Considering the benefits of blogging for your business should be an integral part of your content marketing strategy, or it should be.
In a nutshell, blogging increases your visibility and the amount of content Google has to crawl, which means more chances to appear in search engines. As well as showcasing your knowledge and expertise to your ideal clients, it’s a win/win.
Don’t just write a blog for the sake of it, though. It’s essential to structure and write your blogs with a purpose.
Quality over quantity here is vital. Because when Google does crawl your website, Google only has so much crawl capacity so if you’ve got too many pieces of content, you won’t get everything crawled. And having oodles of content can backfire.
Will content marketing give you results for your small business?
When done right, it will. And one important aspect is to ensure that your content always matches your brand voice.
And content marketing especially blogging, is a great way to help your website rank on Google quicker, especially if you’re a service-based business as blogging keeps your website up to date with fresh content.
Making a plan, I find, makes content marketing work better. And a plan with a content marketing strategy is even better.
I’m thinking long-term with a plan, not just the next blog post. I’m thinking about the year or quarter. And the content marketing goals and KPIs that I want to hit.
No more flying by the seat of my pants quickly writing a blog post just for the sake of it.
Your content marketing plan and strategy should take into account all your online and digital marketing efforts for example:
- Blog posts (of course)
- Social media content
- Videos
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Webinars
- Lead magnets
That way, they all work together and complement each other.
I can break my blog posts down into social media posts. I could do a quick live to share a tip or create a video to support the blog post and use it on socials too. Perhaps an ebook to sell would work well if the article is popular. Or I can promote my ebooks on the blog posts where they relate. If a blog post is popular then that might turn into a webinar. And I can highlight my lead magnets at the end of blog posts to increase my newsletter subscriptions. And seeing what topics are popular on my blog can help determine what lead magnets I should be creating.
See how that all works together?
Also, with a plan, I can establish gaps or where I need to concentrate my efforts and, most importantly, where I am getting a return on the time I invest.
Use blogging to complement your social media marketing
When you take the time and your expertise to blog. Work smarter, not harder, and repurpose it for your social media.
You’ve got the content at your fingertips. Why not reuse it.
Some social media ideas you can turn your blog posts or snippets from your blog posts into are:
- new on the blog
- tip or advice style posts
- stories
- lives – talk about a snippet from your blog post
- showcasing your services/products, and don’t forget to ask for the sale
- asking questions
- showing behind the scenes
- showcasing client/customer testimonials
- running a poll
How can blogging help promote your small business
When it comes to blogging, you want to ensure it will help your business. If you’re going to spend the time writing, you want to ensure you’re getting an ROI and ROT (return on time).
The number one benefit of blogging is that you’ll have content to share. But also
- for others to share
- for other businesses to link to on their websites which drives traffic back to your website and opens you up to new markets.
And Google likes backlinks from authoritative websites. The more links you have, the more Google realises you’re an authority in your field. And it also helps to grow your Google Authority as it’s a backlink.
One crucial part of blogging
Well, it’s actually made up of multiple aspects, but for Google to crawl your blog post and so you’ve got the best chance for it to rank on Google. Format your blog post in a way that will help Google to crawl it by having:
- a focus keyword or angle
- set up headings with your H1 being your most important, then H2s and so forth
- resize your images, so they load and render quickly
- add readable image file names – no underscores in your filenames
- add alt tags to your images as this is what Google reads
And if you want all the tips and tricks of formatting your blog post, read my other article, How to Easily SEO a blog post. I break it all down step by step for you.
What’s next for your blog?
Start by outlining a plan for the year. From there, you can go into more detail for each quarter or month, depending on how you want to work.
And from there, you can craft out your blog posts and social media posts.
If that all sounds a bit overwhelming, I offer Content Consultations where we can do it together or plan where you should start and how. Or if you’d prefer to have it all done for you, we offer content plans and can even write your blog posts for you, so your blog posts are all completely search engine optimised. That includes your keyword research, and we’ll even upload them to your website to double-check the formatting is on point.
Sound good, then reach out and let’s get some rocking content happening.
