As a business owner, you’re probably consistently beaten over the head about the value that a blog can bring to your business – as well you should be. A great blog can establish your business as an industry authority, foster opportunities and drive sales for years to come.
If you’re like a lot of business owners, you might be feeling stuck. Maybe you wrote a few posts. Maybe you even shared them on Facebook and LinkedIn. But over time, you just let it...slip away.
You’re busy. You have clients to take care of and a team to manage. Even though you'd like to blog, you don’t have time to manage the entire process of planning, drafting, publishing, and sharing content. You just have other things to worry about.
So what do you do?
Maybe you bring in some content creators and editors to help. Whether you opt for an internal team or an external team of freelancers, you build a quality team that will consistently publish high-quality blog posts that your audience will love.
But growing a blog is slow going. Not to mention, it can get expensive if you're outsourcing the work. It’s undeniably a long-term investment that won’t provide returns immediately. You might be wondering – is this even worth my time and effort?
The answer is a resounding yes - as long as you have the persistence and processes in place to make the most of every opportunity.
Business Blogging Is Very Lucrative
These days it seems like every company under the sun has a blog, from general contractors to tech startups. It's overwhelming. How are you supposed to get noticed in this vast sea of high-quality content? Well, no one said it'd be easy.
It is, without a doubt, very tough to carve out your own readership and separate yourself from the competition, especially in the more competitive industries. But once you have done so, there are very few marketing strategies that provide as consistent and impressive of a return as blogging.
According to HubSpot, business blogging has never been more profitable:
“B2B marketers that use blogs receive 67% more leads than those that do not. One of the biggest benefits of blogging is being able to attract high-quality leads - even when you’re not working. The more a lead has contact with you, the more likely you are to make a sale. If you’re putting out valuable content on a consistent basis, you’ll be surprised how much your leads will skyrocket.”
When done correctly, your blog content can catapult your business into the top tier of your industry and establish your brand as a true industry leader. Sekari found the following results in a survey about the impacts of blogging on your business:
- 52% of consumers say that blogs have impacted their purchase decisions
- 57% of online marketers say they've acquired new customers through their blog
- 61% of consumers are more likely to purchase goods from a site with custom content
This goes to show you that blogging is extremely effective for lead generation. But blogging generates more than leads. When you put out content on a regular basis, it can attract all types of people to your company:
- Blogging Fills Your Pipeline with New Leads: Putting out targeted content attracts more high-quality prospects in the top of your funnel. Leads generated from your blog will be more likely to do business with you because they already see you as an expert in your field. You’re familiar, and you’ve established trust with them by providing expert content without asking for anything in return.
- Blogging Attracts Potential Partners: Establishing trust and authority doesn’t only extend to potential customers. You may have other business owners approach you and offer opportunities for partnerships. When you put out great content, potential partners will see you as a trusted source of relevant industry information and be attracted to your brand. A little exposure never hurt.
- Blogging Attracts Talent: Although it is often overlooked, publishing valuable content within your industry can put your brand on the radar of talented professionals that might want to work with, or even for, your company. It’s important to understand that a great business blog’s reach extends farther than just prospective customers. It becomes a springboard for so many different aspects of your business growth strategy.
With a little Googling, you can probably find a dozen examples of quality business blogs within your industry. Think of your content as a beacon, attracting all potential suitors to your brand. With some diligence, a great business blog can help a company that is relatively unknown become a true thought leader.
And thought leaders bag the clients.
Making Business Blogging Easy
There are really only two overarching rules when it comes to business blogging:
- Quality. Quality. Quality.
- Don’t try to do it all yourself.
According to MarketingProfs, more than 2 million blog posts are published every. single.day. So yeah, it can be extremely difficult to get noticed and stand out from your competition. Even the most avid of readers in your industry are only scratching the surface when it comes to the content they consume.
Luckily, there's one thing that will help your blog to stand out and earn readership in any industry – quality. Go above and beyond what your competition is doing and strive to create the best blog in your industry. Publish high-quality information that is relevant to the questions that your customers have. Aim high, guys.
To do this, you’ll need a team. You can be as involved or uninvolved in the process as you want, but to catch the attention of your audience, you’ll have to publish unique and amazing content - and do it often. It’s too big of a task for one single person to handle themselves.
If you haven’t done so yet – find help from people with proven track records and verifiable talent. Also, make sure they get you. They should have a clear understanding of your goals, style, and expectations. If they don't, you'll just end up rewriting the content to get it up to your standards. It's not the most efficient way to operate.
This help can be in the form of an in-house content creation team or hired guns (a.k.a. freelancers) that specialize in content creation. At Bonafide, we have both. We have in-house team members who dedicate time to our blog, and we bring in outside help for special projects. After all, it's 2016. We live in a time where anyone can work from anywhere when it comes to online marketing, so take advantage of that.
Getting Organized with Editorial Calendars
Throwing darts at the board and hoping for success might land you a couple of bulls-eyes, but it will never provide consistent, reliable returns on your investment without some direction.
A great place to start is with an editorial calendar.
An editorial calendar is a publishing schedule that helps you map out what type of content you’ll be publishing, who’s writing it, and when it will go live. Planning this out in advance can help you make sure you are covering subjects that your audience cares about - and doing so regularly. It's a pretty simple process to get up and running, and it'll make your life (and your team’s life) a lot easier.
