Blogging for Business Questions Answered

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Summary

Blogging is an incredible tool when it comes to creating content for our business. It allows us to educate our market and it allows us to have a personalised magazine that connects with our customers on our website. Blogging also has some major superpowers when it comes to SEO points of view. If we're writing around our keywords and our topics, then that's going to help drive website traffic, promote our products and services, and build trust with our potential customers. Here are the most commonly asked blogging for business questions I get from my audience: What is the purpose of a blogging campaign? A blogging campaign is a series of posts you make to promote your business or knowledge. You publish these updates regularly on your blog. These blog posts create a relationship with your customers. When you put opt-ins with your blog, they help you generate leads. Blogging also helps you from a search engine point of view as blogs help rank your websites. When you put helpful content for your audience, they keep coming back to your website. And that's what you want to do. You want them to come back to your website so that they can find value in your products or services. How do I start blogging? The first thing to do in a blogging campaign is to come up with a goal. Ask questions like, What do you want the content to be? How often are you going to put it out there? What is the goal of your blog post? You need to have a couple of goals for your blog post. It will be things like book a discovery call, buy a product, build authority, download a lead magnet, or simply to just connect and build awareness. These are all goals that you will have for your blogging. Then figure out what type of tone do you want to use in your blogs? Personally, I like to use a positive encouraging tone. Some businesses like to use a professional tone. You might want to make it more personal. That is up to you, but these are the components of starting a blogging campaign. If you want to delve into this more, sign up for our Blogging for Business course. What tools do I need to start a blog? Tools to start a blogging campaign are as simple as using a WordPress or Blogger website. There are also websites Squarespace and Wix that now have blogging platforms in them. If you've got a website, look at the opportunity of being able to build a blog into your website. Use tools like Google AdWords to do some research on your keywords, or AnswerThePublic to help you find questions or topics that your type of audience is asking. If you're a little bit stuck on how to come up with content ideas, there are tools like Bramework that will help you create a structure for your blog post. And then you can fill in the rest of the details. What content should I write about? The content you write on your blog should relate to your clients. It could be instructional on how to use your product or service. It could be the questions that they ask before they work with you. It could be your most frequently asked questions. The best thing you can do with your blog is to educate and empower your customer to either use your product or service or book a call with you. You want to have content that will appeal to them. Think of things like your top ten tips or your top five strategies. Look at your FAQs. Look at the questions that your people are asking on a regular basis. The content you should write about should be useful to your audience. Your website is there to promote you. Your blog should support the service offerings of your business. How often should I post content to my blog? “How long” is a piece of string question. However, it depends on what time you have. It includes the scope of your business. If you've got a talented team of writers, you might be able to get a post or two out a week. But generally, if we can get a post out once a month, then that means we're providing new content for our audience. Also, blog posts don't always have to be written. Some of them can be episodes of a podcast. You can also look at using videos. You just want to make sure that you're touching base regularly. My rule of thumb is if we can touch base with our clients on our blogs at least three times a month, then we're doing well. And bearing in mind that as you start to blog, you might look at guest blogging as well because getting in front of others’ audiences is a very successful part of blogging campaigns as well. How do I write effective blog posts? One of the most important factors in writing a blog post campaign is making sure you have your content effectively. Don’t assume that people know anything and that it's easy to read Make sure that you introduce the topic properly and use bullet points where it’s needed. Use images where you can to create a visual connection with the text you’ve written. And use headings not only to make it easier to read but also helps Google index what's important. Keep your blogs free of jargon. They are my key tips for writing an effective blog post. And remember, it's a skill you will learn over time. In Blogging for Business, we have the full structure in there. Or if you've got a Marketing Planner, I've got the full structure in there too. How do I generate traffic to my blog? One of the key things is making sure that you've done your search engine optimization. We use a tool called Rank Math that allows us to make sure that we've got the right keywords. We've optimised the images and we're using the categories that are important. And then we make sure we share that blog post on our social media and newsletters. Helping people within Facebook groups and answering questions in places like Quora and Reddit then linking back to your blog post help bring traffic to your website too. How do I promote my blog on social media? Now social media is one of the most popular ways to attract new followers to your latest blog posts. One of the key things that we do is we do an RSS publication directly to our social media platforms. We use a tool called Zapier to publish directly on Facebook and LinkedIn, whenever a new blog post goes live. We also