Millions of small and large companies use blogs for business. If you work properly with a blog, it helps you build trust with your target audience and attract the attention of search engines.

To learn how to run a blog, you need to start gradually, but in any case, be prepared for blogging to take up a lot of time and focus (of course, if you aim to get good results).
In this article, we have reviewed the basic criteria for a successful online business blog.

Set goals

Running a business blog is a long-term commitment: an investment of time, energy, and effort. As soon as you stop updating it and sharing relevant information, there will be no interest. So ask yourself the following questions right from the start:

Why am I doing this?
What do I want to get out of the blog?
What will my audience get out of it?

Perhaps you’re looking for something to boost sales, increase client numbers, build a business from the ground up, become a brand ambassador, or even write a book. Depending on the needs, business bloggers develop a content plan. Beware of vague categories; your goals should be as specific and detailed as possible. Whenever you come up with another topic to write about or define content, you should refer to your main objectives and ask yourself whether they fit with your plans.

Identify the person who will run the blog.

A standard misconception is the idea that the best person to blog is the business owner. The reason for such thinking is understandable, as the owner knows their business better. But, as a rule, this is a completely “broken” solution for several reasons:

  • A well-written blog is time-consuming because it requires regular maintenance, and business owners rarely have an abundance of free time;
  • Blogging requires special literary skills, which, by the way, a businessperson does not need to have (in fact, they do not need to be able to);
  • For blogging, it is better to choose a writer with whom you can sort out possible topics in advance, give them certain tasks, etc.

When you sign a contract with blog marketing companies, you can also agree on the possibility of blogging and writing texts. As a rule, companies dealing with website promotion and online advertising have a whole staff of experienced specialists who know the market well and understand what needs to be written about. But anyway, you’d better use a list-making application.

How to find a good writer

Don’t forget one important thing. There are very few all-purpose writers. You need to decide for what goals you need a specialist. In their original meaning, copywriters are masters of marketing texts. Such specialists know the psychology of the buyer, and the basics of marketing and can sell everything with the help of letters via PC.

Such a copywriter will hardly take up the routine description of the door handles for the E-Commerce shop, or the cost of their services will surprise you.

There are three types of writers nowadays:

  • Authors of informative articles (Web writers). They can write about different topics: finance, the upbringing of children, legal issues, etc. It is good if such a writer has the appropriate education (accountant, teacher, lawyer).
  • SEO copywriters. These professionals can include the same keywords ten times in the text so that the reader does not even feel it.
  • Rewriters. Rewrite the text in their own words, which is also sometimes necessary when there is a need for hundreds of unique texts with the same content.

If you have an understanding of who you need and why, it will be much easier to find a competent specialist who knows how to create a business blog. You will just need to know how to build an editorial calendar for your blog.

Quality content

The main secret to success is a simple conversational style of writing while conveying useful information.

Of course, the information must be useful to each target reader of the blog. And, this visitor must find on your resource the solution to their questions or problems. With the help of the useful information that you (as the author of the blog) must provide in the form of text articles, images, charts, recorded podcasts, or videos (which you may easily edit with the help of video-making software).

Develop a strategy

If you have already decided on creating a successful blog, you need to develop a strategy by which you can get the results you want. Several promotion strategies are possible:

  • Integrated marketing on the Internet includes the use of a huge number of tools, the application of which can give the best result depending on the specifics of the business. In this case, promotion can give the best result, as different ways of contacting potential customers will be used.
  • An online PR campaign helps to get even more people to know about the business. This strategy can be implemented using guest posts, hidden advertising, forum posts, and testimonials. A YouTube channel is also a good way to promote your business online.
  • Viral marketing can be used when a company’s marketers believe that advertising can be used to develop the company. Various publications of a scandalous nature and materials with questionable content can be used here, which can help to attract as many customers as possible.

Surely, everyone expects to get good traffic to their blog for business and excellent behavioural factors. These will further increase the popularity of the blog in the eyes of search engines.

Next, the visitor finds (ideally, and this is what a blogger should strive for) the solution to their question or problem. They read the “recommended material on similar issues” gain trust in your blog, and are likely to subscribe to its updates so that they can return for more interesting and relevant information.

This is roughly the ideal arrangement for the life of a business blogger and their blog.

Methods for online promotion

There are several methods you can use to promote your business blog online. These include:

  • SEO — a set of measures to promote a website in search engines;
  • Contextual advertising — displaying advertisements that match the user’s search queries or interests;
  • SMM — promotion of the company in social networks;
  • E-mail marketing — promotion of business on the Internet by sending promotional e-mails;
  • Content marketing — publishing useful materials to attract an audience.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Nowadays, search engine optimization (SEO) is the most popular way to promote your blog. It is known that search engines are used by every user. And every user is a potential client.

SEO is a fairly complex process, which does not immediately get results. But if a properly optimized website will be profitable for years.

SEO work includes:

  • Working with search engine algorithms. Knowledge of them allows you to determine the ranking factors and be able to monitor updates regularly;
  • Analysis of statistics of search queries for promotion on the Internet;
  • Creating a semantic core (a selection of the most popular queries);
  • Internal optimization of a resource;
  • External optimization of the resource;
  • Analysis of user behaviour on the site as a whole and its pages;
  • Tracking the results of the strategy and changing the current scheme of work if necessary.

Content marketing

This option is based on the promotion of a product on the Internet. The material which can be useful for a potential client is published on a website, thereby attracting their attention. As a rule, content marketing is used in conjunction with SEO promotion as pre-optimized articles are posted on the website.

Social media marketing (SMM)

Social media helps to attract customers. Today, these promotion methods have advanced to the point where it is possible to do business without a website at all.

Every day, people visit social networks, communicate with friends, and read interesting materials. And, naturally, they leave information about themselves. This data allows marketers to target the necessary audience segments.

The task of a specialist who works with social media is to attract the maximum number of clients. To do this, the following guidelines should be followed:

  • The headline of the page should definitely “catch.” If the reader pays attention to it, they are more likely to read the post.
  • The text should be as readable and easy to understand as possible.
  • You should always use calls to action. This encourages subscribers to repost the post, comment on it, and like it.
  • The page should be visually appealing.
  • Be sure to use hashtags so that you can attract more of your target audience to read the post.

Contextual advertising

Context is a kind of the opposite of SEO. It consists of placing advertisements at the top of search engines, regardless of whether a company is at the top. The balance will be charged to the company’s account for each click on its link.

In this case, targeted visits will start as soon as the advertising campaign starts, so you won’t have to wait long. And with the proper setup, you can reduce untargeted traffic to a minimum. In addition, such promotion of companies through the Internet can be placed not only in search engines but also on the websites of partner companies.

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is the attraction of customers by sending offers to their e-mail accounts. This method is only suitable for the additional attraction of those who are already interested in the company’s products. You can send useful information to the subscribers of the website, diluting it with advertisements.

To summarize

Creating and maintaining a blog is a hard job. But the benefits of blogging are also significant: new skills of how to run a blog, communication with an audience, and income from advertising or selling services.

If you want to increase your blog’s audience and monetize it in the future to develop blogging as a business, take a responsible approach right from the start.