Many companies start a business blog because, well, they think they should. A blog is a tremendous resource for businesses and can be a great platform for sharing your industry knowledge, offering helpful information, boosting search results and positioning yourself as an expert in your field…if done right.
Simply creating a blog and throwing up a few random posts does not equate to blog success and won't likely attract blog subscribers or repeat readers. Here's why no one is reading your company blog.
1. You haven't defined your target audience for your business blog.
The number one question you must answer is: who is your blog for? A clearly defined target audience is essential for blog success and building an audience.
- Understand what your readers' pain points are. What frustrations do they have?
- Know what questions your readers have about your product or service.
- It helps to focus on a your specific industry because you can directly address the needs of that particular audience.
If you need help defining your target audience and buyer personas, browse over to our article about rock solid ways to build client personas.
When you write a company blog, you're not trying to write a New York Times bestseller. You're trying to reach a narrowly defined audience of your prospective customers with succinct, helpful information.
For example, if you sell financial planning software, you're writing for an audience of about 200,000 financial planners in United States today. You shouldn't be concerned with people outside of your target market.
2. You don't have any goals for your business blog.
Before you write posts for your blog, it's essential to have goals in place. Rather than just writing about your products or services, you need to carefully consider the benefits of your offerings for your customer. You also need to research what words and phrases they use to search the web for products or services similar to yours. Your blog posts should focus on one keyword at a time, and answer critical questions that your customers have about that topic.
Writing a blog can have many benefits. Some benefits (and goals) of a blog:
- Building credibility with prospective customers
- Positioning yourself as an expert in your industry
- Increasing awareness with greater search engine visibility
- Improving your sales and leads
Did you know that you can improve your offline sales materials through a blog, too? Blog posts can be measured to see which topics generate the most interest in terms of click through and sharability.
Using this information, you can focus your sales materials on these topics, create other helpful collateral, or even compile similar blog posts into a white paper or book that you can print and giveaway at conferences and trade shows. Of course, you can also use these white papers and books as lead generating downloads on your website.
3. Your business blog offers nothing of value for your customers.
Many companies make the mistake of focusing more on their company than what their customers need.
They talk about their processes and products, but not about how the products or services solve the problems that their prospective customers have. When you write your blog, knowing your customer is critical because you can answer specific questions that they have about how your products or services help make their lives easier.
If you really want to know what your customers care about what questions they have, just look at the sent folder of your email.
- What questions have you answered for customers in the last three months?
- What topics does your customer service deal with the most?
Another idea is to keep a pad of paper and a pen by your phone, so that when you answer sales calls you can jot down questions that your customers are asking. When you hang up the phone with your prospect, just write the answer that you gave down on the piece of paper so that you have a question and the answer. You can then turn that into a blog post for your website.
4. Your business blog has no consistency.
When you commit to having a blog on your company website, people expect information to be published in a consistent basis.
- It's critical that you plan the timing of your blog posts so that they are published at regular intervals, at least once per week.
- Use an editorial calendar for your blog, which contains a clear outline for your post topics, publishing dates, and keyword research.
- Write several posts in advance and preschedule them to post when you’d like them to go out. If you use a system like WordPress or HubSpot, it’s really easy to schedule content, even months in advance.
A company blog is essential marketing tool, but it must be used the right way to deliver the most effective results. Throwing it out there to see what sticks won’t work. Having a defined target audience, goals, valuable content, and a consistent publication plan for your blog will help you see results from your efforts.
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