If you have any kind of business and have a website, you have maybe heard that it is good for your website and business to blog.

But how can blogging help you and what kind of results can it give you?

I have done extensive blogging myself to test this, and in this article, I will share some tips with you about how to promote your business by blogging and give you some good ideas on how to get started.

And let me reveal right away that it is something that can definitely help you and your business almost no matter what line of business you are in.

A basic understanding of blogging

Maybe you do not know too much about blogging yet, so let’s first go over a few basic things about blogging. It might sound scary, but it does not have to be.

Blogging is basically nothing else than you writing an article about a certain topic and posting it on your website. Many people get scared when they hear the phrase “to write an article” because they feel they are not a writer.

But the thing is – you do not have to be a writer.

So do not think about it like you have to write a long article for a newspaper or for school etc. It is basically just you communicating some thoughts and ideas in writing, and if you follow a few writing tips, it is not so difficult, so no need to be scared about that.

It is not much different from talking to a friend explaining them about something – on a blog it is just in writing. And if you have problems with grammar, there are also some great free tools that can help you with this, so it is something anyone can do.

How can blogging help promote your business?

So now you know that blogging basically just means writing something for your website – but how can that help promote your business and make you more money?

There are a number of different ways it can help:

Option 1 – Blogging gives your website traffic:

First of all, most consumers start online when they are looking for any kind of service or product. Therefore, most businesses have a website to be able to be found, and you might already also have one.

So to get any kind of attention and thereby get more customers, you need traffic to your website, and you need people to be able to find your website.

To understand how blogging can help people find your website, you need to understand some basic things about how search engines like google work – they love new quality content.

That means that when you create great blog posts on your website, you slowly start getting more and more attention from the search engines and more and more people will be able to find you. I will give an example of how this has worked for me later in this article.

I just want to emphasize on the quality aspect as sometimes I see people think it is just about writing something and what they feel they want to say. But it needs to focus on what your audience and potential customers need information about.

It should not be about selling but about giving them useful and in-depth information about something they are looking for online.

Furthermore, when you create blog posts about topics that are relevant to your business, you will have more pages that are “out there” online and can be found – the more quality pages you have, the more people are able to find you.

Therefore, blogging can be a great way to get more traffic to your website by getting better rankings in the search engines. Thereby you will have more traffic, more people will know about you, and you will have more customers – and this can work for any kind of business, as I will explain a little later.

Option 2 – Blogging can help to brand yourself:

In addition to giving your website more traffic, blogging can be used to brand yourself.

This of course takes time, but if you regularly write blog posts about interesting and relevant topics within your field of business, you will slowly start being known, and more and more people will start coming to you to use your services or products – assuming they are of good quality, which I am sure they are:-)

According to the freelance copywriter Susan Greene, it can simply be explained like this “Your content gets your name in front of your prospects on a regular basis. They develop respect and trust for your organization. When they’re ready to make a purchase, your name is the one that comes to mind”.

I do however want to give a little caution about the branding aspect. Do not go overboard with this and make it into self-promoting blog posts that are mostly about you and how great you or your products are.

Do not focus on yourself in your blog posts – focus on what you can write that will really help visitors. Then they will see the value, and people will start talking about you automatically.

Being overly self-promoting can backfire. So focus on giving genuine information that can help people and answer questions or concerns for them.

Option 3 – Great in combination with social media:

Social media is very popular and this will probably not change in the nearest future. According to Statista, Facebook for example has more than 1.4 billion users daily, and it is not the only popular social media.

That is also why so many businesses are on social media to promote themselves – maybe you are already one of them.

Social media can be very useful, and it can be great in combination with blogging. It of course gives you something valuable to share on your own social media channels, if you have any.

Offering and sharing valuable info on your social media channels is very important to benefit from being there. But you do not even need social media accounts yourself to be able to benefit from the combination of blogging and social media.

Just think about – what do people love to do on social media?…….. The answer is “sharing”.

So when you write some great posts and people find them, they will very likely start sharing your articles on social media. This can increase your traffic, brand yourself further, and increase your earnings.

Therefore, it is great to insert sharing buttons on your blog posts (you can see an example of this below this post) so it becomes very easy for people to share. Over time that can help you both with traffic and branding.

What should you blog about and how often?

So you have found out that blogging can be good for your business and want to start writing.

But what should you write about, how much should you write, and how often should you post? That is something most people struggle with when they first start so let’s go over some tips to help you get started easily.

Tip 1 – What to blog about?

No matter what your business is, I can guarantee that there are plenty of topics to blog about. I can unfortunately not give you specific topics, as it very much depends on your business. But I can give you some general guidelines.

You should choose topics that are related to the services or products you sell. It does not have to be about your exact product/service, but can be anything related to it.

Let’s say you have a flower shop – you could, for example, write about how people can make nice bouquets, themselves how to make flower decorations for different occasions like weddings, birthdays etc., or write about how you should take care of your flowers to make them last longer and look the best.

These are just a few ideas off the top of my head.

A few ways to get more ideas are to think about what your customers usually ask you questions about and write about this. Look at other blogs within your line of business – not to copy, but to get inspiration about certain topics and write your opinion on it.

