In this day and age, blogging is a marketing tool that is largely used by entrepreneurs to generate leads for their websites. Other bloggers also blog to write and share knowledge with their targeted audience, which is eventually monetized. Business owners also blog to engage with their customers.

Given the availability of blogging platforms such as Blogger, WordPress and Shopify, blogging has become easy and rampant. Just about anybody can blog. It does not require being tech-savvy or having knowledge about website design. With a bit of guidance and availability of the right resources, it will take a few minutes to set up and run.

 

What is Business Blogging?

Business blogs are different from personal blogs where you can use ad space to generate revenue. With business blogs, blogging is not done for the sake of fun. It is a marketing tool that supports the growth of a business. Business website owners use these blogs to drive traffic to their website and increase conversions.

A business blog is a means to an end rather than an end to a means. In every business, traffic and conversion are important to spur its growth. Business blogs make the business website more visible on search engines to initiate conversions.

The processes you need to follow to setup a blogging business are listed below.

 

Examine the Audience You Want to Build the Blog For

Determining the audience you want to build the blog for enables you to customize the theme to achieve effective results. What type of content would your audience want to see on the blog? Tailoring your blog does not stop at enhancing the user experience of your audience, it also goes as far as letting them understand your message.

If your blog is poorly constructed your targeted audience will have a hard time grasping your message. Therefore, it is important to understand your audience to enable you to design the business blog appropriately.

 

Choose a Blogging Platform

Deciding on the blogging platform to use is essential in making things easier for you. There are various blogging platforms available including WordPress, Blogger, Shopify and more.

The each have unique features in terms of versatility and user-friendliness. For example, setting up a blog using WordPress takes a few minutes and has a friendlier interface than Blogger has. Shopify provides not only blogging functionality, but adds the ability to sell products as well with a built in shopping cart. It is up to you to decide which platform will suit you.

 

Choose a Blogging Theme

These blogging platforms come with themes that allow users to customize them the way they deem fit. For example, Shopify has a large list of free themes in their Theme Directory that users can choose to design their blog to their taste. There are also paid premium themes, which have many advanced features built-in.

While choosing the theme, ensure that it is responsive to many devices including desktop, mobile phones and tablets and make certain that the navigation menus, colors, widgets and buttons are aesthetically pleasing to enhance user experience.

 

Prioritize on Quality over Quantity

If you want to drive traffic to your business website and generate leads, you have to understand that a business blog is a marketing channel and should be used wisely. Post relevant and high-quality content on the business blog and ensure that it has the right amount of keywords. Use similar content on other social media channels and include backlinks that will refer visitors to your website. Content that lacks quality will not attend to your customers’ interests and will not yield you the desired results.

 

Be Committed

To run a successful blog you have to devote enough time in providing fresh and original content to your audience. You will be doing a great disservice to your readers and your business if you do not spend enough time to create high-quality content.

If you do not have enough time to do this you can hire a team of bloggers or post at least two or three fresh contents per week to keep the audience engaged. Ensure that the contents you are creating are not what the audience has seen before and this can only be achieved if you devote enough time to it.

 

Research on Keywords

You are probably not the only one in your business niche that is utilizing a business blog to promote their brand. To get an idea of how to optimize your blog for effective results you can research your competition.

Find out how your competitors are making use of blogs to market their brand. This will give you an edge to optimize your business blog in a unique way that will yield a better result. It may take time to achieve this, but the results are worth it. Determine your competitors’ blogs by looking at the following:

  • Keywords
  • Blog layout
  • User experience
  • User communication

SEMRush is a great tool that can be utilized to carry out a large-scale analysis of your competitors’ blogs. SEMRush highlights the search engine rankings of the blogs and tells you the keywords used to get better visibility. Always remember that keywords change over time. Therefore, conduct regular keyword research to make necessary modifications to your blog.

 

Create an Editorial Calendar

Once you have figured out the type of content you need and the keywords to use, create an editorial calendar to form a guideline of creating content and how many contents to post per day/week. An editorial calendar enables you to stay organized and make regular posts that will make you stay engaged with your audience. You can solicit the advice of experts to create an editorial calendar and stay on track of your marketing campaign.

 

There it is! This is a comprehensive guide on how to build a blog for your business; whether big or small. Adhering to these tips lets you build a business blog like a professional and achieve favorable results for your business.