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How to Write the Perfect Business Blog: What Are the Main Steps You Need to Take to Prepare
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On the surface, writing and publishing a blog consistently seems simple enough. But that is far from the truth. In other to be a successful blogger that connects with your audience, converts leads into customers and maintains long-term relationships with them, you need to prepare your blog posts.
Consistency is key when it comes to blogging especially for businesses that face stiff competition in their industry and small businesses with a limited budget that extensively use content marketing.
In order to use blogging as an effective content marketing tool, we’ve highlighted the steps to become a successful blogger:
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Illustration by TierneyMJ via Bigstock
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The Blogging Calendar
Calendars are best left for meetings and deadlines, right? Nope. Businesses need a blogging calendar in place in order to be organized, blog consistently and find out what types of content attracts audiences to the website.
You can use a free project management tool like Trello, create a custom content calendar using Google Sheets or buy an easy-to-use one from CoSchedule for $15 a month.
In order to create a good blogging calendar, you must:
Add topic ideas, a working headline, keywords you want to use, a call to action (CTA) and the publish date to dates on your calendar.
Check out upcoming holidays and schedule to write custom content based on those holidays. For example, the week before Easter you could schedule to publish a blog about 10 easy Easter dinner recipes.
Leave some space for writing topical content. While evergreen content is important, it’s essential for businesses to cover news and the latest industry developments so that your it stays relevant and capitalizes on your audience’s temporary interest on a topic.
Topic Outlines – What Should You Write About?
Every single blogger on this planet has had (or will soon suffer from) writer’s block. This common malady afflicts even the most experienced authors and copywriters. If you’re suffering from this ill-fated disease, fear not. The best way to know what to write about is to know your audience.
Knowing your audience involves knowing how they think, what they buy, what problems they face on a daily basis and what their dreams and aspirations are. Once you’ve figured your audience out, it will be easy to find topics that will appeal to them. Most business bloggers aim to solve their readers’ problems or explain a complex process.
If, however, you find yourself staring at a blank sheet on MS Word with nary an idea in sight, consider using tools like Buzzsumo or Hubspot’s Topic Generator. You can enter keywords or a topic to find top-performing articles or simply get some ideas on catchy headlines. These tools will help you get your creative juices flowing.
Besides knowing your audience, aim to write for a niche. Readers love reading customized blogs rather than run-off-the-mill articles.
Keywords and SEO
Blogs boost your ranking on a search engine’s results page with the help of keywords. Your website will get a considerable amount of traffic if it’s ranked high for certain common search terms or phrases. After all, blogs primarily drive traffic to your website.
In order for your blog to be search engine optimized (SEO), it’s essential to use keywords or phrases commonly searched by your audience. One great tool to know which keywords to use in your blog posts is Google’s Keyword Planner. You can search for terms that generate maximum traffic and have low competition.
However, use keywords appropriately. Keyword stuffing is not cool folks!
Sourcing Images (and Crediting Them)
Blogs are no longer rife with words. In 2018, any written form of content is peppered with high resolution images, stunning graphics, captivating videos, easy-to-read infographics and hilarious memes.
If you have a graphic designer at hand, great! If not, you can always source high quality images from certain websites. Flickr, Pexels, MorgueFile, Pixabay, FreeFoto and FreeDigitalPhotos are some websites where you can use images for free. However, it’s imperative that you give credit where it’s due. Always source the name of the artist and the website you’ve taken it from. Ditto with videos that you haven’t created on your own.
Remember to set a feature image for your blog post. You can set the same feature image in your post or use a different one.
Including a Call to Action
What would you like your readers to do after reading your post? Do you want them to subscribe to your e-newsletter, buy your products, avail a discount or sign up for a contest? Always include a powerful CTA in order to convert readers and visitors to leads and eventually to paying customers.
Promoting your Blog Posts
Hold up! We’re not done yet. In fact, a major component of blogging is promotion. Writing and publishing is just half the work. Here are some promotion tactics you can use:
Send your new blog post to people subscribed to your mailing list. You can even curate all the posts you’ve published in a week, make it a newsletter and send it at the end of the week to email addresses in your mailing list.
Use social media sites to promote your new post. However, instead of simply sharing the headline or title of the blog post, talk about its biggest takeaways, inspirational quotes (if you’ve used them), click to tweet boxes and subheadings. And always add an image to the social media post.
Keep promoting the new post on social media sites the day after it’s published, a couple of days later, a week later, two weeks later and several months later. There’s no rule that says you can promote it only once.
Promote some of your older and more successful content often.
Consider paying for promotion. Use paid tools like AdRoll, 360 degree marketing and Google AdWords to amplify your blog’s reach.
The more you blog, the better you will be at it. Businesses need to blog and promote their posts consistently in order to reach a wider audience, convert leads into customers, establish and maintain a connection with potential customers and cement their authority in an industry.
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#7e8f7c” show_divider=”on” divider_style=”solid” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”off” /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”on” gutter_width=”2″ padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” custom_padding=”50px|||” custom_padding_tablet=”30px|||” custom_padding_last_edited=”on|tablet” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_2″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row admin_label=”row” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” custom_padding=”17px|||” padding_mobile=”on” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][et_pb_row][et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_divider color=”#cc4315″ show_divider=”on” divider_style=”groove” divider_position=”top” hide_on_mobile=”on” disabled_on=”on|on|off” /][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section][et_pb_section bb_built=”1″ admin_label=”Blog post main Section” fullwidth=”off” specialty=”off” transparent_background=”off” background_color=”FDF3E7″ allow_player_pause=”off” inner_shadow=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” padding_mobile=”off” make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” make_equal=”off” use_custom_gutter=”off” prev_background_color=”#000000″ next_background_color=”#c97824″ custom_padding_tablet=”50px|0|50px|0″ custom_padding_last_edited=”on|desktop”][et_pb_row make_fullwidth=”off” use_custom_width=”off” width_unit=”on” use_custom_gutter=”off” padding_mobile=”off” allow_player_pause=”off” parallax=”off” parallax_method=”off” make_equal=”off” parallax_1=”off” parallax_method_1=”off” parallax_2=”off” parallax_method_2=”off” column_padding_mobile=”on” background_position=”top_left” background_repeat=”repeat” background_size=”initial”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″][et_pb_image src=”https://iriscontent.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/AIIIA.jpg” show_in_lightbox=”off” url_new_window=”off” use_overlay=”off” animation=”left” sticky=”off” align=”right” force_fullwidth=”off” always_center_on_mobile=”on” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” _builder_version=”3.0.101″ show_bottom_space=”on” /][/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”2_3″][et_pb_team_member name=”Annie Ianko” position=”Chief Content Officer” background_layout=”light” facebook_url=”https://www.facebook.com/IrisWebContent/” twitter_url=”https://twitter.com/Iris_Content” use_border_color=”off” border_color=”#ffffff” border_style=”solid” custom_css_main_element=”box-shadow: 0 0 20px rgba(0,0,0,.1);||” _builder_version=”3.0.101″]
Annie has over 20 years of experience as an editor and content creator and manager. With work in television and written media, she has dedicated her past 10 years to learning the ropes of online content creation, from writing to editing, from SEO to content management.
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