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5 Ways to Create a Business Blog for Your Target Audience

Posted on January 16, 2018 by NextJSjointviews

Business blogs pull traffic and are central to your content marketing success. According to Hubspot, B2B companies that blog more than 11+ times a month attracted 3X times more traffic than those blogging once a month. The success of your best blogs only compounds over time and one successful blog can get you consistent leads for years to come.

The essential aim of creating business blogs is to grow your traffic and reach new markets. For this to happen, your blog must talk to the right market about what they are searching for. Here are five ways to help you create a business blog for your target audience.

1. Know Your Topic

It is essential that business blog writers are well versed with the products and services that you offer. A good blog gives people answers that they cannot find elsewhere and in the form that is easy to understand.

Research the content which is already available online. Study the statistics of the bigger blogs and try to break their monopoly over the audience. This can be done by giving more in-depth knowledge or presenting the same information in an easier form. In any case your blog will sound better if they are written by someone who is an expert in your industry.

Apart from knowing the company’s products it is important to know the branding and philosophy behind a business. This is because your blog is your voice online.
The most important skill to make a blog successful after understanding the topic is the ability to present it in a simple way.

2. Know Your Audience

Right marketing is all about finding the right market and fine-tuning your message to them. Before you start writing the blog always ask these four questions to yourself about the audience:

a. Who are they?
b. What do they need?
c. How much do they need?
d. When do they need it?

Firstly, who are they? This question should answer who your audience really is. Are they small business owners? Do they require information to grow their business? Are they big business owners and need solutions to organize their business?

What do they need? Will the topic you are writing about help them? The title of the blog should catch their attention. The audience should get an instant feeling of security after reading the blog title itself. They should feel “Yes, this blog is going to help me solve my problem.”

How much do they need? It is very important that you understand the main goal of your blog and provide the right amount of information. Avoid overwhelming the readers with too much information or too little information.

When do they need it? At which stage of their business would they need assistance from your blog? If their business is at an initiating phase then how can you help them? Will the same blog be able to help people who have already set up their businesses?

After answering all these questions, make a buyer persona of your audience and write the blog as if you are conversing with them. You now know what, how, why, and when they want information, you just have to provide them with the right answers.

3. Organize the Blog

Organizing the blog includes many factors such as having a strong introduction, structuring the content, breaking the paragraphs after regular intervals, and making the blog look clean.

Using images and videos is a great way to hold attention of the audience. Statistics show that blogs with images get 94% more views compared to blogs with no images.

Remember to include all the necessary information in your blog. Do not shy away from long form blogs that get to the depths of topic. Long blogs with detailed explanation are in-fact doing better in SEO results nowadays.

4. Monitor and Update Your Blogs
This simply means that you should regularly keep track of what the audience wants. Which type of blogs does the audience prefer and how can you evolve your blog into that type. Regularly update your best performing blogs to keep them relevant.

You can even create a small feedback form that your audience can fill once they have read one of your blogs. This will help you create better blogs in the future and at the same time you would be creating a data base of your readers as well.

5. Online Presence
One of the most important steps in creating a successful blog is ensuring its visibility. Visibility is essential for any blog in order to reach its target audience.

In 2017, 66% of marketers reported using blogs in their social media content. This would help you get audience from all the platforms but more importantly you will easily be able to understand how your blog is performing. You will be able to see what people are sharing, liking, re-tweeting etc.

Final Thoughts

These are some ways for creating a successful business blog. Once you understand your audience and their needs, you are on the path of success with the help of your ideas. After all, content marketing is all about giving your customers what they want.

Now that you have the pointers to create a great blog, go ahead and start writing. One last tip would be to write consistently. The more you understand your audience and write for them, the better your blog will get.

Top 7 Benefits of Blogging on Your Website

Posted on October 31, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Most small business owners are confused whether to include blogging in their content marketing strategy. This is primarily because they do not know how they can regularly create high-quality content and the skills required for the same.

However, the fact is that investing in a content publication strategy can be extremely fruitful, leading to improvement in search visibility, leads, and conversions. Start your content strategy with a company blog and get ready to experience the top 7 benefits of blogging on your website:

Enhances search engine traffic

Blogging is just like fishing – when you have more hooks in the water, chances to catch a fish are higher. Adding content to your website increases the number of pages indexed by search engines. Every new blog on your website gives you the opportunity to rank higher for keywords relevant in your industry. This further helps to enhance web traffic organically.

