5 Questions You Need to Answer Before Writing Your Company’s Next Blog Post
Having a company blog is a necessary part of running a business.
It needs to do more than merely exist, though. Your blog should also be updated routinely and with engaging content that is relevant to your industry.
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In order to achieve your desired results, your content needs to be dynamic and engaging. Make sure your blog is doing its job by asking these five questions for before you publish your next blog post.
1) Who is my Audience?
Who are you trying to reach with this content? This should be a specific group.
As a growing business, you might think “Well, I want to attract new customers” or “I need to establish myself as an expert so I want others in the industry to come to this site for advice.”
That’s all fine, but it’s not nearly specific enough. Each post topic should tie into your business and industry, so as a whole, yes those two things would be your overall goals.
However, for each specific post, there should be a different audience.
The point of the company blog is to draw in more viewers to your company website. That means using a variety of SEO (search engine optimization) practices and keywords to draw in the largest number of readers. This works best if casting a wide net.
No doubt for your brand marketing you already have an idea of what your customers and potential customers look like. However, unless you’re in an extremely niche market, there’s probably some variety in there as to who these people are.
Different customers will come to your company for different reasons. Your blog posts should effectively target those different reasons for seeking out your business.
2) Is This Content Helpful?
Will your target audience find this content genuinely useful? Are you teaching readers something new or simply rehashing an old bit?
A solid headline and keyword can bring people to the page, but if the information provided isn’t genuinely pertinent to your readers, you aren’t doing your business any favors. Self-promotional content rarely does anything for your brand.
To really use your company blog to its full potential, you’ll want to post content that is fresh and relevant.
Quality content involves a great starting topic as well as doing research to provide well-rounded information. This can be time consuming, but it really goes a long way towards helping your brand’s image and driving your business.
For other tips on how to construct quality blog posts, check out the Sweet Fish post Never Write a Bad Blog Post Again.
3) Can I Feature an Influencer?
Do you know someone with a lot of authority or a large following who supports your brand? This can be extremely powerful for getting the word out about your company.
Influencer is quite the buzzword in marketing for a reason. An authoritative secondhand source gives your blog and brand credibility.
One way to featuring an influencer is by writing about their work for them. Reference something they’ve written or spoken about recently, quote the person directly, or summarize another form of their content in your post.
The specifics of getting to know and utilizing an influencer take effort, but it is an important point to consider when crafting a new post for your company blog.
4) How Will I Promote This Content?
So, you’ve figured out your specific audience, made sure the content is relevant and helpful to readers, and maybe even worked an influencer into the mix.
That’s great, but now how do you actually get people to the page to read this content?
You’ve already heard the importance of SEO for getting your company blog (and thus your company website) noticed. Yet, keyword optimization and linking the post to social media are just the beginning.
When getting a post ready, you have to consider how you’re going to get the word out about it. This also ties back in with the target audience. Are they twitter users? Would LinkedIn’s blogging platform reach them better? How about Facebook?
Social media aside, what are the core topics in this piece of content that would make great keyword searches? How can you shrink the core of the content’s message into one sentence to show up in the search so that the viewer will click on your link instead of the thousands of other results that show up?
Content creation is the core of running a company blog, but promotion of that content can’t be ignored, either. The promotion is what gets the eyes on the page in the first place.
For a closer look at ways to accomplish this, including how to utilize the influencer mentioned in the previous point, check out the Sweet Fish post How to Promote Your Content Like a Boss.
5) How Do I Ensure Consistent Content Creation?
All of the above questions are moot points if you aren’t posting to the blog consistently.
If you want to write the posts yourself, are you blocking off four hours every Monday to write and schedule posts? Is that even enough time given everything that’s already been discussed?
Are you delegating the maintenance of the blog to someone on your team?
Do you need to outsource someone else to handle it: for instance a freelancer or a team like Sweet Fish Media?
However you decide to do it, it is important to have a plan in place to make sure that the content is consistently posted to the company blog and that it is quality content which is promoted well.
Consistent content helps establish your business as a reliable industry insider. With good SEO practices and quality posts, it will also draw in new readers and new customers.
A static webpage may hold all the information about your business that a customer would need, but a company blog is a more dynamic animal. It draws in more people than would originally be looking for your specific services.
The more varied and consistent your posts, the more new views your site will get. These views can then turns into new leads or new customers. This is how the company blog drives your business.
Having a plan for getting that consistent and quality material on the blog is imperative.
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Conclusion
By now we know that having the blog is important, but if you aren’t asking about audience, content, and promotion for each post, your blog isn’t working at its full potential.
Is this process time-consuming? Of course it is. But it’s something you can’t afford to ignore.
This guide on some of the questions you need to ask about each post on your company blog will help you produce quality content that actually drives your business forward and wins you customers.
Struggling with your company’s blog? Check out this free 5 part email course. You’ll learn how to turn your blog’s readers into paying customers.