You’ve learned about the advantages of having a blog for your business, how to update old blogs, and how to write a quality blog, now it’s time to make sure you utilize essential techniques to reach your desired audience. Blogs are about more than just writing content, they are a crucial way to speak on topics you understand and advertise expertise in a niche area via your products and services. Treating them as an extension of your marketing campaign is key to blogging effectively.
As a locally owned digital marketing agency in Colorado Springs, Succeeding Small understands that aside from word-of-mouth, many small businesses struggle to get new clients without digital and physical marketing campaigns. The stress of running a business while implementing a marketing strategy is time consuming and difficult work. By being conscious in every aspect of your marketing, you can save time and maximize return. Today we are discussing some essential components of what makes your website’s blog a smoothly functioning part of your marketing plan.
1. Understand Your Audience
The first mistake many business owners make when writing blog posts is forgetting who their audience is. Each blog is a showcase of your expertise and knowledge, but it must be digestible for your target audience.
If you sell services or products to other businesses, then generally, you can utilize key industry language. For example, let’s say your business sells car parts directly to automotive repair shops. In a blog post discussing the pros and cons of a specific manufacturer, you can implement concise and professional terms to describe those parts. The client you are communicating to, in this case, has the same industry understanding that you do, so there is no need to rephrase or explain the information further.
However, if your business were the automotive repair shop itself, you would need to write blogs differently. Most mechanics deal with regular, everyday people as their main customer demographic. An effective post in this situation would implement technical language but in an approachable, easy-to-understand way with thorough explanations.
Regardless of your client base, business-to-business or business-to-consumer, ensuring precise, targeted communication is key to an effective blog post.
2. Keep it Relevant
When writing consistent blogs, it is easy to run out of ideas. After a long time of generating thoughtful prompts and topics, it may be tempting to seek easy ideas for new posts. This can be a good strategy if done well, but using simple topics is a slippery slope when you rely on them too much.
For example, if you are a dog groomer and have run dry of grooming-specific post ideas, it may be tempting to start writing about adjacent topics. Perhaps writing about the stylish benefits of dog sweaters and leashes as accessories to a fresh haircut seems like the perfect blog. Though these are fun ideas, they do not serve your business or marketing plan. There is no clear line from “look at these cute leashes” to “choose me as your groomer” for your customers. They may enjoy the topic, but it will not draw in business.
Keeping your blogs relevant to your specific products and services is what helps consumers decide to follow through with a purchase. A dog owner looking for a stylish leash is different than a dog owner seeking a qualified groomer. You need to understand how you bridge the gap of client needs and pursue it in your posts. This will help you reach people who are actually looking to buy services versus casual internet browsers.
3. Always Leave it Open
Staying on topic is the first step in converting readers to consumers. The second step is ensuring that you give them all the opportunities to find and purchase services and products from your business.
Staying with the dog grooming business example, let’s say you have written a blog about how to care for the hair of a poodle. In this entry, you discuss the frequency of haircuts, what shampoos to use for baths, if an owner needs to brush the dog, and general maintenance tips. It is a thorough post that stays on your topic of expertise and breaks down the information in a digestible way for a pet owner.
Now, it is time to fill this post with opportunities. Promoting your services, expertise as a groomer, website, and shop will give your readers chances to follow up and learn more. Sprinkling in relevant information about your business in the beginning and at the end of the post allows the customer to see these as moments of expertise rather than sales pitches. Throughout the body of the blog, weaving in phrases that could become relevant hyperlinks to other parts of your website is a great natural segue to get consumers to dive deeper.
By intermixing clickable options into the information, you leave the door open for business. Customers who are interested in pursuing your products and services have opportunities to do so with a single click. If you do not tie in these elements for clients, the potential for recruiting more customers is wasted.
4. Stay Consistent
As your blog becomes established, you may notice that each post has a specific way of communicating. This could be with brand-specific puns, a certain tone, repetitive word usage, and more. Maybe you utilize conjunctions frequently or integrate alliteration. These writing habits become trademarks of your brand’s voice.
A brand voice is something that will draw customers to your services and distinguish you from the competition. In addition, as this distinctive voice grows, you can start forming ads, social media, and websites around it. If you do not have a clear identity for your business, this is an excellent starting point. It is extremely important that you maintain tone consistency within the blog. When a business deviates from its professional persona or brand, customers may feel disconnected from the business.
As an example, let’s bring back our automotive repair shop. After running a blog for six months, the tone is professional and to the point, sentences are short and analytical, and conjunctions are never used. If suddenly, the next post contained overly casual, long-winded, conjunction-filled language, clients would be confused. This disruptive post may cause customers to doubt the business and its professionalism.
Keeping a brand’s voice continuously delivering on the expectations you establish helps build trust, reliability, and consistency. It also provides a stable system to assist in building other important aspects of your business’ identity.
5. Be Active
The final and most essential aspect of a blog is the level of activity. It takes time to build an audience. Most individuals and businesses that develop content are marketing for the long term. Remember, the blogging journey is a marathon, not a sprint.
It’s helpful to think of this aspect of blogging like a library. If customers are looking for information, they will want to find a library with lots of different books and resources. A library with few books simply does not offer the comprehensive information a consumer needs compared to a fully stocked one.
As you build up your backlog of informative and expert content, you are creating more opportunities for clients to find your business. With an expansive log of resources, people are more likely to trust what you have to say. Plus, the amount of knowledge available to consumers demonstrates the expertise you have in a specific industry. This solidifies your products and services as professional solutions to their problems.
Learn How To Create A Successful Blog With Succeeding Small
As a small business ourselves, Succeeding Small understands the monumental effort of visualizing, realizing, and running a complete marketing campaign. From website optimization to SEO, it can add hours of work into your already busy schedule. This is why we love doing what we do. Our passion is helping small businesses implement expertly crafted strategies to build a larger customer base. Too busy to run your own marketing campaign or manage your own blog? Contact us today! Our team of experts will help you create the perfect blog and brand marketing strategy for your small business.
