Blogging: An Effective Way to Grow Your Business

In this new online world of glitzy advertising, to grow your business, a smart approach is needed in dealing with larger enterprises and other competitors. Large businesses can afford to spend huge amounts of money on advertising but with small businesses, funds are not always readily available.

This is where blogging plays a vital role as an effective way to grow your business because it is a major tool in building bigger customer bases and literally driving prospective customers to you.

Before you read further, it is important to note that blogging is not easy (Don’t let the “10 easy ways to blog” articles fool you), therefore, it must be painstakingly done.

How Does Blogging Work?

Let’s say you own a business that sells clothes. Blogging about fashion trends and including a link to your site where prospective customers can get such quality or trending dresses is a powerful commercial tool.

With more quality blog posts, your blog will be relied on by readers to provide good information about clothes. By extension, your business will also be relied upon to actually provide those dresses.

If you’re not totally convinced by now of the need to blog for your small business, then maybe checking out this list of blogging statistics will help change your mind. It is proven that blogging helps businesses grow.

You might be wondering whether you’re too late to the feast but it isn’t too late. Start blogging today and you’ll be right on time. Trends reveal that more and more content is being created daily and blogs are now being seen as a standard source of information.

Grow your Business With Blogging

If you made it this far, it is safe to assume you really want to blog for your business. Follow these simple guidelines on how to start, content creating, promoting contents and mistakes to avoid to ensure your business reaps the full benefits of blogging.

How To Start

To start blogging, there are two important things you need:

• Blog hosting
• Blog software

Sounds technical, doesn’t it? Don’t worry about the fancy names. A blog host is just a company that helps store all of your articles, posts, and information. The company then delivers these to prospective customers when they type in your blog name or click on your links. One such company is BlueHost.

Blogging software, on the other hand, is a tool to help build your blog. One of the most popular and easiest blog creation tools is WordPress. It is very easy to navigate and it offers in-house help to prospective bloggers. Most WordPress users learn how it works by watching tutorials on YouTube.

For beginners, it is interesting to note that WordPress could help you out with both blog hosting and blog software. You don’t need to worry about where to get them. Just check out WordPress, they offer all sorts of services ranging from free to subscription-based services.

Content Creating

Now that you have a shiny new blog where everything gives off that new book vibe, you’re ready to start blogging! Yay!! The next problem is how to craft your blog posts.

Remember that the main goal of blogging is to drive traffic to your site. Blogging topics must be well related to what your business offers. Take for instance you offer cleaning services. Good topics to write about could be:
– Best cleaning tools
– Best cleaning agents
These are just suggestions and these articles will directly impact your business.

When people learn that some tools are better and more efficient than others, they want those tools to be used in cleaning their homes or offices. With your business offering these services, it is a win-win situation for you and customers. Quality information and quality service at the same time.

How To Start Writing?

There is no clear cut way to writing. There are varying schools of thought, however. You can outsource the writing to professional companies. For a fair price, you will get engaging, SEO optimized articles/blog posts for your blogs.

You can choose to write the articles yourself. Blogs aren’t totally professional, they may still retain a measure of flexibility because the aim is to give information in the simplest terms possible. There has always been a debate between in-house writing and outsourced content, choose an option that will work for you,

Promoting Content

Don’t start thinking about splashing the cash just yet. You can promote your content with a good social media campaign and a lot of good friends willing to repost your links and articles. Hugely popular social media sites like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are important in promoting blog content.

Adding social media plugins to your website will hugely make it easier for people to share your posts on other sites.
Email marketing is also a good way to promote content. This ensures that most customers who visit once will always be informed on updates.

It is easy to be discouraged when you first start. You will notice that your posts may not be getting enough traction. This is every new blogger’s ordeal. It takes at least six months of perseverance and a great traffic building strategy to start seeing dividends.

Mistakes To Avoid

1. Making The Contents Of Your Blog Just About You – This is a mistake green bloggers make. They project their personal persona instead of actively thinking of questions customers would love answered. Don’t make this mistake. A little bit of research can help you determine what buyers most need.

2. Not Interacting With Readers – Comments answered is one of the best ways to get a personal relationship with customers. If you project a helpful, knowledgeable and polite image, customers will learn to depend on you. If you don’t interact with readers, you are missing a host of opportunities to get loyal customers.

3. Quantity over Quality/Quality over Quantity – This is strange because it seems like you can’t win here. But no, you can if you choose quantity and quality. People want to read a blog post and come out with the feeling that they have gotten all they require on a subject matter. This means that your article must be exhaustive and qualitative.

4. Boring Headings – Looks like a pretty minute detail but it is essential to your posts being read. Readers make sudden decisions on what to read based on what attracts them. They will be attracted by powerful and interesting headings. For example:

Blogging advice for new bloggers.
Or
Efficient strategies for new blogs.

One sure does sound and look better than the other. Brainstorm ways to make your headers interesting. It will help a lot in enticing customers to take a gander.

Expected Returns Of Quality Blogging

1. Blogging ensures that Google Recognizes Your Site As “Active”

Business sites don’t change homepages or description of goods and services often, so blogging provides the opportunity for the site to be infused with new, fresh and exciting content.

Search Engine Result Pages (SERP) naturally lean towards favoring active sites more than dormant sites. More people will flock to your site because their searches led them there. Research shows that active sites receive more traffic than dormant sites. Blogging will help maintain your site’s ranking or even help elevate it in search results.

2. Ensuring Customer Base Awareness

Apart from being ranked high on search results, customers will be kept informed about updates and new trends through new content that can be sent to their emails.

Short and enticing messages can be attached to new blog posts. “If the consumer does not know, he/she cannot buy”. Blogging will help the site remain in the consciousness of customers.

There are more than a billion other online presence fighting to get the attention of your customer base, blogging will ensure that your site does not get lost in the multitude.

3. Making Your Site A Reference Point

People naturally have questions about goods, services or ideas they want to purchase. Blogging about your services in an effective manner can help your consumer base answer those questions even before they ask them.

With informative blogging, consumer bases will be provided with up to date information that will help them make the right choices. Consumers will begin to use your site as a reference point for the niche you’re in.

It is vital to understand that blogs must be engaging, innovative, humorous and factual. Reliable information is what drives traffic, not hoaxes.

Blogging definitely helps businesses grow if utilized properly. These steps can be employed all at once or singularly. Sometimes the business niche also determines the type of blog posts that will be effective, something important to take note of.

Write blogs, drive traffic to your site and grow your business.

Quick Roundup On Everything Discussed

• Blogging is cheaper than other forms of advertisement
• Creating a blog is easy enough if you follow the steps outlined
• Research shows that businesses that blog receive more than 50% traffic than non-blogging businesses
• Outsource or Write, there are options for everybody
• Promoting contents written is best optimized using social media sites
• Replying to comments made on your blog can get you, loyal customers,
• Blogging makes you a formal and believed opinion in your niche
• Minimize mistakes by updating yourself on improved ways to drive traffic to your sites
• Blogging helps your site’s online ranking (which is important when customers search for stuff that concerns your niche)

Blogging works. Grow your business with a perfect blogging strategy. If you follow these steps, you will be able to transform your business. One other important info is that you can even make money directly from your blogs through Google ADs. Extra cash is always good, don’t you think? Don’t dread starting, start today.