How to Use Blogging to Grow Your Business - A Comprehensive Guide

Let's Start The Journey...

All businesses either offer products or services. These products and services are proposed as offerings to customers and have a mix of usability/ sense of possession clubbed with great experiences to garner loyalty for the business owners for short-term to long-term gains as fee/ cost/ price of the making of the products/ rendering of the services. 

When businesses plan to reach out to their customers they build upon a balanced marketing mix to promote their offerings and capture the market share as customers. The marketing mix for any business is a structured framework of ATL, TTL, and Digital Marketing Mix.

In this article, we will focus on the digital aesthetics of business marketing tactics. In case you are looking at promoting your business digitally/ online, there are a few things you need to remember and practice.
First, have an online presence of your business, this can be done with a website, a product/ service blog page, or creating social media pages on platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Linkedin, etc.
Second, have a digital communication strategy (push and pull) in place, present your product's/ service's key attributes and usability, and add value to your digital presence with great storytelling and product/ service explainers by means of blogs.

In this article, we will also help you understand, how to use blogging as a platform to grow your business...

Ok, let's begin by analyzing the what, why, when, and where?

You can start by shortlisting the Key Features of your products and services. Further, you need to create images, diagrams, and infographics as a visual communication aid and explainers to help communicate the product and service advantages as an offering and as compared to the competition. Collect and Collate all prominent testimonials and reviews by your customers and keep them as special inclusions where ever possible to embark trust in your offerings and to add the punch of customer experiences/ journey. All this comes together in framing an effective online marketing mix propelled by a good content strategy.

Now let us step-by-step turn your blogs into growth drivers for your business...

Let us Now Understand, What is a Blog? 

A blog is a mix of images, diagrams, infographics, and great copy (content), published over the internet, either on one's stand-alone website (captive reach) or on a blogging platform (open to all) or shared on social handles/ platforms (microblogging platforms).
Blogs can be of different nature and formats, to name a few, they can be in the form of articles, industry insights, success stories, product/ service explainers, user experiences, brand storytelling, etc.

Blogs are indeed a great way to share ideas & knowledge, communicate business objectives, interact with the target audience, promote one's offerings, means to gain greater traction from industry leaders and influencers, etc. In today's digital arena it is a great way to connect with potential customers and also help gather customer insights on products and services as offerings, this information collected is further utilized in product development and research initiatives. With the help of blogs as an online promotion medium, organizations worldwide have experienced higher sales and achieved greater customer loyalty.

Now the Big Question is, How does Blogging Works?

One common question that always arises is how does it work? or rather how should it be done, make it work? and yes, it's easy and simple; just that it has to be planned and implemented with clarity of the expected end result, which you are looking at as the outcome.

When blogs are published on one's captive website, it has to be first easily accessible and available next to the product/ service it is planned for. The blog needs to have the right mix of images, diagrams, and infographics as a visual communication aid to help communicate the key attributes and usability advantages of one's offerings. Insertion of testimonials and reviews (preferred medium is audiovisual) given by your customers help embark trust in your offerings and showcase the positive customer experience as a journey. All this comes together and frames an effective online marketing mix propelled by blogs.

Now, in case you decide to publish your blog on a microblogging platform or social handles/ platforms, or independent industry-based knowledge-sharing platform; the first thing you have to do is, make a blogging account.

Here it is important to choose the right blog platform. There are many platforms and forums available over the internet, and one has to position one's offerings with respect to the platform's user base and profile. For example, if you have website design and development as an offering- then you can enroll yourself in web hosting-related communities, online developer and programming platforms, internet-based services forums, social platforms/ handles such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube- and might be the best choice of platforms for you. whereas, if you are having SEO as an offering, then Online Marketing Forums, Digital Marketing Communities, Content Development Groups, Gig/ Freelancer Microblogging Platforms, social platforms/ handles such as Facebook and Linkedin- might be the best choice of platforms.

The heart of any blog is always Content Syndication, so always create a great pitch as a content strategy. It means creating high-quality content that's interesting and relevant to your target audience to help them make their decisions with ease and to help you convert your readers into your service influencers. In case you're are not sure how to create good content for your offerings, there is nothing to worry about... there are plenty of online resources to get inspiration from, as well as plenty of freelancers available who can help you create great copy/ pitch.

Now the next question which comes to your mind is how much will it cost to optimize and promote your blog?

How to Use Your Blog to Grow Your Business?

Blogs are optimized with the inclusion of frequently used search phrases known as Search Keywords or simply keywords. While creating and curating your blog content you should always conduct extensive research of important words which may be included in your writes and which further become keywords for readers and prospects as search phrases/ search words. 
A well-articulated blog not only provides a good connection to readers and prospects but also helps you build relationships with them as customers and potential partners. Additionally, you can use your blog space as a platform to further stay connected with your target audience and customers, and build a marketplace where new business offerings can also be introduced, shared, and promoted.

Every time you add a blog to your platform, always make sure it is interesting and engaging. Keep the frequency of blog posts regular but not cluttered. This helps you gain greater traction from readers and platform users.

How to Create an Effective Marketing Strategy for Your Blog?

For captive websites, an on-page and off-page SEO- Search Engine Optimization Mechanism can be created to boost the performance of your blogs and website as a whole. For Microblogging and Social handles/ platforms, the correct use of Keywords, HashTags (#Tags), and Attherate Tags (@Tags) should be in place for helping you get search results from trending feeds from time to time. This is the Organic way of boosting your blog performance. By optimizing your blog for SEO, you will increase the chances of your blog being more accessible to readers (your target audience), and also increase the probability and scope of getting scrolled by Google and other Search Engines- Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc; and hence appearing in more organic search results.

The inorganic way of boosting your blog performance, and attaining greater visibility can be achieved by the mechanisms of SEM- Search Engine Marketing and SMM- Social Media Marketing techniques. SEM is a process where you promote your blog and its pitch on Search Engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, etc. This can be a simple Adword based Sponsored Blog with Post Link/ hyperlink, or by means of Display Banners of the blog towards getting greater traction from the search queries over the web.
On the other side, SMM is a far more interactive way of inorganic marketing done on the social platforms/ handles where the social post on the blog is shared to a target audience that matches your customer demographics and attributes. This helps you reach out to members of the microblogging platforms and social handles who are looking for similar offerings as yours, over the internet.

Heart of the Blogging System- "Content is God"

One of the most important things you can do to grow your business is to create high-quality content to explain your offerings. You need to provide valuable information about your offerings that's interesting and relevant to your target audience. You should also make sure your content is easy to read and understand. It will help keep your readers, target audience, and prospects engaged; there is more probability that you will convert them into your customers and further into business revenue.

Hence, Your Blogs are always the Growth Drivers of Your Business...

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