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You may have noticed the blog trend that is ruling the cyber world from Google to social media. Whether it is fashion influencers or tech gurus and travel enthusiasts, blogging is a trend that continues to grow each year.
How does this relate to your business? Blogging is a way to share your expertise and knowledge with your target audience. In doing so, you are 1) helping to provide information needed by your potential customer and 2) demonstrating your expertise on the subject which in turn keeps the customer coming back to you for further assistance. You are building trust with your potential customers/clients and this results in more leads for your business. Having well-written and updated blog content on your website also strengthens your relationship with Google which boosts your rankings in search results.
Now that you know why you need a business blog, let’s talk about how you’ll find the time to add this task to your agenda.
It is common for small and medium sized businesses to outsource business functions like payroll, human resources, accounting and more to keep the organization lean and flexible. Outsourcing blog writing? This might seem more challenging – after all, your blog is the voice of your business and a critical part of your content marketing strategy.
It is definitely possible to outsource blog posts, and do it well. Below are two of the most common questions we get here at BIS Designs about blogging:
Writing is personal and every business feels like they have a unique tone or style they’re looking to capture in their blog. The very concept of outsourcing might feel like it will cause you to lose some of your business’s personality.
Solution: Take time to educate your writer. We’ve all heard it, “you get what you put in”, and in this case, it is definitely true. A good writer will research and educate themselves as much as possible but to keep your business personality/style/tone the same, you’ll need to give some details on what makes your business stand out from your competitor.
If you give your writer nothing to work with, you get nothing in return worth reading. It’s that simple. You are the subject matter expert for your business. A good outsourced writer will bring your expertise to light in a readable way. If you’ll provide more information and direction, you’ll get more of what you expect from your writer and overall blog content strategy.
Solution: Make a list of topics. Whether you do this once a month or once a quarter – take the time to send a few topics to your writer. Once your blog writer has a list of topics, he/she can now get started on the time-consuming part of the project - creating engaging content. The few minutes that you spend concentrating on topics will help to keep your business personality/tone/style alive on your website.
A big perk of outsourcing your business blog writing is that your new writer will bring fresh ideas to the table. This simply adds new insights that can make your blog better.
Fun Fact: The average blog post takes 3 hours 20 minutes to write and the most engaged blog content on the web now has 41% more words than it did 3 years ago.
If you have a blog on your website that you simply don’t have time to keep up or you would like to add a blog to your website but aren’t sure where to start, give us a call! Outsourcing to a local company who can meet with you face-to-face to discuss your marketing goals is a great way to start the new season.
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5 Benefits of Business Blogging
Phillip Long - CISSP, CEO of BIS Technology Group, along with his team of marketing and information technology experts, will walk you through an overview of what your business should be doing to protect your data and plan your digital marketing strategies.
About BIS Technology Group
BIS Technology Group is the technology leader on the Gulf Coast and is comprised of four divisions: Information Technology, Web Design & Digital Marketing, Office Equipment and Business Consulting. Together these divisions help local businesses exceed expectations and allow them to group to their full potential while minimizing risks. To learn more about BIS Technology Group, visit bistechnologygroup.com.
You may reach out to us at: Phone: 251-405-2527 Email: plong@askbis.com
Here’s a quick illustration of how SEO works…
Google has developed automatic algorithms that rank your website. They send out what are called “spiders” to “crawl” your site and check it for over 100 indicators that determine whether the website is valuable or useless. These indicators include things like backlinks, domain age, traffic, fresh content, etc.
SEO can be considered the art of making sure those crawling spiders are happy with what they find. It is a very complex field that is always changing but in all that chaos there are a few constants that have remained the same since the beginning.
1. You need your own domain and hosting.
One thing that beginners need to know is that you need your own domain and hosting. Free blog set ups don’t do any favors for your SEO efforts. Why?
People tend to speculate that if you were serious about your website you would get your own name and host it yourself. Google only wants to point to websites that are considered serious and trustworthy and so this is a basic signal.
Starting your own website, hosting and a business blog can seem intimidating but that’s why we’re here. We offer multiple packages to meet your needs, which saves you a lot of time.
2. Problem solving with original content.
Keep in mind that Google’s entire purpose is to provide their customers with relevant and useful search results. Everything they do is built around this goal.
To be realistic, the most important thing you can do for your SEO is create the most useful content that solves people’s problems. If you are solving problems that people are searching for then it is likely that you are going to get shared on social media and ranked higher in Google.
And “original content” means so much more than just blog posts these days. You can expand into:
3. Make sure your theme is SEO optimized.
Think of SEO as having two components: the off-site stuff like social media and backlinks and the on-site stuff like optimizing your theme.
Optimizing your theme is important because it helps give Google indicators that you are a trustworthy site. It also helps Google find your content. Some of the things to keep in mind when optimizing are:
4. Build your social media profiles constantly.
You want to have a big focus on social media for SEO purposes as well as traffic building purposes.
Why?
Because Google is now looking to social media as a signal of an article’s authority and relevance. If people are sharing on Facebook or tweeting about it, you must have written something pretty good. The best way for this to happen is to build a strong following, keep them engaged and they’ll see your blog posts as they are shared.
Commenting and sharing other business blogs is always a great way to build a community and possible cross-promoting opportunities for the future as well.
Are you now ready to get a blog started and make sure your SEO is on the right track? Schedule a meeting and we’ll handle every detail from writing, optimizing your website and sharing to your social media!
Author: Stephanie May
12 Reasons Why Your Business Needs A Content Marketing Strategy