How to start a blog was thoroughly dealt with in one of my recent posts. But, most of the questions I came across thereafter was why should a businesses invest in blogging.
Ordinarily, business blog is a marketing asset, just like company social media pages. Making a business owner to accept to start a blog has not that being that ordinary though.
This is why I decided to follow up the how to start a blog for small business in Nigeria post with this; answer all possible questions regarding what a business will gain from blogging consistently.
What makes blog different from website?
A blog is a journal on the internet or your online diary which you frequently update to keep your audience up to date about you or your business. While a website is a collection of web pages or documents which are accessible via the internet.
Only e-commerce websites and a few transactional websites get frequent updates with fresh content while many other businesses leave their webiste to become mere online brochure.
Yet, these dormant websites need leads and new businesses from online users. What an irony?
If your website is optimized for search, your meta tags, image alt text, inbound and internal links are intact, you have a wonderful traffic-generating website. #wehdonesir!
Let’s flip the script and reason like a prospect for a moment…
You have a burning issue to solve. You Google and find a website that sells what solves the problem or offers services that can resolve the issue. Clicking through to the website, you find out more about the organization on their website.
You take their contact details and plan to reach them later. To be honest, you have an idea of who can solve the problem already but there is so much uncertainty as to how that problem is actually going to be solved.
What small business blog offers prospects?
Over time, a blog is supposed to address issues, answer questions common to the industry, support or criticize school of thoughts on matters arising.
In order to give prospects reasons to contact you immediately, you must have, through your blog posts, identified problem(s), provided perspectives to his situation, proffered solution to his problem and positioned your business to effectively tackle the problem.
Your company website introduces your business to the world as a problem solver. It is a consistent blog that helps the world start solving their problems even before they get in touch with you.
Why you need to know how to start a blog?
Whatever form of value you offer, using blog to explain your processes, share your success stories, take a stranger through how you have solved similar problems is not impossible.
One thing is certain, every business that has a product to sell has a story to tell.
Blogging is one effective means of telling your story as a business. When you run promos both online and offline directing prospects to your website, it is a vibrant blog that can make first-time visitors come again after the first encounter.
What can small business blog about?
- explain your product design processes
- answer ‘FAQ’ questions about your product
- provide interactive guide to how best your product works
So many milestones can be achieved small business blog. But, please, don’t use it to blow your honorable trumpet. A blog that is too salesy get boring quickly.
How will blog benefit small business?
- Conversion
- Customer satisfaction and retention
- Brand awareness
- Direct sales
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It may interest you to know that your entire buyer’s journey can be summarized into a blog post.
How to capture buyer’s journey with small business blog?
Use links within the blog post to direct readers to landing page, product pages or other pages
where they can take profitable action.
A blog post could contain text, images, links and a video. While the plain text addresses a particular topic that the blog post is about, you can embed internal links that lead a reader through the conversion process in clickable texts.
Besides text and links, well-crafted images (with Alt text and descriptive caption) can help buttress your topic.
Use Images within the blog post to break down seemingly complex process your customers might have complained about in their feedback
Such instructive blog post can come in handy when your online customer service rep needs a bullet-point to support his/her response to customers’ complaint. Your rep could forward the link or refer the customer to read further.
Use Video to engage prospects.
There is practically nothing any business does that video cannot be used to demonstrate. A video can be used to explain an offer, your CEO could address customers using video on your blog post.
Customers’ experiences can be made into series of short videos. Think of everything you can do to attract and retain customers, a short –less than 15mins max- video will blow your mind in terms of engagement.
What are the roles of blogging in marketing?
This bothers on the content strategy for your blog. Of course, you do not want to wake up
tomorrow morning a blogger for your business without clear, concrete, sustainable plan for research,
development, distribution and promotion of your blog.
As you choose topics, titles prior to blog content development, have at the back of your mind which of your buyer personas that particular blog post is meant for.
READ ALSO: Keyword Research Tools for Small Business in Nigeria
Also take into consideration, what stage of the purchase funnel the buyer personas are before
developing the content of your blog post.
You don’t want to target everybody and you don’t want to address more than a particular topic
per blog post.
A blog post could be aimed at attracting strangers to your business, convert new visitors to leads, closing leads to customers or delighting existing customers so they
become promoters of your business.
To attract strangers, your blog post should identify and explain a particular problem. To convert a visitor to a lead, you could blog about an offer while you place a call-to-action for that offer or similar offer in a conspicuous place of the web page.
To close leads into customers, your blog post should position your product or service as the solution to the problem already identified and explained.
Some copy-writing plus appraisal of your offers is allowed here, but be careful not to over-do it.
For customer delight, you could blog about how your brand makes life better for customers. You could address after-sale complaints made via such blog posts. Customers’ suggestions could be the center of blog posts like these as well.
By sincerely putting yourself in your existing customers’ shoes, you definitely will know what to blog about that will promote customer loyalty.
Whose duty should blogging be in my organization?
Much as everyone in your organization may not be good writers, everyone is eligible to make contribution
to a successful business blog.
After you have outlined topics relevant to your purpose, every prospective contributor to your blog content should be guided your blog content mission statement.
It is advisable to have someone or a team dedicated to developing content, distributing and promoting your business blog.
This brings some sense of responsibility. Though, content development should not be limited to this person or team. The reason is that the idea some people within your organization will give towards your blog content could be amazing.
Everyone who interacts with customers, whether in sales, marketing or customer service, should be encouraged to contribute towards your blog. It could be what a customer confide in them or what trend they notice in consumers’ behavior that would trigger your hit blog of all time.
Everyone can’t blog for your business, but everyone has the potential to make meaningful impact on your blog as a stakeholder.
Hope you found one or two reasons why you need to learn how to start a blog today.
Very helpful tips! I have had my blog for a while now, but I just kept thinking about what to start writing??? Using all these tips, I am confident than ever!!
I will rather just make it a blog for my start up business. Thanks lots!
Thanks you Vickie!
Please let me know if you’re looking for a writer for your site. You have some really great articles and I believe I would be a good asset. If you ever want to take some of the load off, I’d love to write some content for your blog in exchange for a link back to mine. Please blast me an e-mail if interested. Many thanks!