Or use google trends – here you can see how much interest there is on a certain topic, and at the same time see suggestions for related terms that could be great to write about.

Below you can see a few suggestions that came up when I put “fasting” into google trends. These are just 5 out of 25 suggestions, so it is a great way to get inspiration for any topic.

By using a few techniques, you will quickly come up with plenty of ideas.

You can also check out this article about how to get blogging ideas, where I go more into this topic and explain several techniques in details.

Tip 2 – How long should blog posts be?

When you write blogs, you should make them thorough. Both to give the visitors in-depth information that can help, and also because with more content, you can rank in search engines for many search terms and get more traffic (and more customers).

That does not mean you should write just for the sake of writing. Write in-depth and focus on quality – sometimes a post then might be around 800 words and other times around 5000. That is both great as long as you focus on quality.

Some people make the mistake and think they just need to post as often as possible and then post 4 times a week but only posts that are around 150-250 words. That will be seen as thin content and neither the visitors nor google will like this.

Therefore, when you have found a topic, look at what else is ranking at the top of the search engines. Then try to make your content of higher quality and more in-depth.

That will give you the best chances of giving readers what they want and of ranking in the search engines.

Tip 3 – How often should you blog?

Once again there is no exact answer to this. What is important is to be consistent and post regularly. Do not post 4 times one week and then not again for the next 6 months.

How often you need to post to get good rankings in search engines depends a lot on the competition. For some, it will be enough to post quality content once a month or less, and for others, you will have to post several times every week.

The best advice is to find a schedule that is realistic for you.

To just write a quality post once a month is better than not posting at all, so do not let it stop you if you feel you do not have time to write a lot. But make a realistic plan and stick to it.

Ranking in the search engine takes some time but with consistent work, it can really bring in a lot of traffic and boost your business.

What kind of businesses does blogging work for?

Blogging can be great to promote any kind of business. And it does not matter, if you have a small local business or an online business.

No matter what, blogging can help attract customers if you provide valuable information in your blog posts.

If you have a local brick and mortar business, it is great to focus on your local area in your writing. Not that you should mention the area in every post, but if there is anything relevant going on in the area that is relevant to your business – write about it.

Also, do not worry about that there will be nothing to write about for your specific business. Once you get started and use some of the tips I have shown above, you will keep getting ideas, and there are plenty of topics for any kind of business to write about.

A blogging example

I have done a lot of blogging myself (and also am here on OnlineZerotoHero.com), and I just want to share an example with you to show you what blogging can do.

I started a website to see how much traffic it was possible to attract through blogging alone, and how this could generate customers/leads.

The graph below shows the statistics of visitors month by month for the first year for that particular blog.

As you can see there was basically no traffic at the beginning of the year right when my website started, and it kept growing. And it has increased significantly since then also, so it does not even show the full potential it can reach.

If you can grow traffic for a website continuously, you can also keep growing your business, as more and more people will hear about you, find you, and become your customers.

The traffic from this example comes only from blogging. I did not use any paid ads or anything like that. It is to show that blogging can definitely be used to grow interest for your website, product or service.

I achieved these results by blogging on average twice a week – some people might achieve a lot better results by doing that, and others not as good results. It depends on the competition, your line of business, etc., and in many cases, you will not have to write as often as I did in this example.

It will be different from website to website and from business to business. If you already have a website that has existed for a while, it will, for example, be easier for you to achieve results, as your website already has built up trust with the search engines.

The website from this example was a brand new website, so everything had to be built from scratch.

Important aspects when blogging – a checklist

Here towards the end of this article, I want to give you a checklist to remind you what is important when you start blogging to promote your business:

• Quality:
  Quality is one of the most important aspects of a blog post. So always focus on providing content that is useful and really help people and answer their questions. If you provide quality information, you will do very well.
• Stay on the topic:
  I sometimes see that people know blogging can be good, but they are not focused. They just write about whatever comes to their mind. That can also work for some blogs, but in most cases, it is better to stay on the topic and write about things related to your service/product. If not, it can confuse both search engines and users and will therefore not give you any results.
• Be consistent:
  Write regularly. It does not have to be every week, but make sure to write consistently. True results only come with consistency. That is what over time will build your website traffic and your business.
• Be patient:
  This might be one of the hardest aspects, but also an extremely important one. You have to be patient to achieve results through blogging. You will not just be able to write a couple of blog posts that will then automatically get on the first page of Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. and then become a famous name and have a great business. It takes time and consistency, so be a bit patient.

What’s next?

Now it is up to you to start writing. Start by using some of the tips I have given above to get some ideas about what to write.

And do not be afraid that your content won’t be perfect. Just get started, and you will develop your own style as you go along. If you wait until you are “perfect” at writing, you might never get started.

If you feel like you need more help or support, I highly recommend the platform Wealthy Affiliate as a place to get step-by-step guidance about building a blog from scratch and getting traffic to it through blogging.

 

Also, if you have any questions, I will be more than happy to help you out. Just leave a comment below, and I will get back to you as soon as possible.