How to use Blogging to Grow your Business. 3 things every startup must know.

Running a new or small business and is looking to beat the competition and grow?

Startup businesses who have discovered the potential a blog has, are already using it to their benefits.

Why don't you join them?

Here, I've put together the basics every Startup Business needs to know before running a blog.

You see most startup businesses experience a lot of challenges on scaling their business and 50% fail mostly in their first five years.

As that might not sound nice, but it's actually what is going on.

That is; having low website traffic, few or no customers, and spending so much to keep the business going.

How do you scale through then?

As a digital marketer, I'll advise a startup business to first focus on their challenges, while generally; building awareness (your audience) & credibility can help solve some of these challenges startups face.

Going from letting them know of your products & services, to creating the perfect sales process that does not actually sound like one (pushing for sales) and driving quality traffic to it.

Now the thing is, every startup business aspires to be at the top, growing to be worth a "Billion Dollar Company"

I guess even you.

Right?

Well, even as everyone is allowed to think that way, it doesn't just happen overnight (i.e having a lot of traffic followed with a high conversion rate and a minimized way of spending). You first have to give your business time.

Blogging has the ability to help startup businesses scale through, but only if they put in the work and effort.

Although there are some businesses who blog and have failed, that is because they probably didn't do what was right.

However, imagine if you were told that there's a way to blog that could actually get your company to grow to that "billion dollar worth" you aspire for, in years to come.

Would you agree? And would you go for it?

Okay here's the thing, blogging when done the right way, can bring in huge benefits and growth to your business, but these results might not be that visible in your first years of blogging.

So if you're not the patient type, then I won't advise you to start a blog. Because it requires a lot of patience, consistency and time. Marketers & bloggers already know these.

Now if you're running a new business and you're here just to read, or you've read so much about blogging but not sure either to start a business blog yet, you just want to see what I have to say.

Then here's what you'll be getting from this post:

• Things you need to know about a blog (that will grow your business).

• The concept of marketing (and how you'll use it on your blog).

But before I get started, what is a blog?

When blogs first started in 1994, it was more of a personal journal, where you could talk about your daily life and even share about things you did or know.

Now it is seen as a place where you can share valuable information online, not just for personal use but you could use it for your business too.

So now here's what you should know...

A). What you need to know

As I earlier said, blogging is for those who are patient enough to wait for results over a long time. Not only that, but it will take your whole time and attention if you'll want to get the best out of it.

What do I mean? Here are 3 things that you may need to focus on if you'll want to grow your business through blogging.

1. SEO

2. Quality Content Creation & Keyword Research

3. Analytics and Maintenance

#1 SEO

Let's say you run a hairdressing business, do you know how many people could be searching for "Hairstyle" on Google?

Want to know?

here's the result…

search volume for your keyword

Ubersuggest is a website designed to give insights or data about keyword ideas or website.

To search for other keywords, just head onto Ubersuggest.com and type in your keyword on the search provided. You'll see the results displayed below.

Now Search Engine Optimization simply means you get to optimize your website so search engines make it visible to those searching for related topics on your blog.

So how does this help my blog?

Generally this means that blogging improves your website visibility on search engines.

Absolutely, when you create relevant content that gives answers to questions your target audience would search for, search engines would show it to them.

But how do you go about these?

SEO Experts would also tell you how you can use it to your advantage. From the topic you choose to the backlinks and the Domain Authority of your website or blog.

Meanwhile what's important for you to do is to create relevant content to your audience. Do a topic research to be sure your audience would find that topic helpful.

Now these leads me to my second point "Creating Quality Content".

#2 Quality Content & Keyword Research

Imagine building your fashion design business blog with people who don't like fashion.

What will happen?...

That's more of waste of time right?

Your blog should be built around your target audience. What they'll would want and questions they might ask. So your blog would remain relevant and valuable to them even in future.

