If you’re a business owner, you’ve probably wondered if a blog is really necessary for your business! You could possibly take into consideration the time, budget, and maintenance costs associated with running a blog, and ultimately tell yourself that it’s an unnecessary burden.

However, if properly done and managed, a business blog can increase awareness among your customers while improving your SEO, brand awareness and sales performance.

So, why start a business blog and how do you do it right? Elements of answer below!

Table of Contents

• Why would you want a business blog?
• Starting a business blog: what you need to know before you start
• The steps to create a business blog
  • Define the needs and objectives of a business blog
  • Which technology to choose to create the company’s blog?
  • Create or integrate a business blog into an existing site?
  • Define the audience for a business blog
  • What is the target of my business blog?
  • Define the editorial line of a business blog
  • Write content on your business blog
• Business blog: the most common mistakes
• Improve the visibility of a company’s blog

Why would you want a business blog?

Let’s take a quick look at some of the reasons you might want to start a business blog:

• Improve the brand image;
• Improve your SEO;
• Boost the content of a site;
• Retain a community;
• Improve customer relationships;
• Generate leads…

So many reasons that should make you consider the business blog as one of  the most effective tools in digital communication.

Starting a business blog: what you need to know before you start

Setting up a business blog should not be done lightly or in a hurry, otherwise there will be no benefit.

It can even be counterproductive, especially if it is poorly managed. It then becomes important to properly assess the budget to be devoted to it, to define your needs, to know your target, to define an editorial line, etc.

The steps to create a business blog

Whether you are a manager of a small company or a branded entrepreneur, it is essential to clearly define the steps for the creation of your business blog, especially in a highly competitive digital world where content is ROI.

A well-designed and maintained blog is not only a profitable way to boost your marketing, but can also become a real magnet to customers in a completely organic way.

Define the needs and objectives of a business blog

Defining the needs of a business blog means asking yourself “What is the purpose of my blog” or “What features will I need for my blog?”

This step will also allow you to choose a technology to create the company’s blog:

• Need for a mailing list:
  Obtaining the email addresses of your prospects and your customers is decisive in informing them of all the news orbiting around your activity.
  Consider developing a newsletter or integrating a registration form into your website in exchange for a gift such as an Ebook for example to expand your e-mailing list while respecting the standards of the RGPD.
• Boost your visibility and generate qualified traffic:
  The quality of content being the element considered primarily by search engines like Google, a blog is in fact a real gold mine to boost your visibility and generate qualified traffic. Optimize your articles for SEO and write them without spelling errors in order to make them in line with the SEO algorithms to improve their chance of ranking in the first results.
• Raise awareness on specific topics:
  Treat specific topics always closely related to your industry within your blog by offering quality content.
  Informing your visitors and raising their awareness regularly and free of charge is an excellent lever to possibly encourage them to buy your products or services.
• Offer guides, give advice:
  In the same trend, you can feed your business blog or even sub-sections within your website with personalized guides and advice, able to generate more interest. of your readers. In this sense, a forum is an excellent way to have direct contact with your visitors while answering their various questions in detail.
• Do surveys:
  Surveying your audience is also a good practice to provide content that specifically responds to their demands.
  Easy-to-use tools like Hubspot, Google Forms, Drag’n Survey or SurveyMoney will help you build interactive surveys to integrate into the heart of your business blog.
• Unique graphic
  charter : A graphic charter is generally made up of different characteristics including the company logo, its signature, the different reference fonts, color codes as well as the rules for integrating these elements according to the distribution media used.
  As a result, having a unique graphic charter linked to your entire website and your corporate blog greatly helps to strengthen your brand image.
• Improve your notoriety:
  Since Google places great value on content published on a website, it is undeniable that your content will end up obtaining better rankings, especially if it is of very high quality and properly optimized to SEO standards.
  Improve your notoriety with your business blog and propel your chances of becoming a leader in your industry.

Which technology to choose to create the company’s blog?

As a technology, you can choose between a CMS, a webapp (online solution), or create a tailor-made blog according to your needs and your budget to design your company’s blog:

• Create a business blog with a CMS (content management systems)
  Among the main CMS, we find WordPress, Joomla and Drupal mainly used for their ability to offer multiple facets highly customizable and rather easy to use.
  In most cases, these software do not require great technical knowledge in terms of coding and offer you ready-made and mobile-compatible (responsive) models that you just have to adapt according to your company’s graphic charter.
  Among the few disadvantages of a CMS for creating a business blog we often find hidden implementation costs to perfect the system according to the needs of the users and to tailor it perfectly to the image of the company.
• Create a blog with a webapp
  According to the main online solutions for creating a blog, you will have the choice between website editors such as Wix, Jimdo, Weebly, Hubspot, Squarespace, etc.
  The big advantage of using one of these applications lies mainly in the fact that you can easily build your blog thanks to real-time interfaces without adding a single line of code.
  However, this type of software may not be suitable for all companies to create their blog. Indeed, we quickly find ourselves limited in the level of customization offered. So forget about the tailor-made, professional-quality corporate blog.
• Creating a tailor-made blog
  One of the main advantages of creating a tailor-made blog is the possibility of completely personalizing it to the image of your company or yourself as a manager. You might be looking for a specific look or function related to your industry, top performance.
  With the help of a personalized blog, allow your business to tell the world what it does its own way.
  Whether it’s a font style, a design element, or a specific navigation tool, this type of bespoke development can look and work just the way you want it to. What’s more,as well as a much more enhanced user experience through its use.
  The cost and a large investment in terms of time are the biggest drawbacks of a personalized blog. A substantial budget will have to be planned, which mainly includes the cost of the agency’s services and the intervention of specific experts.

