It’s no secret that having an online presence is the best way to reach your target audience. Knowing how to accurately reach them though is a different story. Since our reliance on social media and mobile devices has grown exponentially recently, it has become crucial for any business to be actively engaging with consumers online. A great way to create brand awareness and share knowledge is by blogging. Most successful businesses aren’t just blogging for the sake of blogging though. They’re producing content that people actually want to read.
Why should I be blogging?
It’s a fair question to ask. To begin with, blogging is one of the most cost effective ways to market your business because it takes very little to start and maintain. Secondly, if you’re blogging about things people actually want to read about, it’s possible they will share your blog with their audience. These are just a few reasons below why blogging can be beneficial to your business:
- Drive traffic to your site
- Increase your SEO
- Develop customer relationships
- Increase Sales
- Position yourself as an industry leader
- Build trust within the industry
- Connect people to your brand
- Get insight into your target audience
Web design and content
Generating traffic to your site is the first step in producing potential leads. Before you start trying to drive traffic to your site though, make sure it is not only user friendly, but is also designed so that is has appropriate landing pages and call-to-action items to easily convert any lead into a sale.
A big mistake a lot of businesses make when blogging is that they try to up-sell you their product or service. As soon as a reader thinks they’re being pitched something, they will either stop reading the post or leave your site all together. You have to make sure that you’re being educational and informative rather than promotional. You want to educate them on a certain aspect of the industry, not what services or products you have to offer. Let’s say for instance, you’re a real estate agent and you want to blog about trends in the market, or how to get your house ready to sell. Don’t write about how great you are as a real estate agent and why they would choose you over someone else. Write about the topic at hand. Sharing knowledge and up-to-date information will help establish you as an authority in your field.
I’ve started a blog, now what?
There are many pitfalls people can fall into once they start blogging. To make sure you don’t fall into one, here are a few tips to get you started:
- Blog frequently and consistently
- Post content that has high value to consumers
- Include a call-to-action at the end of every post
- Don’t get discouraged, and keep blogging
Once you create a blog post, sharing it on all of your social media accounts (with the appropriate hashtags) is key to maximizing your exposure. People oftentimes overlook hashtags, but adding the right ones onto a post can help expose your content to a larger and more relevant audience. It’s also important to respond to any comments or questions you receive about the post. Engaging in the conversation is a must! From there, referral traffic will be generated from the engagements your post receives. The more traffic your article gets, the more of a chance you have for potential leads to turn into sales.
The big picture
Blogging won’t always be easy. Not every post will be received as well as you’d hoped it would be. It may take some time to start seeing an increase in traffic or sales, but the more that you blog, the more you build brand awareness and recognition. Being recognized as an authority in your sector can only help you in the future. Over time, it’s possible that your blog could become one of the most important lead generating sources for your company.
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