How to Start a Company Blog

Vee Tardrew | 25 March 2014

I'm going to cut right to the chase here - if you have a business, you absolutely should be using blogging as a part of your Content Marketing strategy. Here's why:

  • Companies that blog see 55% more website traffic than those that don't, because...
  • Businesses with blogs have 434% more indexed pages, and...
  • 97% more inbound links (HubSpot), resulting in... 
  • 67% more leads (InsideView)

So now that I've dished up compelling reasons to be blogging for business, here's a round up of things to do to get the same results.

Setting Up a Business Blog for Success

1. House Your Blog and Website Together

For business purposes, in particular, its highly recommended to host your blog and website on the same domain, i.e. not make use of free or 3rd party blogging platforms. There are a number of reasons for this including:

  • Seamless user journey and experience
  • Consistent branding
  • Better search engine optimisation results
  • More control and easier maintenance

Integrate your website and blog to keep users immersed in the brand for as long as possible without moving them between disparate elements and often confusing elements. This means being able to directly navigate between your blog and your main website via menu navigation.

2. Use Summary Listings on Your Blog Homepage

Website users are content scanners by nature. If a potential reader lands on your blog homepage (as opposed to a specific post) make it easy for them to quickly scan the page and determine posts that are relevant or interesting to them. An effective blog homepage will list a number of your recent posts, highlighting the headline, including the featured image and a short snippet of the introductory copy.

3. Address Mobility with Responsive Design

It should go without saying that an aesthetically appealing layout and design will help build your credibility and professionalism in the mind of your audience. Further to that, though, blogs (and websites) need to adequately cater for mobile users. Back in 2011, it was predicted that mobile Internet use would exceed desktop use by 2014. By the end of 2013 mobile Internet use was at an all-time high, with 63 percent of all cell phone owners claiming they use those devices to go online. 

According to information from StatCounter, the end of 2016 for the first time saw mobile search surpass desktop, with 51.3% of search coming from smartphones and tablets, as compared to 48.7% of visits from conventional desktop devices. By the beginning of 2017 it's become common for mobile search to surpass that of desktop devices, making mobile responsive design all the more imperative.

By opting to use responsive design, you address the needs of the increasing amount of users coming through to your site from mobile phones or tablets, to not only accomodate users, but evolve and grow with the marketplace.

3. Establish Google Authorship

Build your blog contributors' credibility and authority with Google Authorship. Integrating Google Authorship has also proven to increase visibility and click-through potential in search engine results pages. Google’s Eric Schmidt had this to say:

“Within search results, information tied to verified online profiles will be ranked higher than content without such verification, which will result in most users naturally clicking on the top (verified) results. The true cost of remaining anonymous, then, might be irrelevance.”

See Google’s directions on setting up Google Authorship if you haven’t already done so.

4. Categorise Your Content

Assigning categories to your content holds both user experience and search engine optimisation benefits. If you tag your blog posts with the relevant category this will help visitors uncover other articles of the same subject and sends signals to search engines on the nature of the post.

Include a ‘search by category’ widget on your blog to make topic related searches easier for your readers and bolster your SEO efforts.

5. Encourage Email Subscriptions

One way to encourage repeat visits is to notify readers to new posts on your blog. An easy way to do this is to set up notification emails that go out automatically to subscribers once a post is published. Include a simple subscription form on your blog that allows visitors to opt-in to receive these notifications.

6. Add Social Share Buttons

Readers want to share quality content with their social networks. In order to make this process easy for them, be sure to include easily identifiable sharing icons - for Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and GooglePlus - within the blog post. If people see that others have shared your content they are more likely to do so themselves too.

Creating High-Quality Blog Content

7. Write For Your Buyer Persona  

Creating your buyer persona should be one of the first tasks you undertake when developing your marketing strategy. Essentially this is a fictional representation of your ideal customer. The document provides insight into their personal and professional preferences, interests, challenges and aspirations.

All content creation should be aligned to this buyer persona, ideally addressing the questions they have or issues they are looking to solve. Your blog content is no exception. All blog posts should be created with your buyer persona in mind and be relevant to their specific needs.

