How to use a blog to promote your business?

What is a blog and why should you start one?

A blog is a section of your website that you consistently update with new content that answers all the questions of your ideal audience. What’s great is that it gives you a chance to get in front of people who may not even know your business exists. To do it successfully, you need to start with creating a content plan, which will help you grow your business.

Come up with content plan

Before you start, it’s really helpful to think about your mission statement. If you don’t have one yet, you can use this simple template to come up with it: “I help (group of people) do (how you help).” It will help you come up with your business goals and values.

Once you have your mission statement you want to break it up into about 3-5 content pillars. Let’s take MasterClass as an example. MasterClass is a platform that offers courses, and their content plan is going to align with their course topics, for example: photography, music, and becoming a better chef.

Once you’ve come up with your content pillars you want to consider what questions your audience has around them. The goal here is to position yourself as an expert and your business as a solution to your audience’s needs.

“The goal here is to position yourself as an expert and your business as a solution to your audience’s needs.”

Perform keyword research

The best way to understand your audience’s questions is by performing keyword research. By doing it you will be able to see what people are typing into Google so that you know what problems they need help with. You can read more about it in this article. 

Once you have your main keyword there are a few things you need to do.

First of all, check the search intent of that keyword. Type the keyword into Google and check which sites are ranking for it. Do those top queries answer the same question that you are setting out to answer in your blog post? If the answer is yes, you are on the right track.

“The best way to understand your audience’s questions is by performing keyword research. By doing it you will be able to see what people are typing into Google so that you know what problems they need help with.”

How to optimize your blog articles for success

Once you create your article, remember to optimize it for the main keyword by including it in:

• Your blog post title, meta title and meta description 
• The blog post slug or the URL
• Subheadings within the blog post 
• The content itself – in the paragraphs 

Have the keyword in mind when uploading images to your blog post too. First, it’s a good practice to rename the files you upload to make sure they are descriptive. Once they are uploaded, remember to include alt text which is what e-readers read. It should describe the image and possibly include the main keyword in it. 

You also want to add supporting keywords to your blog post, so that many different keywords bring you traffic. Lastly, remember to include calls to action for your business in your blog posts. This way you could get more eyes on your business and more traffic to your website.

Create the best piece of content

When writing a blog post your goal is to create the best piece of content that exists on the topic. Look at what is ranking for your main keyword and think about what questions and sections they address in their blog posts – you want to address those too. Make sure that you are answering all of the related questions associated with that query so you’re really creating something in-depth that is a one-stop shop when people type the query into Google.