Corporate Content

Blog Like You Mean It

By Geneva Ives on Sep 17, 2013 in Marketing | 1 Comment

A corporate blog, when done right, is an inbound marketing machine. In fact, one study by HubSpot discovered that businesses with blogs received 55% more visitors than businesses without blogs.

A blog can help both search engines and potential clients get to know, like and trust you. Blog posts that are published get indexed. Indexed pages help your site get found in searches. Popular blog posts are shared, providing social proof and inbound links for your company. Inbound links boost your SEO. Any way you look at it, blogging is good for your business.

But how do you go about the business of good blogging? It’s less complicated than you may think. Whether you’re starting from scratch or rebooting an existing blog, here are 4 easy steps that will get you going:

Think

Before you can set pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, you need to brainstorm potential topics for your blog posts. Take 15 minutes to populate four simple lists:

1. Questions clients frequently ask you
2. Business topics you know a lot about
3. Business topics that interest you, but you don’t know much about
4. Current events in your industry or area

Ta-da! You’ve just come up with piles of content for your corporate blog. Keep these lists handy so you can add to them anytime inspiration strikes.

Schedule

Creating a content schedule for your blog is critical to your success. Consistency is key when it comes to building an online community of readers. First decide how frequently you can realistically post. You should post often enough that your readers look forward to new content, but not so often that your posts become a lot of noise. Once a week is good. Twice a week is better. More or less depends on your business.

Then, pick which days you can commit to having your posts live and draft up a monthly calendar. Fill in the dates you just chose with the topics you just brainstormed and, voila, you have a blog content calendar that will help you organize and focus the efforts of your blogging team (even if it’s just you).

Write

This is where so many people get stuck. Putting your ideas in front of an online audience can be intimidating. Don’t let writer’s block cripple your inbound marketing efforts! All you have to do is stick to the schedule you just created and write 300 words or more about your chosen topics. Here are 6 tips to remember as you work:

Do proofread. Everyone benefits when words are spelled correctly. It’s so much easier to read!

Don’t worry about perfection. Don’t stress out about grammar rules you may have forgotten, just try to get your message across as clearly as possible.

Do solve problems. Who are you writing for? Why would they want to read your blog? Use your posts to tackle issues they face. Do you lease apartments? Share small-space organization tips or design resources.

Don’t sell. That’s what the other pages of your website are for. Don’t turn your blog readers off before you even have a chance to turn them into customers.

Do ask questions. Engage your readers by asking for their opinions or experiences.

Don’t forget about your audience. Use formatting and images to make your posts visually appealing.

Repeat

Ask any blogger. What’s the hardest thing about running a blog? Blogging! There is a common misconception that blogging is free. While it’s true that you might not have to pay for your blogging platform, a successful blog that works for your business will cost you… in time. The time to research, write, edit, post and promote your content.

Although at first it might not seem that your investment of time is returning significant rewards, don’t give up. You have to be consistent to see results. Track your comments, social mentions and analytics to see what kind of posts are working best for you, and then fine tune your approach every few months.

Case Study

Here at Point2, we recently employed these very strategies on our corporate blog for real estate agents. Although last year’s schedule was haphazard, we now post every day. We try to provide solutions to common problems that today’s real estate professionals face, like how to make their websites more SEO-friendly or how to incorporate video into their online marketing.

And the results? We’re seeing more visitors to our blog, with monthly increases numbering in the thousands. More visitors equal more opportunities to build rapport, make sales and keep our existing customers happy. And that makes us happy.

Does your organization have a corporate blog? Share a link below!

Editors’ note: Geneva Ives is the marketing writer for Point2, a leading provider of online marketing solutions for real estate professionals, including custom websites, syndication tools and prospecting utilities. She will be contributing technology-oriented real estate posts to The Balance Sheet.