Andriana BoyrikovaAs a small business owner you want to attract customers to your business through any means possible and you have, naturally, started a business blog. You publish articles every week and you think this is enough. Yet, you don’t notice any website traffic spikes and if someone visits your blog, it is for such a short time that it is of no use either to you or to them. Obviously there is a problem, and you are wasting time and efforts while failing to attract and keep your ideal customers’ attention.
There are six major pitfalls you should avoid if you want to develop a strong web presence with your business blog and provide truly relevant and valuable information to your prospects and customers that will grow your business in the long run.
Your headlines aren’t well formulated
Your headline is the first impression you make on your prospective readers: if your headline doesn’t entice them to click on your blog post, they are never going to find out how interesting and useful your blog post is. In a world where you have less than three seconds to capture someone’s attention, you need to make sure you create powerful headlines.
There are a few easy headline formulas you can apply:
- Promise something in your headline and then deliver on it in your blog post: “Applying these six principles will attract more customers to your real estate business.”
- The How To headline provides a solution to a problem your target audience has: “How to gather data insights to increase your sales.”
- You can formulate your headline as a question (this might improve your blog post ranking as most search queries are phrased as questions): “What is content marketing and does your business need it?”
- The Why you should blog post makes your target audience realize they might have a problem and that your content has the answer: “Five reasons why you should start organizing your daily tasks at work now.”
- Try to evoke emotions with your headlines by adding power words, for example, smart, critical, surprising, best, outstanding, perfect: “How to write the perfect headline for your article.”
- Be mysterious and tease your prospective readers’ curiosity: “Find out how our latest software update will change the way you analyze data.”
The topics you write about don’t interest your target audience
Write for your ideal customer, not for you!
Often when small business owners start blogging, they instinctively write about themselves: their expertise, accomplishments, partnerships, and why their company is the best. While blogging originated as online journaling, this isn’t what makes for a successful business blog: business blogging is about delivering useful and relevant content to your target audience.
Your target audience are real people that you should provide value to. And in return for that value, they will help you grow your business. But in order for you to provide value to them, you need to know a lot about them and understand their lives, goals, ambitions, problems, and needs and create content that will help them.
Switch the angle: think in terms of “them” instead of “me”.
- Will this blog post help them solve a problem they are facing?
- Will this blog post educate them about something important to them?
- Will this blog post entertain them or make them feel good?
- How does the information in this blog post relate to my product or service, and how will it make their lives easier or better?
Your blog posts are too promotional
How many times have you clicked on a blog post that seemed interesting and then, 30 seconds later, you exited because the writer was trying to sell you something? The more promotional a blog post it, the less interest people have in it. Be helpful: by providing relevant and valuable information and answering your prospects’ and customers’ questions, you build authority and trust: and this is how you win new customers
Abandon the “I will share more useful information when they start to pay” mindset.
Sharing your knowledge doesn’t mean you will end up without any customers because you have given away what you know. On the contrary, this will show that you actually care about them, and that you are willing to help them.
One effective formula you can apply to make your blog posts helpful is to start with identifying a problem.
- For example, you are a personal trainer and you know your prospects find it difficult to lose weight and stay fit.
- You can deepen the problem and make them worry: what would the consequences be if they didn’t follow through immediately? (They would be in poor health which would consequently impede them from doing the things they love.)
- Then offer your solution: your expert advice on how to start exercising. Make sure your solution is clear and easy to follow through, so they are triggered to click on your call to action.
You don’t know what your goal is with each blog post
There is one question you need to ask yourself every time before you go about writing a blog post: “Why am I writing this blog post? What do I want to achieve with it?”
Many small business owners make the mistake of launching a blog and creating content on random topics at random times with no clear purpose in mind. Without a roadmap of whom you are writing for, what message you are trying to convey, and what you are trying to accomplish with it, you are simply wasting time and efforts.
Next time, ask yourself if the goal of your blog post is to:
- build credibility or establish you as an expert in your field
- connect you with your customers
- get new leads
- create a community of readers
- create new partnerships
- provide answers to the questions your prospects have
- provide further information to the people who have already purchased your product or service
- give a behind-the-scenes look into your company
- achieve something else?
You don’t distribute your blog posts effectively
You should spend just as much time distributing your blog posts as you do creating them. Writing a blog post is only half the work.
I guess now you are wondering: “Where should I be distributing them?” You will find the answer in your buyer persona’s template (when you know your target audience very well, you will also know where to find them online and offline).
To get you brainstorming, here are a few ideas:
- Are you sending a newsletter to your subscribers, leads, and customers? Then you should definitely add your business blog posts to those newsletters or consider starting a dedicated newsletter to promote your new blog content.
- Don’t spread yourself too thin trying to be on every existing social media channel. Instead, focus on one or two social media channels – where your ideal customers are most likely to be – and make sure they are well-maintained.
- Find podcasts that your target audience listens to and get to be a guest on them. Then you can refer the listeners to your business blog where they can find relevant and useful resources.
- Reach out to a few selected people that might be particularly interested in the blog post you have just published. If they read it and like it, the odds are they will share it with their own audience.
Poor writing
Grammatical and punctuation mistakes, poor structure, no writing stye: I guess these are self-explanatory and I don’t need to tell you why they reflect badly on your company. However, even if you are using a spelling and grammar checker to avoid illiterate writing, it can’t guarantee that your story will be well-written.
Polishing your writing skills doesn’t happen overnight. As I have said before, not everyone knows the ins and outs of writing. If you aren’t quite the storyteller, make sure you hire an expert writer to maintain your business blog. And don’t go for the lowest bid: why compromise on quality when it comes to your business?
One final point:
You should utilize closed-loop marketing to execute, track, and show how marketing efforts have impacted bottom-line business growth.
Leave industry jargon behind. Using words that you think make you sound smart but actually impede your target audience’s reading is pointless. Again, if you know your target audience inside out, you will know how to tune your language so that it resonates with them.
Conclusion
Maintaining a business blog isn’t an easy task. But if you choose to follow that path, remember to:
- create well-formulated and powerful headlines
- write for your ideal customer, not for you
- be helpful instead of promotional
- be very clear to yourself what you want to achieve with each piece of text
- spend just as much time distributing your blog posts as you do creating them
- deliver excellent writing and storytelling experience.
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I hope you have found these tips helpful. Which of these six mistakes have you been making and how are you going to fix them? Let me know in a comment.
Featured image: Shutterstock.
Do you need help with your business blog? Email me and I would love to help you.
