The Blogosphere is here and it is not going anywhere. It’s not just for people talking about what they’re eating for lunch or their next celebrity crush. Blogging is big business for entrepreneurs and business owners. CEO Blog Nation launched a blogging community and we regularly blog for entrepreneurs and business owners and there are numerous reasons to blog. Rescue a CEO asked some businesses how they use blogging to help their business.
#1- Showcase my skills
As a content marketer, my blog shows my skills. I publish a new, in-depth blog post about content marketing every two weeks because it: shows I can do my job (write!), and shows potential clients that I'm knowledgeable about the industry they work in.
Thanks to Elise Dopson
#2- Organic traffic
I leverage my company's blog for getting organic traffic. I look at popular organic content done by my compertitors, and I explore search queries on the rise via Google Trends. I then craft content revolving those topics. By answering the questions your potential customers have in the awareness and consideration stages of the buying process, you're more likely to get their sale when they reach the decision stage.
Thanks to Elizabeth Bradshaw, Canvas Art Boutique!
#3-Content marketing and link building strategy
Whilst content marketing is integral to our business and is firmly embedded in the structure of the site itself, we use the blog to link to key internal pages, provide extra context for our web users and to build relationships with other sites to develop a mutually-beneficial back-linking strategy with them. This has the effect of showing the search engines that your site is really relevant to your audience and helps to boost your SEO performance.
Thanks to Will Craig, LeaseFetcher!
#4- Generate interest in our services
Like a lot of companies, we use our blog to generate interest in our services. In particular, we're trying to show companies that the way they handle their finances at the moment is flawed and inefficient. Most businesses don't really think about this – everyone hates expense reports, and company card isn't great, but it's just the way that business is done. Our blog highlights the common problems with these systems, and shows people that they're relying on outdated technology and bad processes. They don't put up with this in their product and sales teams, so why do they for finance? It's not about selling Spendesk to every business, but about helping them identify potential problems they might have.
Thanks to Rodolphe Ardant, Spendesk!
#5- Show off my work
I use my blog to show off my photography through the photos that I capture at a wedding day, engagement session or a portrait session. Constantly updating my website with blog posts and optimizing them tagging wedding venues and engagement session locations has been a great way for people to find my photography business, especially living in a wedding destination location like Savannah, Georgia.
Thanks to Hilary Hull, Hilary Hull Photography!
#6-Educating and providing news
We offer blog articles with the main purpose of educating and providing news that is beneficial to e-commerce and retail clients. We also have white papers that tackle a particular pain point. We use our blog to reach potential clients as well as to inform.
Thanks to Brian Sheehan, Hollingsworth LLC!
#7- Keep the emessage in front of the customer
Consistently send your blog out to your list to keep to your message in front of your customers. Mine is synced with Mail Chimp. The frequency is less important than the consistency, that depends on your business model and your customers, but consistency is key. The same time every day, week or month. This keeps your message front and center. Every week, When my blog goes out I get a call or an email that says: I was dealing with a problem, or I have a project and when I saw your blog I thought I’d reach out.
Thanks to Ilene Marcus, Aligned Workplace!
#8- Target new audiences
We use our blog to target new audiences, by providing educational, value-added content that our site visitors would learn from. We want to position ourselves as the trusted advisor so that when they are ready to purchase, they come to us.
Thanks to Akin Tosyali, Tiege!
#9-Engage in authentic communication with my audience
My blog, One of a Kind, helps bring EarthKind’s mission-driven purpose of being a fierce, yet kind, industry-disruptor to the forefront, providing a platform where I can engage in authentic communication with my audience. One of a Kind allows me to truly connect with the EarthKind tribe, giving a voice to the importance of conscious capitalism, of leading a business with purpose and passion, and the value of sticking to your dreams, morals and missions – despite uphill battles and compromising decisions. Through One of a Kind, I hope to tell readers about my many setbacks and share how I accomplished some amazing wins, especially as a woman entrepreneur. Most importantly, I strive to inspire readers to take that leap of faith and to always dream big, while giving advice on how to avoid some painful pitfalls. You hold your destiny in your hands – and through kindness, consciousness and courage – you can achieve anything. One of a Kind drives home EarthKind’s overarching message of kindness and tenacious pursuit, while letting readers know that they can always keep it kind with EarthKind.
Thanks to Kari Warberg Block, EarthKind®!
