Creating a Business Blog: 7 Steps to Success

A business blog is a pretty powerful tool if you need to increase interest and draw attention to a company. What does it take to create a successful business blog? We have identified 7 main stages. Let's figure it out.

1. Setting goals

If you're going to be successful, then you need to be clear that running a business blog is a long-term commitment. Once you stop paying attention to it, update and add news, interest in it will quickly fade away. Therefore, before taking on such a long-term project, answer the following questions:

• Why are you doing this?
• What do you need from a blog?
• What does your audience need from a blog?

Depending on what you plan to do (whether to increase sales, or expand your customer base, or maybe even write a book), a content plan will be drawn up. Make sure that there is no "blurring" in the names. All goals should be clear, specific and detailed. Think about the topic before making another entry. Refer to the tasks and ask yourself if they are in line with the main plans.

2. Audience Research

Without knowing your audience, its desires, you will not be able to create relevant content. Your task at this stage is to satisfy the information needs of the audience. But, it is also worth remembering that you will not be sweet for everyone, whatever one may say.

If your product (service) is specific, explain the essence in simple language, describing the details in detail. If your direction is B2B and you are an expert in your niche, find new interesting information for direction professionals.

To learn more about your audience, use the data from the analytics of your resource and social networks, and detailed information about visitors will become available to you. By compiling a detailed portrait of readers, you will be guided by what information needs to be published.

3. Frequency of postings

It is important to understand here: the main thing is not often, but regularly add blog entries. Choose the optimal interval for yourself based on the reader's expectations, and be consistent. If you don't follow this rule, you will lose it. The reader will not sit waiting for new entries, but simply leave.

In addition to regularity, you need to focus on the usefulness and design of the material. Do not force yourself to write through force or very often. This may adversely affect its quality.

4. Editorial calendar

Your blog will be more productive if you keep an editorial calendar. Mark on what day, what material should be published. There are a lot of tools for creating such calendars: from Google Docs to a variety of task managers.

We will not focus on a detailed list of tools. Let's go over the points of the plan:

• Posting date and author (in the event that someone else writes besides you).
• Title (it can be draft, the essence is important).
• status and section.
• Notes, tags, and call to action (if provided).

Treat the calendar as a guideline, not a clear schedule of activities. Don't push yourself if you don't meet deadlines. The task of the calendar is to organize work, and not to give a clear schedule.

5. Write

Now that the plan is clear and the goals outlined, let's start writing content. The topic of the content that you share with readers will depend on the tasks and audience. I would like to draw attention to the main points of your content strategy:

• Company news . Tell the reader about what's going on in your office. Got a new employee? Introduce it to your readers. Tell us about the corporate events taking place in the company. Be open.
• Research . Are you up to date with the latest news in your industry? Share it, express your vision. Do you have any predictions? Tell about them.
• Product Reviews . Here you can post information about recently announced tools that will be useful for you and your colleagues. This may be information about long-forgotten products, but suddenly discovered by you. Test them, it won't take long, but the information you share may be useful not only for you. As a result, you will receive additional traffic, plus, possibly, get new subscribers.

6. Promote your blog

It is not enough to publish the news, you still need to tell about it to as many audiences as possible. Here are some ways to draw attention to your blog:

• Social networks have many opportunities to attract attention to resources. Take advantage of them.
• The SlideShare tool will help you create a presentation of your publication.
• Are you using a mailing list? Then leave the blog URL in the signature.
• Use keywords.
• Use hashtags to post on Twitter.
• Start your title with numbers. The reader is attracted to organized information.

7. Measure success

This is where tracking your audience is important. See how it interacts with the blog, how it gets to your pages, etc. To date, there are a lot of analytical services that allow you to sort out all the indicators “by the bones”. Use them to understand where to go next and which direction is the right one.

If you are focused on attracting readers, use SEO. The main thing here is to track the indicators and not overdo it.

If you are aiming to increase sales, track how much time a person spends on blog pages, how many pages they view in one go. Also pay attention to traffic from other resources.

If the blog is aimed at other players in your industry, pay attention to whether there are repeated visits to the blog, subscriptions, comments, links from social networks.