Are you planning to start a business blog? If yes, you are opening up your business for more opportunities. However, you will need to start it the right way to lead a successful blog writing journey. Following are a few steps that help you get started with a business blog:
1. Define your goals and strategy
Once you decide to get started with a business blog, you will need to define your goals and strategy for the same. It is critical to set expectations and craft a general strategy beforehand so that you can track and report your success.
You might have goals like reaching 1000 readers in a year, rank top for answers to at least five industry questions or establish your blog as a sales resource, etc.
You also need to ensure that your business blog is in alignment with your overall business strategy.
Most marketers don’t seem to have a proper strategy or mission statement for the content they create. Your ‘why’ should be clear before you decide your ‘what.’
Convey a clear and concise mission statement to all stakeholders involved in delivering blog content. If possible, make your goals and strategy visible and accessible.
2. Set up your blog
Following is a to-do list for starting the setup process of your blog:
1. Form a folder in the root directory of your website
2. Install blogging software that you like
3. Add user accounts
You can access your website via FTP; thereby, you can create a new directory. This directory is where your blog will reside. Thus, the name of your folder will display in your URL.
3. Design your blog
- Once you are done with the blog setup process, it’s time for you to move to the designing part.
- Consider consulting a designer who will help you make your blog design visually appealing.
- A custom theme for your site typically takes somewhere between a few days to several weeks. You can set up the remaining part of your blog during this time, such as adding users, writing short bios, and drafting some posts.
4. Delegate responsibilities while working as a team
Suppose you are operating as a team that works with different teams, including writing, social media, marketing, or management teams. In that case, you will have to establish respective responsibilities and work accordingly.
While working as a team, everyone in your team should be well aware of a few things, such as how frequently you will post the blog, do you have any schedule that you will be following, and the tone of your blog content? Is it friendly, humorous, or serious? Etc.
These are the important questions that your team should know the right answers for. Once your team is on the same page regarding the answers to the above question, the next thing you will do is to assign tasks to your team members. Who will be doing what should be clearly defined?
5. Maintain an editorial calendar
When you step up into generating blogs for your business, you will need to keep up with regularity. A recent study by HubSpot has shown that blogs that are posted regularly and followed timely schedules attract comparatively higher readerships and subscription rates. This doesn’t mean that you will need to post something every single day. You just have to stick to the schedule.
- Consider maintaining an editorial calendar, thereby keep track of forthcoming stories.
- Various editorial calendars are available that help you with a posting schedule, provide links to tips and resources, and even offer blog post ideas.
- You can use a content calendar to schedule blog posts and keep track of when and where you will post your content.
Start writing content
Getting into writing the content is the hero aspect here. Always align your writing with the mission statement, and don’t write just for the sake of it. Your blog content should meet your goals, and it should appeal to your website visitors.
Consider developing an editorial process for your posts right from brainstorming to publishing. Follow the set process; for instance, check if your content needs approval from a manager before publishing. Will you be following a procedure for editing content? If yes, include it into your schedule and follow it religiously.
7. Publish & promote
So far, you should have done with the following tasks:
- l Respective tasks allocated to the blogging team
- l Designed integrated blog theme
- l Editorial or content calendar created
- l Done with the writing, editing, and publishing of one or more blog posts
You are ready to publish and promote your blog once you are happy with the blog content and how it will look. Add a link to your blog on your social media channels and the homepage of your website.
Promoting your blog is as crucial as publishing it. You can drastically improve the rate with which visitors view, read and share your content.
For promotional purposes, consider using relevant hashtags, including images, mentioning tagged person and company within a blog, re-sharing your content, trying different headlines on different platforms, etc.
8. Outreach
You will need help from SEO if you wish your blog to rank well for related keywords. You can promote your blog and build authority through link building and targeted outreach.
Provide links to your posts. It will drive more traffic. It will also entrust authority to your content.
Sum up
Starting a business blog, publishing, promoting, and link building all might appear cumbersome at first. However, you will need to stick to your routine and deliver relevant content regularly. It might take some time to make your blog successful. Still, if you take all necessary actions and execute the quality performance, your business blogs will eventually assist in your business growth.