Good morning! Do you have one minute to read and one hour to do? If so, you can improve your small business’ marketing in a big way. Each week, we will provide new ideas. Grab your morning beverage and let’s get started:
This Week: Commit to Start Basic Blogging
Social media is great, but there’s a limit to how much you can say in each post. If you find you’re running up against space constraints time and again, you should start blogging. After all, blogging is nothing more than writing longer social media posts.
Commit to start basic blogging in five easy steps:
STEP ONE
Is your website ready for blogging?
See what your website is equipped to handle. Many websites already have the capability to blog. If not, contact your web designer. This should not take the designer more than an hour or two. Ask them to show you the basic steps to creating a new blog post.
STEP TWO
Create a blog schedule.
Decide you’re going to blog once a month. Create topics to cover the next six months. As with your social posting, think about this from the point of view of your audience. What would they want to know more about with respect to your business? What would they find “entertaining, educational, or inspirational”?
STEP THREE
It’s time to write.
Create your first blog post. Since you already have your topic, just start writing. Over time, you’ll find your voice, and it will become more comfortable. Don’t feel like your first blog post must be perfect. Just make sure it is grammatically and factually correct.
The good news is you can make changes at any time. Even after you post, if you discover an error or if something about your topic changes, it is easy to take care of.
STEP FOUR
Optimize your blog post.
Now that you’re done writing, let’s see if we can make this post work even better for us. Best practices at a minimum:
- 800 words
- Try to use a keyword in the blog post title
- Use a clever title
- Add a link to additional support information on your website
STEP FIVE
Go live with your blog post.
Post your blog and monitor how it does. Use these numbers to drive the choices of your future topics. Don’t forget to promote it in a dedicated social media post with a link
Payoff: If the goal is to create a relationship with your target audience, a blog should be exponentially more helpful in their understanding of who you are and what your business is about. You can start slowly (a few paragraphs once a month) and work your way up (longer and more frequent blogs).
Blogs have the added payoff of helping your website be less static and more relevant, which is what the search engines like. Also, blogs help prove you are who you say you are, which is part of the formula for doing well with search engines.
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