Blogging is the hallmark of a solid inbound marketing strategy. However “just write” is some of the worst advice you can give to someone writing for a business blog. Your posts for a business website need to be focused around a specific goal for the company. Here are some of the different goals we aim for when planning out blog content:

Writing to rank on a keyword

When you’re trying to build up organic traffic, you want to focus your blog post on a specific keyword or phrase. This gives you an entire page on your website that’s now dedicated to that keyword. I like to think of each blog post as an individual inbound funnel, giving you the opportunity to bring people through on a specific topic. From there, you can make the case through your good content that your audience should want to hear more from you.

More importantly, writing a blog post toward a keyword gives you a whole page to tailor your message for first-time visitors that might be searching for that very term. You’ll want to make sure that whatever keyword you’re targeting is included in the article title, the url, the article body, and the meta description. That way it’s clear to the search engines that your page has a real focus around that specific topic.

Getting Social Exposure

Sometimes you may want to write an article for social exposure, or to get social shares. Before you try this, make sure you have a plan of action. Who will share this article? Why will they share it? Do they have audiences that will find your information useful?

Make sure you have an answer for all of those questions before attempting to write an article for social exposure.

A post that’s written for this purpose can also be a way to build links to your website. If you call out various groups or individuals, they might repay the favor by linking to you. This builds your site’s credibility with search engines, and can also drive ongoing traffic back to your website. 

Not every socially-focused post has to go for links, but whatever your stated reason, you should have a clear goal in mind. Just writing an article and hoping that people share it because it’s awesome is a losing strategy. 

Answer Sales Questions

One of the first things we like to do with new clients is to interview a salesperson to ask what their most commonly asked questions are. From there, we can create a piece of content that addresses each question individually. This lets us immediately give salespeople a very important asset to help them do their jobs better, and it gets them in the habit of sharing content with prospects. 

Any question the sales team has had to answer more than once is probably a legitimate concern that content can help people with. Even if these articles don’t get a ton of traffic on their own, they can provide value by saving salespeople time.

As an added bonus, these posts sometimes end up ranking as well. Browsing habits have evolved so that people are often typing full questions into search engines. In turn, search engines have gotten better at finding pages that are focused on similar topics and keywords too.

Providing Value to your Prospects

The most important thing that your blog post should be is valuable. If your post is super-optimized around a keyword, but useless, it won’t make a good impression or remain ranked for very long.

Posts that are focused on how to do something or that give advice can be great for building your brand. You can share them on social media, they can drive your email newsletter, and they can get people to ask you questions about what you do.

Often, these posts aren’t necessarily top traffic-getters, because they aren’t specifically optimized around any keywords. However, they can provide value in other ways for prospects. Once someone has arrived on your site, these can be the posts that really get them to move down the sales funnel.

Blogging for your business doesn’t have to be overwhelming, but it should above all be a strategic pursuit. Make sure that each post you’re putting out there has a clear purpose. If you get into the habit of articulating why you’re publishing each piece, your blog can become a huge asset for your marketing and sales.

Just getting started with creating a content strategy for your business' blog? Take a look at these free resources to help you start creating content that converts.