Adds a voice and personality

Your home page or about page sticks to information about your business and the services you offer. A blog post, on the other hand, allows you touch on issues that are of interest to your prospects. It enables you to voice your opinions. It adds a human approach to your brand giving you a unique personality that clicks better with the target audience. The likeability quotient of the brand also improves.

Assists with social media activities

Maintaining a social media presence requires a continuous generation of content. Most of the time, small business owners resort to sharing other people’s content on their own pages. While this is an effective strategy, it won’t take you far. You need to redirect people to your own website in order to be able to directly pull customers for your products and services. Sharing your own blog posts on your social media pages comes in handy here.

Additionally, blog posts help in creating email newsletters. Simply compile the blogs of last week or list the top 10 and shoot a newsletter to all your readers.

Establish Authority

With a blog, you can position yourself as an expert in the industry. You can share information and insights related to the current trends and build trust among the target audience. A brand that has established authority through its content tends to familiarize with prospects and remains in their top-of-mind recall, thereby generating more queries and leads.

Pulls up conversion rates

A blog with content updated actively shows that the business is alive, updated and loved. This is why just having a blog is not enough. The blog needs to be updated with high-quality content regularly to establish brand loyalty. Customers see the expertise and innovation the brand brings to the table through their blog and helps to improve conversion rates.

Helps with long-tail keyword rankings

If a website does not have a blog, ranking well for long-tail search queries will be a challenge. Regular industry-specific keywords can be easily taken care of; however, when it comes to targeted keywords with special search queries, content is vital. It is the only tool that helps you rank for the less commonly searched queries.

Facilitates two-way communication

Blogging allows two-way communication. It gives users the opportunity to comment and interact with the brand on industry updates, company updates, and launch announcements. Any feedback from the customers can be recorded through the blog and getting an insight into the customers’ perspective is essential for the marketing team. Your next marketing initiatives can also be planned on the basis of the inputs you have received from your customers.

Conclusion

Blogging on your website is an important way to differentiate your business from that of the competitors. Sharing such content allows you to express your own words, your own thoughts and insights building a trust factor and connect with the target audience. This further impacts the search traffic and ultimately sales positively.

Blogging is more crucial for small business owners as it gives them the opportunity to compete with the big brands without spending much. Blogging is cost effective and you don’t have to set aside a large marketing budget to execute a content strategy.

How to Do Keyword Research for Content Marketing [10 New Strategies]

Posted on September 13, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Most bloggers and website owners constantly have queries such as “How to increase traffic to my blog” and “How do I get more readers for my blog”. Search results to such queries often include experts sharing valuable tips, techniques and strategies to increase traffic. But how many of those techniques genuinely bring you traffic?

From the experience of dealing with Jointviews content marketing clients, the big takeaway is that picking up the right topic can bring in lot of traffic naturally. So here we share what the Jointviews team has learnt about choosing blog topics to bring more traffic to your website.

Figure 1: Popular Google searches for increasing blog traffic

Take time to understand the business properly – No matter whether it’s your own or that of a client, take time to learn what your business is actually dealing with. Not how you understand it, but how the masses understand it.

Study it like you used to study subjects back in school before an exam. It will help in understanding the different elements of the business very clearly and naturally you will get numerous topic ideas.

For example, if you have a website selling cakes, you could generate topics such as “How to make a cake?” “Which are the best cakes in the world?”

You could also talk about “cakes and culture”, about the “individual ingredients” used to make cakes, countries where cakes are more popular, and so on… A deep understanding of your business thus provides you an extra edge in presenting effective content.

Talk to your sales team –Once you get a good idea of the business, talk to the sales team to understand what actual conversations they have with prospects and customers.

They will offer a completely different view from what you formed by studying theoretically about the business. You would be able to understand easily and the sales perspective will give insights to real world problems.

Taking the above example of cakes, your sales person might be able to say “people ask for white forest much more often than black forest” whereas you might actually be concentrating more on producing black forest.

Also, people might want something specific – like personalizing the cake when getting it delivered. In short, it helps in understanding what your audience specifically wants from you.

