Can These 10 Tantalizing Tips Help Supercharge Your Business Blogging Efforts this Year?

You’ve realized the enormous business benefits of blogging. You’ve started posting content on a regular basis but have yet to see a huge increase in your site’s visitor numbers. Before you throw in the proverbial towel, take a moment and revisit your blogging strategy (you do have a blogging strategy, right?). There are simple adjustments you can make to your company blog that can have a profound impact on your content outreach ROI. Consider the following ten tips if you want to supercharge your business’ blog:

1. Share Worthiness: Before you start writing a blog post, consider whether your topic is share-worthy. What will it take for others to be inspired to share your content? Mediocre content will not do. Even if it takes a little longer to create, make sure each blog post is great, not just good. The longevity of your blog depends upon your willingness to offer awesome content.
2. Use Interviews: A fabulous way to increase content on your blog. Conduct interviews relevant to your target audience and post them to your blog. Record video interviews and post them to your blog. You’ll be amazed at how much discussion will happen around your interview, especially if you solicit feedback from your audience. What a great way to build attention around your company’s blog, right?
3. Narrow Focus: When crafting new blog posts, focus on a very specific audience. Who do you want to receive the most value from your content? If you write with a specific type of reader in mind, your content will naturally speak to their needs. Don’t try to impress your entire Twitter/Facebook audience; narrow your focus to deliver blog posts with true value.
4. Social Listening Tools: Discover topics your audience cares about. Tools like Social-Searcher.com can help you find conversations your target audience is already having online. Use the data you find to fuel your blog post creation strategy. If potential customers are already having conversations relevant to your blog post, the chances of extra eyeballs on your content greatly increases. Sounds like a no-brainer, right?
5. Be Conversational: Treat your blog posts like a conversation. One-sided promotional posts aren’t going to build a community around your blog. Ask questions of your readers. Solicit their feedback on your content. You want readers to return to your business’ blog on a regular basis and/or subscribe to your RSS feed. Make sure your content talks ‘with’ them and not ‘at’ them.
6. Trend/news analysis: Fuel your content creation strategy. News-jacking is a great way to increase readership for your company blog. Is a current news topic relatable to your target audience? Will it have an impact on how they relate to your brand? If you can use current trends to initiate a conversation on your blog, create a blog post your audience will enjoy. Use caution with this strategy though; you don’t want to jump on a trend just because it is hot. Online readers are savvy; they’ll immediately know if you’re just trying to bump your audience analytics by hijacking a trending news story.
7. Proper Tone:  Positive posts resonate far better than negative content. If your business blog is primarily doom and gloom, your readers won’t want to return on a regular basis. Make sure your content skews positive and the social shares of your content are likely to increase.
8. Spell-check: Always proofread your posts before hitting the publish button. While this might sound obvious it is surprising how many bloggers fail to do this. Read a few posts on Medium or LinkedIn Pulse and see how many typos you can spot. Spelling mistakes on a company blog immediately impact how a potential customer feels about your company. If you can’t be bothered to check the spelling on your site, how careful are you going to be about satisfying your customers’ needs? Don’t trust yourself? Use a tool like HemingwayApp.com to proofread your post prior to publishing.
9. Tweet-Worthy Tidbits: To increase the social shares of your blog posts, include tweet-worthy tidbits within your content. ClickToTweet.com makes it super simple to embed tweet-ready tidbits within a blog post. With very little effort on your part, you can significantly increase the number of social shares for your content.
10. Incorporate live-streaming: Use tools like Periscope or Facebook Live for live video streams or Anchor.fm for live audio streams. Whichever platform you choose, embed the final result into your blog. You can even use a tool like Anchor.fm to request audio feedback on your blog posts. Not only can this boost engagement on your blog, it can also increase the social media attention around your site. Retweet each audio comment you receive and then embed your Twitter retweets beneath your original blog post.

Building a successful business blog takes time and effort. You’re not likely to enjoy huge readership numbers at first. But with patience and a focus on quality and engagement, your audience will grow over time. Not only will business blogging build a strong online reputation for your company amongst potential customers, your efforts will increase your search engine results too. Companies that blog on a frequent basis are likely to rank higher than those without a blog. Now that you have the knowledge to improve your business blog, are you ready to double-down on increased readership numbers?