Hosting a blog on your website is an accepted way of raising your brand awareness that is often overlooked or undervalued when it comes to planning a digital marketing strategy.
This mistake is a legitimate one, as business blogging can seem like just one more responsibility or one more thing to keep up with in an already over-busy environment. It also requires keeping up to date with the latest trends in your industry, as well as mastering the arts of both writing and digital marketing, each of which has its own rules and skill sets.
Overlooking the potential of business blogging would be a serious mistake, however. Research reports that B2B marketers using business blogging as a marketing technique receive 67% more leads than those that don’t. Likewise, marketers who regularly post to a business blog are 13 times more likely to receive a positive ROI.
Business blogging simply cannot be overlooked for any business owner using the internet to conduct business. We talked to Tom Treanor of the Silicon Valley marketing firm Right Mix Marketing to get some helpful tips on how to use business blogging for ultimate success.
How can business blogging help a business, both financially and in other less measurable ways?
Blogging is an often overlooked marketing tool for many companies. Why? Because it’s only effective if it’s done consistently, if the content is better than average, and if the topics hit on your audience’s pain points.
Blogging can help a company in the following ways:
- Creates a perception of authority in the industry
- Helps a company make the connection between user’s problems and the company’s solutions
- Improves SEO for the company
- Provides content for a company (or a company’s connections) to share in social media
- Brings in leads when people find your company via the blog content
How can a business blogger know what topics are trending in their industry?
There are several ways to find out what people are interested in. You shouldn’t be just writing about your products or services. Some ways to find out what they’re looking for include:
- Asking your sales or customer service what pain points prospects have and what problems they’re trying to solve
- Using a tool like Google Adwords keyword tool or Wordstream to see what people look for
- Use Buzzsumo to see what articles are popular in social media based on a keyword or an industry website
- Use SEMRush to see what keywords are driving traffic to your competitors
What advice do you have on crafting the best possible ledes, or intros, to snare an audience’s interest?
Start with the pain they’re facing now. For example, a lede for a small business marketing-related post could be something like this: “Your small business needs to reach new audiences but the old approaches are no longer working. You’ve done the networking rounds, paid for Google Ads and ….”. If people recognize that you understand their pain, they’ll be willing to keep reading.
Do you have any recommendations on how best to combine hard facts, like statistics, with writing that speaks more to the emotions? Why is finding that balance important?
You need the emotional connection to interest your audience. Write from a person’s perspective (e.g. yours) and direct it to a specific person (at least in your mind). Don’t write like a robot. In addition, the statistics give some proof that you’re not just making this up, and that there are some facts that back up what you’re saying.
Can you share a two or three quick ideas on the best ways to get your content noticed? Are there any methods outside of social media that someone might be surprised by?
- Make sure your company social media accounts share that content (and more than once) on channels like Twitter.
- Make sure your most connected employees (or all of them) share company content on places like LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook.
- Consider creating content, like infographics, that others in your industry might not be trying. Invest a little to stand out in your industry (there are lots of designers who can help with this).For more updates from Right Mix Marketing, like them on Facebook, follow them on Google+, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest, connect with them on LinkedIn, and subscribe to their YouTube Channel.