Content Marketer Joe Pullizzi writes:
“I’ve been in the publishing industry for more than a dozen years now, and along the way I’ve noticed a couple of things about editorial calendars. First, they are utterly critical for any content marketing program to be successful. Second, most businesses don’t use them...Content marketing is not a short-term campaign … it’s a long-term strategy to attract, convert, and retain customers. You can’t have a long-term strategy without some tools to manage it all. And one of the most effective tools you can use is the editorial calendar.”
Editorial calendars don’t have to be complicated, either. In fact, they shouldn't be. They also not set in stone. You can always change your publishing schedule to deliver content that is in line with industry news and trends. If Instagram drops an unexpected bombshell one day, you can easily work a post about it into your schedule. Editorial calendars provide a basic plan and direction for your team, but they shouldn't limit your team’s flexibility and creativity.
These calendars will also help you diversify your content, which you should definitely do if you want people to keep coming back to your site. By planning out your blog, you can get an overview of the content you're planning and fill in gaps in topics where you need to.
Creating Content that Connects with your Audience
As a business owner in your industry, you know your niche better than anyone. Use your expertise to your advantage when putting together your editorial calendar. Make sure that you are covering your bases and delivering the type of content that will excite your audience. You want to keep them enticed to stay top-of-mind when they're ready for your services.
Here’s how you do it:
- Identify and Answer FAQs from Customers – Dig through emails, phone records and your own personal experience and figure out what kind of questions your customers typically ask. These questions are an excellent starting point for content creation and they'll give you a place to point customers toward when those questions pop up in the future. As is the case with any blog post you write, make sure you optimize each post correctly by including keywords and phrase people are searching for online.
- Overcome Objections - By overcoming objections that your prospects have before you speak with them, you’re setting your sales team up for success. Get your sales team involved in the process. Determine the questions and objections they typically run into on your average sales call and figure out ways to answer those objections with your content. Rank common customer objections in order of importance, put them on the calendar, and craft content for each one.
- Incentivize the Team – Creating a bit of competition around your content creation process can be a not-lame way to get your whole team involved and grow your blog quickly. Everybody wins! Offer a good incentive (longer paid lunches, leaving early on a Friday, etc.) to those that produce content that meets your goals – whether those goals are related to traffic numbers, leads captured, or gaining traction on social media.
- Record Audio & Transcribe It - One thing we’ve done at Bonafide is used transcriptions of recorded conversations to generate blog posts. It's worth its weight in gold - recorded transcriptions usually produce a more amicable, conversational, and relevant blog post. People like to read blogs that sound natural and personal. Additionally, offering the recorded audio as a bonus download can be a great way to beef up a great blog post with added value.
- Use Videos to Bolster Your Blog Posts - Standing out from the competition is tough, but a simple and fun way to go the extra mile is to record videos that relate directly to your content. According to Pearson Prentice Hall, 65% of the population falls into the category of “visual learners,” meaning that they absorb information more easily when it is presented visually, rather than in text. Use this to your advantage. Create simple videos (interviews, presentations, explainer videos) that align with your post to connect with a larger portion of your audience.
- Let People See You - People love transparency. They want to get to know you as a person, and putting a face to the content that you publish can help you earn trust with your audience. We know not all business owners are comfortable with this, though. Instead, you can encourage your team be more personal and less corporate in their content creation efforts. Don’t hide behind a thin veil of industry jargon and legalese. Write for your audience and create content that sounds like it was written by a real person. For ideas on how to be transparent in your writing, check out what Buffer (a company known for their transparency) baked into their company culture.
- Tell Stories – Storytelling is at the crux of every great marketing campaign. Embrace it! Use your business’ history to inform your content. Your business has stories. You and your team have stories. Your customers and clients have stories. Tell stories about how your business was founded, the people you’ve helped, the team you’ve put together, or the reason you do what you do. Be real, be personable, and let people get to know you through hearing your stories. When you do, you’ll cultivate trust which will eventually turn prospects into customers.
- Show Off Your Successes - When you write posts about past or current clients you’ve helped, it accomplishes three things: (1) It gives them free publicity (2) It makes you look good because you’re the expert who helped them and (3) it creates desirability for your brand. People will want to work with you when they see what you have done for others, and replicate those results for themselves.
- Think Outside the Box - After months of brainstorming blog topics and digging through customer communications to come up with ideas, you’ll (inevitably) hit a road block. Writers block is a problem for almost every writer, so don't feel bad. The only way to overcome it is to get out there and actively drum up some fresh ideas by exposing yourself to new perspectives. Start by poking around the blogs and social media accounts of competitors. Take a look at your older posts and think about ways in which they could be updated or improved. Brainstorm topics with different departments in your company. Ask your customers what kind of content they’d like to see. Content creation is just easier when a bit of collaboration is involved.
What Are You Waiting For?
A year from now, you'll wish that you had started today. Business blogging is a long-term strategy that can take months (or even years) to provide the type of returns that every business is hoping for. But with planning and persistence, your business blog will be able to provide a consistent ROI and generate leads and new opportunities for your business.
You know what? Don't even worry about the time - it'll fly by.
The sooner you start publishing bad-ass content, the sooner you’ll see your investment pay off. And you'll see why so many businesses have made blogging an essential component of their digital marketing strategy.
