Editor's Note: Wanda Carlson is a business writer and graphic designer who contributes to WebsiteSetup. Today, she joins us to share an original graphic that concisely explains how to build and maintain a blog for your company.
As a business maintaining or striving to maintain an online presence, there is almost nothing better you can do than to keep a blog. According to the 2016 Content Preferences Survey by Demand Gen, about 47% of buyers read 3 to 5 pieces of content before initiating a purchase. Consequently, by failing to adequately focus on content, businesses can forfeit up to half of their potential revenue!
It's worth considering why businesses make this mistake. One answer could be the sheer number of good, productive marketing strategies for an online business. These include maintaining an active social media presence, an email list, or targeted advertising campaigns.
Depending on the company and product, any one of these strategies may be well worth pursuing. But one thing tends to remain constant from business to business: a single strategy should not be pursued at the expense of everything else. Online marketing is no different; publishing original content on a blog is not only a great way to earn and convert inbound traffic all on its own, but complements social media and email marketing activities very nicely.
Infographic Summary
In the following infographic, we will explain the basic steps you should know to create and maintain a business blog. Here are a few key takeaways:
- There are numerous blogging platforms, and depending on your needs, you may decide to choose something specialized to an industry. However, after many years, WordPress remains the strongest multi-purpose platform on the web. Not only is it fast, easily customized and free, but has a large support community that can help if you run into any issues.
- Craft diverse and genuinely valuable (rather than salesy) content for your blog on a regular schedule, in a voice that comes naturally to you and reflects your brand identity, with a carefully considered audience in mind
- Be engaged with your own audience, and other influencers in your community to build authority and backlinks. Integrate content into your other marketing strategies by sending blog posts to social media, or to email subscribers.
- Stay relevant by paying attention to important trends, and bring search engine traffic to your blog by optimizing content for SEO.
With that, here's the infographic - feel free to save and share with colleagues or friends!
Learn more with these related OMI classes:
Expressing the Brand Through Content Marketing
Creating and Curating Content People Love
Visit the Online Marketing Institute to browse over 400 classes in the digital and social media marketing space.