4 Expert Tips on How to Promote Your Business with Blogging
Every business seems to be having some online presence these days either by being listed in a web directory or digital platform, active on social media or having their own business website.
For the most part, a mere online presence without a marketing strategy makes little or no impact on income and profit. There are many ways to promote your business online. Blogging however is the most sustainable and reliable content marketing method if done properly.
No matter the nature and scope of your business, creating and running a blog could bring a serious leap forward to increasing influence and generating more sales. A blog allows you to publish fresh content attracting visitors from search engines, social media and other traffic channels.
Here are 4 useful tips to promote your business through blogging
1. Add a blog to your website
A blog on your website is that section where you constantly publish articles and interact with readers who find those articles on search engines, social media, mentions on other sites, etc.
Your website is generally made up of static pages presenting the company, products and services, contact information, partners and some pages for information purposes online. In some cases, the company website may include an eShop, a forum, a news section, etc. But to be able to attract potential customers to your business through inbound marketing, you will need a blog.
If your business hasn’t gotten a website yet, you will have to create your own website beginning with a domain name. I understand the challenges that come with having to choose a domain name for your business. This becomes more perplexing if your exact business name has been taken by someone else.
The domain name industry is becoming more and more lucrative. Some people register names just to resell for profit. One of my clients asked if there are possibilities to register a domain name for free. Of course you can. The point is that domain names are no longer a big concern if your name is still not taken. However, there are mistakes to avoid when picking a domain name for your website.
Once your blog has been set up on your business website, the next step will be to create and publish content to bring exposure to your business. Note that adding a blog to your website or creating a new blog isn’t a big problem at all. Technically, this can be started and finished within a few hours and it’s just the beginning of promoting your business with blogging.
2. Create and publish content
This is where I have seen many businesses fail. That’s because of a lack of proper guidance and strategy. We are always confronted with the question of what to write about on my business blog. I have answered this question several times in my blogging career but the answer is always very simple.
If you can answer the question of what problems your business seeks to resolve, then you are very close to publishing powerful articles on your blog. If your business is in the pet industry where you help your audience train their animals at home, you should regularly create content that educates dog or cat owners on some recurring issues that can easily be handled by them.
While these pet owners get pulled to your blog to consume the free and useful tips, they will see you as an authority in the industry and will easily buy whatever product you sell or hire you for more complicated issues.
Your content should not be scanty with no value. If your blog is being used to promote your business, it has to feature articles that address real issues and propose lasting solutions.
3. Promote your content
Creating and publishing content on your blog won’t just bring the customers. You have to position the content to be found by potential customers. Once you struggle to create a powerful piece of content, it shouldn’t be read by you alone. Here are some of the ways to promote your blog and increase your business exposure and sales:
- Do some SEO to get traffic from search engines
The best thing that will ever happen to your business blog is when it starts driving natural traffic from search engines. But there is quite some work to be done to get to this level. This begins with making sure your website is technically SEO-friendly.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It’s everything you do on or off your website to be found, indexed and ranked by search engines. SEO is a complex topic we cannot get into details in this post. However, basically, If you have well researched content that touches different points of the topic you are writing on, your content should be well positioned to entice search engines.
Another thing you need to do is to attract other readers to cast a vote in favor of your content. They do it by willingly linking back to yours from their websites. By doing this Google considers you a leader and rewards you by giving your entries an improved position on search results pages.
- Establish a Social media presence and share your content
Promoting your blog on social media is tricky. The reason is that social media is becoming so noisy that if care is not taken, you may not have any results from it. You have to begin with building a targeted social media following. Don’t just be overwhelmed by numbers. Thousands of Twitter followers may not make any sense until a majority of them show interest in what you represent.
Having a blog will ensure you keep your social media followers refreshed with new information each time you post. With a static website, it will soon become a bore and an annoyance sharing your product pages day after day. Social media allows you to strategize and find a balance between organic posts and paid social media ads, which is vital for growing these channels.
- Guest post on other blogs
Some marketers think guest posting is a waste of content. Sometimes, you come up with powerful content and you are wondering why you should submit it to another website. It’s actually not a waste at all. The content you submit to other websites will take your business to the readers of those websites.
Secondly, you stand a chance to earn a backlink from that website which will inevitably improve your performance in SEO through the best guest blogging services.
- Share to your list subscribers
One of the most powerful assets of your business is your email list. It is better than social media followers since you can reach out to them any time and no one sets the rules for you.
If you have a list for your business and another list for your blog, don’t mix the two up. Treat them separately when it comes to what content to send out. The list for your blog will always click through to read your new articles and take necessary action.
4. Let others write for you
Earlier on in this post, I recommended that you should submit articles to other blogs to benefit from their audiences. As you submit to their websites, you help in their promotion. That’s what also happens if you allow other experts in your industry to submit to your own blog.
While guest posting is powerful, you must make sure you don’t allow just anything to be published on your blog. This may damage your reputation and business in general. Set tighter guest posting rules to filter out thin content from SEO firms.
How often do I publish content on my business blog?
This is one of the questions I frequently get from my clients. The truth is that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to this. It all depends on your business strategy. Some people want multiple articles per week with no depth. Others prefer 2 well-researched in-depth articles a month.
If you don’t have a strong blogging team for your business, take it gently and steadily. Set and maintain a frequency. Be consistent in what you do. Make sure you properly promote your content. It makes no sense to create content that’s not found. Monitor your progress and make sure your effort is not wasted creating and publishing ideal blog posts.
