Blogging For Your Niche Market: How To Transform Industry Jargon Into Your Content Marketing backbone
When you’re creating your business’s content marketing strategy — with all the fun options available — it’s easy to leave blogging out. But blogging is not a thing of the past. Your content marketing cannot just exist on social media, you need content for your website too! Blogging is a strong component of any content marketing strategy that raises awareness, builds credibility, boosts search engine optimization, establishes expertise and generates leads.
Here are 5 reasons you should consider a blog for your business:
- The most simple reason to blog is that it helps you provide your customers with new, interesting content on a regular basis.
- Blogs are great for driving website traffic.
- Blogging costs nothing but time.
- Blogging helps you build trust with your target audience.
- Blogs can create a lot of strong content for your other marketing avenues, like social media.
When thinking about a blogging strategy for your business, the first thing you should do is decide on your target audience. You can’t write an effective blog for the masses: you need to choose a group of people with like characteristics who would be interested in your business, would buy your products, or want to learn more about your industry. Having a defined audience will not only help you write an effective blog, it will also give you a direction in which to choose your blog topics. Write topics you know your audience will be interested in!
A few steps to consider when deciding on your primary audience:
- Start with who your customers are. What commonalities do they share?
- Who do your competitors serve? Does your business serve the same demographic or do you serve a different market?
- Use Google Analytics to see who visits your website. Then think, are you serving them or selling to them?
Consider tailoring some of your blogs for industry influencers. These are other businesses or independent bloggers that have an interest or stake in your industry and have a larger audience than you do. That way, they can share your blogs with their audiences which will widen your reach, and generate new leads!
Not sure where to find industry influencers? These are a few places you can start:
- Use hashtags for your own social media posts and pay attention to the hashtags your competitors use, too. It’s likely that influencers in your industry will use the same hashtags.
- Scan your competitors’ mentions and tags on social media. If they’re taking advantage of influencer marketing, you’ll probably be able to find a few accounts you can pitch your blogs and posts to.
- When you’re researching blog topics to write, take note of the top blogs and bloggers you see in your search. Those accounts are likely influencers in your industry!
Finally, your content marketing strategy, and therefore your blogs, should have a goal. Writing a blog for brand awareness is different than writing a blog for influencers. Your content should change according to your goal, especially your calls to action. Every blog you write should contain a Call-to-Action (CTA) so that readers know what to do next. CTAs often include phrases that begin with action words like “read,” “learn” or “click.”
Here are some goals that might be a right fit for your business:
- Brand Awareness: If you’re new to the industry or a local area, brand awareness is a great place to start so the right people know your business is there to help them!
- Lead Generation: This would be a great goal for a more established business to use blogs to get more inquiries.
- Thought Leadership: If you want your brand to be perceived by customers as an expert in your field, blogs are the perfect tool. Try to stay on the cutting edge of new trends and practices in the industry in your blogs to show that you’re the best in the biz.
Blogging is not just an opportunity for you to plug your business. It’s a medium that allows you to showcase your knowledge and industry expertise, create a voice for your business and explore industry topics that you may not otherwise be able to learn about.
Remember that your blogs should tell a story not only about the topic you’re writing about but about your business as well. Having a firm grasp on your business’s story can not only help you write your blogs but can also help you build your content marketing strategy overall.
A blogging strategy is a long-term time investment. You may not see results immediately, but if you’re in it for the long haul, blogging can yield big results — even if your industry doesn’t seem quite as blog-friendly as others. If you need help building and executing your own blogging strategy, contact us to see how we can help.