make sure that we have our blog post RSS feed go into two tools to make sure that we've got posts going out on social media regularly. One is called MeetEdgar. MeetEdgar will draw on a social media campaign again and again. So if you've written a good evergreen blog post, it will be re-posted on social media again and again for people to connect with that post. The other is Missinglettr. Missinglettr will create nine posts for your blogs. We also use Missinglettr for its Curate feature which allows us to have our content shared by other people. How do I use email marketing to boost our blog traffic? If we're sending a newsletter on a regular basis using tools like Mailerlite, you'll be able to bring in a blog RSS feed directly into your newsletter template. And you should be doing that. It gives a little bit of an excerpt, the image and a key summary to your audience about what's going on with your blog. You might also want to use an email marketing campaign to take a series of blog posts and run a challenge. Email marketing to boost your blog is about letting people know that it's there, and sending updates to clients that might benefit from that latest blog post. It's about making sure that the blog reaches the people it was intended for. What sort of advertising should I use for my blog? I'm a big organic girl. However, if I've got a blog that I want to have a high amount of traffic, which I often reserve for podcast episodes and videos, I will use Google AdWords, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn ads to promote it. When we run ad campaigns, we need to make sure we've got all our organic stuff working first. We need to make sure we've got all the optimisation on our website done first so that we benefit from that ad campaign. You want to make sure that your images are great, your keywords are great, people can opt into your newsletter, and you've got everything else before you start sending paid traffic. What should I do if my website and blog traffic go down? Website traffic ebbs and flows on the Internet. No matter what time of year it is, it will ebb and flow. Of course, you need to note that there are times like Christmas or school holidays when people just aren't there. If our traffic has gone down, you need to ask yourself, how consistently have you written a blog post? Have you optimised? Have you done all the things that you need to promote your blog? If our traffic consistently drops on a regular basis, then maybe we've gone off message. Maybe we have to look at reviewing where we are. The last thing is that some people tend to only look at the statistics of their blogs. Now, remember, we want good, engaged and connected people reading our content, not thousands of people reading our content and not taking any action from it. How do I measure my blogging success? Like with all marketing, your blogging success comes down to consistency. Are you consistently getting inquiries? So it’s important to get those how did they find us surveys. Looking at our Google Analytics is also a good place to measure your success. Our marketing mix comes down to how many sales are we getting, how many comments are we getting on the blog post, and how many inquiries are we getting. They're the things that measure our success, but they're all part of a mix. Make sure that our activity is generated to help people find us. My key factors for measuring the statistics of my blog are looking at my Google Search Console, seeing if I'm ranking for the right keywords, making sure that we are still attracting more traffic to our website each month, and making sure that the top performing blog posts that work well for Google Search Console are the ones that we write more content about. Final takeaway There you go. These are the most popular questions I get asked often when it comes to blogging for business. If you've got more questions about blogging for business, please ask me. If you are looking for more blogging tips, get our Blogspiration Deck. If you want to learn more about blogging, sign up for our Blogging for Business. If you really want to dive deep into the world of marketing with me, then come and join us in The Marketing Circle. We would love to see you there. Highlights: 0:00 Introduction0:30 What blogging does for our business0:45 Blogging for SEO0:55 Most commonly asked blogging for business questions I get from my audience1:08 What is the purpose of a blogging campaign? 1:44 How do I start blogging?2:23 What tools do I need to start a blog? 3:07 What content should I write about? 3:52 How often should I post content to my blog? 4:51 How do I write effective blog posts? 5:55 How do I generate traffic to my blog? 6:35 How do I promote my blog on social media? 7:35 How do I use email marketing to boost our blog traffic?8:25 What sort of advertising should I use for my blog?9:07 What should I do if my website and blog traffic go down?10:24 How do I measure my blogging success?11:13 Final takeaway11:25 Blogspiration Deck, Blogging for Business, The Marketing Circle Resources Mentioned in the Podcast: (Where appropriate, we use affiliate links.) Blogging for Business Blogspiration Deck The Marketing Circle Other Resources Linda's Suite of Marketing and Business Products  Join The Marketing Circle  Book a Coaching Session with Linda  Contact Linda  Follow Linda: Website  Facebook  Twitter Instagram About Linda Reed-Enever: Linda Reed-Enever is an Ideas and Marketing Strategist who boasts a unique knack for helping businesses and individuals tap into their marketing, branding, and business potential. She draws on both her educational background and over 20 years of experience in the marketing and public relations industry to help businesses and individuals through one-on-one coaching, courses, webinars, training, and other tools. Linda’s expertise encompasses innovative ideas that span marketing, public relations, course creation, social media, marketing automation, and branding. She has an incredible eye for visual content and a talent for simplifying complex topics to help business owners build their profile, their brand, and their expertise.

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