be using? Read Jenn’s blog to learn how to choose these right keywords for your business.
While using keywords is important for SEO, you’ll want to avoid something known as “keyword stuffing.” Keyword stuffing is exactly what it sounds like; trying to cram too many keywords into your text to the point where your content appears spammy. This defeats the purpose of blogging for two main reasons: 1) Users aren’t going to read and engage with your blogs, and 2) search engines will actually punish you for this and negatively impact your ranking.
So, you now know you should blog often and naturally use relevant keywords, but you’re probably wondering, “WTF do I blog about?” Think about the frequently asked questions your business receives and acknowledge these in various blog posts. For example, if you’re a hospitality company and travelers are coming to you for local restaurant recommendations, this gives you the perfect opportunity to write a blog on the top 10 restaurants to dine at while visiting your destination.
Blogging with a purpose and touching on topics that are solution-based, educational and helpful significantly improves the user experience while also establishing brand trust and credibility. Avoid making your blog posts all about you. TBH, no one cares! Blogging is a great opportunity to address pain points and discuss topics your audience actually wants to read.
Since blogging is such a strong SEO tool, it helps to do keyword research around your industry and product/services to see what your ideal customers are searching for and base your topics around those key phrases. There are several tools you can use to conduct keyword research such as SEMrush, Moz and Soovle.
Your blog title is the first thing users are exposed to and usually determines whether or not someone is going to even open your blog. Think of this like an email subject line. Would you open an email if the subject line was super mundane and/or salesy? Highly doubtful. The same goes for your blog title.
Your blog title should give the user a short, basic understanding of what they’re about to read. I mean, it’s really just common sense. Don’t title your blog “Five Reasons We Love Corn Dogs” if your blog is about toasters.
“LOL no shit, Sherlock,” you say... Touché.
The point is, make your title relevant without being boring. Have fun with it and your audience will, too!
Did you know adding images to your blog helps your rankings? Remember earlier when I mentioned to include important keywords in your alt-tags? Surprise! Those alt-tags are what’s attached to those pretty visuals you include on your site pages, including your blog.
Including images on your business blog also allows for a longer post, which search engines love and will thank you for by boosting your ranking.
Not only do visuals help with SEO, breaking up the text with images and videos allows for an overall better user experience. According to a study conducted by Jakob Nielsen, data showed that users spent 10% more time looking at pictures of people on a page than they did reading the biographical content associated with the images. Even though the text took up 316% more space, users preferred looking at the visuals.
Images help add value to your blogs by really connecting users to the message you’re trying to get across. In fact, the SAGE Handbook of Political Communication found that the brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than the time it takes to decode text. There’s no question that attaching visuals to your blogs will help users to better consume your content, allowing you to reel in those leads more effectively.
When writing a business blog, it’s important to include both internal and external links within your text. Internal links take the reader to a different page with your same domain, whether it’s another blog post, service page, product page, etc. An external link takes the reader to a site page from an outside source.
Including internal links in your blogs helps with… you guessed it! SEO. Are you noticing a trend yet? There are three main ways internal linking impacts SEO. It helps with website navigation, supports the architecture and hierarchy of a website, and distributes page authority and ranking power throughout the site.
External links, on the other hand, are a great way to build relationships and potentially extend your reach. For example, if you link to an external website page and a marketing employee from that company notices you’ve been hyperlinking to their content, there’s a chance they could reach out, build a partnership, and share some of your content in return.
Using external links in your blogs also helps build brand trust. Crediting outside sources when feeding your audience information shows that it’s not all about you. This also helps build credibility and allows the reader to learn more about a specific topic.
So by this point, you might be thinking, “Wow, blogging is great for SEO, but how is this going to help me close more sales?” Well, besides the fact that good SEO is going to make your website more discoverable and bring in the right ideal customers, what’s really going to help seal the deal is including a call-to-action (CTA) at the end of your blog.
A CTA is an instruction to the reader that provokes an immediate action. Your CTA should offer insight to your audience’s pain points. This could vary from downloadable eBooks and case studies to white papers and consultations, depending on where the user is in the buyer’s journey.
Your CTA should drive the user to a landing page that includes a form to collect some personal information in return for the offer. The contact information you receive on these forms will allow you to nurture these leads through email or phone calls depending on the type of offer. Appropriately nurturing and following up with these leads in a genuine, non-pushy manner is what’s going to help you turn these leads into customers.
Once you’ve got a consistent business blog up and running, you’ll want to receive all the exposure you can get. You don’t want to rely solely on SEO for your blogs to get discovered. Expand your blog reach and promote them on social media so users can easily find and engage with your content.
And if your blog is super helpful and engaging, users can easily share your posts on their social media accounts, extending the reach even more! How can you make sure your blogs are shareable? Read this blog to discover how you can create your own attention-grabbing content.
The more exposure your content and blogs receive, the more leads you’re going to attract and turn into customers. It’s simple. Be consistent, make sure your blogs are optimized, create content that’s helpful, use visuals, and promote on social media. These are all the key ingredients you need to run a successful blogging strategy that’s going to attract the right customers.