Blogging For Business – How It Can Improve SEO And Sales

It has been four years since I have been working with a fashion brand to strategize their social media and manage their blog. With a very unusual project on Freelancer, I was quite intrigued about the brand and what it was doing to establish itself in the retail industry. Of course, there were some loopholes and one of them were not considering Blogging for business.

Blogging is very popular these days but having a business blog is an idea that doesn’t come to many. In fact, only the big players in the market use this tactic but you know what! That’s what differentiate you from them. You’re not doing what they’re doing because you think they are giants and only they have a good enough reason to do that.

Seldom people understand that they’re big because of those things they’re doing. Today, I am going to discuss the importance of Blogging for business and share some useful experiences I have acquired while working on that project.

First of all, what’s the difference between blogging for business and other blogs? Truthfully speaking, there isn’t any difference. Both kinds of blogs are, well, blogs. But there is a big difference in vision, technicalities and kind of content each kind have. While usual blogs represent an individual and team, a business blog represents a business.

Usual blogs are focused on generating more & more traffic in order to make the blog more popular and profitable. Business blogs are focused on generating leads for the business and increase the online and offline reputation of the business.

Why Blogging for business is so important?

There are many reasons why Blogging for business is important. Not only it can help you with the SEO but also can help you build customers’ trust which is often the biggest challenge brands face. A blog can help you create that personal connection with your clients which would make them emotionally attached to you and your business. A blog can be the marketing tool which costs way less than the profit it generates.

READ: 5 Dumb SEO Mistakes You Should Avoid

Wait! Profit? Can a business blog really work that efficiently? Yes, it can but only if you are doing it the right way. What’s the right way?

One reason why I differentiated between usual blogs and business blogs is because it is important to understand the difference between them so as to devise a correct blogging strategy for your business. Business blogs require a different kind of plan. Here’s how you can do that.

1. Strategize: Find out what’s the thing you’re focusing at. And please don’t say that it is traffic. A normal blogger would sound sane if he says he wants loads of traffic and that’s his ultimate goal. But for a business blog, traffic is less important than lead generation and customer relationships. Define exactly what you want through your blog. Numbers is what you require here. If you want leads, how many in a month? If you want customer relationships, how are you going to measure that and how much you want?
2. Keyword Research: Blogging for business plays a big role in search engine optimization so it is very important that you do keyword research and find out which keywords you would be targeting through your blogs. I use Google Adwords keyword research tool for this purpose. It can be easily used by beginners and promises great results. Note down all the keywords you would want to target. Prefer long tail keywords.
3. Content: Now, you need to start with content creation. You can either do it by yourself (if you’re good at writing and you’ve enough time to spare) or hire a team for this purpose. You also need to decide the frequency of posts. For a business blog, standard frequency is 15-20 posts per month. This amount is necessary if you really want to benefit your business through blogging. Make sure the content is high quality. Never go for less than 500 words. Content as long as 3000 words would really provide you an edge with search engine rankings. Make sure you include visual elements to the content as well – presentations, images, videos, infographics etc. And the content should obviously be SEO optimized. The keywords density should be 3-5%.  Keep a blend of informative, fun and promotional content. Never do excess of self-promotion. It is harmful.
4. Promotion: It is time to promote your business blog. First step is definitely to connect your blog with your social media channels and start sharing your recent blog posts on the channels. Then you should opt for guest blogging. Get very high quality articles published on high quality blogs and ask for a backlink to your blog. Do press releases and offline promotion. Everyone should know that you have a blog.

Blogging for business is only beneficial when done right. A blog full of self-promoting or duplicate content would bring your reputation down. But a good blog can bring you tons of leads and fans. You must keep this thing in your business plan and I am sure you would feel the change. In case, you have any more questions on the subject, feel free to ask.