Create or integrate a business blog into an existing site?

It is advisable to integrate your blog directly into the company’s website, through a dedicated section for example.

The benefits in terms of seo will be better because they are also effective for the company’s site. However, it is entirely possible to start a full-fledged blog.

Define the audience for a business blog

It is imperative to determine the audience when embarking on a blog creation project in order to better target your content and define an editorial line. Also avoid targeting too broad at the risk of missing out.

It is therefore preferable to focus on a specific audience to benefit from a business blog.

To help you define the audience for a business blog, ask yourself these questions:

• Who are your products / services for?
• What makes the difference compared to the competition?
• What sets you apart from your competition?
• Who should your articles be addressed to?

What is the target of my business blog?

Defining your ideal client as well as possible will help you understand their habits, typical day, interests and needs. This will give you leads to create interesting content on your blog.

You can then answer these few questions:

• What is my catchment area?
• What type of customer is interested in my products/services?
• Why is he interested in it?

You thus define different profiles of people (personas) for whom your content will be highly likely to interest! This will then influence your editorial line to match their preferences, habits, intentions etc.

Define the editorial line of a business blog

It is essential here to define the ideas of subjects to be addressed. Identify the questions your audience is asking and find ideas for content by exploiting the web: it is possible to use community sites to do this, forums, Reddit, and even Youtube for inspiration.

For content ideas, you can also try answerThePublic for example.

Write content on your business blog

Schedule posts according to a schedule, write and ensure SEO optimization of your articles, then distribute them. Also consider optimizing old articles by adding new links to your new articles in their content for effective networking.

You are also advised To read our resource in detail here on Things to know before starting a professional blog?

Business blog: the most common mistakes

Your business blog can be the primary source of significant organic traffic to your website and help you build your authority in your target market. However, many novice blog owners are prone to making common mistakes that can compromise their positioning related to their industry.

Among the most frequent errors are:

1. Have no content strategy:  Many people start a blog, but never spend time thinking about a content strategy that fits their business model.
   If you blog without direction or planning, your business blog will likely end up being overwhelmed with the thousands of other blogs posted every day.
   Good to know: an average of 4.4 million blog posts are published on the net every day.
2. Undervalue the budget:  Something often overlooked, evaluating your budget is of utmost importance when setting up your business blog. Writing your own blog posts is not always easy, because you have a business to manage and writing optimized for the web is a profession.
   A blog post can cost anywhere from $ 100 up to $ 1000 for articles from expert bloggers.
   Remember that you have to define a certain number of quality articles to start getting results in terms of visibility and a possible return on investment.
   It is therefore crucial to properly estimate your budget before you start.
3. Create inappropriate content-Bad editorial line:  It is known, bad content is worse than no content at all! Always keep in mind that the content is not just filler on the beautiful designs of your website.
   What you offer as reading on your articles or pages are the main reasons people come to your website. Creating inappropriate content under a bad editorial line is therefore a dangerous practice capable of seriously damaging your brand image.
4. Poorly targeted content:  Content of course, but if it is poorly targeted, it will have a negative impact, in particular on the organic traffic of your website. Many webmasters forget for whom and for what purpose their content marketing is done.
   While it is important to invest a significant amount of time in spelling and grammar, it is just as fundamental to ensure the production of content that helps you achieve results according to your target market.
5. Abandonment, lack of animation, publications:  A lack of animation in the form of interaction or publication is not only a bad indicator for your visitors, but also for the search engines.
   This practice effectively reflects a lack of professionalism on your part vis-a-vis your visitors, but it is also a negative indicator for your organic seo.
6. Not improving existing content:  Another practice often noticed even among experts is the lack of improvement of existing content. For example, a 5-year-old SEO blog post is likely to need updating due to changing algorithms.
   It is always a good idea to regularly review your content not only on the written part, but also on the level of your different media (sounds, images, videos, etc.).
   Tailoring your old content to best match your current business journey can further improve your website traffic, sales, and get you even closer to your goals.

Improve the visibility of a company’s blog

The creation and integration of a blog in a site, it is thus to improve the contents of the site, but it is also a way to improve the visibility of a company. And to help improve the visibility of the company blog, there are also several tips:

• Take care of the writing of articles by optimizing it for SEO: The proper optimization of your existing content as well as your possible content is essential if you want to boost organic traffic on business blog, as well as improve the overall user experience.
  The best known tip is to incorporate the right keywords and phrases without overdoing them and to eliminate all sources of superfluous content to provide content suitable for your visitors as well as the search engines.
• Relay on social networks: A regularly active activity on social networks reveals a real professionalism both for your subscribers, but also for Google.
  Be careful, however, to identify the most appropriate networks for your business.
• The newsletter relay:  Although neglected, the newsletter is also an excellent asset for improving the visibility of a business blog.
  This is an electronic letter sent in phase with the publication of your new articles to inform your readers via their email address.
• Create different content formats: In addition to your articles, creating different content formats is a great way to boost the visibility of your blog on the web. Media such as podcasts, guides, infographics, interviews or even webinars are very interesting elements that you can integrate as other sources of content.
• Bring in Professionals: It is recommended that you hire professionals if you are having difficulty increasing the visibility of your business blog.

You could use web agencies, specialized in SEO and website creation for example, or even call on a community manager or web marketing experts who will be able to guide you step by step.