You could even prepare a FAQ section on your website to address the questions that your audience keeps asking your sales team.

Look at Google popular searches – once you have a good theoretical and real world understanding, it’s time to start Googling. Search for common industry terms, queries, etc and look at the ‘Related searches’ and ‘People also ask’ sections.

The terms mentioned here are pure gold. You can also look at Google’s predictive search terms. Note the ones which frequently appear in multiple searches.

Such terms can be used to generate blog articles with good traffic, also these could provide ideas for Big Rock Content (A comprehensive blog about a particular topic answering a wide range a queries about a particular topic). They can also provide you infographics and video ideas.

Look at Q&A sites such as Quora – Once you are armed with a decent number of search terms, it’s time to cross check them in popular Q&A sites such as Quora.

This is done to confirm these are popular topics and also to see if there are valuable content available on the given topics. Save the Q&A’s if there is valuable content.

There would also be related content which might give further ideas about new topics. At times, you would be able to write on exactly same topics given in related content sections with a lot more research around the web and in real life.

Also, if you go through the answers, you can digest information and generate new topic ideas which can be exceptionally good.

Prepare for Voice Search – Voice search is touted to be the next big thing in online marketing. Most voice searches come in the form of questions. Talking to sales team and looking at Q&A sites would help this to a large extent.

You could also use tools such as AnswerThePublic to find out even more queries that the public audience have regarding your industry. Forums are another source of good questions people are asking about.

Some characteristics of voice search are

Search queries are conversational in nature and hence lengthy
Most voice searches are local searches. People are looking for a place to hangout, do some shopping, a restaurant, etc
Short, straight to the point answers are expected. People are mostly on the go while doing voice search. So they are looking for direct answers.

Beyond proving to be a good source of content, these questions can also help you find gaps in your business or industry, and by addressing them, your business could grow a lot more.

Connect with entertainment – Having gone through Google and Q&A sites, you would probably have a stash of relevant topics with good search volume. Now, if you are looking to increase the traffic to your site, using entertainment topics related to your industry can be highly useful.

The audience would be dormant. They will not actively convert. But, it offers good branding opportunity.

For example, look at the search results of “movies about marketing and sales” given below. You can see Hubspot ranks first. Not IMDB, Hollywood reporter or even Wikipedia, but Hubspot – a marketing software company.

The topic need not be related to movies alone. It can be games, sports, health, etc. You just have to do enough research to find the right topic and collect enough information.

Search for emerging technologies – New, interesting technologies often experience a mass curiosity wave. If you keep your eyes and ears open for new technologies and find out as much as you can about them and how they can be applied to your business, it will help generate great topics that will bring in significant traffic over time.

For instance, there is VR. A Google search for a long tail keyword like ‘uses of virtual reality in entertainment’ will reveal there aren’t many relevant results. So, it is an opportunity to rank quickly if you produce the right content.

Continuing with the earlier example of cakes, you could talk about how VR can help your customer have a much more realistic shopping experience from wherever they are.

They could look through the menu, check different cake designs and make a far better choice than just ordering online from your website. Talking about such concepts which spur human imagination to unchartered territory can gain a lot of attention.

Keep Tab of Latest News – You can use Google alerts and Google trends to identify latest news that are popular with users in your industry. This would help identify trending topics, and if you can quickly get relevant content created, the benefits are going to be immense.

Use tools such as BuzzSumo, THEHOTH, RankReveal– Marketing tools are dime a dozen these days. It can be very difficult to pick the right ones for the right tasks. For choosing the best topics, tools such as BuzzSumo, TheHoth and RankReveal can help. BuzzSumo helps you find the most social blogs written on a particular topic on the web.

The free version is very limited, but can be helpful when you are out of topic ideas. RankReveal and TheHoth’s free search engine ranking tools both reveal keywords for which you are ranking. When used wisely, both can help you make surprising topic discoveries to boost traffic to your website.

Use site search and Google Analytics queries – If you already have a good amount of visitors to your website, looking at popular site search and Google analytics queries will help understand what people are looking for.

Once you understand these, you will be able to create topics on exactly the same topics or even modify existing ones for more traffic.

How to approach once you get the topics

Each topic should be the best available answer in that particular niche. If it’s a low competition keyword, even an average blog would rank. But if the competition rises in future, you will slowly lose traffic. So maintaining quality language and information is very important for the success of your blog.