8. Omit Company Speak and Limit Industry Jargon

People read blogs for informational and educational purposes about industries, trends and best practices. The quickest way to turn your prospects away is to adopt an egocentric approach. While there will definitely be room to mention a particular product or service within certain blog posts, a blog that appears to be nothing more than a self-serving, public relations platform is one that will not be shared or revisited by prospects.

The same applies to a blog littered with avoidable terminology or language that does not resonate with your buyer persona (see point above).

9. Construct Compelling Blog Titles

Your blog title is the first, and possibly the only, chance you have to grab a prospective reader’s attention. In fact, we know that only 20% of people who read your title will actually go on to read your blog post. It is therefore of the utmost importance that you craft a blog title that is appealing to your buyer persona, clearly demonstrating the value for them and encouraging them to click through to your post.

10. Optimise Content for Search Engines

While you should write first and foremost for your buyer persona, you also want your blog posts to be found by search engines so that you can rank for your targeted keywords. In order to do that you need to apply some on-page search engine optimisation so that the search spiders can work out what your post is about and what type of keywords should be associated. Make sure your keywords appear within your page title, blog post title, in your URL and scattered throughout your text - in headings, subheadings as well as body copy. Also, don't forget to add alternative tags to your images so that the spiders can 'see' them.

11. Publish Fresh Content Regularly

One of the biggest challenges we see for companies is committing to regular publishing of content. Most will start off guns blazing - furiously punching out a blog post a day and slowly but surely trickle down to one post every other week (or month even). In order for your business blog to be successful it is imperative to draw up a blogging editorial calendar and stick to it. The frequency you decide on will impact your ability to generate traffic and leads, but consistency is key. If you can only manage one post per week in the beginning, that's ok (it's still better than nothing), but you need to commit to getting that post our every week from then on out.   

 12. Mix Up the Format

Multimedia elements such as images (think infographics), slide presentations, videos or podcasts can go a long way to enhancing your business blog. As human beings we absorb far more information through visual cues than we do text, so don't be afraid to incorporate different media into your blog posts.

Also try out different blog formats and see what resonates best with your buyer persona. Do they enjoy a how-to post or does a list post do better? You'll only be able to answer that question once you've done a few of each to establish which is favoured by your audience.

13. Build Internal Links with Your Blog Posts

Internal links are helpful for website visitors to move through your site. These are hyperlinked words or phrases that link up one page with another. Within blog posts always try to link to another blog post or a web page, using the most appropriate keywords for the page you're linking to as the anchor text. This is useful for website visitors if they wish to read further about a topic mentioned within your blog post. Bonus: This helps improve your overall SEO efforts too.

Using Your Business Blog to Generate Traffic and Leads

14. Share Your Posts on Social Media 

The adage 'If you build it, they will come.' doesn't apply to a blog post. Well, a little, perhaps, but for the most part and most especially in the founding stages you have to work hard - very hard - for visits and subscribers. Once you've created your utterly awesome blog post, you need to go share the heck out of that baby on your social media channels. Remember that social media signals are starting to play a bigger and bigger role in search engine rankings too so this holds various opportunities for you.

15. Include a Call-to-Action on Every, Single Post

So extra traffic is great, but we really want our readers to convert to leads on our blog. Once they are known to us, we can establish a relationship with them. Never miss an opportunity to provide a chance to convert by including a clear call-to-action (CTA) on each post. Closely align the CTA offer with the blog post subject to maximise conversion and follow it up with a lead nurturing programme that helps move your leads closer to a buying decision with offers that are relevant to them.

Here's an additional tip - a personal one: Give yourself some time. Time to create posts and time to see results. 

One of my greatest challenges when I first started blogging for business purposes was the time it took me to draft, research and write a post that would be valuable to my audience. I've learnt that good content does take time. Sure, there will be the occasional post that I can whip up during a tea break but for the most part, a post still takes me hours to complete from start to finish. I now plan around that.

The second challenge was getting over the disappointment that my first few blog posts (in fact, the first few months) did not magically increase our website traffic overnight. The meter only really started moving a few months in. Don't give up. With a plan and dedication, you too can start reaping the results of blogging for business. And if you've been at it for a while and still not seeing a jump on your traffic or leads dashboard, reach out to our expert team, and let's see what we can do about changing that!

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