Blog: https://www.oneofakind.blog/
#10- Integrate into my current culture and society
As an Australian living in Warsaw, Poland, a long way from home, I've had to learn a lot about Polish culture. I saw that there wasn't much written in good English, so I decided to change that. I've basically used my blog to integrated into the culture and society here. Life here is very different, but by creating my blog and using it to help connect other expats and educate them about Polish life, history and culture. As a result, I have a lot of traffic that's other expats wanting to move here. I'm teamed up with a few TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign language) schools to help get Expats educated so they can work here. As a teacher myself, I speak from experience. I've built authority, an audience and people listen to me when I speak. That makes it easier to build a rapport and monetize in the most honest way possible. The blog has helped me build friendships, find more work and even led members of the travel industry to me, to help encourage tourism here. Plus, a second form of income is always good as an Expat!
Thanks to Phil Forbes, expatspoland!
#11-Foster relationships
Our blog is a combination of data-driven reports written by the marketing team and how-to guides written by guest writers who apply to our contributed content program. The data-driven reports present original statistics on the state of different industries, which draw in journalists and industry experts seeking facts. Our how-to guides take a shorter, deep-dive into a specific topic. It's very much a hub-and-spoke model. Our blog allows us to foster relationships with people who may want to learn more about our main content – ratings and reviews of business services companies. For example, a business writer my apply to write for us, but in reality, their business is a good fit for our platform.
Thanks to Sarah Patrick, Clutch!
#12- Several purposes
We launched dog gear company DJANGO in late 2016 along with our modern dog blog. At first, we considered our blog posts to be very secondary to our e-commerce business. We originally didn't put much effort into the posts, and viewed them solely as a way to slowly build SEO ranking. About a year after DJANGO's launch, we started taking our dog blog more seriously. I began writing content myself, using blog posts to answer interesting and practical questions about dog travel and dog health. I began reviewing my favorite pet products – ones that I have at home and use regularly with our dachshund Django. We soon noticed a huge pickup in traffic to certain blog posts, improved site ranking, and consistent traffic to our website overall. We now put consistent effort into our dog blog and publish new content regularly. I always weave anecdotes into each DJANGO Dog Blog post and include insights from my life with my long-haired doxie Django. While our focus remains on dog travel, dog health and high quality pet products, we also use our blog to announce new product launches on djangobrand. We definitely appreciate the power and importance of growing a unique, thoughtful, and interesting blog.
Thanks to Stephanie Wiggins, DJANGO!
#13-Retain and improve traffic
Used to capture keyword opportunities and acquire users that operate in the same market space, but not necessarily relate to our product. As our blog progress, users come to solve simple problems but stay for useful content, from an expansive knowledge space. This method is excellent to improve SEO and retain direct traffic.
Thanks to Hung Nguyen, Smallpdf!
#14- Building SEO and Relevancy
GoShare’s company blog is an important part of our business strategy. It serves many purposes for our organization. First and foremost, it allows us to build upon our brand, sharing more about what our company stands for and our role in the market. Second, it is essential for sharing rich content and building our Web site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and organic traffic. We also see an increase in inbound links, as other sites and
influencers link to the useful and relevant information we provide. Third, our blog supports our customer conversion funnel. On landing pages, links out to the blog on topics of interest allow prospective customers to conduct further research. While this in-depth information is not appropriate for a landing page experience, it’s easily accessible via internal linking to our blog. Whether a delivery professional is considering joining our platform and wants to know more about the hourly wage, or a customer needs more information about standard moving costs, we can help provide this information as they make their decisions. Fourth, our blog content supports our social media program by offering owned, valuable, and shareable content. Links out to new GoShare blog posts are some of our strongest performing Facebook and Twitter posts.
Thanks to Shaun Savage, GoShare!
#15-Educate, inspire and portray the personality of my business
My company manufactures and wholesale distributes handmade Mexican tile and stone. As an online business, driving traffic to my website is important not only for generating revenue, but also for maintaining authority as an expert in our niche industry. Blog posts evolve around a trifecta recipe: 1)how our handmade tile lends itself to a variety of architectural design styles, 2) technical and installation aspects of handmade tiles, and 3) an inside look to the personalities of our staff. With thousands of social media followers, I've been successful at generating revenue through my blog as well as branding my business.
Thanks to Melanie Ocana, Rustico Tile and Stone!