This is very necessary as one way to do this is to think like your audience would. What type of questions would they be searching for? how useful is the content you'll put out to them.

Then make a list of these topics you have in mind, so you'll back them up with a research to be sure they'll turn out to be relevant content.

To do that, make a research on the main keywords in your topic as it is essential to accomplish your goal and to write your content.

So here are some things to look out for when doing your keyword research for a quality content:

• Topic trends: How long is the topic going to be on the trending list. This would help you rank and build traffic for a longer time.

• Search volume: how many people are searching for that keyword per month.

• Cost per click (cpc): This describes how much people pay to advertise on those keywords.

Like for the example I gave on SEO above, you can see the main keyword there is "Hairstyle" and its monthly search volume is 550,000.

So now you're sure that the main keyword you're trying to rank for is being searched online.

So you're left to come up with an Engaging blog content to serve your audience.

But why does your content have to be engaging?

The truth is you wouldn't want to spend so much time to come up with blog content that people won't spend time to read.

Of what use would that be then?

One criteria to judge how effective or engaging your content is how long people spend reading and scrolling through your blog.

In fact it should be part of your SEO strategy. Because search engines value sites that visitors spend more time on.

So when creating your blog content, focus more on grabbing your reader's attention.

#3 Analytics and Maintenance

As you'll always hear, one way to keep getting better results is to repeat the success of your most popular blog.

But then how can you do that if you don't.

keep track of your blog analytics?

Most times you get the best result from testing and analyzing different results. Run an a/b test on your blog titles, design, and other factors on your subsequent blogs to see which one brings more traffic.

Also, you can discover the sweet spot between your niche and your audience interest so you'll have a clearer view on what content to create.

Use your website analytics report to dig out the topics and categories which get the most traffic then write more content in that category, this way you get to attract more audience to your blog.

And for your maintenance; as time goes on your blogs go out of date, the 3rd party data you linked to might have updated their records. So many things do happen over time.

And the funny thing is that most people don't have enough time to checkout their old posts and that's not good enough.

So you'll have to ensure your blog gives updated information to your readers, because no one wants to read an outdated stuff, in fact it'll even be a "turnoff" for your new readers.

So how do you go about these?

Here are some things to checkout and be conscious about:

• Broken links: The websites you linked your content to may have redirected to a new page or something.

• Third party data: You wouldn't want to talk about data that is already outdated just because your post too is an old one. So do well to update those statistics, facts and trends you put on your content.

• Sites you linked to: Also if you've made changes on your blog do well to notify those who linked back to your content so things go in order.

Now lets look at the concept of marketing and how you'll use it on your blog.

B). The Marketing Concept.

Since blogging is known to attract certain category of readers based on the type of content on that blog, Marketers have decided to finesse successful blogs as a market place to get new customers.

These concept is considered as inbound marketing.

Now Inbound marketing defined by Hubspot is a business methodology that attracts customers by creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them.

Now looking at blogging in terms of inbound marketing.

Blogging as a means of Inbound Marketing.

Since inbound marketing is about creating valuable content so as to gain customers, blogs can be used to accomplish that goal too.

By creating quality and engaging blog content to your visitors as I mentioned earlier, you can convert them to customers.

They wouldn't feel like you're forcing sales on them because they're getting value from you.

But first here's how you can grow your blog:

1. Define & Attract your Target Audience.

2. Set your Goals

3. Schedule your post

4. Have a promotion strategy

#1. Define & Attract your Target Audience

As a child when growing up, whenever I needed something, I would always go to my mum and ask her for it, even when I am to go straight to my Dad, I'll prefer to still go through my mum and ask.

I did that because I knew I could easily get what I wanted from her and she listens to me most times.

I'm sure you too had your childhood days, RIGHT?

Where if you wanted something, you know the right person to meet and would listen to you.

So was it your Dad or mum?

Well, just as how you figured that out yourself, now you need to do that but in a clearer picture.

