Blogging is one of the most valuable tools that businesses have to engage with their present and future customers. There are many benefits for businesses / organizations to be blogging, especially if you are a tourism organization. When I create a content marketing strategy, blogging is one of the pillars of that strategy. It provides content for us to post on our social media channels, in our newsletters, provides content on our site that helps increase our organic search, and keeps consumers coming back. It is of my opinion that organizations should publish a blog at least once a week, but realistically, I had our tourism organization publishing a blog 3 times a week. Which had a huge impact on our social media marketing, website stats and SEO. There are many reasons why blogging is beneficial for your business.
Before I get into tips on creating a better business blog, here are some of my pet peeves with businesses that blog. They are self serving and not about the consumer. Don’t talk about you, help the customer. By being helpful you are more likely to get bought. Not blogging consistently. Too many times I have go to an businesses / tourism organizations blog and it has not been updated since in 3 months or more. I’m sorry but that is not doing anything. You need to be posting regularly for it to have any impact at all.
So what should your business blog about? Here are my tips for a better business blog.
Solve Your Consumers Problems
Blogging is about your customer not about you. A blog should not be self serving. Too many companies focus their company blog on talking about themselves, a product line and trying to make a sales rather than focusing on solving your readers’ problems. You want to answer questions and concerns your audience has come to your site for (look in your google analytics, this will provide you with that information), or better yet, ask your customers. Your blog should address those concerns on the blog.
Provide Value
You do not want your blog to be a advertorial time drain. That is just a waste of time for you and for your customers. You want to write something that provides value to your readers instead. Your blog should educate, inspire and inform your audience. A guest blog every once in awhile from your readers is a great way to keep the content engaging. Providing your readers with travel tips or guide to summer happenings is a great start to involve the masses at both ends. Your customers what to consume content that provides them with value.
Be Your Own Media Outlet
Getting an article published in your local newspaper is harder these days than it was in the past. When I created a content strategy for the tourism organization that I worked for, the best piece of advice that I was given was that producing your own media content would go a long way in blogging. When you write your own content, use your own images and videos in your blog, the SEO payoff is enhanced because people will link to your original article and you will receive more exposure because those images are embedded with that article and link. Once your gain traction and keep producing your own content, the local reporters will share your articles on their social media channels, which is just as good as getting published in the paper.
Focus On Your Audience First
Too many business / tourism organization blogs that I see, focus on themselves and not on their audience. In my opinion to the people / your consumers who are reading your blog and visiting your website that make the most profound difference. Marketers who listen to their audience are the ones who have the most successful business blogs. Those marketers get to understand their customers drives and needs, and they connect with their audience by answering their questions and solving their problems. Your blog is about the people who read, share, link, comment and who visit your website. They are the ones who purchase from your business.
Stop Being Self Serving and Talking About Yourself
On a lot of business / tourism organization blogs that I visit, I notice a lot of them are only about press releases, their features, services, etc. I have always been a big believer in that it’s about the consumer. I would write articles that provide real value to your blogs readers and websites visitors, that will help them take action. This will help your organization be seen as an expert in your industry and provides you with a simple way to increase your sites traffic through social media and SEO. If your content is valuable, people will share it and Google will rank it in their search results.
Remember your not just blogging, you a publisher and it your think like a publisher you will create amazing content that will resonate with your consumers and increase your SEO and web traffic. We all want to make a sale, but remembering that our content is about helping the consumer, that will increase the chances of them buying from you. Being helpful will get your products bought.
Here are some past blogs I wrote that may be of interest, 5 Reasons Your Organization Should Blog (Regularly), Content Marketing Do’s, and Content Marketing Don’ts.
