As a small business owner, you are actively looking for ways to improve customer retention. Whether it is through giving out brochures, putting up posters, or running ads on the radio—you have probably thought about it all. But there is nothing more effective nowadays than pushing marketing efforts online.
Most consumers rely on an Internet search to look for shops and read product information. For this reason, it would be a good idea to start blogging on your business’s website. It is an effective way to drive traffic to your website, push for that brand awareness, and get significant leads and conversion in the process.
Here are tips on how you can make sure your business blog becomes a relevant source of information in your niche and how you can generate significant revenue from it.
Consistent brand voice and tone
A branding image consists of many parts, and on the web, it includes:
- Logo
- Color scheme
- Overall aesthetic look (font types and sizes, pictures, layout, etc.)
- Website copy
Let us focus on the last one—website copy. Involved in your copy is your choice of domain name, tagline, headers, and the voice and tone.
Your domain name should be easy to remember and still somewhat related to the industry you are in. Keep it short, limiting yourself to about a maximum of three words only to avoid long-tail domain names. Your tagline and headers should be able to tell customers about who you are as a business and what it is you promise to deliver to them.
Lastly, your voice and tone must match your established business persona. Remember that a blog must be informative and yet engaging, so you can always be flexible with your voice and tone in your blog. However, it is important not to overdo this flexibility. If you have a formal business persona, having fun in your blog is totally fine, but make sure it is not over-the-top.
Website is easy to use
You want your readers to understand how your website works in the smallest amount of time. You can ask yourself, “If I were my reader, would I like going to my website? Am I able to find information easily?” If the answer is no, then you might want to consider simplifying your website layout. Remove unnecessary elements on your blog that interfere with the path you want them to take. If flash graphics are a distraction, remove them. If you have too many subpages, reduce the number and re-categorize your blog posts.
Do not forget to put a search box so that readers can easily type in a keyword and all the content related to it will appear.
Must be mobile-adaptive
In 2015, Google announced that most searches happen on mobile. This is why the search engine has started prioritizing websites that are mobile-friendly, and in fact, made it an important criteria in their ranking algorithm. It all comes down to simplifying website design so that it can easily adjust to mobile screens. As for content, avoid huge bricks of texts. Instead, cut it to digestible paragraphs, limit it to short sentences, and put images in between to give readers a break from all the copy.
Create engaging content
Of course, all the tips above are moot if your content is unreadable in the first place. What you want is to be relevant, entertaining, informative and engaging. What you do not want is to be boring, repetitive and cringe-worthy. Note that people read blogs either to learn something or to kill time; do not waste theirs by publishing content just for the sake of having it online.
The key here is to create a strong headline, provide various kinds of content (articles, tutorials, videos, infographics, etc.), cut the fluff out, and keep it original. Most importantly though, do not hesitate to tell a story. You can tell your readers about your journey as a business, its conception, and its vision for the future.
