How to improve the performance of your business blog

If you’re a marketer in charge of blogging for your business, you’re probably doing your best to write, curate, and publish the best content as often as possible. But let’s face it, business blogging can be tricky business. It takes time and resources that are difficult to find. And when your efforts aren’t yielding the desired results, it can be discouraging.

That’s why I’ve put together some fresh, new, cutting-edge business blogging techniques to help you take your business to the next level. Check out the tactics, tips and techniques below to get the most out of your blogging strategy.

Aim for Composite Messages

According to HubSpot, every business has a specific type of post, which they call “compound posts,” which make up only 10% of a blog’s repertoire, but generate 38% of total blog posts. This means that only one of these special posts generates the same traffic as six regular posts.

What is a hard post? Whereas typical messages generate an initial burst of traffic and then, over time, their effectiveness decreases; they disintegrate. On the other hand, composite posts continue to provide value and generate more and more traffic over time without any marketing effort.

Composite posts may not be the most popular at first, but they are evergreen, which means they retain their relevance and value for very long periods of time. They are very storage stable.

HubSpot shared a real-world example of one of their compound posts, which you can see below. The graph shows that while the traffic generated by a post increases and decreases over time, it invariably receives more traffic than it did in the first month after posting.

These posts are of course incredibly valuable. Aside from the initial work that you and your team put into creating them, they don’t require effort or energy, but they continue to drive traffic to your site.

So how do you create compound messages? HubSpot’s research report on post compounding suggests the following tactic.

Answer common customer questions.

Many people are likely looking for the same questions that you and your sales reps regularly hear from customers. Give authoritative answers to their questions in your blog posts.

Write on a broad topic, but offer specific, practical advice.

These types of messages can include product reviews, step-by-step process descriptions, or instructions for diagnosing a problem.

As HubSpot’s Mimi Ahn writes, “If you’re trying to create a complex post, write to as large a segment of your potential customers as possible. This means that the message should cover a topic that has mass popularity. ”

Consider SEO even in headlines.

Headlines that help posts become successful. Composite posts help the reader quickly see how much value they will get by reading them. They often use words like “How”, “What”, “Why” and “Best” to clearly show the reader that this post provides the answers they are looking for.

Structure your posts so that they are quick and easy to read.

To become a composite publication, the content must be well organized so that the reader can quickly assimilate the information. Use fresh and interesting images, make headings bold, link to other relevant information, and use bulleted lists.

Never run out of great ideas

This is a common fear of every content creator: the writer’s dead end. Many content marketers fear that they won’t have enough ideas to write about. Never fear a blank page again. Here are some surefire ways to make sure you never run out of blog post ideas.

First, start with one topic. I’ll use the business blogging theme as an example. When you have a theme, try the following exercises:

Expand

Get as much information as possible about your topic. Take notes as you exhaust all possible options on the topic. Write down questions, tips, ideas, examples, statistics, and anything else that might be relevant to the topic.

At this point, you probably have enough information for a few blog posts. Ask yourself where you can go deeper to provide exceptionally detailed and relevant content. Focus on creating as deep and detailed messages as possible on your topic.

While doing this business blogging exercise, I came up with the following ideas:

• How to measure the ROI of your business blog
• How to Reach More Leads with a Business Blog
• How to overcome the most common business blogging problems

These topics are quite specific and will allow me to elaborate on the content. I could give actionable advice at a detailed level. It is the purpose of this exercise to offer many ideas that will deepen your topic.

Decrease

Take a step back from your topic. Think about it at the industry level. Look for ways to present your topic in a broader perspective. See if there are statistics you can use to demonstrate the relevance of your topic on a wider scale.

Using my business blog as an example, I came up with the following ideas:

• Best Business Blogs Around the World
• The Rapid Growth of Business Blogging
• Companies that are killing it with their blogs

You can see that these posting ideas are broader in nature, but still valuable and relevant for people interested in blogging for business. What’s interesting about these “dig in” and “zoom out” exercises is that they create blog posts that appeal to people at different stages of the buying process.

The posts resulting from the zoom out exercise are likely to appeal to people in the awareness stage. They are early in the buying process and their prerogative is simple. They want to better understand their situation and clearly define their problems. These higher-level blog posts will help them understand this and become better acquainted, in my example, with the general principles of business blogging.

In contrast, a drill down exercise generates post ideas that might appeal to people under review. These people have advanced a bit in the buying process and are looking for content that helps them begin to understand their options for solving the problems they identified during the familiarization phase. These posts provide useful information that these readers will appreciate as they work through the buying process to make a purchasing decision.

Change formats

It is sometimes easy to get into the habit of writing one or two types of blog posts all the time. Try to think of different ways to represent your topic. Here are some options to consider:

A practical guide. Describe in detail the actions the reader can take.

