Whether you work for a large company or are a small business, having a blog should be an integral part of your marketing plan because everyone is doing it!

There are also many other benefits that your company will receive from having a Blog:

You will drive targeted traffic straight to your website.

If your business has social media profiles then this is the perfect opportunity to drive this traffic back to your website by using lead-generated calls to action.

Blogging will increase your online presence and help your business get discovered by new visitors.

Every time you create a new post it gives current followers the opportunity to share your post via Facebook, Twitter etc.

Every time you post a piece of content a new page will be indexed on search engines.

This is especially beneficial because Google will see that your site is being kept up to date posting quality content. This can also boost your rankings in search engines also and drive organic traffic back to your website.

You can strengthen your social reach with blog content and driving new website visitors to your blog via social media channels.

Create content that can answer common customer questions or content that informs the customer of new developments. This then establishes you/ your business as the experts of your field. This will then reassure the customer that they know where to turn to if they have any questions in future.

A blog post can deliver long-lasting results.

For example, say you spend an hour on a new blog post, you publish it and send it out to your social media channels which takes around 20 minutes. After one day your post has 200 views and 10 leads,  the following day that same post has received 100 more views and an extra 5 leads. The post could even be 3 or 4 years old and still generate traffic and leads to it. So that one hour and 20 minutes you spent can be worthwhile.

This is another opportunity for your business to out-blog the competition. You can post relevant content that answers your customers queries directly or by posting direct news, tutorials etc. You can be more trustworthy  to post useful information than others blogs you will retain more loyal followers. Build relationships with regular followers and or influencers who share your content to other users which will boost your online authority, therefore boosting traffic. By showing you care about what you post, your audience, your web-analytics, keeping an eye on competitors blogs and web-analytics and your online reputation- by doing this you’ll be sure to prove to the audience and the competition that you are human and mean business.

Encourage user participation on your Blog/ social media sites- Good and Bad

Have your viewers/ customers in mind whenever you post a new piece of content, this is crucial if you want to make your blog successful.

Invite your customers to leave a response in the comments section. Having this type of call to action (CTA) at the end of a blog post is a great way to cultivate genuine relationships with your customers which in turn will lead to loyal followers and enforce your authority. This is also a great method to learn how your customers respond to new products/ services and gain a better insight into what you need to do to improve things  which can allow that product/ service to generate more sales.

Customers want to feel valued, build empathy into your market research processes to find out what makes people take action online (Sharing, Liking posts etc.) By doing this you can use your business to serve these purposes with the creation of new services/products.

Personally engage with customers

If they leave a positive comment thank them personally for taking the time to read your blog.

When starting a Blog it is important to establish an open and respectful environment but be prepared for backlashes.

An important side-note

If a reader leaves a negative comment its not the end of the world there are things you can do to nip it in the bud and it all comes down to how you handle that situation. Stay polite and have empathy to the reader when writing them a response and making their opinion seem valued may result in having a sincere conversation rather than an argument where everyone then has the opportunity to jump on the band-wagon.By handling negative situations this way, your online reputation isn’t tarnished your revenue does not impede and you will be known to have  great customer service.

So what tips do you have to making your blog successful? Let us know in the comment section below! You can read more on our Gambit Nash blog here