A good explanation of your "target audience" is that person or group of people who would listen to you and can easily get them to do what you want (i.e buy your stuff).

Businesses use these a lot, once you know your target audience then you can easily get your way around them.

So who is your target audience?

Make a table of their age group, lifestyle, earnings, location, what unique thing that connects you and them, note all these down. These would help you not only to understand them but to create better relevant content for them.

2. Set your Goals

You want to start and grow your blog so your business can grow too right?

Now that is a generalized goal. But try to be more specific on your goals so your strategies can go in line with them.

For example if you want to increase your Niche Authority then you'll have to consider a strategy of creating lots of content to keep your brand "top of mind" to your leads.

So when they're looking for a product in your niche you'll be the first to pop up on their mind.

Your goals should be based on what you want for your business and where opportunities are, that way when making your analysis, you'll know what metrics to look out for and what to work on, for better results.

Be sure to write down your goals in a more precise and measurable way because statistics shows you'll be more likely to achieve your goals when you write them down. So do that now.

3. Schedule your posts according to your content marketing calendar.

schedule your posts

One good thing about scheduling your blog posts is that you'll always find free time so you'll cover up for your lapses, like when you fall sick or as a result of some activities beyond your control.

Also as humans we aren't perfect and can sometimes fall out on our commitments once in a while, so don't feel bad when you miss a day, it happens.

However, all thanks to automations where you can create and schedule your content ahead of time so you can even go for

vacation.

But First you have to plan out your frequency of posting. Like how many times would you post?

Everyday?

Once a week?

Or monthly.

Strategize and plan how you'll go about it based on the goals you've written earlier.

With all that put together you can determine how often you'll be posting on your blog, tracking deadlines and what's next for the team to work ahead of.

As that is very important to hitting your goal. Create a content marketing calendar that you'll use and follow.

Your content marketing calendar should include things like:

• Upcoming content,

• When to post,

• Planned promotional activities,

• Partnerships and

• Updates to existing content.

All these should be put in place and easily explained so your team members will be aware.

4. Have a promotion strategy

You've done a good work by creating great content, sadly you won't just rank #1 on search engines if you're just starting out, especially if your Domain Authority is low (an SEO criteria).

So what do you do?

Promote the hell out of your content! YES. You'll first have to drive traffic to it. Set a promotion strategy for your blog content and follow through.

Once you create a promotion strategy, you can even add that to your content marketing calendar.

Meanwhile here are some ways you can drive traffic to your blog;

1. Social media: You can drive traffic to your blog through your social media accounts most especially Twitter and LinkedIn. You can also use advertisements when necessary.

2. Family and friends: Tell your friends and family about your new blog and ask them to help share it. There is no crime in doing so.

3. Your Email list: Have an email list? Then run that campaign, try to beat all odds and make sure your target audience get the value from your blog.

While you might not have a list yet then you don't have to panic. Create an opt in form on your blog or offer something for free (freebie) in exchange for their email addresses so you'll grow your list.

And if you're having difficulties handling your email campaigns then you can check out my blog content on "Email marketing strategies that'll skyrocket your sales"

Or you can send me an email at ksoctsi@gmail.com and I'll help you out.

Final Note

So how do you intend running your business to create better results after reading this piece?

Running a business blog is not a must-have before you reach your little goal. But it can just help you reach your big goals in no time.

Every new business requires time and a lot of work, same goes with blogging. Now you already know what it takes to market your brand using blogs and how to go about it.

While you might want to focus on developing your product and showcasing it, you also need to focus on the marketing aspect.

You have to plan out a good content marketing strategy that can move the business forward. From creating the right content for your audience in a way they'll engage with it, to distributing it in different forms and platforms.

So have you planned out how you'll go about with your content creation process for your blog?

Or what difficulties are you facing in starting a blog?

Let me know in the comment section.

And I hope you found this article helpful. If you did, kindly share, it could be helpful to someone too.