Thomas Griffin — October 25, 2019 You already know that your business needs a great blog. But how do you make one?
Although starting a blog seems simple, it’s easy to miss crucial steps that make a difference. When you have the right setup in place, you can focus on creating great content and winning customers. Without the best tools and strategies, you’re faced with frustrating redesigns and redeployments.
Ready to find out how you can build a great business blog? Let’s dive in!
1. Use the right platform
For ease of use, convenience and control over your content, WordPress is a powerful platform to help build your blog. It’s easy to set up a blog as there are many WordPress hosting services that let you make one with a single click. One of the best features of a WordPress blog is that you can upload your content without a developer’s help whenever you need to.
2. Create focused content
Build your content around a theme that’s relevant to your industry and customers. With work, it’s possible to create a content hub for your domain that answers questions. Content also impacts SEO, and it’s important to create relevant and informative posts that give value to your site visitors.
3. Invest in design
Since a blog is about reading content on a screen, it’s important to make it as comfortable and appealing as possible. You have to make choices regarding color and fonts that improve readability. Refer to sites like Medium to understand what makes a blog easy to read.
4. Post content consistently
A blog plan will help you list topics and schedule content. You’ll have a clear idea of what you’re writing. You’ll be able to take advantage of different seasons and holidays by planning for such content. You’ll be on track and post content consistently. You can also schedule posts using a built-in feature on WordPress. On your post page, you’ll find the Publish button where you can click the Immediately link.
You can set a future time and date for your post to get published.
5. Use tools
Using tools will help you make the best of your blog. Here are some helpful tools that will make a difference:
- Optin forms: Optin forms like popups can capture user information just as they leave your site. In this way, you can build an email list and use email marketing to convert them to customers.
- Social proof apps: Social proof apps create trust and overcome resistance to buying from your site. Adding a social proof app to your site generates helpful notifications that show recent user activities. Such activities include recent purchases, registrations and sign-ups.
- Analytics: Adding analytics to your blog in advance is vital for business success. Analytics can guide future decisions by providing information about your audience. It can also tell you what content is doing well and what needs work.
6. Promote your blog
Sharing your blog’s content will help it get attention and engagement. Social media platforms are popular and have a large number of active participants. Make sure that you have a business profile on different sites and post to them regularly. A social media management tool lets you post to different sites at once, and you can schedule content in advance.
7. Use calls to action
Add calls to action in your blog and at the end of blog posts. You can send users to more content or drive them further through the sales funnel. These calls to action can be to subscribe, buy a product, or to follow the business on social media.
8. Optimize for mobile
Mobile optimization is more important than ever. Billions of people now have access to smartphones and access the internet on them. Also, Google now has a mobile-first policy that indexes mobile sites first and then their desktop counterparts. Use mobile responsive themes for WordPress sites and make mobile optimization a priority for your blog from day one.
9. Invite guest authors
You can add more authority to your blog by getting expert guests to write for you. Approach leaders and professionals in your industry and ask them to create helpful posts, which can have a few links to their own websites. In this way, you save time and draw in a wider audience.
10. Leverage your linking structure
When planning your blog, keep in mind to use internal and outbound links in your content. Internal links will in your posts send users to other posts on your site. Outbound links will point them to other resources. This creates more content for them to explore and makes it possible for search engines to index all your content.
11. Build an online community
Create a feeling of belonging in customers by making an online brand community with a membership site platform. Your users will hang around longer on your site and engage with each other. They can even create content for your business by having discussions and answering questions.
Start your business blog the right way
Your business blog is an important asset. Setting it off the right way is paramount to making driving SEO and getting conversions. Follow the tips given here and you’re on your way to making a successful blog that supports your business goals.
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