According to statistics, WordPress users publish around 70 million blog posts every month. Does this mean you should be joining them and start your own blog?
The answer is yes. Blogging can bring multiple benefits for your organization. It’s a very low-cost alternative to having an online presence which provides you with a lot of opportunities to share insight and news about your business, reach your target audience, and convert visitors into customers. The good news is, that a powerful CMS such as WordPress, can help you run your blog smoothly, and faster, and easier than ever. The downside is, that simply having a blog is not enough. This is why today we have gathered up some useful tips on how to create a successful blog for your business.
Prepare yourself
Although, starting a blog might seem easy, especially given all of WordPress’s blogging benefits, there are a few important choices you need to make. Picking the right CMS, as well as additional integration or tools which might be of use.
How can the process be easier? Choose a user-friendly, popular CMS. Given that nearly 36% of all websites on the web are powered by WordPress, you guessed it – we would recommend using this platform. It can easily be paired with other popular blogging plugins such as Google Analytics, and a number of SEO tools.
Keep in mind, that you need to pay special attention to the design of your blog and the quality of the visuals you’ll be using. They should appeal to the audience and will make your blog pleasant to look at. You have a huge selection of WordPress themes, appropriate for blogging and which you could customize with just a few tweaks.
Research the competition
As mentioned above, there are literally millions of blogs on the web. This is why attracting visitors and making a blog popular is not an easy task. A useful tip is doing your research on the competition. A lot of them might be seasoned bloggers, which doesn’t have to be a bad thing. This could be a great opportunity to learn from their mistakes.
Try to identify which are the best blogs. See the patterns – which are the most successful blog posts? Why is that? Can you add anything to the topics which attract most visitors? You need to find your own niche which will differentiate your blog from others.
If you’re worried that it might take too much time in researching the competition, try some tools such as Ahrefs or SEMrush. They will be able to provide you with a set of relevant keywords which drive traffic towards the competitors blogs and specific posts.
Take your time with your own blog posts
If it isn’t obvious already, you need to pay special attention to the quality of your blog posts. There are a few elements you need to consider when blogging – watching out for the competition is just the beginning.
Keyword optimization. The above mentioned tools would be able to help you with finding the key phrases and words which customers use. Now you need to write a good piece which might attract potential customers and make them share it.
In terms of small and medium businesses, it’s always useful to get some extra coverage on social media, as well as some industry related blogs and websites. To do this, you need to publish in-depth and well-thought resources, as well as invest in digital marketing. Blog posts are highly likely to get shared on social media by your email subscribers – this is why you need to pay special attention to your mailing list.
Blogging is an essential tool which can help you share your knowledge with customers and build your authority as a leader in the industry. A lot of businesses are aiming at that, but not all of them can succeed. Make sure you pay special attention to each and every one of your blog posts – make them stand out from the rest.
Be consistent
This doesn’t mean that you need to publish every day. Quality still beats quantity, but regular posting is also important. Don’t just try to post a few blog posts a week, and then remain silent for months.
The more you publish, the bigger the chances are that you can reach your target audience and make your blog popular. Although there is no specific formula to successful publishing frequency, around 44% of bloggers publish between three and six times per month, but doing it regularly.
This also applies to your content promotion strategy. Especially at the beginning it’s difficult to attract new readers. Set aside some budget for promoting your blog posts. If their quality is high you should be able to attract organic traffic, likes, shares and email subscriptions. Keep improving, keep writing and promoting your content with every new blog post.
Backlinks and guest posts
Promoting your content doesn’t necessarily mean using only social media and marketing tricks. You can easily drive traffic to your blog with the relevant backlinks, as well as guest posts.
Be picky about the anchor text and linking pages as well is guest posting opportunities. If the content you have produced adds value to a respected source, this will easily bring organic traffic to you. Always remember, with blogging the most important thing is quality.
Engage with visitors
Hopefully, by now you have managed to create a high-quality and thought-provoking blog posts which are related to your niche and are attracting new visitors every day. But what do you do if they have further questions about your content?
Insightful blog posts are more than capable of staring up a conversation with your customers. To make that happen, make sure your contact section is on full display and leave some extra space for comments.
Try to implement plugins which will encourage engagement. You can add a comment subscription, pop-ups, as well as a live chat plugin, which will help you have an actual conversation with your customers.
How to make the most out of your blog posts? Ask yourself the following questions:
• Do I have the necessary time to create quality content?
• Is this enough to engage with and attract new customers?
• Can I make the most out of my blog posts?
The answer to all these questions is Yes! You are very likely to succeed in creating a popular blog. Don’t be afraid to mix and match different tools and tactics. Analyze what works best for your business and just keep doing that.
