Basics For A Successful Blog

By now you’ve heard about content marketing and how it’s really important for you to use content to improve your business.  You’ve also heard about how blogs can be a really big tool to use in your content marketing strategy, so you’ve decided to take the plunge and start blogging.

As you sit down to type up your blog post, it hits you!  “What should I write”? “How will people know I’m writing”?

Speak To Your Audience

If you want to make a real impact with your blog, you have to start by picking a target audience for your blog.  Who is it, exactly, that you want to read your posts?  This will probably be one of your customer segments.  If you are a b2b then you will most likely be talking to a decision maker at a company that could become a customer.

If you are a b2c, then you may be talking to a young mother of 1 or more children (if that fits one of your customer profiles).  Regardless of whether you are a b2b or a b2c, you have to write your blog specifically for your target audience.

What To Write

The tendency is to write about the products that your company sells or the services that you provide.  However, this will put your blog on the fast-track to not having any audience engagement.  People engage with business blogs, primarily to learn something.

Your blog can be the perfect tool for educating both current and future customers.  You can educate them about the industry that you are in.  If your product will save your customer money due to a better process, educate them on how to develop that process.  Genuinely help the reader improve their current situation and they will thank you by engaging with your blog.

Get People To Visit

Your blog is no different than your website, it has no value if no one knows about it.  You are going to have to let people (your target audience) know about your blog.

B2B’s, email is going to be one of the best ways that you can get people to become aware of your blog and to engage with it.  Send out an email blast with every new blog post that you write, letting them know there’s a new piece of information on your blog.  And, don’t forget to include a link back to your post to make it easy for them to visit.

B2C’s you may find a combination of email and social media announcements will let your audience know that you have a new post on your blog.

Conclusion

In the end, having a successful blog comes down to creating valuable and relevant information on a regular schedule and then letting people that fit your target audience profile know about your latest post.