Blog All About It! Creating a Blog for Your Business.

Have you been thinking about launching a blog for your business, but have been afraid to take the leap? Here’s your sign to start! It’s been shown that businesses with a blog have 55% more web traffic when compared to businesses that don’t. This makes having a blog a great way to turn traffic into leads, and leads into customers! Here are some of the best practices to help ensure your blog is as successful as possible:

Update Your Blog Regularly

Keeping your blog up-to-date isn’t just important for search engine optimization (SEO) reasons, it can impact how people view your business when searching online for your products and services. For example, if a potential customer arrives at your blog via an online search and sees the last time it was updated was 8 months ago, they aren’t likely to return. On average, it’s recommended that you post at least once a week.

Integrate With Your Website

While you can keep your blog separate from your main website, it may be easier to integrate it with your existing website. This way, you’re not starting from scratch. When your blog uses the same URL as your website, it can not only help grow your brand recognition, but it makes it easier to improve your site’s ranking on search engines. Every time you create a new post, it adds another index page to your website, making it more likely a potential customer will find you.

Educate, Don’t Promote

Let’s say you’re a roofer, and a potential customer is looking to replace their roof and finds themselves on your blog. At this point in the process, homeowners are trying to educate themselves on what the project entails and find someone they trust to do the job. If all they find is sales pitches and offers, they’ll look elsewhere. They know what you do — that’s how they found your blog — instead, show them what you know. A good rule of thumb is to keep around 80% of your content educational and the other 20% focused on sales. Educating your customers can help increase loyalty, build more trust, and reduce complaints. It may even lead to referrals, as customers share your knowledge with their friends and family.

Share What You Write

You have all this great content on your blog — now how do you get people to read it? Many people will find your content organically through searches. However, you can drive even more eyeballs to your blog with other methods. You can do this on social media, email newsletters, SEO marketing, your website, and even in your email signature.