Business Blogging Helps Customers
Business blogging is a great way to drive traffic to your website. An established blog delivers value to prospective customers and helps you establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry.
This is the information age, people! Customers know they can find information at any moment’s notice at the touch of their fingertips and they are searching diligently. With an effective blogging strategy that helps answer questions your future customers might have, your blog should bring thousands of new prospects into the sales funnel. Some business blogs are quickly becoming the biggest generator of new customers.
With that being said, here are the 7 most common “sins” made in business blogging today that prevent legions of potentially interested customers from converting:
1. Slothfulness – Not Understanding How to Use Your Blogging Platform
Come on, people. Not much has to be said here. This is a great first step. No matter what platform you choose, there are plenty of resources available to help you learn the basics of blogging.
More important than just how to post a blog, there is also pertinent information such as, how to link posts to other related posts within the blog to boost SEO and give the reader an “optimized” experience. Look into these things. Every little bit helps!
2. Lust – Not Optimizing Correctly
Speaking of optimizing, the only way your blog is going to be successful is if people can find it. Let’s be careful here though. You don’t want to write your blog solely for SEO purposes. Write for the customers! Focusing too heavily on SEO can take the human element out of your post. Customers like to be treated like humans. Find out what your customers are talking about and then give them what they want with a creative post. The keywords will appear. If you don’t know what your customer is talking about, you’ll miss the mark.
3. Ignorance – Not Knowing Your Audience
To give the reader what they are searching for and talking about, you have to know them, almost personally. Who are your top 3 buyer personas? What are they usually looking for before they find your product? How can you give them the free information they are searching for? What are some hot topics they are interested in within the industry? These are just a few questions to consider before brainstorming blog content. Don’t point and shoot with your posts. Narrow your sites onto a popular target of conversation that a future potential buyer might be interested in.
4. Greed – Making a Giant Sales Pitch
Posts should be an educational resource for readers looking for information or answers to questions. The reading they do should help them. If your blog is just one giant sales pitch telling the reader what to do, then they will tune you out. Give the reader just enough information to graze their hair, leaving them wanting more. If you explain the benefits of your products and services, be tactful about it and for the love of all things, use hyperlinks!
5. Pride – Not Using Effective Images
Using powerful images brings personality to your blog and makes it more visually appealing. Try and stay away from the “that’ll do” approach. There are many stock image sites out there. Don’t settle for photos that scream, “I AM A STOCK PHOTO.” Look for something that evokes emotion and has high contrast. More often than not, the image will be the first thing a reader sees and while they might be scrolling ferociously through their news feed, you’ll want something that catches their eye.
6. Laziness – Not Posting Consistently
Posting consistently is the key to driving future customers to your site. If you post sporadically, you might as well be giving half-hearted suggestions for customers to come to your site. They’ll take their business to more confident thought leaders. At a minimum, you should post once a week
7. Selfishness – Not Sharing Your Posts
Sharing is caring. Tell the world about it! Take pride in your work but don’t spend too much time writing. Allocate your time better so that you are spending just as much time promoting your content as you do writing it. Don’t keep it a secret. Contrary to popular belief, there are no “blogging fairies” that pick up the best and most interesting blogs on the Internet and spread them to the masses. Post links to individual blog posts throughout all social media channels. Social media has become the global sharing hub. Adding social sharing buttons helps readers share with just a click of a button. Social media has compounding interest power!
Creating an effective business blog comes over time but if you avoid these mistakes, you might start to see traffic come quicker than you ever imagined. Starting is the hardest part and learning comes along the way but those who underestimate the power of this content tool are missing out. Now you know what to avoid, go out and DO IT!
Much success,
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- Content Marketing: Why You Should Write Blog Posts in a Series
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- 3 Tips to Find More Topics for Onsite Blogging
