10 Ways to Promote Your Business Through Blogging

December 3, 2019// Category: Digital Marketing // Author: Samantha Hager

According to Techjury, 77% of internet users read blogs. From the ‘avid van’ life traveler that documents their entire trip across the nation all the way to the beauty blogger that reviews high-end makeup products in their spare time, it seems like everyone has a blog of some sorts nowadays—and they’re getting thousands of views per month because of it.

In fact, some bloggers have been able to make full-time careers out of their blogs that stem from page views, book deals, and merchandise. But how can a blog actually benefit a company that already has an established brand and set of products or services? To understand the power of blogging for any business, let’s take a look at ten of the best ways to promote your brand through your blog content below.

 

1. Create Staff Highlights for Relatability Purposes

 If you were given two posters for the new desktop Mac with one showcasing the product by itself on a table and the other showing a team of coworkers using it in a real and relatable setting, which one would you like best?

For most consumers, the answer is the latter because it feels more personal and shows the product in a natural setting.

The same concept can be applied to your blog posting. Although very professional and impersonal blogs are very common in certain industries, the truth is that finding ways to show off the relatable and personal side of your business may actually make people want to support you more.

According to a recent survey performed by the Washington Post, ”More people have a positive opinion of small businesses than larger companies in general, with 90 percent of respondents giving small companies a favorable view, as opposed to 61 percent for major corporations. In fact, two-thirds of respondents said they prefer to shop at small businesses, even if it means paying more.”

With this information in mind, creating monthly staff highlights is a great way to showcase your team, build a stronger brand image, prove that your company is smaller and more personal than bigger brands, and show just how relatable and local your team actually are.

2. Cover Your Products or Services Specifically

 The next thing you can do as a business through your blog to promote your brand is actually cover your products and services in your initial articles. For instance, if you were a plumbing company, you may want to start with articles about plumbing services in your area and qualities to look for in the best local plumbers.

Similarly, if you were a company that provides social media campaigns, you may want to write articles about what social media campaigns entail, what makes a good social media campaign, and how your brand stands out from the other social media marketing teams in your area.

This allows your customers to see exactly why they should work with you without you having to persuade them whatsoever. The articles showcase your hard work and your meticulous methods as well as your experience in the industry. This is why some of the first article topics to cover on your blog should always be bottom of the funnel in nature.

For those unsure of what bottom of the funnel content means exactly, think of your entire blog as a sales funnel that leads to your products or services. When you get someone to check out your blog, they are essentially on the edge of the funnel deciding whether to fall in or not.

This is where your wide funnel content comes into play. Wide funnel intrigues them in a very nonchalant way without being too direct. Next, they may turn to your mid-funnel content that explains how your services or products can help them without actually recommending the product.

Finally, the bottom of the funnel content is the kind of content that directly targets your brand and your services specifically. It outlines every aspect of your buying process, your product or service overviews, and any comparisons you intend on making to other products from your competitors.

3. Don’t be Afraid to Review Your Competitors

 Although confrontation in business is never recommended, there is nothing wrong with comparing your products or services to your competitors’ on your blog. In fact, if you choose to remain unbiased during the entire review and don’t completely tear your competitor’s down unnecessarily, you may actually be able to suade those trying to decide between your brand and your competitors’ brands.

The best way to go about this to get the right results but also steer clear of possible competitor confrontations is to have sources outside of your business endorse the review or actually write it themselves. If you can get an outside party to guest blog on your site about your products in an unbiased manner, you may be able to help those on the edge without trying to persuade them personally whatsoever.

4. Write Product Tutorials new Customers are Sure to use

Although it may come across as a joke in most cases, IKEA is known for their difficult product assemblies that require product manuals to complete. For the most part, if you follow along with the manual, you can quickly assemble your furniture with ease. This is a known fact and, therefore, encourages the use of their many manuals and additional guides to get through the process.

So, how can this simple fact actually help a brand such as IKEA? Well, the answer is simple; these manuals and product tutorials give the brand another opportunity to market their additional products, get more online views from real customers, and receive additional buyer information such as emails and mailing addresses that can be used for marketing campaigns in the future.

Think about all of the direct and email marketing campaigns you can create using just these two pieces of information along with the product they purchased alone. It’s a world of opportunities for those willing to grasp it.

5. Highlight Business Updates

Tying back into the relatability aspect of business blogging, sharing business updates with your readers and clients is a great way to get them involved in your brand and its personal success story.

