A quality blog can complement your new business. Using it to share your product images, video tutorials, and informational articles can be very convenient. If done right, a blog can help you reach a broader audience, generate new leads, and increase your revenue.
However, before you start posting the content, you need to set the blog up. This step includes choosing the best blogging platform, customizing the blog’s looks, and configuring its settings. Only then can you focus on using your blog to promote your business and gain profit.
If you’re new in this field, keep reading. Throughout this article, we’ll help you better understand what blogging platforms there are, how they work, and how to use a blog to promote your business.
What Is a Blogging Platform
A blogging platform refers to a software or online service that lets users create, edit, publish, and manage content on the internet.
The product of a blogging platform is called a blog, which is short for weblog. A blog may contain different content types, such as articles, a collection of photographs, and videos. Typically, it presents its content in reverse chronological order.
How Blogging Platforms Work
Blogging platforms usually require you to register for an account. Once you’ve created one, enter the username and password on your chosen platform’s Login page to get to the dashboard.
On it, you can create and organize your blog posts. Apart from that, a blogging platform also lets you:
- Assign writers. Displaying the authors’ names on each blog post that they wrote to give them a little credit.
- Create tags and categories. If you add new content religiously, your blog will soon be filled with tens or hundreds of posts. For better organization, most blogging platforms grant taxonomy. With it, tagging and categorizing content is much easier.
- Customize the look and feel. Blogging platforms often pack lots of templates and themes to take advantage of. This enables you to match your blog’s appearance with its niche.
- Configure the blog settings. From hiding the published date and including the author’s note to installing an SEO plugin and adding a security patch. These actions are usually accessible through the blogging platform’s dashboard.
Users visit a blog through a domain name, which refers to the words or phrases that people type onto their browsers’ URL bar. It’s an essential part of a blog as it’s how people will find your website.
Getting the perfect domain name can be a challenge. When searching for one, run your desired domain name through a domain checker to see if it’s available. If someone else has claimed it, the tool will provide you plenty of options on available domain names to choose from.
How to Use Your New Blog to Promote Your Business
You must’ve heard about digital marketing and how “content is king” in today’s marketing landscape. This is because any type of business can benefit from it.
One of the best strategies for digital marketing is blogging. By writing and optimizing articles that cover your business niche, you can improve your blog’s positioning in the SERPs (search engine result pages). This will not only raise brand awareness towards your company but also attract more potential customers.
When it comes to promoting your business through a blog, there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Determine your purpose. Different goals can be achieved through blogging, like lead generation and improving brand awareness. By setting a goal, you may be able to make more informed decisions on what type of content to write.
- Know your target audience. This research helps determine the best writing style, voice, and tone. Apart from that, a persona can help you figure out what your audience is after.
- Post informational content. Strive to post content that will help people solve their problems. Creating “What is” articles and tutorials is the best way to appeal to your readers.
- Conduct SEO. Short for search engine optimization, this method is about improving content quality and quantity to increase its visibility on search engines’ result pages. The aim of this is to drive organic traffic.
- Share on social media. This is important to help you reach new people. Also, letting readers share your posts on their profiles helps drive more traffic. Thus, don’t forget to include social media share buttons on your blog posts.
- Grow your email list. Offering premium content subscriptions and promoting your business’s products are easy, thanks to email marketing. For that, you may want to conduct events, such as giveaways, to attract your readers to fill in the contact form.
- Try guest posting. Write for other blogs and include your blog’s link in the article. This method is a win-win solution. It’s a convenient way to reach a new audience while building long-term relationships with other experts in the field.
- Test and optimize. Trends shift, and your blog may become irrelevant. An A/B test can help your blog adapt to the changing environment. Thus, it’s highly recommended to research the market every once in a while.
Types of Blogging Platforms
When talking about types of blogging platforms, website builders and content management systems are definitely on the list.
The former is a beginner-friendly blogging platform with pre-built templates and other components. It often comes with drag-and-drop functionality to help users move things around based on the blog’s needs.
Some of the most popular examples of website builders include Wix, Weebly, and Shopify.
The latter refers to web-based software that offers more flexibility. It provides hundreds of free and premium themes to choose from and grants limitless customizations on them. However, users need to have coding skills to take maximum advantage of this blogging platform.
Powering 41.9% of all websites, WordPress is the most popular CMS. However, it only accounts for approximately 75 million blogs globally. WhereasTumblr has more than 500 million.
How to Choose a Blogging Platform
With the many blogging platforms available in the market, choosing the perfect one can be challenging. Moreover, switching from one platform to a better one can be risky. It can lead to downtimes and loss of traffic.
Here’s a list of criteria you should look for when researching blogging platforms:
- Ease of use. If you have little coding experience, opting for a blogging platform that’s easy to set up will help to ease the process.
- Changing your blog’s design details from time to time is an excellent way to ensure a fresh and up-to-date look. Therefore, check if your chosen platform grants limitless customization.
- As your audience grows, you may need to add more functionality to cater to the blog’s changing needs. An excellent blogging platform provides a flexible environment to help scale your resources.
- Monetization option. As blogging will be one of your income sources, make sure the platform you’ve chosen supports monetization tool integration. Typically, professional bloggers use Google AdSense to display advertisements on their blogs.
- The amount of money you spent is another crucial factor to consider. Usually, you only need to pay additional domain and hosting fees when using a blogging platform. Thus, make sure your chosen platform doesn’t ask for more. Anglų kalbos dienos stovyklos Vilniuje Kaune ir Klaipėdoje vaikams Intellectus Kaune ir Klaipėdoje vaikams
Conclusion
A blogging platform lets you build a blog with ease. Among the popular platforms are WordPress and Tumblr. However, the drag-and-drop functionality that website builders have may also be a convenient choice for new bloggers.
Using a blog to promote a business is not a new tactic. Many business owners take advantage of blogging to boost business exposure, drive organic traffic, and increase revenue.
To summarize, here are the eight tips for how to use a blog to promote a business:
- Determine your purpose. Deciding on what content to write is easier if you have set some goals to achieve.
- Know your target audience. This helps you formulate your target audience’s needs and determine the writing style, tone, and voice, so your content resonates with your audience well.
- Post informational content. Make sure your posts solve your target audience’s pain points, so they’ll make your blog their source of information.
- Conduct SEO. This is about improving your blog’s positioning in the SERPs.
- Share on social media. Include social media share buttons on your posts so your readers can invite their friends to read them.
- Grow your email list. To conduct email cpg content marketing, growing an email list is one of the vital steps of the strategy.
- Try guest posting. By writing for other blogs, your passive traffic may improve.
- Test and optimize. As blogging is an ongoing process, monitoring trends may be beneficial to make sure your blog always looks appealing.
Now you know all the nitty-gritty of blogging for business promotion and profit. By implementing the tips and tricks you’ve learned in this article, you may be more than ready to get your new blog into the spotlight. Good luck!