How to Ensure that Your Business Blog Grabs a Quality Audience
Digital Marketing • 31st Mar, 16
Let it never be said that Google’s got no interest in the little businessman just because they’re a multimillion dollar international conglomerate. Google regularly releases various algorithms structured around helping businesses refine their online presence in such a way that will ensure customer satisfaction, broad appeal, and – most invaluably – a high ranking in search results. It’s basic stuff, really: if you want to get noticed, the key is folks being able to find you on Google. And you’ll want to keep in mind how many folks tend to give up after the first five pages.
And as we really don’t need to tell you, a good deal of business’s online representation is via blogs. Here’s a few ways that Google – the massive corporation of Google – has taken time to help you, the ordinary business owner, maintain an effective online presence.
Google loves fresh content
Keep the new stuff coming. It’s how you survive on the web – and, more importantly, it’s how Google learns about your site. The diligent little multinational brand is always on the lookout for fresh material to keep itself fully informed on just what your site’s on about; and making use of this, they rank pages on how useful they reckon they’d be to specific users.
Simply put, if you’re going to get Google to push your little domain up somewhere that folks will notice it, you’ve got to keep the content regular and relevant.
Who is your target audience?
A pretty layout and some attention-grabbing keywords are nice; but if you’re going to keep potential customers’ attention for more than ten minutes, you’ve got to make sure your site matters to them. The idea of a business blog adding value to the lives of its readers does sound a bit lofty; but aiming to achieve lofty things is how businesses flourish.
And if you’re going to craft the sort of blog that adds something to your readers’ lives – the sort of blog that they just can’t do without – you’ve got to fully familiarise yourself with precisely who your readers are.
Make use of Google’s resources to learn more about your customers. Look into them. Categorise them. Create personas for them, delving into their demographics, their identities, and what they want from your company based on the search terms they found you with. Google’s offering you the means to do it; whether you take the initiative to do so might just be the deciding factor of your business’s success.
What is your unique selling point?
Be honest, now: when you come across a brand name you’ve never heard of, your instinct is to assume they offer some unremarkable, commonplace product or service and that their name will be absorbed within the next five or so years.
That’s what most potential customers are going to be inclined to think when they first encounter your business; and your competitors will certainly be happy for them to keep thinking that.
It’s up to you to make it clear to them that your business is more than that – that you can offer your customers something your competitors can’t.
And if there’s any solid way to prove that, it’s making sure that your site, likewise, offers its visitors something unique. Obviously, nobody but you can decide what that is. Consider what you can offer – and, for goodness’ sake, don’t limit yourself; that’s a death knell for an up and coming business.
Inspire, educate, entertain. Define your purpose and sharpen your content. Do this from the get-go, and you’ve given yourself the sort of running start that so many new business stumble and collapse without.
Kick Off:
Done it all? Thoroughly and properly? It’ll come back to you if you haven’t.
If you really have though – if you’re absolutely sure you’re ready – then get on there, and set the thing up. The platform, the layout, all of that’s up to you (although, just to start you off, WordPress does integrate blogs pretty neatly into existing sites); what’s important is that you’ve prepped properly, and that, whatever you may do with your online platform in the future, you’re dedicated to ensuring that it’s attentively crafted, and that it serves the needs of both your business and your target market alike.