in: Blogging
by: Sabina Hitchen
As a business owner, just as important as it's important to build and share your product, service or expertise, it's essential that you are always sharing your brand story. Press and social media help you do this, but one of the most powerful and consistent ways you can be sure your story is told to hundreds, perhaps thousands - perhaps millions - of readers is via a blog.
The fact is, Facebook isn't enough. Your website alone won't cut it. You need a blog. The good news? It's 100% possible for you to not only enjoy and streamline the blog creation process, but you can also master the art of creating compelling, shareable content which will in turn boost your credibility and visibility. All of this means: your biz and buzz will grow.
Below, find four powerful strategies that will have a lasting impact on the success of your blog.
Join us Wednesday October 8th at 12 p.m. Eastern as we dive even deeper into the strategies below and several others on a live, digital webinar. You can participate in the course from anywhere in the world, you just need access to a computer or phone! Sign up & the read on!
Be Clear on Who Your Audience Is
If you are blogging for your business remember you are doing just that, blogging your brand's audience not your friends or family. This will help you narrow your content focus, your style and even the way you promote it on social media and your newsletter. Things you can ask yourself when thinking about your audience include:
- What do they come to my business for?
- Why do they love our brand?
- What "world" is my brand a part of (for example: health, fashion, small business, elder care, etc.)
- What types of things are going on in my reader's lives that are important to them?
- What other blogs and media outlets do they read?
The more you know the answers to these things, the more you can craft killer content that they will keep coming back for and share with their friends!
Vary Your Content
Now that you're sure about the audience for this awesome brand storytelling platform aka, your blog, it's time to start sharing content that they're going to lap up. Of course this is a great place to talk about your business and what you have to offer, but limiting your posts to that will limit how often your audience wants to not only read your content but share it. Just like in social media, we encourage you to vary your content. Here are some ideas for a few other things you can include in your blog include:
- Behind the scenes peeks (and pics) of you at work and/or your business in action.
- Discussions or coverage about news or buzzed about stories in your industry, niche or "brand world" as I like to call it.
- A tie in to a hot topic in the news that you can "piggy back on" and add to or connect your business to (this is also a great way to be hunted down on Google by people searching for stories about said hot topic)
- Tips or advice that your business makes you can expert in. Remember, this isn't just for service providers and experts. Jewelry designers could share tips on traveling with jewelry or accessorizing for date night. Product creators should always find ways to share their expertise and your blog is a great place to do that!
- Share your press. Toot your own horn and get people excited about you. Even better? After you share press let readers know where to access the product or service that the press featured.
- Interviews with people relevant to your business or brand story - or people who your audience would find interesting to read about.
Plan Ahead
Just like we encourage you to create PR campaign plans to be sure you stay on top of things, streamlined, stress free and don't miss any hot opportunities, you should do the same things with your blogging. No need to create a higher level system, but a simple editorial calendar that you create and house online (we love Google Docs for this) will let you plan story topics, be sure you hit seasonal holidays and any other hot topics that you can plan for, and it will help keep your head clear. All of these are a must if you want blog content that is timely and shareable. It will even allow you to plan things like interviews and ask for outside contributors from time to time, all of which will liven up your content and take some of the content creation pressure off of you!
If you are tasked with making compelling and shareable content, once you actually create that content you want to share the heck out of it and allow others to do the same thing. This means:
- Be sure you have "share" and social buttons near your blog so that readers can easily spread it for you.
- Include it in your newsletter.
- Promote it in your Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram - you name it - feeds!
