Establishing and running your own business can often feel like a desperate effort to keep plates spinning. So many elements impatiently and relentlessly demand your attention that sadly, marketing your small business can become an afterthought.
Whilst you’re fine-tuning your service or carefully gift-wrapping your products, bear in mind; you can be the absolute best at what you do, but if people don’t know about it- they’re not buying!
A blog is an opportunity to bring traffic to your website, prove your expertise, showcase your products and convert traffic into happy customers.
Web users have become immune to adverts, simply clicking the ‘x’ box without taking the time to see what’s on offer. With people spending an average of 2.5 hours a day consuming content online, a well-shared blog post can be paramount to your marketing success.
What is the purpose of a small business blog?
The word ‘blog’ gets a bad name. Too many people associate it with someone uploading a photo of their breakfast and talking about what’s in store for their day.
Like your entire marketing strategy, a blog is not for you, it is for your customer. Before you open your laptop, think about what your audience will enjoy reading about. What do they want to learn about? What will inspire them? What will they gain from reading your blog post? The purpose of your blog posts is to answer those questions, show that you understand your readers’ problem and then demonstrate how your business is the solution.
Increase traffic to your website
There are many ways to find a blog post, through social channels, email, newsletters, Google etc. The more you get it out there to be found, the more people will come to your website. Depending on where they are in their customer journey, they may not be ready to buy there and then, but they now know your brand. use calls-to-action links to entice your traffic to join your email list, or simply suggest a reason why they will want to join your linked Facebook page. The point is, you have their attention, they’ve found you.
Use your small business blog to show your expertise
A blog is the perfect platform to show you know your stuff. Here are a few examples of how different businesses could use their blog posts to exhibit their skills and expertise in their chosen topics.
Whilst these business blog post examples may appear to give your reader your methods, you will find that your readers’ takeaway will be ‘wow, how they’ve done it looks great, they really know what they’re doing, I might as well hire them to do it’.
You’ve built trust in your brand as an expert in your field. If your business is more product-based, you obviously write about situations where your products will be used.
A toy brand could write about inspiring imaginative play in children. Their linked products happen to be the ideal accompaniment to the methods of play listed.
A furniture maker could show different ways to lay a Christmas table. Of course, the photos used show and link to your beautiful furniture and how wonderful they look styled for Christmas dinner.
Show your reader that you understand their problem – let your service or product just ‘happen’ to be the answer. Showing your expertise in your blog builds trust in you and your business. Trust leads to bookings and sales.
A blog provides you with sharable content
There are only so many times you can tweet your latest product. Too many businesses use their social channels to spam people with adverts about their offerings – yawn. People will scroll past and it’s unlikely it will even be seen. A blog allows you to share something of interest that talks about your product in a natural way. A blog post is far more likely to engage your audience as it is more relevant to them and their needs. It also has the potential to be shared by another local business. A fellow small business owner will have no interest in sharing your adverts but if your content adds interest and value to their readers, you just might get a share. This is your chance to access their audience too. I also encourage my clients to invite larger publishers to share their valuable blog content. Many experts believe backlinks to be in the top 3 most important methods of search engine optimising your site. It’s absolutely worth sending a few cheeky emails.
A blog will support your search engine optimising efforts
Search engine optimising your small business website is far more than posting blogs. However, more quality content on your site speckled with some carefully chosen keywords will certainly help.
Think of what your ideal customer would search to find you, then cover those variations in your blog post. Be sure to include your location if it is relevant. Internet users looking for local businesses will often include location in their search. If you’d like to take your blog page SEO one step further, there are plenty of tools available online that will help with your keyword research and choosing the right ones for your blog post. Adding your keywords into titles, headings, subheadings, and ALT tags in photos all help too. One of my favourite things about my work is when a business discovers that a blog post I have written for them has climbed the ranks and started to drive traffic directly from Google to their website. It takes time but it absolutely can be done and the results could prove to be lucrative for your business for weeks, months and years to come.
Showcase products/services in your blog post
After years spent as a freelance writer writing for tiny start-ups and huge industry leaders alike, I have now turned my hand to content creation for the small, local businesses within Swadlincote and South Derbyshire. Now, take the time to think back through this post. Do you see how I just proved to you that I can create helpful, engaging content? I then told you that I could actually write it for you. That’s what you’re aiming for!
I hope you found this post valuable to your small business content marketing strategy and if you’d like 1;1 advice on writing your own posts, you can email me here.
If you’re looking to have well-researched, search engine optimised blog posts written for your business, get in touch.