There are many different reasons that companies introduce blogging into their marketing mix. Whether you’re outsourcing your blogging or doing it all yourself, a strong blogging strategy starts with identifying your goals. If you’re currently blogging for your business or thinking about it, do you know your primary goal for blogging?
Your goals might include a mix of these things, but it’s important to identify your primary goal and understand how it can impact your approach to blogging.
Improve search engine rankings
Search engine optimization (SEO) is a big goal for many organizations who invest time or money in blogging for business. SEO is what keeps your content showing up when people search for the topics you write about in your blog.
Strong SEO requires identifying keywords and using them in your content, writing longer content, and potentially taking a different approach to your headlines. Blog copy of 300 words is the absolute minimum for SEO purposes, though longer copy (around 1000 words) may perform even better for SEO. And while you want those keywords in your blog content multiple times, you still need to make sure the writing feels natural and not forced.
Share your expertise
If you’re an expert in your field, your blog content can share that expertise with current and prospective customers. Sharing your insights about key topics in your industry can help showcase your expertise and also tie into your SEO strategy.
Some people are concerned about giving too much away on their blogs. With the right blogging strategy, you can showcase your expertise about key topics and use it as an opportunity to encourage people to work with you because of your expertise. If sharing your expertise is your primary goal, you’ll also want to consider additional ways to get your blog content in front of your audience, such as sharing it on your social media or sending a monthly email to customers that spotlights recent blogs.
Help prospective clients get to know, like, and trust you
People do business with people they know, like, and trust. If this is your primary goal for blogging, be personable in how you write! Make sure your blog content fits your brand voice and includes topics that help people get to know, like, and trust you. This is another area where you’ll want to get your content out to your audience via social media and/or email marketing as well.
If this is your primary goal but SEO is also on your list of goals, it might mean striking the balance where some posts focus more on the know/like/trust factor and less on specific keywords.
There are many reasons that people use blogging for business, but it’s important to know your primary goal up front and understand how that goal impacts the way you write blog content.
If you need help developing a blog strategy for your team, reach out to the StoryPath team today to discuss our blog packages.