While ensuring it is the best answer, also ensure it is user friendly. Add relevant images, videos, infographics and if possible add a personal touch by relating to everyday circumstances.

If it is a competitive keyword, you can go that extra mile and include other resources such as downloadable files and videos.

Also,

At least once in a week, take a look at the traffic your blogs bring in, and keep an eye open for chances to improve the content of the blog. It can be as simple as adding couple of new lines or an image. But keep the blog updated. Your rankings can significantly improve if such updates are good and worthy.

Finally,

Success is not just about passion, techniques and hard work. All these factors matter; But more importantly, you should have the perseverance to go the distance. You should face the reality that results don’t arrive in a short period for most businesses.

So, when you pick these topics and write, you should give it enough time and support by distributing it online through various channels for it to show the desired results.

How Blogging Helps Ecommerce Businesses in the Long Run

Posted on August 21, 2017 by NextJSjointviews

Is blogging helpful for an ecommerce website? The answer is a resounding ‘Yes’.

Take the case of Marcus Sheridan owner of River Pools and Spas. His blog post on fiberglass pool costing led to sales worth more than $1.7 million for his swimming pool company.

While it is rare for a single blog post to lead to such huge amount in sales, there are numerous small businesses that have seen substantial increase in their conversion over the long term. According to a study by Hubspot, businesses that blog get 55% more visitors and 97% more inbound links.

Here is how blogging can help your ecommerce site in the long run:

Blogging improves SEO

Blogging regularly leads to better ranking on search engines such as Google and Bing. More blog posts mean more indexed pages for Google to crawl. An average company that blogs has 434% more indexed pages compared to one that does not blog. This translates to better ranking on Google.

Search engines also prefer sites that are updated regularly with fresh content. This is why adding new blog posts regularly will boost your rankings.

Blogging will also give you an opportunity to rank for keywords that do not fit into your product pages. For example an ecommerce website selling bicycles cannot target popular keyword ‘best bicycles for mountain trails’ unless they write a blog about it. Blogging will also increase keyword density of important keywords in your site and drive up your rankings.

Lastly blogging allows other bloggers or businesses to link to your informative post and earn you precious back links. Blogs are also sharable and this helps to optimize your site for search engines.

Helps in Branding

All successful businesses are great storytellers. Nobody wants to visit a site with just a list of products. Blogging is an effective way to tell your brand story.

Blog lends a personality and voice to your website. Visitors can know more about your business and product philosophy through blogs. Blogs can be used to connect with your visitors and build a relation with them.

An informative blog that addresses reader’s pain points will keep them coming back for more. Educating your readers with what they are passionate about will build a certain brand authority in their mind. They will turn to you for any query in your industry. This helps to establish a loyal online community that values your brand.

Increases Conversions

Yes, blogging has a direct impact on your sales conversions too. In fact, businesses that prioritize blogging experience 13 times increase in ROI according to Hubspot. This is because of the continuous stream of traffic that blogs drive to your website. The marketing ‘rule of 7’ says that most of your prospects won’t buy from you unless they have seen your brand at least seven times.

A quality blog will keep your audience coming back and make sure that you are on top of their mind when they think of purchase in your industry.

Supports Content Marketing and Inbound Sales

Blogging provides a continuous stream of content to drive your content marketing. Sharing others content can build audience, but how do you make sure your following becomes your traffic to ecommerce site?

Blogs are an integral part of inbound methodology to convert visitors into leads. This can be done by inserting a call to action in your blog itself. This could be a discount coupon, free guidebooks or free shipping in lieu of their email id.

Sharing your own quality content will build your brand authority, drive traffic and also convert it to customers in your ecommerce business.

Customer Touch point

Blogs are also a great way to be in touch with your prospects and customers. Encourage your readers to comment on your post to have a dialogue with them. This drives up user engagement and gives your readers a sense on involvement in the business. Blog comments can also be used to choose the next topic for your blog. Many of the successful blogs just answer the most pressing questions that customers in their industry have. Encouraging a two way communication on your blogs will drive user engagement, conversion and feedback.

The importance of a blog for an ecommerce site must be clear after reading this. So have you started on your blogging journey yet?