Making time to consider your marketing and allocating a realistic budget is essential in business, whether you are finding things a little quiet or you’re too busy to cope.
Marketing is not just about high-spend advertising campaigns or high-end video productions; it’s more important to spend time being consistent, relevant and approachable to reach your target audience.
Blogging for your business is an excellent and affordable marketing tool and it’s never too late to start. But like most good things in life it takes time to nurture and grow a decent blog for your business. The best thing about blogging is that the content can be used again and again. Fresh new material for your website, shared in your regular newsletters, posted on social media and you could even try submitting post to industry publications to reach another audience.
Making time to be creative
This can be hard but put all of that aside and think of the benefits. If you want to connect with potential customers, build your brand, influence people or stand out as experts in your field then blogging could be the perfect platform for your business. Plus, the only real cost is yours (or your team’s!) time so it’s great for those on a budget.
Six ideas to get you started
As we’re half way through the year already I thought I’d share some ideas to get you through the next six months, add in six ideas of your own and ta-dah you have a jam-packed blog and 12 fresh pieces of content. Plus, the Google bots may just decide to list you a little higher.
1. Current trends
Be brave and have a go at predicting trends for the future. Think about how you make searches and it’s likely others will do the same.
2. Share a case study
Case studies instantly demonstrate the type of people and businesses you work with. Ask your client if you can add a testimonial so potential clients can get a thorough understanding of how you work.
3. What’s new in your industry?
Whether it’s new regulations, the impact of Brexit or changes, demonstrating your knowledge in your field shows you know your world inside out and helps position you as an expert.
4. Meet the team
Writing a post about your team is a great way to help your audiences relate to your business on a more personal level. A blog can be a friendlier extension of your About Us pages, especially if you get people to write about each other or welcome new starters.
5. Run a customer surveys and share the stats
Ask your subscribers or readers to do a quick survey and let them know that you’ll publish their collective results on the blog. This helps you get some indication of how your audience is using your product, their thoughts on a service or valuable research for new product development or future marketing campaigns.
6. Write a ‘how to’ post
Sharing knowledge about how people can do something that relates to your business is both a helpful and clever move. People often search for ‘how to…’ terms so the chances are your post may come up and those that read it may wish to connect with your business for further advice.
Throw in some posts about events you may be attending, awards you may have won, some new client wins and you’ll have plenty to talk about.
Whether your annual marketing budget is £1000 or £100,000, have a go and add blogging to your teams and your own must do list. Monitor the results for yourself in Google Analytics, social media stats and newsletter click-throughs and hopefully you’ll see it’s all worthwhile.
