Startup Tips: Why and How a Blog Can Help Your Business Grow
A blog is very important for every startup. If you are just starting a new brand, it is a tool you can effectively use to boost your business. Even if your product is still at the idea stage, starting a blog will help you to build a community around your brand. Having a blog will give you the online presence that you require and it can also be used as one of your marketing channels.
Are you planning to launch your business soon? Did you just launch a new business? This article will direct you through the procedure of setting up a blog. You will get detailed information that you need to have a blog for your new business. Please carry on reading, so you can build it the right way.
Before we proceed to inform you about how to go about setting up a blog, you need to know why you should have one. You might have heard about startup blogging and you have not paid close attention to the topic.
There are many reasons why you need a blog for your startup. We would not be able to explain all, but, we would list the important ones.
- Update: A blog, when properly used is a great platform to inform your clients. A Startup needs to send launching news, product releases, company announcements, press conferences, and other news related to the business. This can be made easier with the help of a blog.
- Relationship/Confidence: For a startup, gaining the hearts of your audience is one of your main priorities. A blog can help you to create the right perception in your audience. A blog can be used to convert visitors to clients. When your blog posts are valuable, visitors help you to share them to other platforms.
- Traffic: Starting a blog for your startup will help to drive traffic to your website. You need to include some keywords in your blog posts that will help to gain visitors to your website. This will also increase your chances of being ranked high in SEO ranking.
What Should My Business Blog Be About?
Many people usually ask this question. They always say they would love to blog, but they do not know what to talk about to their audience. Remember that if a blog is not valuable, it would not generate traffic and it would not be shared. Your audience will just scroll their screen and leave the page.
Before you start blogging, you need to ask yourself these questions; who are my target audience? Who are my prospective customers, partners or sponsors? Who are those that would have an interest in your product and services? Do your research to answer these questions and let us continue.
Here are some recommendations on what to blog on;
- Your Industry: In the early days of your startup, you need to have effective blog posts introducing your business and the problems you want to solve. You need to give your audience reasons to check back on a regular basis
- Useful Content: You need to blog on topics that would be useful to your potential customers. The content must be informative and you should blog on topics that you are knowledgeable at. These could include lessons learned; personal experiences when launching the business, the motivation behind your startup and lots more.
- Products: Your blog can be used to share a passionate story about how your product/service has solved someone’s problem. You can make a description of how your product will look like in the next few years. You can also tell your audience how your product fits into the universe. Market predictions can be made and referred to later on your blog.
Hopefully, by now, you should be aware of possible topics to write about. All blog posts should be properly organized to attract and retain the right audience. You should draft a blog outline that portrays the vision of your startup and it should be strictly followed. Please do your research to formulate one.
Types of Blog Posts For Your Business
Let’s have a quick look at the types of blog posts that you can use for your blog. Here are the main types and a brief description:
- Listicles: As the name implies, they are written in the form of a list. They are very effective in generating traffic because of their simple and easy nature. However, you should not forget to make the content valuable and informative. Your audiences are more likely to share these blogs.
- Interviews: As an entrepreneur, during your preliminary research, you should have interviews with experts in your industry. These interviews should provide answers to your client’s questions.
- How-To’s: We are in a world where people want to try things out themselves. This type of blog posts focuses on “DO IT YOURSELF” guides. They should focus on specific subjects that are important to your audience. Ultimate guides are similar to this type of blog, but they are more specific and they increase your chances of getting high SEO ranking.
- Image-based content: This will really go a long way in helping you generating traffic. You can work with a graphic designer to make this work well. The images should be unique, meaningful, and related to the blog texts.
What are Blogging Strategies and How to Use Them?
The world is constantly changing. As a blogger, you need to stay updated with the latest blogging trends and adapt to it. Your audience would be disappointed if your blog is not up to standard and you might lose traffic.
Here are some useful tips you can begin with;
- The Length: Always remember that quality is always better than quantity. You do not want to bore your audience with too long posts. Average posts of 1,500+ words do better in terms of search traffic.
- Include Images: They make blogs attractive and it encourages visitors to share your blog posts. Images include charts, graphs, infographics, and lots more.
- Consistency: This encourages your visitors to become a permanent audience. Luckily, they might be your next clients. Your audience would not want to read an old post when they visit your blog.
- Formatting: Your text and images should be professionally arranged. It is recommended that your title should not be more than 60-70 character titles. Make use of bullet points, headers also make blog posts readable. They also help the audience to prioritize content.
Growing Your Startup
First of all, get a suitable and unique domain name for your blog. Select a preferred theme for your blog because the theme determines the look of your blog. You can also make use of some webmaster tools to create a tracking code for your website.
We hope this article has taught you the basics of startup blogging. All you need to do is follow these guidelines step by step and maximize the benefits of owning a blog for your startup. For any additional questions or help, feel free to reach out. We’d love to help your business succeed.