It’s tempting to have everything on your website be a sell, sell, sell.
Whether you’re pitching your own expertise or selling products, you want those conversions!
However, a constant stream of sales content can actually turn potential clients away. They may feel overwhelmed by a 24/7 pitch or just simply not understand WHY they should give you their hard-earned money.
Instead, create content that simply adds value, without a hard sell. To provide the most value, you’re going to have to give away a little information…for free. Blogging is one of the most effective ways to do this. When done correctly, it can bring fresh customers to your corporation, small business, or startup. What is a blog used for in business?
When it comes to digital marketing strategy, there are main five kinds of content you can have on your website:
- Completely free content, like a blog post or commentary by a thought leader. It’s open to anyone online to read.
- Content focused on industry insights or business news, such as a press release.
- Case studies and real-world customer success stories that paint your company in a positive light.
- Content behind an information wall. This can include asking someone to input their email address for a free download, product coupon, or complimentary service.
- Content leading to a paid conversion. This encompasses the sale of digital goods, physical goods, and scheduling paid services with your business.
Blog posts are an essential tool in all business marketing strategy, for both service providers and e-commerce shops alike. Even if you’re only selling one product on Shopify or are using your website as an online portfolio, have a blog. The reasons are twofold:
1. Build trust with a business blog
Let’s say you’re looking for someone to paint your house.
If you call a house painter for an estimate and they show up with nothing to say other than “hire me,” you probably wouldn’t be impressed. Where is the information about how house painting works? How about examples of their work? What about pricing?
The same holds true for your business. You may know that you’re the best in the biz, but without any proof to back it up, it’s hard to get someone to believe in you. Even if you’re just starting out without much work under your belt, you can use a blog to:
- Explain business topics related to what you do
- Provide examples of how you have (or would) address customer problems
- Signify your expertise in a specific area
As your visitors begin to read your posts, your brand value will grow in their minds. It can feel weird at first to be creating content that doesn’t lead to an immediate sale, but ultimately, you are working to cultivate loyal repeat customers, not one-time purchases. By establishing yourself as a constant voice and continually placing your content in front of blog readers and email subscribers’ eyes, your brand will be the one they think of when it’s time to purchase a product, engage a service provider, or hire a new team member.
2. Get more customers through optimized content marketing
By blogging intentionally with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind, you can use your blog as a tool to bring in more customers and generate interest in your business.
To do this, you’ll want to create content that answers specific questions your ideal customer might have about your area of business. For example, if you sell shoes, don’t just write content about “women’s shoes” in general. Instead, get really specific — do you sell shoes for hiking? Running? Children? Write about things this audience might care about, like “the best women’s hiking shoes”, “how to choose a running shoe after injury”, or “the five best kids’ sandals for parents on a budget.”
Similarly, if you sell a service or are trying to showcase your expertise, narrow in on specific things people need to know. Pick a fairly easy to grasp concept (or something you don’t like doing, and would rather have clients DIY for their own businesses) and write a primer on how it works. Heck, write several!
How to start a successful business blog
You don’t need a fancy website to get started blogging — in fact, you can do it for under $100 per year.
1. Choose a blog platform
First things first — see if your existing business website includes a blog. If you use a platform like Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify, this is already included in your website package (you may just need to turn it on).
If your website does not include a blog, you can create one on a separate platform. Good, affordable platforms for new bloggers and small business owners include:
- Proseful: at only $7 per month, this ultra-lightweight blog platform is easy to use. If you can type a word document, you can manage this blog! It has a built-in editor that is super simple and clean.
- Blot.im: Blot is another cheap ($4 per month) and user-friendly blog. It uses normal text files you keep in Dropbox, so it really feels like writing a regular old document!
- Telescope: Telescope’s tagline is that they’re “like medium, without the bullshit,” and that holds true. It has built-in functionality for people to follow your blog by email, text, or Telegram, and it’s only $4.50 a month.
Both of these platforms come with a subdomain you can use (such as yourwebsite.proseful.com) but it’s a good idea to connect your own domain. You can even connect it as a subdomain of your existing website (like this blog is)! Each blog platform has instructions you can follow on how to do this.
What about Wordpress?
Wordpress is often touted as the gold standard of blogging, however, it is a fairly complex piece of software that may come with more bells and whistles than you need.
2. Establish your blogging schedule
When posting blog content with the intent of driving traffic to your website, the more you can post, the better. However, above all else, it’s most important to choose a blogging schedule you can actually stick with. Attempting to post once a week is all well and good, but if you can only post once a month, do that. It’s better to post one really high quality blog post than four half-assed ones.
3. Develop your blog topics
Create a list of the three or four main topics you’d like to write about on your blog. These are your content “pillars,” or the main subjects you’ll cover. Under each topic, begin breaking out subtopics that relate to the pillar. For example:
Topic 1: Entrepreneurship
- Building a successful business
- Marketing tactics for startups
- The coolest business owners you won’t read about in Forbes
- Small business trends for the new year
Topic 2: Social Media Marketing
- Should you work with social media influencers?
- Using social media templates for success
- The top 5 metrics you need to track
- Using LinkedIn to grow your business
Topic 3: Email marketing
- Why marketers love Mailchimp
- Should you use Substack?
- The latest news email marketers need to know
- 5 great podcasts about email marketing
4. Schedule and write your blogs
Aim to make each blog post at least 500 words long — 1,000 is ideal. You can share portions of each new content piece you create via email or on social media, as well. One blog post can usually lend itself to 2-3 Instagram or Facebook posts. This will help you funnel customers from your social media to your website and back again!
What do the best business blogs have in common?
- They post regularly, on a reliable schedule
- Content is easy to read with bullet points, charts, or graphics
- Blogs provide information — they aren’t all a giant funnel for a product, service, course or webinar
- They feature guest posts from other industry experts and interesting people
- The posts answer questions people actually have
- They’re free! (You can have paid blog content that’s only accessible to customers, but to use your blog as a marketing tool, you need free content.)
Content ideas for business blogs
If you’re not sure where to start, ask some of your customers what they’d like to know about your business or industry. You could even ask friends/family — they might be unclear about exactly what you sell or provide, and it’s a great way to get a sample of what the general population might be wondering.
Some great evergreen (i.e. you can use them any time of the year) content ideas for any business include:
- A comparison of three products or services you offer
- A “good, better, best” comparison of three similar products at different budget price points
- A roundup of the best products or services to meet a very specific need
- Profile one of your customers and how they use your business’ products or services
- Profile one of your vendors who has an interesting origin story or business model
- Write more about your business mission and why you choose this approach
- Create a weekly guide to using one of your products
- Post a DIY video that relates to products and services you sell
- Share a roundup of reviews and user-generated content from happy customers
Make blogging part of your business strategy
By choosing a blogging schedule you can stick with, maintaining your blog can easily become part of your overall business strategy.
But what if you don’t like to write?
There’s no shame in that! Many times business owners are made to feel like they should be a one-stop-shop, jack-of-all-trades — when, in reality, there’s often not enough hours in the day. And sometimes, we’re simply not so good at something or just don’t enjoy doing it. If it turns out that blogging isn’t your cup of tea, you can hire a freelance writer to take care of it for you — right down to developing the strategy.
Read more: The Ultimate Guide to Hiring a Freelance Writer