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8 Blogging Tactics to Support Your Business

Is blogging still important for your company? Years after Content was declared King, many question whether blogging is worth the time spent researching and writing worthwhile entries. The reality is that blogging is absolutely still relevant and worthwhile for several reasons: blogging can be a valuable tactic to attract new visitors to your website, establish you as an industry expert and help convert traffic into leads. Perhaps most importantly, blogging can increase SEO because search engines place high value on relevant and engaging content for your community.

Here are 8 blogging tactics you can use to support your business and increase your audience:

Writing

1. Incorporate Keywords – You want to make sure any content you’re sharing is SEO-friendly. When you start a post, consider listing out the most important keywords for the post before you write to make sure these are well-integrated into the writing. Make sure not to force keywords where they don’t belong, or to stuff too many keywords, as search engines have more advanced algorithms and can penalize you for this.

2. Answer User Questions – What are the common questions that your audience is asking? If you can answer these questions as an authority or expert, that’s a great place to start for blog topics. (Hint: use Google Analytics and Google Keyword Planner to see what search terms are currently bringing people to your site and what other search terms you should consider adding).

3. Take a Stand – You can help build your brand by taking a stand on controversial or current issues. It’s important to show emotion, passion and character by taking a stand on things that are important to your company inside and outside of your industry. Just make sure your view aligns to your corporate standards.

4. Use Guest Bloggers – Invite industry experts or industry connections to guest blog for you. First and foremost, this will show authority and offer a fresh point of view to your readers. Secondly, this offers the potential to tap into a new audience or following that you’re not already accessing.

Sharing

1. Incorporate your Content into Other Marketing Channels – Once you have developed good, fresh content… use it! Maximize the impact of your blog posts by sharing on social media, email marketing, email signatures, and more.

2. Consider Existing Online Communities – Do some research to look for existing online communities where your content is already relevant, and don’t be afraid to engage. If you can answer questions and participate in discussions, you can become a credible source and include links to your own blogs.

3. Integrate your Blog on your Website – It’s easy to set up a ‘Blog’ on your website and add posts there, but it’s more effective to integrate relevant blog posts onto specific pages of your website. Add popular posts to relevant pages with a “Read more about XYZ on our blog” link to drive more traffic (and more quality traffic).

Tracking

1. Track Analytics– What posts are bringing the most traffic? Driving the most leads? Getting the most feedback? It’s essential to use simple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track your blogging efforts. The best place to start for beginners is Google Analytics.

And that brings us full circle. Good bloggers use past posts and trends to improve the process moving forward. Attention to analytics and trends will allow you to start writing more relevant and more popular blog posts moving forward. It often takes time and effort to develop an effective blog, but the impact can be well-worth it.