Blogging has come a long way since it began in the 1990s. From being a casual online Writing diary, it has become a compelling, easy and powerful way of digital marketing and Business promotion. When done right, even small and new businesses can grow faster than those who don’t blog.

But blogging for business is totally different from the popular and casual form of blogging which anyone and everyone can do. From SEO to customer engagement, there are many aspects to be taken care of. Those are covered in the following tips for effective business blogging:

Audience research

Business blogs are unlike casual and free blogs which are mostly written for self. Here, blogs are written keeping the audience in mind. Mostly they are the same people who are the target customers of the business. Try to get some information about the blog audience like their age range, education levels, interests etc. The more you know, better it will be to write perfectly curated blogs for them.

Blogging purpose

There should be a proper direction and aim for writing blogs. It gives clear thinking as to what and how it should be written. A couple of common goals of a business blog should be 1. Generating leads for the business and 2. Generating traffic for the website. Definitely don’t write blogs which will be termed as sales messages, as it will actually pull people away from your business.

Plan a content calendar

Some of the intents of writing blogs should be to educate readers about your business products/services, solving their problems, queries about the same, or for general entertainment purposes regarding and related to your business field. Research on topics and finalize those concerning your business. Try to cover every aspect of it. Plan a content calendar in advance so that the topics are selected in a correct order. You shouldn’t end up writing on ‘dismantling your gadget’ before writing on ‘assembling your gadget’. The blog topics should also coincide with other business happenings like launches, promotions, events etc.

Topic Research

Before starting to write a blog as per the content calendar, do extensive research on the topic even if you totally knowledgeable on it. You may discover something which will be good to share as a hyperlink in the blog, or some other knowledge about the topic which you were unaware of.

Research is also important to discover if there are blog articles with a similar topic and title. Go through them so as to make your blog more interesting, knowledgeable and different from them.

Keep an attractive blog title

The headline of the blog is the most important if you want people to read it, if you want the maximum visibility for it. The title should give a fair idea of what the blog is about. It is preferable to use numbers at the beginning, or question mark in the end. Anything in short words that will catch the attention of even the lazy surfer.

The title should also be SEO friendly. Generally, it should have those words which people most likely will use in the search box of Google and other search engines. The headline should not be too long.

Writing an impressive introduction

The adage ‘Well begun is half done’ is true in every field, including blogging too. People can skip reading the blog even after reading the title or a few words of the first para. Hence, the introductory paragraph should be captivating enough for the readers in such a way that they will be enticed to read the whole blog.

The introduction should be simple, clear and should explain the topic in short. It shouldn’t be entirely wacky and different in theme than the rest of the blog. Once, the ideal introduction is written, the rest of the blog will flow automatically.

Writing quality content

There shouldn’t be any room for a wishy-washy content body. There is no limit on the blog length, it can be 300 words only or even 2000 words long. But write creatively, ‘to the point’ and make it easy to read, avoid unnecessary and extra words; there should be something which will be new for your readers.

Don’t slap a big wall of continuous words on the readers, break the blog in small appropriate paragraphs, sub-headings, points, bullets etc. Occasional outside info like expert quotes, customer or influencer opinions, industry research data etc. will give a good credibility to the blog. Highlight important words with bold or italics.

Having a fitting conclusion

The ending of the blog should satisfy the readers about it or else they won’t turn up for your next blog. Give a short recap of the main points of the blog. Adding a ‘call to action’ is recommended, it can be anything like giving an extra reference to read about the topic, or requesting to contact you for more info, or giving links of specific pages of your website.

Beautifying the blog

People love to scan content before thinking whether to read or not; hence your blog should not appear visually dull having only a continuous flow of black letters on a white page. Use different font sizes and styles for headings, sub-headings, points etc. Give references with hyperlinks of either your website pages or any external content wherever suitable. Add static or gif images to explain a point, it can also be a stat table or infographic. All this beautifying will make the blog attractive, look more social and hook the readers for a longer time.

Optimizing for SEO

Some basic On-page SEO checks will help the blog rank higher in search results. Make an independent well-formed URL for the blog, keep the title in about 6 to 14 words, give alt tags and titles for images, h1 tag for the main title and h2, h3 tags for subtitles. Ensure all the blog structure and format is looking readable and in place in the mobile version.

Proofreading is important

Your blog should look good and professional for the readers. Read it once, but after some time, not instantly; and read it as an audience, not as a blog author; you may feel like changing or adding anything, making the language or writing style easier or specific. Read it again to correct spelling, punctuation and grammar mistakes if any.

Sharing the Blog

The whole idea of writing blogs on the website is to promote and grow your business, to get more website traffic. After writing if they are just left as it is, there will hardly be a few visitors. Thus, the blog needs to be shared to get more readers, and website traffic.

Share the blog link on the social media pages of your business, also via your own personal social media account. Put it on the content discovery websites, send it to your e-mail list. Besides that, you should also give shareable social media buttons at the end of the blogs, so the readers themselves will do free marketing of the blogs if they like it. Also add a comments section after the blog as it will keep the blog page active, alive and increase the reader engagement. Duly reply to reader comments on time and in a courteous, friendly manner.

Posting frequency

There are no set rules for posting frequency of the blogs. It mainly depends on how many topics you can conjure up for your business. You can also invite expert writers to make a couple of blogs that will give a different writing style and topic for the readers than yours. More the blogs, better it will be for website traffic and building a reader base for your business. Various studies have confirmed that posting about 16 blogs per month will get four times more site traffic than posting a maximum of 3 blogs per month. Consistency is important; space out your blogs evenly in the content calendar and never miss writing dates.

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