The primary objective of a business blog is to create valuable resources for your target audience, which will, in turn, make them interested in your business. Today, it is regarded as one of the core components of inbound marketing strategy. Having a business blog not only enhances brand awareness, but also helps you generate more inbound links, indexed pages, leads, and conversions.
Business blogging can be extremely productive if done right. Like every other business initiatives, there is a right approach of maintaining a successful business blog and, quite obviously, a wrong way as well. While many businesses are starting to recognise the importance of having a business blog, that doesn’t mean all of them are doing it right.
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It’s not rocket science, but there are a few small yet crucial things which can have a drastic impact on the success of your blogging initiative. In this article, we will explore five fatal business blogging bloopers that you must avoid at all costs.
1. You are posting uninformative content
Does it even need an explanation? Poor content quality is the main reason why so many business blogs fail to impress target readers. If your blog posts are neither informative nor engaging, readers will turn away for sure. Make sure that the content you are publishing are providing the readers valuable information. Readers’ interests and desires must be the number one priority while selecting the blog topics.
2. You are publishing content inconsistently
There is one common element among all successful business blogs: consistent posting schedule. Businesses that are making the most out of blogging are the ones that publish content frequently.
In a nutshell, you can’t afford to write at your own whims and wishes. You need to come up with a regular content schedule so that the readers can anticipate new content and check in regularly. If bandwidth is a real concern for you, consider outsourcing content creation activities to a reliable freelance writer.
3. Your blog is not optimised for search engines
It’s a fact that organic traffic is essential for the success of any business blog. If you are not making a conscious attempt to optimise your blog for search engines, then you are missing out on a tremendous opportunity to grow your community and turn your readers into customers. So learn the nitty-gritty of SEO techniques, do your keyword research, follow the best practices and let the search algorithms find your content with greater ease.
4. You are failing to promote effectively
What’s the use of creating outstanding content if there’s no one to read and appreciate your thoughts? That’s why effective content promotion is important.
Leverage the reach of social media platforms to introduce your business to new users. Implement social sharing buttons to ensure that your blog is actually gaining some traction on social channels. Guest posting on high authoritative sites can be another useful tactic to attract visitors to your blog. List building, forum posting and promoting content to your target audience through email outreach can also bring good results.
5. You are ignoring smartphone users
Failing to optimise blog content for mobile devices is one of the latest additions to the growing list of business blogging mistakes. Look around to see how many people around you are using smartphones to access content online and you will readily understand the importance of making your blog content mobile friendly.
Today, mobile optimisation is a must if you want your blog to be accessed anywhere and at any time. Responsive design is here to stay and the sooner you adapt to responsiveness, the better it is for the success of your business blog.
Final Words
A business blog is a powerful tool that can help your business grow in the right direction. It’s a marketing funnel with the ability to turn readers into customers. However, to extract the maximum ROI from your blogging efforts, it is important to avoid the common mistakes discussed above. Done right, your business blog has the potential to become a vital business asset in the longer run.
Feature image: NOGRAN s.r.o. via Flickr.
