Are you working on ways to boost your sales? Looking to develop a bond with your customers? Are you just aiming to lead the competition?
If ‘yes’ is your answer to any question above, then it’s time that you start a business blog.
In its early days, blogging was only a medium to express things from your personal lives with online readers. While today it is an effective tool for promoting any business or your views online.
An Introduction to Blogs
A blog is a mini-website that assists you in building your online visibility, attracting leads, and connecting to your audience. It is a collection of well-written content on a particular niche that defines your blogging purpose.
Blogging has become an important marketing technique, which can
- Bring traffic to your business website
- Convert the traffic into prospective customers
- Assists in gaining control in your industry
- Ultimately, expanding your business
Social media research suggests that blogging has resulted in 13 times more ROI for organizations.
Why Start Blogging?
Before you start a blog, be sure about the reason why you want a blog. Once you know the purpose of your blog, it will be easier to set your objectives and aims.
The reason for creating a blog can be many:
- Why are you starting a blog:
- Writing to support people
- Promoting your business or website
- Sharing your knowledge or expertise with readers
- Making extra money
- Or just for time pass and fun
Blogging Tips – Let’s Get Started!
1. Designing and Development
Once you have clarified why you want a business blog, start to think about its design and development. Looks are important for visitors, as it’s the first thing that connects them to your blog. Add some explicit features and pages to attract your visitor’s attention.
Choose a Good Blogging Platform
Be perfect from the start by selecting an ideal blogging platform. Many beginners use free blog hosts like WordPress and Blogger to save money.
However, we never recommend free blogging platforms. These platforms don’t give complete control of your blog, limited customization, and design options, and you even can’t make money online from these.
Take Ideas from Other Blogs
Reviewing other blogs really helps. It gives you an idea about designing your blog and what features you want in your blog.
Compile a list having your preferred color choice, template pattern, pages you want, and other features that attract you. It will help you in choosing a perfect blog theme online.
Have an About Me Page
The blog readers would like to know about the blog owner, so don’t forget to integrate the About Me page. It should have your details and your image, which helps in building a bond with them. They will visit your blog frequently if they feel connected to you.
Have a Featured Sidebar
Have a content-rich sidebar for your blog. The side widget can include similar posts, recent posts, popular posts, signup sections, and many more.
2. Planning your Blog Content
After developing the blog, we need to create content for the blog. Consider the following tips before you write your blog posts:
Consistency is the Key
Many bloggers often overlook consistency. It requires a lot of hard work and time to build visitors but it’s easy to lose them. With consistency in blogging, the readers feel that you are a dependable blogger.
Research has revealed that regular blogging has resulted in higher subscribers to your blog.
Share your Knowledge
Don’t feel scared to express what you do. Many bloggers hesitate to share their core knowledge because they fear giving the ‘special recipe.’ But, in this digital world with internet access to everyone, there is no special recipe. Now you can easily search for anything online. So, open up and share the best you have.
3. Creating Content and Writing Blog Posts
Writing blogs and creating content is really interesting. Following are some blog writing tips for creating good blog posts:
Images Build Interest
Having images within your blog post makes it more appealing to readers. It is a fact that images within a post get more views, likes, shares, and comments. Sources like Pixabay and Unsplash provide you with good-quality and copyright-free images that can be used for free.
Create Captivating Headlines
Even great content won’t matter if the headlines are terrible. Readers make their decision in a couple of seconds whether to scroll through the post or not. But, an attractive headline will attract visitors to click on your post. Keep the headlines to be simple, bold, engaging, and powerful.
Keeping it Short
The biggest lesson that I have learned over time is that the reading length of blogs should be 2-3 minutes. Most of the readers don’t even go through two-thirds of your content. The post should be short enough to be captivating and informative to detail the topic.
Proofread and Check your Content before Posting
Don’t be in a hurry to post your content. When finished writing, stay away from the blog content for at least 24 hours and then read again. This break will provide you a fresh mind to find mistakes that you might have overlooked before.
Try to Write Daily
Good writing needs practice. It’s about making a habit of writing something every day. Not necessarily a blog, but it could be an email, tweet, Facebook post, or even a diary entry.
Always End with a Summary
It is a fact that most readers skim through the content and only read the end. Be sure to highlight the key elements that will be in your reader’s mind for a long time. Do you know that only 30-50 percent of readers read till the end of the article? You sure would not want to disappoint them?
Final Thoughts on Blogging
Blogging is challenging, but with regular practice, you can refine your writing abilities. If you enjoy writing, then blogging will attract you. Be sure that you provide quality to your readers. To become a versatile writer, you need to blog regularly, build a network, and promote posts online.
There are many bloggers online that you should reach out to, build your group, volunteer for writing, and do guest blogging. Have fun writing!