Do you want to know how to write a blog? Have you been looking at sourdough recipes lately?
How about ways to stay in shape while at home?
Chances are, you learned these from your favorite blogs. These online articles allow regular people to share their expertise with readers directly.
On the other hand, businesses employ them in their marketing strategies. If you own a company, you know how crucial online clout is for business.
The race for internet presence began with email marketing and other past methods. Nowadays, you must first start a blog post to beat your competition to the top of search results.
After all, millennials make up a considerable portion of the market, and they research before making purchases.
You wouldn’t want to miss out on this opportunity, right? Whether you’re flying solo or cruising with your business crew, you’ll benefit from blogging.
It’s an inexpensive way of connecting with customers, sharing valuable info, and keeping your brand in people’s minds.
If you don’t know how to start a successful first blog, our guide will teach you all you need to know.
We’ll show you a step-by-step guide on the keyword research tool, helpful bullet points, and strategies needed to build a blog today so you can start blogging!
Identifying Target Audience
Before you even begin building a blog, you should identify your target audience first.
This is one of the most critical steps in how to start a blog and writing your first post. After all, your blog will promote products or services that cater to a specific kind of person.
Consequently, they must be written and presented in a way that resonates with those people. You may be thinking, “I already know my customers, so what’s the fuss about?”.
Well, it’s better to have a more detailed and nuanced profile of your audience, otherwise known as a buyer persona.
This hypothetical person should be made of your customer’s traits and behaviors, and it’s beyond your generalized view of consumers since it involves research on customer characteristics.
Use a Buyer Persona
Using a buyer persona, you’ll have a more nuanced profile of your customers.
It could say that they range between 25-45 years of age. It might tell you that they are mostly professionals, and they live hectic, healthy lifestyles using their upper-middle-class earnings.
As you can see, the buyer persona gives you more information than just typical stereotypes. Since they frequent mainstream social media sites, you might want to use Facebook as a blog platform, and this is important to keep in mind when writing your first post.
You may need to know how to write blogs in a semi-formal tone to connect with these professionals. Also, they could be more amenable to spending, so you might be able to offer more expensive meals. You can’t plan like this by using outdated stereotypes like the “typical millennial”!
Related Article: How to Write Blogs that Generate Leads
Setting Your Own Blog Goals
Another necessary step before you start writing blog posts is setting blog goals.
Now that you know your target audience, you should determine the value your online articles will provide.
In other words, you should ponder why customers should even read or simply preview your blogs. Do it right, and you’ll be using one of the most cost-effective business exposure and marketing methods. After all, blogs are the 5th most trusted source of information online.
Interesting Blog Facts
Blogs provide 97% more links to business websites.
Marketers are 13 times more likely to yield a positive return on investment.
Business-to-business (B2B) marketers gain 67% more leads compared to non-bloggers or new bloggers.
Websites get 434% more indexed pages which are crucial for SEO (Yoast SEO).
Blogging accumulates online traffic exponentially, even after several months and years since publishing.
A new blog post can help also help your brand for many other reasons:
Announce product breakthroughs
Instruct educational content
Share materials with potential customers
In the long run, blogs spread awareness for your business to gain more customers and sales, especially using features like a contact form within your copy. Eventually, your brand can become a paragon of your industry!
Creating Good Blog Post Strategies
Once you have determined your blogging goals, you should now map out how you’ll get to them. You must formulate a long-term marketing strategy for your online articles.
Since blogs take time to take effect, you should have planning behind your published content. In addition, you should set the indicators for your strategy’s success, otherwise known as metrics.
These will measure the performance of your strategy, either acquisition or retention. If you need to pique public interest in your brand, your blogging strategy is geared towards acquisition. On the other hand, a retention strategy aims to maintain consumer interest in your business.
Learn the pros and cons of each and find out which one fits your brand best.
Acquisition
People learn about brands when they have a search intent for products and services online through a one-click button. Their search engine will then search for content or subject matter that has matching keywords. Afterward, it will show you search results and show the ones with the most trending keywords first.
Most businesses game this system by incorporating those popular search terms into their online articles. This is known as search engine optimization (SEO), and it’s crucial for any effective acquisition strategy.
After applying SEO techniques to your other blogs, you should publish your content frequently. This is a cost-effective method of drawing traffic towards your brand.
However, you’ll need a considerable amount of time when using SEO. Understanding the basics could take a while, and you will have to compete with others using the same keywords.
What to Keep in Mind
Additionally, your blogs could link to other websites, so your business reaches more potential customers. Your products and services could be related to other genuinely interested categories so that they could appear on relevant third-party websites.
For example, a shoe brand can appear on showbiz websites if a celebrity endorses a specific pair. As you spread more content on various websites, people will eventually identify your brand as a leading expert. However, it also takes time to take effect, and it is difficult to measure brand awareness.
What’s more, you could persuade people to become subscribers by promising more content in exchange. You could place slide-in ads, in-text promos, or pop-up calls-to-action (CTAs) in your blogs. This method could draw more people closer to your brand without gathering excessive information. For it to work, you’ll need time to nurture email addresses and set up email blasts.
Retention Tool
While you may have no problems attracting customers, you could be struggling to keep their interest. Blogs can promote product niche samples and exclusive content to your customers so that you can sustain their continued patronage.
These can persuade your clients to keep paying for your products and services. They might even convince them to spread the word about your brand!
Moreover, you could send frequent updates to your customers so that they will engage more with your brand. Send them product improvements and tips on how to use them. As a result, your customers may feel more involved with your brand, and they might even rave about them online.
Just like the other ones, these techniques take time to yield results. You’ll have to coordinate closely with your product teams, which means days or weeks of planning and execution.
Content Planning
With your goals and strategy ready, it’s time to research keywords and plan your pillar pages. Check the terms people use when looking up your brand.
Then, collaborate with your team and brainstorm ways to tailor your blogs according to consumer behavior. We recommend optimizing your online content for Google since it’s the world’s top search engine.
Consider:
How much content you could create
What kind of content you will post
What are your blog’s goals are
How social media can help
Keyword research helps your blogs target intended audiences effectively. Find the right keywords, then how to write blogs and edit your entire blog topics based on them.
It’s also a good idea to include long-tail keywords, especially in the post title. The good news is, these consist of more words, but these usually have fewer competitors using them.
This means it won’t be buried beneath other related content, so people will likely find them quickly. Persist for a few weeks or months, and your search volumes will be populated with more qualified visitors.
Steps in Keyword Research or Blog Post Ideas:
