When a visitor comes to your company’s website for the first time, what impression do you want them to come away with? Ideally, they should see a site that is well-designed, easy to navigate, and filled with engaging content. Above all, your website should be dynamic. That is, it should project an image of a company that is relevant, up-to-date, and continually evolving. Having a regular business blog is the best way to do that.
The benefits of a business blog are numerous. Not only does a blog provide you with a means of regularly updating your site, but it also gives you a valuable way to communicate more directly with your audience. By publishing smart, well-researched content every week, you can give your visitors a reason to return to your site. There’s just one challenge you have to surmount—how do you bring that traffic to your blog in the first place? Here are some techniques that can help you build a loyal audience for your blog:
Keep your formats versatile—and surprising.
Try to put yourself in the place of a visitor to your blog, and scroll down the page. Does anything catch your eye? What prompts you to stop and read? Do all the posts look the same, or is there plenty of variety? Experimenting with different blog lengths, adding graphics and videos to add visual interest, and even keeping headlines diverse and interesting will help to keep your readers interested.
Emphasize quality over quantity.
If your blog’s readers find new posts every time they come back to your blog, they’ll be pleasantly surprised—unless they go on to discover that most of the updates are of poor quality. If you find yourself publishing too much trivial or half-baked content, your readership is likely to dwindle. While it’s important to post regularly, it’s more important to make sure that your content is as strong as possible.
Change up your posting schedule.
While you may want to have a regular posting schedule in place, you should also be careful to avoid getting locked into a routine that is too strict. If you’re only publishing on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, for example, you’re missing out on the potential audience you might be getting on Wednesdays and even Saturdays. Publishing on less-popular business days may even give you a boost over your competition. If you want to get your content in front of as many eyes as possible, keep your content schedule flexible.
React to current trends and themes.
While you should publish your fair share of evergreen posts—that is, posts that are relevant to readers at any time of year—it’s also a good idea to keep an eye on the calendar. Learn to anticipate holidays and special events such as Black Friday so you can write content about them in advance. This gives search engines time to notice your posts, so your audience will be more likely to come across them.
Social media provides you with a means of instantly spreading the news every time you publish an update on your blog. It’s a good idea to get in the habit of posting a link on Twitter and Facebook every time you have a new blog post, even if you don’t have a large following on either platform yet. As your social media following grows, you’ll see more and more traffic coming to your blog. Be sure to use hashtags to make it easier for people to come across your posts, and don’t forget to engage with anybody who comments on them or retweets them.
Learn to make your headlines sharper.
The headline may be the first thing that anybody reads, but you don’t want your readers to stop there. To ensure that your audience is inspired to keep reading, you need to make your headlines taut, clear, and intriguing. Look at other successful blogs and observe how they craft their headlines to appeal to readers. You’ll notice a few trends—for example, using action verbs to make headlines vivid and concrete, not airy and vague. Using numbers is also a good way to hook a casual reader into checking out an entire article. The more you practice, the easier it will be to write good headlines.
Every great website needs a great blog. If you want to find out just how effective a well-researched, professionally written blog can be, it’s time to connect with Pennington Creative. Our writing team can provide you with the first-class blog copy you need to maintain a strong, dynamic web presence. To learn more about our services, go to our website and send us a message today!
