How to Maintain an Engaging Blog for Your Small Business
Do you agree that marketing for large companies is different from small business marketing? Large companies can afford to spend huge budgets on advertising and attracting customers. And if even 50% of the advertising does not work, then the rest will bring enough customers for payback and income. Small businesses cannot afford the luxury of experimenting with advertising. Each advertising move should generate revenue or at least payoff expenses.
More and more companies are coming to run their corporate blog. The efforts of Internet marketers and other promotion specialists have contributed to the realization that engaging posts on social media are an excellent tool for promoting a brand to the masses and recognition. But what if a business is just starting its development and has neither huge capacities nor an impressive team? And is it worth it for small businesses to spend time writing blog posts at all? Let’s try to figure it out.
How is a blog useful for small business marketing
1. Attracting a new audience
The company’s website appears in the search results for more requests, gets into extended snippets, and has zero output, thereby more people get acquainted with the company. The content of the page determines what feelings the user will feel for you: respect, trust, or disappointment and anger.
2. Increasing trust
Users are more inclined to desire to get in touch with a company that looks like an expert in their eyes. And expertise and experience can be proved, including in the blog.
3. Maintaining brand loyalty among existing customers
If you periodically appear in their field of vision, they will remember your existence and thought leadership, and the next time they or their friends need your services, they will remember where to turn.
4. Traffic and conversion
Content can give a decisive push that will help people decide to become your customers. It can also bring conversions – sending applications, call orders, purchases, and subscriptions. If you manage to tie the content to the purchase, order, or download of the material, the persuasiveness of the content will raise the conversion rate. To further boost the effectiveness of your content, consider one-way link building since it can improve your website’s search engine rankings, increase brand visibility, and drive more traffic to your site, ultimately leading to increased conversions and sales.
What to write about and what not to write about
It is here, in the blog, that you, as the head of a small business, can begin to form an atmosphere. Consider some blog post ideas:
- learn to tell Instagram stories;
- share how you came up with the idea of starting a business;
- tell how your typical day goes;
- describe what it means to you to do exactly this business;
- explain what you want to give to your consumers.
Do not make a blitz survey format out of this information, write a lot and in detail. Even if it is not a masterpiece of journalism, these texts will play a good service. Are the stories about the meaning of business and everyday life over? Go to the story about the goods and products. Use various platforms for promoting, as well as infographic makers when it is necessary to facilitate and accelerate the transfer of information: instructions, ideas, facts, and statistics.
Use video content
Video content is something that is becoming more popular all over the world from year to year. Therefore, video marketing is a tool that simply cannot be neglected today if you have seriously decided to grow in the digital environment. It will help promote both goods and services. It will bring great traffic to the site. It will help to find a new audience and increase the loyalty of the existing one.
Advantages of video content over text and pictures:
- Ease of perception;
- Information intensity of content;
- Visibility;
Video content today is not just a talking head in the frame. You can create different types of videos, and test what will be the best. And alternate formats so that the content does not get boring and does not cease to amaze.
To do this, you can use:
- Expert video. A classic video in which a specialist or manager reveals a topic that is interesting to visitors of the site. For example, the topic of content promotion.
- Demo video. A short and vivid demonstration of the product, which gives a visual representation of it in addition to a textual description. For example, if you are creating some kind of software, you can use a screen recorder to show all its benefits. Learn how to record your screen on Mac or Windows PC.
- Video review. This is a longer and more detailed format, also dedicated to the presentation of the product and the description of its capabilities/features/application options. Find out which instrument can help you in creating engaging videos.
- Rating. A video clip made with one of the programs from the list in which several products are presented with ranking by one attribute: by price, by functionality, by size.
Optimize your content
If you want Google to love your blog and reward it with high positions in search results, you need to make sure that the site is properly optimized. Blog promotion using SEO tools increases the chances of increasing organic traffic.
If you plan to optimize yourself, pay attention to the following things:
- Don’t overdo it with search queries. The days when Google approved the addition of a large number of keywords are over.
- Enter the Title and Description. These are probably one of the key elements of SEO on the search results page, encouraging users to visit your site.
- Don’t forget about linking. Provide internal links to other articles.
Also, take advantage of free Google tools like Google Analytics to see detailed analytics. It will determine how good SEO blog promotion works.
Use “free” potential buyers
Free advertising. Small but interesting articles attract traffic to your site and increase the blog’s performance, and each of the visitors is your potential client. Completely free.
Anyway, the blog is indexed by the keywords that you insert in the title and the body of the text. This attracts people from search networks who find an article about the product they need and see a link to purchase it. If you are the owner of an online store, then competently compiled posts with useful and expert information on goods and services will help increase sales. When starting a blog, consider the concept of relevance. You can make very interesting articles that indirectly relate to your business, but even if they collect a lot of reposts and views, they do not provide any help to the business.
Choose the right employee to maintain a blog
First of all, take a closer look at those who interact most with the product and customers. They have the most knowledge about the problems of your target audience and the advantages of the product. Hire millennials with fire in their eyes. If there are people who are attracted to their work, then they will become a good mouthpiece for your business.
You can also look at the social networks of employees, if someone writes meaningful and funny posts on his page, maybe he will want to write for you. Do not forget to use an editing tool to check the correctness of your texts.
Conclusion
Summing up, a small business certainly needs a blog. In some cases, even more than anyone else. Start blogging your business now, and you will see that the number of your customers will be much higher than that of your competitors.
Salman Zafar is a serial entrepreneur, digital marketer, writer and publisher. He is the Founder of Techie Loops
Video content can be a sensational trust builder. My live videos seem to draw in blog readers who get to know me via the medium. I need to broadcast more these days. Sensational post here. Good job.