As a new or prospective business blogger, you may have a few or many questions concerning running and managing a business blog. I will do my best to answer all your business blogging questions here as succinctly as I can without going into all the technical details. If your questions are missing from this list please let me know in the comments below as I will keep adding to the below FAQs as often as I can.
1. Does My Business Need a Blog and Why Should I Invest in One?
Yes, it does!
Almost any business can benefit from having a blog. In today’s Digital Age, content is everything and you can never have too much content so long as it is quality content.
If you want to generate leads and sales online then you have to communicate with your target publics as much as possible. I say ‘publics’ with an ‘s’ because most people forget that their customers are not all the same and different content appeals to different sub-sections of your target market.
Blogging gives you an opportunity to tailor your content to different publics and make your communications more relevant and appealing.
Blogging is very much a Public Relations activity aimed at educating customers and thus establishing trust with them. If your public does not trust you then you are going to have a hard time marketing to them.
So blogging and PR in fact should come before marketing and advertising. Done right, Blogging can significantly improve your marketing and advertising results.
2. What are the Benefits of Having a Business Blog?
There are numerous benefits to having a business blog. These benefits include:
- Educating Your Potential Customers – Most buyers prefer to know something about the products, services, or solutions they are considering. Thus, it is important to educate them about not just your solutions but also the problems they face and how your solutions actually work to solve their problems.
- Establishing Trust & Leadership – If you do a good job educating your potential customers you will in all likelihood have gone a long way to establishing trust with them and you will also start to position yourself as a Leader, and expert in your industry. As a business blogger, you will also be able to establish your own personal brand and increase your personal leadership within your industry.
- Social Media Content – Like it or not, Social Networks play a huge role in reaching your markets and growing your business and revenue. A business blog gives you a greater degree of control over your online marketing because it allows you to build a valuable hub of industry-related content. If the content you post on social is made purely for social networks and it does not link back to content on your website or blog then you are working for free for the social networks rather than leveraging them to work for you.
- Blogs Help You Build Your Mailing Lists – Email marketing is still your most important and often most effective means of marketing your products and services. By blogging you give people more reason to join your mailing list as well as giving you more opportunities to enable signing up.
- Become a Better, More Confident Writer – Business blogging also gives you the opportunity to exercise your writing muscles. Blogging regularly will not only help you to become a better writer but it will also help you to improve how you articulate industry-related thoughts and ideas. This means your communication on business-related topics will improve and this can only be beneficial for the growth of your business and revenue.
3. Will Having a Business Blog Improve Our Search Engine Rankings?
Yes, absolutely, business blogging can definitely improve your search engine rankings.
Not only have I seen this over many years of blogging for corporate clients and small businesses but there are more than enough blogging statistics out there showing that blogging increases search visibility and other business metrics.
Not only can great quality blog articles rank well themselves and drive traffic but they can also help to increase the rankings of other web pages such as product or service pages.
By combining good quality content that is relevant to your target audience and using some smart blog marketing strategies you can significantly increase your search engine visibility and earn more traffic and leads.
4. How Often Should I Post Content on My Business Blog?
The short answer is as often as possible.
I would say once a week is definitely the minimum. If you can post every day that would be even better. I have also found that publishing multiple blog articles in large batches is beneficial.
Most importantly, you must post good quality blog articles that are highly relevant to the topic being explored. Go deep rather than wide on your topic. In-depth blog posts rank far higher than overly broad or surface discussions.
It is much better to write fewer but longer in-depth articles than it is to write shorter, slim value articles.
The more blog posts you write the greater your footprint will be on search engines and all those articles can add up to a lot of traffic in time.
If you know your subject reasonably well and you are familiar with a few blogging strategies and hacks you could certainly write 1000 – 1400 words in 1 – 1.5 hours, which means writing an article a day is doable with some effort.
5. How Long Should My Business Blog Posts Be?
Business blog posts like any other blog post should be as long as it takes to fully articulate and communicate your message.
That said, there are many studies that have shown that the higher the word count the more likely a blog article is to rank well. These word counts vary between 1500 – 2500 words.
The length of your business blog articles will also vary according to the subject being tackled and the type of blog post you are writing.
Answering questions related to your industry through a response post could give you an article-length somewhere between 1000 – 1500 words.
If you are going more in-depth on an important and popular topic then 4000 – 6000 words may be more realistic.
If your subject matter is such that it requires somewhat more than 6000 words then you may want to post a shorter 1000 word blog article and put the entire full-length article into an ebook or whitepaper that readers can exchange their email address for – here is your email list building at work.
6. Can I Outsource Content Writing for My Business Blog?
Of course, you can. In fact, this is to be encouraged where you want to build up a large blog article inventory fast.
This does not mean you have to outsource all of your content. You could write some of your own blog posts while outsourcing others.
Depending on the subject matter, you may be the only person qualified to write your blog posts. But for most industries, there is enough information already online to allow reasonable research by outsourced copywriters into the subject and the production of good quality articles that are relevant.
When outsourcing your content writing you have many options. These include finding blog copywriters who specialize in certain industries to using large content platforms that have hundreds of copywriters available to write your articles.
Outsourcing your blog content writing has many benefits and a few pitfalls and then there is also the question of proofreading, editing, and in some industries, fact-checking.
If you need help with your blog article writing or strategy be sure to get in touch with us.
