Business Blogging: Content is King

Your company’s blog needs to appeal to your target audience and highlight your knowledge and expertise.

Company blogs should appeal to your target audiences and highlight your knowledge and expertise. Blogs won’t generate business immediately, but they will build awareness, understanding, and trust for your company, making them valuable tactics for your content-marketing plan.

However, blogs are time consuming: They require your company to generate fresh content on a regular basis. Given that time is money, you should ensure you get the most traction for the resources you spend on your blog.

Content is King

To drive readership and engagement, a successful blog has quality, regularly posted content tailored to your audiences.

Write Winning Blog Posts

Many types of blog posts work well for driving traffic:

• How-to Posts: Step-by-step instructional posts come up well in searches.
• Beginner’s Guides: Guides for beginners build brand awareness among new audiences who are searching about your products and services for the first time.
• Advice: Do you have advice on how to handle something related to your company’s products? The best way to string outdoor lights during the holiday season? The best time and way to buy tickets to a sporting event?
• Interviews and Q&As: Interviewing high-profile people in your industry will interest your readers and generate traffic from your subject’s fans.
• Current Events: Although these posts “expire” as quickly as they are written—meaning they don’t have a long shelf life for reuse—posting about current events relevant to your business (e.g., hardware stores during severe weather warnings) can drive traffic to your site through search.

Update Regularly

Create a schedule for posting new content and stick to it. We have all come across blogs that haven’t had a post in three months or even three years. This makes the company look disorganized, rinky-dink, and perhaps even defunct.

Another reason to update regularly? It improves your SEO, driving new customers to your business, and it promotes loyalty among current customers. (Don't forget - loyal customers can be a valuable resource in promoting your company!)

Establish a Theme and Editorial Guidelines

Establishing a theme and editorial guidelines drives a consistent voice and brand across the blog. Here are critical elements for your blog’s plan:

• Mission: This helps set the tone of what article and what topics should be included.
• Audience: Who are you targeting with your blog posts? Describe in detail your target market.
• Topic: Ensure that the topics are in line with your mission and have a natural flow to their order.
• Reposting Policies: Can your blog post be reposted by other blogs? Can a guest blogger post the blog on his or her Web site?
• Word Count and Formatting: Keep these standardized.
• Linking Policy: What links are off limits? What types of links are appropriate—and what types are not?

Target Your Content

Write what you customers want, not what you want. Creating great content will get you traffic, but creating content that your customer needs and wants will generate more sales.

For example, if you’re a college, you may feel tempted to write about the latest trends in higher education. However, potential students would most likely be interested in articles about life on your campus and the types of majors they can find there.

Does your business need help establishing a blog or making your blog work better for you? Enter FrogDog.