Business blogging is here to stay, and so more and more companies are adopting and personalizing the incredibly effective model for their own use. But with this influx of new bloggers, there is a gap between the demand for well written articles, and the ability of first time bloggers to deliver. Inexperienced bloggers often create content which is boring, poorly strategized, or simply not effective at achieving any long term goals. Here are 5 fatal mistakes made by inexperienced or incompetent business bloggers.
Lack of Strategy
In the rush to publish, many first time bloggers end up choosing topics that seem easy to them, rather than searching for topics which will help accomplish the goals of the blog. Common goals include creating an engaged online audience, spreading your brand, and establishing yourself as a leader in your industry. Whatever your focus is, every single post should be engineered to help you hit that goal. From topic selection to the final publishing of your blog, you should be mindful of what you are trying to accomplish. Use data and the tools at your disposal to craft material which will actually accomplish your goals. Because a business blog is so customizable, you can use it to shore up a weak point in your business model, or to double down on delivering to your customers the type of service and atmosphere they are used to.
Failing To Focus on SEO
Your business blog should be your best tool for helping your overall website SEO. When used effectively, a business blog can serve as a hosting page for the answers to many questions your customers will be looking for. Very few people go on company websites to look up their blog, but everyone goes on google to find answers to their questions. If you have pages which have been optimized and contain your keywords, you are likely to come up as a result to these searches. Efficiently and accurately answering the questions of potential customers exposes them to your brand and builds up trust. Make sure your keywords are appearing on the page, in the URL, and also in key points like section headers.
Ignoring Data
The best thing about the digital age is the amount of data we have accessible to us. If you are trying to get started with a business blog, don’t just assume that your first tries are the best you can do. Just as with everything else, practice makes perfect. Looking at data and reviewing how your blog posts are doing will help you to begin to perfect your craft. Pay attention to things like SEO ranking, social media scores, as well as data about which of your posts get the most attention. We can examine things like where clicks are coming from, and where readers are going to after reading to decide if our posts are helping them. If the search a question on google, click on your link, and two minutes later return to their query on google to look again, you probably didn’t do a good enough job of providing an easily accessible and well researched answer to their question. All the optimization in the world won’t help you if your readers don’t like your content. And speaking of your content, the next section is…
Boring Articles
Regardless of who your target audience is, every post that you make should be handcrafted to excited and interest them. This starts with effective graphical elements and titles, and continues onto the content you put in the meat of the article. Make the reading easy for them, with each point flowing logically into the next. Additionally, frame the knowledge within the context of its usefulness. Once you show the value of the knowledge you are providing, you can generate additional interest in your content. Make sure that your topics are actually things which your target audience will be likely to look for.
Inconsistency
Just like everything else in life, the best way to ensure that your business blogs are effective tools is to be consistent in creating them. This means consistency both in your schedule, making sure that you don’t go too long without adding an update, and also in the quality of the content that you are producing. Failing to produce content which is valuable, or simply allowing the quality of your posts to fluctuate wildly can erode any trust that an observer might have had for your brand. Make sure that you provide for yourself or your writers an environment and situation where they can produce the best possible content. So get started writing. As long as you can keep it up consistently, you will have the opportunity to improve your writing, and grow in your ability to generate value for your company.