In a recent study by Lyfe marketing, it was discovered that 78% of consumers prefer to get to know about a company through articles than by advertisements. 70% also believed that if the companies used custom content that they cared about their consumers and wanted to develop a relationship with them. With these statistics in mind, we can see that a well-designed blog is essential to build trust with your customers. But how do you go about it?
STEP 1: Find the reason for your blog
Before you start to create your blog you need to know what the ultimate goal for your blog is. You need to establish why do you want to blog. Is it to increase brand awareness or attract new customers or provide post-sale support or do you want to take a stand or do you want to make direct sales? Each goal is important but it is also important to remember what is the benefit that your customer will receive from your blog. Will they become better informed about your product? Or will you increase their knowledge bank?
STEP 2: Define your audience
You need to have a clear idea of who your audience is. How do they consume content? Do they like long-detailed blogs or do they prefer to read infographics? What websites, social media channels and offline content do they use? What are the pain points and interests of your audience? This will all help you to write content which is relevant and shareable with your audience.
STEP 3: Create a space for your blog online
WordPress is one of the most well-known content management systems available and is user-friendly. You can learn more about WordPress here and if you need help getting your website up and running, here is a course by Simply Digital Design that could help you. You can also ask your web developer to create a blog page on your website for you to add your content too. You will also need to register a domain for your business.
STEP 4: Decide how often you will post your blogs
You must be consistent when you blog. You will need to decide on whether you will blog daily, weekly, or monthly. If you don’t feel like you could deal with the number of blogs you need to write, you can hire a content writer to create some of the content for you or you can get another complementary business to do guest blogs on your website.
STEP 5: Brainstorm keywords
Keywords are the words your clients will use to search the internet to find your product. You can use Google Keyword Planner to help you find keywords to use in your blog content. It is important that even though you want to rank for these words that they don’t appear in the content so many times that it makes it hard for people to read it.
STEP 5: Decide on the type of blog post to write
There are a variety of blog posts that you can write. By knowing the goal of your blog, you can decide on the types of blogs you would like to post. You should also keep in mind what call to action you want to initiate from your customer after they have read your blog.
STEP 6: Write
This step is sometimes intimidating for some people because they don’t believe they can write well. But write. When you are done. Set the blog post aside for a few hours and re-read the blog and check it for the flow and you can put it through Grammarly to check for grammar errors. Please note Grammarly is an American application and therefore may correct your spelling of words to American English rather than British English. You can check your document for its readability to ensure that your target audience will be able to understand the content you have produced.
STEP 7: Post and track
The final step is to post your blog on your site and then promote it through the various social media platforms you are on. You should also track your blog to see how many people are viewing it and taking action on it. There are different metrics to keep track of depending on your blog strategy.
By following these seven steps, you should be well on your way to creating a blog which will help grow awareness for your product or services. Get out there and share your knowledge with your audience.
Proudly brought to you by the NSBC.