In fact, this is one of the best ways to harness the power of your small business in a market of major competitors. In our modern society, we like to watch our heroes fall. To put this simply, most people don’t care if a billionaire makes another billion dollars in a year as much as they care if a small business from their hometown makes a million.

By sharing your business updates and your connection to your community, you can not only become even more relatable to your audience but also create a supportive and engaged audience that actually wants you and your company to grow and succeed.

6. Showcase Local Events and News

 Additionally, just as your personal business updates are a great way to prove your relatable nature, being invested in your local area is as well. Whether there’s a local event going on that you plan on attending or a bit of local news you want to touch on which may be related to your industry, these are great ways to engage your local area and prove that you are just another member of this incredible community.

These kinds of blogs would be more in the wide funnel category and would typically showcase photos of you and your team at these events or actually give personal opinions and views on the local news topics you plan to cover.

A rule of thumb for blog content as a whole is to write only roughly one bottom of the funnel pot each month and then fill the other three weekly slots with the wide and mid funnel topics of your choosing.

7. Share Discounts and Promos Exclusively on Your Blog

 Have you ever scrolled through Facebook or Instagram on your phone and seen an ad for a product that you simply have to have? If so, you likely clicked on the advertisement only to find that you needed to put in your email and other information to even receive the deal or promo to begin with.

Surprisingly, this is actually a very common marketing technique that encourages individuals to put in their information or do the things you want them to do in order to receive the deals you promise them.

For blogging specifically, you can encourage individuals to read your blog, give you their additional information, compete surveys, or even just engage with your brand on your website and social media in order to receive these exclusive deals. It also trains your audience to check your blog regularly which helps your clickthrough rate (CTR) over time.

8. Implement a Link Building Campaign in Your Marketing

 This next form of blog marketing for business promotion actually doesn’t require blogging on your personal page at all. Instead, it encourages you to reach out to other blogs in hopes of guest blogging or having them write reviews about your products.

In some cases, this will require you to send them your products or let them use your services in order to review them, but the results are definitely worth it. Imagine receiving hundreds of new views and sales overnight just by having a popular blog endorse you.

In order to do this for your own business, start by searching for any and all magazines and blogs that are in your market which may benefit your brand. From there, check their domain authority and make sure it is higher than your own. This is important because the link itself will also help your business and your ranking on Google likewise if the blog is ranked higher than your own and trusted more.

9. Offer Guest Posting Opportunities in Your Industry

 In conjunction with guest posting on other blogs, you too can offer guest posting from leaders in your industry as it may actually be able to draw their audience to your site as well. The reason this matters is because anyone in your industry is likely to have an audience that will find interest in your products or services as well.

Similarly, allowing guest posting on your blog may also give you a chance to focus on other aspects of your business while your blog posts are handled by those that want to write on your site instead.

To get started, you may need to reach out to leaders in your industry or other local industry members letting them know that your blog is a vessel they can utilize at any time. The one thing to look out for when allowing guest posting is unauthorized link building or spam links that could affect your online ranking.

10. Reap the Benefits of Optimized Consistent Blog Content

 The final benefit to blogging as a business is actually something that comes from consistent blogging and optimization alone. Since the average business owner doesn’t typically know much about search engine optimization, or SEO, it is important that they are aware of how this optimization affects their website and their online ranking.

The big reason why people recommend blogging for business owners to begin with is that blogs allow these companies to post new content on their site weekly. One of the ways that websites are ranked is upon their “Fresh Factor”. This determines how frequently the site is updated and posted on. If you rarely update your site or post new content on it, your FreshRank is sure to be low.

Similarly, blogging also helps companies build their TrustRank. The best way to understand TrustRank is through the old saying, ‘birds of a feather flock together’. Essentially, you can add links to Forbes, Huffpost, Inc., and a million other big magazines and never really see any increase in your online ranking from this.

However, if one of these bigger magazines or sites were to link to your website, this would instantly boost your Domain Authority. This is also why we recommend that you take a look at the domain authority of blogs before having them link to you or promote you as stated above.

Through all of these different elements, your blog posting could actually help you rank higher on Google search engine results pages and, therefore, beat out your competition from the first click forward.

In the end, blogging is clearly so much more than something that beauty gurus and adventure junkies do for a living. In fact, posting a blog post once a week could completely transform your business in the blink of an eye. With this said, all that’s left is to get to writing and creating share-worthy blog content that your audience is sure to love.