The “Secret Sauce” of a Successful Business Blog

Everyone (and we do mean everyone) is starting a blog on their business website these days. It seems easy to get going — especially when your team is excited and momentum is high; but how do you set up your business’s blog to stay relevant for months to come?

Let’s take a little look at the “secret sauce” of a good blog section.

1. A good business blog starts with an intentional strategy

Strong blogs always start with a good, hard look at your business’s overall strategy: 

• What is the purpose of your new blog? 
• How will you measure its success? 
• Why are you doing it in the first place — because the internet told you to, or because you genuinely believe it can help your company achieve its goals?

Once you clearly define the purpose of your business’s blog section (sharing company news with a relevant audience, adding unique opinions to an ongoing industry discussion, explaining the need for your product, etc.), it’s time to figure out how you’ll meet it.

You need to thoughtfully decide what topics you’ll write about and how often based on audience insights, plus make sure your website’s technical aspects are top-notch so your blog is easy to read on mobile devices.

2. Search engine optimization doesn’t happen automatically — it takes research

It’s not enough to just toss content (even good content) onto your website and wait for the traffic to spike. In the modern age of the internet, website pages don’t show up in Google search results by accident — your business’s blog copy needs to be carefully crafted to answer users’ questions with real value.

The search engine optimization landscape is constantly evolving as the key players (read: Google) adjust their algorithms, but one thing is certain: search engines are prioritizing the experience of real humans over any technical cutoffs for keyword density or word count.

In many ways, this is great. Search engines have huge power to transform the web into a more accessible, user-friendly place! When it comes to measuring your website’s performance, though, things can get a little messy. How are you supposed to optimize your business’s blog section without “exact guidelines” of what will make your content rank higher?

With careful research and an appreciation that you’re writing content for people, not for algorithms, that’s how. And working with a few professionals won’t hurt.

3. Don’t just “add more noise” to the content marketing landscape

We have no shortage of content these days. What we lack is clear, relevant, quality information.

It’s tempting to start a blog and try to write about everything that seems related to your industry in an effort to just increase the copy on your website, but trust us: It’s a bad idea.

Before blogging about a certain topic, you need to honestly ask yourself if you 1) have anything new to add to the discussion or 2) can help explain the available information in a clearer or more applicable way than what’s already been done.

If you can’t answer yes to either of those questions, you need to reevaluate your business’s blog strategy… or settle for not getting the results you want.

When it comes down to it, the most important part of blogging is your audience — you need to provide content they actually care about. If you keep their user experience top of mind throughout the entire blog creation process, the rest (read: increased web traffic and business leads) will follow suit.