#16- Positions us as the industry experts
As the number one naming platform and a crowdsourcing solution, we use our blog as an informative resource for people seeking captivating business names. A large portion of our customer base is made up of entrepreneurs, and they are always looking for new tips and resources to solve their problems in a cost-effective way. Our blog provides a wide base of helpful information on naming, testing names, and tips for brainstorming your own names. Our blog is not an extension of our business to sell contest packages, rather, it positions us as the industry experts that we are. The Squadhelp blog is a free, accessible resource that sets people who use our services up for success; it is also available to anyone who needs a little guidance on naming. We recommend that a businesses blog, especially in B2B spaces, be less about trying to sell and more about becoming a helpful resource. We approach our social media presence in the same way. This allows us to showcase our honesty and sincerity in our mission to provide disruptive solutions for businesses and entrepreneurs. In the end, your brand should focus on your customers, not you–the blog is a great place to do this.
Thanks to Grant Polachek, Squadhelp!
#17- A number of ways
Promocodes' blog is an excellent resource for savvy shoppers who want to learn more about saving money, find out about exciting deals that we're currently offering, or get tips and tricks to stretch your dollar further from our team of knowledgeable experts. Aside from highlighting our key retail partners and offering useful insight to our site visitors, our company blog is also an excellent source of SEO building. By mentioning relevant keywords and search terms throughout blog posts and loading up content with keywords that your target audience is searching for, it will help to make your website rank higher on search engines.
Thanks to Aydin Karadeniz, Promocodes!
#18- Establish credibility
As a young (and young-looking) lawyer with my own firm, I use my blog to establish credibility. Writing authoritative posts on the topics that concern my target clients lets me showcase my knowledge to these potential clients, which can help overcome objections based on my appearance. It also offers a great excuse to share posts with referral sources, like former clients and other local attorneys, who can vouch for my skills and distribute my content to a wider audience. The danger of this approach is to assume that the act of creating timely, relevant content is sufficient-it's not. Without a strategy for getting your content in front of the people who are either leads or can generate leads for you, you're wasting your time.
Thanks to Mark Tyson, Tyson Law!
#19- Answering questions
Since we are a CBD eCommerce business, our blog posts on our website are tailored around answering questions people are asking about CBD on search engines. Not only does this benefit our SEO, but most importantly, we provide a blog where people can gain knowledge about CBD and answer potential questions they may have about CBD products.
Thanks to Shervin Mohseni, The Source of All!
#20- Three ways
My company and I publish at least five pieces of unique content every week with a heavy rotation of social content to funnel folks to that content. For us blog content has to fit into three buckets: 1. Giving users great advice so they know we are the experts on a particular subject – typically digital marketing, politics and corporate crisis communication. 2. Proving that we are the experts by publishing case studies and sharing our best content. 3. Showing that we have a great culture and are awesome people to work with through a lot of fun content. No one wants to work with an asshole. We use our content to build large email lists and then email out each week’s content. The entire purpose of our content is to generate interest in Push Digital. We want to be top of mind as soon as someone thinks about digital marketing in the political or corporate brand reputation spaces.
Thanks to Wesley Donehue, Push Digital!
#21- Create a human connection
My customers want to learn how to communicate, how to tell their story better. The blog opens the door to that human connection. In it, I combine communication and leadership tips with my own stories. Then, my clients learn to apply these techniques to their personal and professional lives. Following, we take our interactions to the next level. We progress to emails, one-on-one coaching, and the workshops I teach at their businesses. Your blog will give you a perfect gateway for authentic connection, interaction, and partnerships with your customers.
Thanks to Izolda Trakhtenberg, IST LLC!
#22-Create useful content
I use my blog at Bloggerbridge to create useful content for my potential audience which is travel marketing and PR people. I also produce a regular podcast called Passport – Travel Marketing and PR Podcast. We bring on different industry experts. At least one college program has assigned the podcast as regular listening… more should. 🙂
Thanks to Chris Christensen, BloggerBridge.com!
#23- Create trust
We use our blog as our way to show our subject matter expertise in our industry and help guide our clients through questions they may have, industry changes they may be experiencing, etc. Our blog's main priority is to be used as a tool for gaining trust from our clients and customers. By showing clients that we know what we're talking about, they're more likely to trust us and turn to us when they need a product or service.
Thanks to Keri Lindenmuth, The Kyle David Group, LLC!
#24- Share company news and events
Our company blog is primarily used to share company events, happenings, and industry subject matter opinion pieces. It used to house some of our most popular evergreen content, for ex. our -how-too guides or how it's made videos, but we eventually gave this content a permanent new home in our Promo University section on our main website. The blog is our primary means of sharing timely news with customers and humanizing Quality Logo Products(r) for the masses. It allows us to connect and communicate with our customers via small, bite-sized updates.
Thanks to Bret Bonnet, Quality Logo Products, Inc.!
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