Blogging: Best Practices
May 8, 2015 7:09 am- 3 million blogs are published monthly (Source: Spokal)
- 81% of U.S. online consumers trust information and advice from blogs. (Source: BlogHer)
- 92% of companies who blog multiple times per day have acquired a customer from their blog. (Source: HubSpot)
- B2B marketers who use blogs generate 67% more leads than those that do not. (Source: InsideView)
- Once you write 21-54 blog posts, blog traffic generation increases by up to 30%. (Source: TrafficGenerationCafe)
The numbers are in and it is obvious that blogging for business has evolved into a valuable marketing strategy. Knowing that blogging is beneficial for your company and actually being able to publish a successful blog is a whole another story. With the overwhelming number of blogs being published daily how can your business blog stand out, get recognized by the search engines and make you a leader in your industry? Let’s look at the best strategies for blogging.
- Pre-writing – As a team, decide what the goals of the blog are. What is it that you want to accomplish by publishing a blog? Do you want to increase leads? Do you hope to increase search engine visibility? Do you want to be seen as a leader in your field? Most likely it is a combination of each. Once you understand your goals it will be easier to come up with topics and content ideas.
- Research – Understand your consumer. That means figuring out: their business concerns, job priorities, and anticipating business problems. Research may include surveying your current clients, reading many blogs in your field or just getting on the web and finding out what the buzz is in your field.
- Writing good content – What is good content? The best advice is to create original content. Write blogs that solve problems, discuss emerging technology, take a stand on an issue in your field or ask the readers for ideas and contributions. Be sure to create an editorial calendar that gets your writing team organized and brainstorm topics well ahead of publication dates.
- Analyze – Use analytics on your blog and social media pages to find out what topics and posts most interest your readers. Discuss what blogs prompted comments or responses by clients or customers. Look at other blogs from company’s in your field.
- Post Frequently – HubSpot recently put out this graphic on the frequency of blogging.
