Blogs are a great way to market your business.
They can be used as an interactive tool for customer service, provide valuable information about products and services, and even help increase traffic on your website.
If you’re new to blogging or want some tips for how to start marketing with a blog, keep reading. Here’s our guide for newbies and veterans on how to market with a blog:
Simple steps to market with a blog
1) Make plans
A blog marketing plan is a detailed outline of what you want to share on your blog and when. This will help potential readers understand what they will see if they visit it, how often updates occur, and why the content provided matters for them personally.
For example: if you have a pet supplies business, you might want to create blogs about what dogs love to eat. How certain dog foods are great for specific types of breeds, and what are the best items for you to give your dog as a “treat.”
By having this type of information outlined, you can create a plan around it. This will help those who visit understand why they should be interested in following your blog’s content.
2) Create your website
Come up with a name for your blog. This can be anything related to your business or the general topic you plan on writing about.
For example: “Paws and Claws Blog” for a pet supplies store, “Corgi Capers” for a dog bakery, or “Shiba Snacks!” if you are running an online Shiba Inu merchandise shop.
After coming up with a name, make sure you register your domain. There are many cheap and reputable options like GoDaddy or NameCheap that are easy to use.
But if you want to score a free domain on a very affordable $2.95 a month hosting plan, click on the following:
Free Domain On A Low Priced Hosting
3) Install WordPress
After you joined Bluehost, installing WordPress is easy. Just sign in to your Bluehost account, click on the “WordPress” button in the left sidebar and install WordPress by clicking the blue “Install Now” button.
That’s it! You’re done with step three!
Now you have a blog up and running without any coding experience necessary at all.
4) Write contents
By adding ten or more posts quickly, you can attract readers to your blog. Then change to a regular post schedule and keep reading.
Google will take time to index your articles. Don’t wait for it to happen overnight. Just keep writing, and your blog will start showing up in Google’s search results within a couple of months.
While you’re waiting, you can promote your content on social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. You could even create an infographic.
5) Get social
Get social! Including your blog on marketing materials is just one of the many ways to integrate social media into blogging. By integrating, you can post updates and share interesting content with followers, and include your own posts in these messages so that people get a taste of what they’ll find if they read more.
6) Interact
A blog is social media if you allow commenting on your posts. Once you’re getting traffic into your site, you’ll also get comments. Make sure you respond to each one. This will do two things:
First, show that you care about your visitors.
Second, it shows that there are humans behind the blog.
Make sure to let people know who you are if your name doesn’t identify you already. People want to feel like they’re speaking with someone real, not just a company computer screen.
If possible, find ways to get involved in social media conversations about the topics of your posts or other related ones. You can do this by participating in Twitter and Facebook groups or even forums about blogging specifically.
If someone asks a question, answer it honestly for the best outcome but don’t hesitate to point them towards one of your helpful links either way.
It’s always nice to give back as much as possible without being too spammy ;). This is also good practice so that when anyone mentions something relevant later on down the road, they’ll be more likely to check out what you have to say.
7) Promote! Promote!
Another great thing about blogging is that there are so many places online where you can promote your content for free and gain valuable exposure in the process.
If it’s good, people will share it on their own social media sites or with their friends, which brings even more readers into the mix.
When writing blog posts, always include a section like this at the end of each piece called “Further Reading” instead of just linking off-site somewhere else.
Not only does inline linking look better, but when other bloggers find your links useful, they’ll usually retweet or pin them too! And finally, don’t forget to use relevant keywords throughout your content.
What is blog marketing?
The process of marketing through a blog is called blogging. Many business owners use WordPress for their blogs and websites because it’s easy to manage and provides access from one location.
The key benefits include ease-of-use, being able to keep all assets together under one platform rather than two separate ones, which would require more management time dedicated separately; as well as providing easier accessibility by visitors who could be looking at either site or may interact with you elsewhere online such as social media sites like Instagram or Pinterest.
The major difference between a blog and a website is that while both provide information, blogging focuses more on sharing new thoughts versus static pages, as in websites where content is generally predetermined and remains unchanged until it’s updated with something newer.
Why use blog content for marketing?
Blogging is proven to be a great way to increase traffic and gain traction on the internet as you write relevant blog posts about your business, industry, or product.
This can also lead to new visitors who weren’t aware of you before finding out more about your company’s offers.
Blogging is also a great way to spread company news, client successes, and transparent information about products or services. In addition, it can help people find out more about your brand, which may incentivize them to purchase from you in the future.
Blogging also creates opportunities for backlinks which helps with SEO (search engine optimization) efforts within Google’s algorithm and other search engines like Bing and Yahoo.
Search engines use several factors when determining how high they will place a website on their result pages, so creating relevant content through blogging is an easy way to boost rankings without paying for ads.
The ultimate goal of marketing with blog content is ultimately lead generation: new visitors who then call into customer service, inquire about sales leads by emailing the company directly or purchase the product online.
Having a dedicated page on your website for blog content is also beneficial since it acts as a search engine, which means more pages and keywords you can rank high in Google for.
In addition to helping with SEO efforts, blogging creates opportunities for social media sharing through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn (and others). If people enjoy reading the posts, they will share them via their own profiles, which helps create brand awareness even if someone doesn’t purchase right away. There are multiple ways to market using blogs.
Conclusion
If I had to sum up how marketing with a blog works into one phrase:
It’s all about creating relevant content at scale that attracts new visitors that ultimately become customers either by calling customer service, signing up to your email list, emailing a sales department, or whatever your conversion process is.
And that’s how you market with blogs!
As a dedicated SEO professional, I help businesses improve their online visibility and attract more customers through search engine optimization. Whether you’re a small local business or a large corporation, I can help improve your search rankings, drive more traffic to your website, and ultimately grow your business.
Christian Tanobey