How to blog for business

Blogging for business is a totally different beast to personal blogging that requires a unique approach and skillset. To become a better corporate blogger, it’s helpful to first look at:

 

1. What not to do

Mistake number one is focusing solely on what the brand wants to achieve. So many companies give in to the temptation to treat their blog like a press centre, posting about their own products, services and in-house news.

Taking an ego-centric approach to business blogging will always backfire, as you miss out on opportunities to connect and engage with people with the power to share, refer and purchase.

 

2. The ultimate goal of business blogging

The primary performance metric and objective of creating a corporate blog is to grow the network of people that find, interact with and share your blog content.

Therefore, your blog should be community-centric. This requires a deep understanding of who the reader is and exactly what their reasons are for reading blogs. In most cases, this will be a desire for informative content, compellingly conveyed.

 

3. Find your niche

With so many blogs clamouring for attention, you need to quickly determine your specialist subject. Establish exactly what problem/s your company solves for people, and the one thing that you are best at.

Once you have established exactly who and what your blog will be the ‘go-to’ resource for, start planning how to dominate the conversation on that topic. Keeping your audience’s unique challenges and needs in mind, consider all the ways you can help them. Will ‘how-to’ blog posts work best, or could you expand your offer with videos, infographics, expert interviews and so on?

 

4. Stand out from the crowd

Successful business blogging is not a choice between quality and quantity. Both are absolutely necessary. Ensure you have the resources in place before launching, whether this means assigning a dedicated blog editor or outsourcing content creation. Blog posts should be consistent in quality and tone, relevant and shareable.

Coming back to your readers’ needs (priority number 1, remember), provide something that they can’t find anywhere else online to guarantee return visits.

 

5. Grow a community

Don’t be shy to ask your readers to interact directly with your business blog and all other social media channels that you use to share content and engage with fans, followers and prospects. When readers participate – reward, recognise and repeat. Valuing your community is a powerful way to build and cement fruitful relationships.

 

Over to you

What tactics have you used to keep your business blog audience loyal and engaged?