How to Start a Blog for Your Business

Develop regular content that creates a real presence for your audience.

There is an unbelievable value in the unique insights you have for the people you want to reach. One of the best ways to bring that value to the world is through blogging. It’s your opportunity to:

• Share tips, tricks, and information.
• Create content that becomes present on social channels.
• Increase the number of web pages you have indexed on search engines.
• Rank for more keywords that are related to your industry.
• All while bringing tons of credibility to your brand.

Let’s break down how to start a blog in five steps:

1. Conceptualize Your Blog

A blog is a piece of technology. How you use a blog makes it a part of your business. We always recommend when you have an idea (like “I want to start a blog) to start with a SEAD for an idea. Figure out what your audience needs and how you can cater content for them.

Next, ask the other important questions:

• Should your blog have a name that helps your audience understand the content?
• What type of blog posts will help your people most?
• How often will you post?
• How long should each post be based on your expressible objective for the blog?
• What type of imagery will you use with each blog post?
• What is the “voice” of your brand and how will you get that into your blog?

2. Decide How to Measure Its Success

Brand awareness, earning links back to your site, lead generation and search engine optimization (SEO) are all great reasons to start a blog.

But what keywords will you target? How will you capture leads – through a newsletter signup form at the end of every post or a specific call to action based on each post’s content?

Will you measure your results through Google Analytics and Search Console, or do more dynamic user tracking?

3. Pick a Blogging Platform

The easiest platform is whatever content management system (CMS) your site is built on, with the most popular example being WordPress. About a third of the internet uses WordPress, and if your website was built right adding a blog can be a breeze.

Other blogging platforms include WordPress.com (an out-of-the-box managed version of the open-source WordPress CMS), Wix, Joomla!, and Squarespace, just to name a few.

4. Start Creating Content

Do this before you create your blog.

Ideally, you want a few pieces of content to showcase on launch, not just a single post.

Three is a good number, but really it’s all about the cadence for your posts. If you are planning to post daily, 100-200 word posts, it’s not as important to have extra posts at launch. If you are going to post weekly it is good to have a few when you go live. Your audience can get a better idea of the content you are bringing to the table before they have to wait another seven days to read what you have to say.

Keep in mind that long-form content generally does better than short-form content, but both are helpful depending on your strategy.

5. Promote Your Blog and Track Key Metrics

Remember why you are creating a blog; to bring value to your audience. Where is your audience as of today? Probably not hanging out on your website. The beauty of creating content like a blog is that “content creates presence”. What that means is when you post content on social channels, when you show up in an RSS feed, when your newsletter hits an inbox you are creating a presence where you didn’t exist already.

Turn each blog post into a post on all of your social channels. Start sharing your posts in groups where you can bring value (don’t be spammy). Start sending your current and previous clients posts they’ll enjoy reading. Establish your RSS feed and start showing up in Apple News, Feedly, and other readers.

Do all of this and then do it all again, and again, and again. Build a system that helps you create content on a regular basis that represents your brand and supports your business objectives. Your audience will thank you.