Digital PR Specialist, Nada Giuffrida explains what do to before starting a business blog and its benefits:
1. Position Yourself as an Authority
A blog is the ideal way in which you can show yourself as an authority within your field. A blog can ensure that you are the first place people go to when they want advice related to your market, products or services. I would suggest starting this process by looking at what your competitors are doing, and more generally at other high ranking competitors’ blogs. This will give you a better idea of what people want to read about, and also provide you with ideas for your own articles.
2. Showcase Your Products
Your blog is the ideal place to show off your products or your services. However, this needs to be done in a non-promotional way. Write posts that give your products context – share ideas – be inspiring. It is about placing your products in stories that make sense.
People go to your product page to browse beds, they go to your blog for inspiration – use articles to show how your products can transform houses, and lifestyles. So for example, if your are a beautiful furniture retail business, people will go to your product page to browse beds or dining tables. They will go to your blog for inspiration, so use articles to show how your products can transform houses, and lifestyles.
3. Gain Additional Search Traffic
In addition to original creative articles, your blog is the ideal place to answer questions. What are your potential customers asking, but not getting the answer to? We call these “long tail search queries,” – questions that people type into Google. “How do I…” These can be discovered using Google’s Keyword Planner, and would be the ideal fit for your “Tips and Guides” section.
4. Attract Authoritative Links
By writing interesting, original content for your sector, you may begin to be noticed by other writers and bloggers in your industry. There are thousands of bloggers on the internet – and often they will be looking for content inspiration. If you can provide this, you can start to attract more, relevant links to your site. Links are a key ranking factor, and will help to increase your domain authority too.
5. Provide Content for Social Media
Make sure you have social profiles on five of the main social networks: Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. If you are trading in Interiors for example, I would suggest that you consider creating an account on Instagram too. Finding content for social media can be extremely time consuming. A blog can provide you with this. People on social media are looking for entertainment, so blog posts are the ideal way to entice social media traffic. This opens your website up to a much wider audience.
So…Who is Your Audience?
One of the first things you need to consider when embarking on a blog is: who are you writing for? Who do you want to read your posts – and why? If you are a retail business, you want to raise awareness to people who may buy your products, or people who may want to write about your products. This process is what we call persona research. Personas are generic customer types. Things to consider include:
- What kind of professions do they work in?
- Are they more often male or female?
- What age group do they fall into?
- What income do they have to spend?
By answering these types of questions you can start to form a picture of your average blog reader. If you can understand who they are, you can start to think about what they might want to read.
Enjoy writing!
