There are a lot of people wondering how to write a successful blog to promote their online business or company. Why should you even blog at all? Blogging is a cost effective method of engaging with your target audience, increasing your potential reach and establishing your ‘brand’.
What is a successful blog? This would depend on your idea of success of course but to most people it would be a blog which brings in new customers and answers questions for already existing customers. The way many people will find your ‘brand’ is through your blog by reading your articles. They might find your blog through social media advertising or sharing or even through the search engines such as Google.
Blogging consistently is a slow burn method of attracting new visitors to your website and ultimately online or physical products. However do this for long enough and you can reach a ‘tipping’ point where your visitors continue to visit your site at the same time as you are bringing in new visitors. Your ‘older’ posts will still bring in traffic to your website while your newer posts continue to do the same. You can also build a subscribers list and let them know every time you create new content. What all this means is that you are building several ‘streams’ of traffic to your site which starts out very slow and, providing you are consistent, develops into several traffic ‘rivers’.
Providing your content is of value to your potential customers or clients, they will continue to read and become exposed to your products and offers which can generate income. Of course your content must be relevant and congruent with your product/s or you will have a thousand visitors who are not at all interested in your product. This would be an incredible waste of time of course so your content must first provide interest and value but must also be relevant to your target audience as defined by your products and services.
Targeting your ideal visitor is a good place to start when setting out to write a successful blog. A useful tool is the Google Keyword Planner which shows various keyword phrases which are frequently typed into the Google search engine. You can begin with a phrase or term which is related to your topic of interest. Type it into the planner for a list of related phrases which are currently searched for. Choose one of these keyword phrases as your article title and target this key phrase.
If you are writing on WordPress get WordPress SEO by Yoast. This is a simple plugin which will help you to target specific keywords and rank for them in Google. Ideally choose phrases which are low in competitiveness listed on the keyword planner. You might think that going for the keywords with the most traffic is the obvious choice but these tend to be much more competitive and you will struggle to rank your site for them.
As you build your blog your site will be rewarded by Google. Google likes blogs which regularly post new and unique content. The longer your blog the better but aim for a minimum of 400 words for each post. Once you have posted your blog share it in as many social media sites as you can and send it out to your list. Try to get people to engage with you by encouraging comments below (thanks for any feedback by the way!).