List: Present your content in an easy-to-use list format, broken down into simple parts.

Review: Share your opinion on related products, services, research, news and events.

Use Case: State your theme in a use case format and present best practices and real life examples.

• Data Driven: Focus on hard facts. Present data from a recent study along with graphs and visual representations of some of the most impressive statistics.
• SlideShare: Instead of a traditional blog post, post your content in slides and publish it to SlideShare. Insert SlideShare into your post along with your resume.
• infographic:A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Get creative and showcase your content. Use interesting data and statistics to present your information in infographics that will work well not only for your blog, but also for social media, especially Pinterest.
• Video: Consider changing something and write it down instead of writing. Create a solid outline with your key discussion topics and record a video, optimize the video for SEO and post it on your blog and social media for more impact.

Use variations

Take a look at your theme from different perspectives with variations. Rather than trying to come up with tons of new, unique thematic ideas, it helps you list different approaches to the same idea, each unique enough to grab your audience’s attention and keep them engaged.

For example, using my topic “Business Blogging”, I might get the idea to write about “How to Get Leads with Your Business Blog.” Here are several variations on this single theme:

• How to Convert Leads to Customers Using Your Business Blog
• How to Attract Leads with Your Business Blog
• How to build brand loyalty with a business blog
• How to Reach Leads with Your B2B Business Blog
• How to Reach Leads with Your B2C Business Blog

See how it works? By simply changing one part of your theme, you have a whole new idea for a great blog post.

By exploring topics from multiple perspectives, your publishing pipeline will not only be continuous, but your blog will remain fresh and relevant to your readers.

Many marketers often feel like they are writing about the same thing over and over again. When you introduce these recurring themes from different perspectives, deeper details, new voices, different formats and unique angles, they become interesting, fresh, and relevant to both your existing readers and new ones.

Align with sales

There are so many important reasons for aligning sales and marketing; Your business blog is one of them, as is all of your marketing content, for that matter. Who better to talk to about what your current and potential customers want to know than your sales team? They communicate with potential clients on a daily basis. They know their common questions and problems. They are used to solving their problems and overcoming their goals.

Direct consideration of objections and concerns

Ask your sales representatives what objections and problems they most often face among potential customers. Write blog posts that directly address these issues. Let’s use business blogging again as an example and suppose our sales team is selling a business blogging platform.

Challenge: I can’t afford it.

Blog Topics:

• Why you can’t afford NOT to blog for your business
• How to measure the ROI of your business blog
• How to Enlist Your Boss’s Support for Business Blogging

Answer Frequently Asked Questions

Again, ask your sales reps the questions that customers and potential customers are constantly asking. And if you can’t get that information, try visiting your company’s FAQ page for inspiration. Write a blog post that directly answers each question.

The great thing about these posts is that they can provide answers to not only FAQs, but also FAQs, which means that if you structure them well and strategically use keywords, they should perform well from an SEO standpoint.

Here are some more business blogging examples:

Q: How often should I blog?

Blog Topic : Business Blogging Frequency: How Often Should You Post

Question: What should I blog about?

Blog Theme: Best Themes for Your Business Blog

Use old messages

Don’t underestimate the power of messages from the past. HubSpot actually found that 76% of its website traffic and a staggering 92% of potential customers generated by its blogs came from posts posted at least a month earlier. In other words, HubSpot’s “old posts” generated the vast majority of blog traffic and leads.

Chances are, your blog’s “old posts” are also driving more traffic and leads than you might imagine. The process HubSpot calls historical conversion optimization can help you leverage your best performing old blog posts and past posts with the greatest potential to deliver the best results for your business.

Find out how to do historical conversion optimization for your business blog in our recent post entitled “INBOUND Insights: Use Old Blog Posts to Generate New Leads,” which walks you through the process step by step.

Align with Marketing

Aligning a business blog with a marketing strategy may seem like common sense. More often than not, however, the two work separately from each other, rather than being integrated and actually working together.

Be sure to include an appropriate call to action in every blog post. The best conversion rates are achieved by blog posts with calls to action that are closely related to the topic. For example, in my blog post entitled “How To Maximize Your Business Blog’s ROI,” I could include a call to action encouraging readers to download a research report on business blogs. But the best call to action for this post would be for a business blog ROI calculator.

When you create your business blog content calendar, be sure to include themes that match the content you create, the campaigns you compose, and the posts, offers, and promotions that you will be rolling out along with each blog post. published.

For example, if in a few weeks I have a webinar called “How To Succeed With A Business Blogging.” I should probably plan to strategically publish a few blog posts related to business blogging ahead of the webinar.

Business blogging can be a daunting task, but armed with reliable strategies, tools, and tactics, you can achieve results that pay off. Use these tips today or hire a reputable SEO company and start building your best business blog. I would love to hear about your results!