We all want to be the go-to person in our field, right? We all want to be that number one choice for our customers.
But how do you stand out when there are so many others fighting for your customer’s attention?
Well, one of the most effective ways is through blogging.
Blogging instantly boosts your credibility. It shows you’re the expert in your field, and it helps you widen your scope for a bigger, more engaged audience.
And the best part, those new readers are all people who will potentially buy from you.
But there’s more to blogging than meets the eye. And to really grow a successful blog that works for you and your business, it’s a good idea to follow these three best practices.
Provide real value
Many business owners often feel reluctant to give away their best kept secrets. I mean, if you’re giving that information away for free, nobody’s going to actually buy your product or service, right?
But that’s simply not true.
Because there will always be people that need the whole picture, that don’t have the time to implement it, or don’t have the confidence to go it alone.
By sharing your expertise, you’re showing your audience you’re someone that knows their stuff.
You’re someone they can trust to solve their problem.
You’re giving them that reassurance and the nudge they need to take the leap to work with you.
You do that by showing your reader you understand the challenges they’re facing, and by providing actionable tips they can implement to get those quick wins they’re after.
Every piece of content you create should address their big problems. It should offer tangible results.
Because by providing real value to your audience you’ll set yourself apart. It creates that trust factor. And if they subscribe to your blog and become a loyal reader, you cover the two other important pieces of the puzzle too – the know and like factors.
It helps you go deeper with your audience. And since not every other business is going below surface level, you’ve automatically got the edge.
Be consistent
Now you know offering real value is key, the next important step is consistency. You need to show up regularly with great content if you want to build your fan base.
Because consistency breeds loyalty.
Far too many business owners fail with blogging and think it doesn’t work because they don’t stick with it long enough. Maybe they’ll write a few posts for a couple of months, maybe share it to their social channels once or twice, but then crickets.
Nobody’s clicking, nobody’s commenting or sharing and you start asking yourself: ‘What’s the point?’
But this is when you need to dig deep, trust in the process and unleash your inner bull. Be stubborn and do it anyway. Because slowly but surely, you’ll start to see the payoff.
Once a week is a good frequency for posting to your blog. But if you can only manage twice a month, or even once a month, that’s ok for now. The most important thing is that you keep going and your audience knows when they can expect to hear from you.
Not every business is consistent with their blog content, so you have a great opportunity to do things differently. To be a predictable presence, build your community and nurture those in your circle.
And the best way to keep you on track, is with a blogging strategy.
If you’re a Pet Biz Thrive Online Club member, there’s a whole blogging module with tutorials, worksheets and templates to support you. That’s how many of our members have started their blogs from scratch and skyrocketed their results.
Don’t forget to promote
There’s little point in creating great content if you’re not going to put it in front of your ideal customers.
Many businesses forget this step, or don’t have a solid promotion strategy in place.
They write the content, hit publish and wait for the readers to roll in.
If this is your strategy, you’re going to be disappointed my friend. Because you need to actively drive people back to your posts if you want to create a real impact with your blogging.
That means sharing your blog posts across all your social media channels. And not just once either.
To get the most out of each piece of content, you should reshare each one every couple of months or so. And as a bonus, you should also share each blog post to your email list too.
That may sound like a lot of work. But you can make the process easier by using a social media scheduler. With a tool like Smarterqueue.
This allows you to make your posts evergreen, so your posts are automatically reshared every week.
Not every business actively promotes their blog posts. So by getting your posts out there every week, you’ll boost your visibility and have more opportunities to show people how you can help them.
By following these best practices you’ll soon realise what an effective marketing strategy blogging can really for your business.
So now it’s over to you. Share your key takeaways from this post in the comments below and let me know which best practice you’ll be applying to your own blog this week…