What Are The Benefits of a Company Blog?
The first and most obvious benefit of a company blog is to collect leads and make sales. While this is the most profitable benefit, it’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Another really important effect of blogging is building authority. If readers trust your company blog they’ll grow to trust your company.- The company owns the content
- Free reign to publish anything
- Traffic comes from search so it’s not paid
- Great content will make your company the go-to authority
- Authority builds trust which builds conversions
You can always drop recommendations for company products/services into posts since you own the content. But remember that being too pushy can have the opposite effect.
Check out this post by Kissmetrics covering a few tips for business blogs. If you follow these rules and make awesome content I guarantee your business will grow.
Running a blog doesn’t cost anything more than just running a company website. But while you aren’t paying in cash you are paying with time to actually sit down and write content.
Outsourcing is always an option but if it’s your company then you should be seen as the authority. And if you already know the information you won’t need to do much research. The only difficult part is writing the content and making it fun to read.
Inbound Marketing Basics
Marketing is a catch-all that means many things. I define marketing like this: anything that helps your company/product stand out and get attention from the consumer.Marketing can include print media, display ads, sponsored content, social marketing, or anything that gets eyeballs on your brand. The latest strategy is inbound marketing which often blends nicely with content marketing.
The idea of a company blog is to write valuable content and bring people to your site. Great content will rank in Google so this marketing strategy involves people finding your site organically rather than through paid marketing efforts.
Choosing what to write about is often the hardest part. But it all comes down to value.
For example, writing posts that answer questions about your business can drive people further into your site. This is one of the biggest reasons to create a blog for any company.
This works well for service-based companies and with e-commerce sites that want to sell products. Even the ecommerce platform WooCommerce has a blog.
Inbound marketing relies mostly on search queries from Google which consistently brings in traffic month-after-month. But you can also share blog posts on social media to build even more traction.
Inbound marketing is like a snowball rolling down a huge mountain. Week after week there won’t be many changes. But over a few years it’s possible to amass a huge blog full of amazing content that will keep converting new leads for many years to come.
Tips For Writing Great Content
Every company blog mostly looks and behaves the same. The one defining factor is the quality and volume of content.The very first step before writing anything is to come up with a content plan. I recommend using a spreadsheet program like Excel because it’ll help you track ideas. But if you prefer to start with paper that’s fine too.
Jot down as many questions, ideas, or topics related to your company. Try Googling them to see what comes up. Most topics already have content online, but it’s not all great content.
Check the first few results in Google and see how they look. Would any of them be useful to your customers? Or could you write a better post that offers more value? If yes then you definitely want to keep that idea saved.
Also try to focus on evergreen topics that never change. This term in blogging refers to “evergreen content”, which means content that never goes out of style.
If you can write posts that will always be useful then a post you write today can still bring in visitors ten years later. This type of content makes your blog stand out as an authority on the subject.
Beyond that you’ll need to just try stuff and see what works. I recommend reading this post to figure out how you should structure your content.
As for always writing great content there is no single correct way. But I do have three big tips you should follow.
Know Your Customers
This is useful for business and blogging. If you know your customers then you’ll know they typically go through a buying cycle.Some have no idea what they need, others have a vague idea but need recommendations. And some customers know exactly what they need but just need a push to get started.
Understand who you’re targeting with each blog post and try to cater to their needs. Sometimes you’ll want to explain things more technically and other times you’ll want to write more loosey-goosey. Test the waters and see what works best.
Offer Valuable Resources
Everyone loves free stuff. Use this to your advantage.Think about what kind of things your readers might enjoy. A list of free resources? A diagram explaining something complex? Interviews with professionals? Detailed case studies? Or maybe a bunch of free photos under a CC0 license.
Whatever you can offer try to make it the best stuff online. If you share something really useful then it’ll get shared around and people will find it. Free stuff is always valuable whether it’s something tangible or just information.
Don’t Be Afraid To Sell
Your company blog should hold valuable information but it’s also a marketing tool. Use it to drive readers to become customers at opportune moments.There are two common issues with a company blog; overselling or not selling enough.
Don’t be afraid to write posts that end with suggestions for your services. Or maybe try sprinkling links to your products into certain relevant posts.
You can also use social channels to promote your posts and build an audience on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.
If you write a lot of solution-based posts you can even try Quora marketing. This is where you publish answers on Quora offering real valuable content, then include a link to a post on your company blog with more info.
Think about selling as pushing value in the right context. Selling your company should feel natural in your writing. If you’re doing something and it feels spammy then it’s probably not a good idea.
But if a commercial link promoting your business can fit somewhere in your blog post then it’s a win-win for both parties.
5 Company Blogs That Rock
To wrap up I’d like to share five company blogs that do content marketing well. These companies are digital so they’re not the traditional brick and mortar businesses.However since content marketing is mostly digital it makes sense that digital entrepreneurs would know how to run blogs the best. Study these examples and see how they do things. Take stuff that works, reject what doesn’t, and add your own ideas to create an awesome company blog that stands out from the competition.
Kissmetrics Blog
The Kissmetrics blog is all about data analysis and optimization. They publish a lot of tips and case studies on basically everything under the sun. It’s actually a great source for getting started with content marketing.
Ahrefs Blog
I only recently found the Ahrefs blog while searching for marketing strategies. It has some of the most in-depth research pieces and case studies you can find. Again it covers Internet marketing so it’s very digital-oriented.
But they cover the topic well and this is by far one of the best company blogs I’ve read.
ThemeFuse Blog
ThemeFuse is a WordPress theme company that sells premium themes and plugins. They have a blog that offers a mix of promotional content along with informational content.
I think the content split is about 50/50 and it seems like a good angle. This helps existing ThemeFuse users who might want to customize plugins/themes, but it also helps regular developers who want to learn about building WordPress sites.
Jscrambler
In the world of programming there’s the Jscrambler blog which teaches frontend tooling and web development. It’s a niche audience but the Jscrambler service is only useful to people who write code.
This is why their blog is such a great idea. The company can help developers solve common problems while also building attention for their product.
Canva Blog
Canva is a digital graphics creator and it’s used prominently for marketing pieces. But they have a fantastic blog that teaches design lessons and offers tips for aspiring designers.
This is one of the newest blogs in my list but it has grown rapidly. Their content is phenomenal and it’s mostly all informational. Because the posts are pretty long they tend to rank higher in Google which drives even more attention to Canva’s brand.
These are my top 5 company blogs but they’re by no means the absolute best. Search online for your competitors and see if they run blogs. Gauge if their content is decent or “just enough” and then try to write content that’s even better!
Source: Vandelay Design
0 Comments