One of the most effective ways to generate interest in your company, connect with prospects and build an audience that legitimately trusts you to provide useful, authority information in your niche is to start a company blog.
But simply starting a company blog is not the same as running a successful company blog, and as millions of corporations, LLCs, entrepreneurs and freelancers discover every year, the latter is never a sure thing.
Whether you find it hard to keep up a steady posting schedule, you can’t think of new topics, or you manage both and no one reads those posts, a blog can be a frustrating exercise without a bit of direction up front.
Here are some tips to help you determine exactly what to write about and when to write it for your company blog.
7 Effective Content Types for Your Company Blog
A good company blog needs to do three things: 1) Show the company’s personality, 2) Help prospects and customers alike with common issues or concerns, and 3) Build relationships with those very same prospects and customers.
So you need more than just press releases, recent product releases and corporate memos. It needs to include a range of content types such as:
- Stories About Staff and Management – Who performs the tasks your customers need? Who fills the orders? Who makes the products? Show a little behind the scenes action to bring people into the fold and give them a sense of ownership over what they buy.
- Industry-Related Advice and Tips – Straight tips and advice are always helpful. Just make sure yours are unique. Be creative, fun, and willing to try new things when offering this kind of advice to people.
- Questions and Calls for Submissions – Engage your audience with calls to action for comments, submissions, questions, or other input you can use for future posts.
- Timely and Audience Specific Articles – Timeless articles are great and can rank well for years on end, but the short term, time-specific posts are equally important, drawing seasonal and environment specific traffic.
- Social Integration and User Generated Content – Make sure every post is connected to your social media presence, shared on those platforms, and integrated with user generated content like images, comments, tweets, etc.
- A Keen Sense of Humor to Match Your Audience – Do your best to avoid the dry, boring, redundant tone that plagues most corporate blogs. Keep it light. Keep it fun. Keep it interesting. It’s more engaging.
- Numerous Types of Media – Mix it up a bit. A big block of text is intimidating to most readers. So mix in some images, videos, infographics, even a podcast link or two.
If you include all seven of these things in your posts on weekly basis, you will connect with the largest possible swath of your audience.
When to Post to Your Blog
With an idea of content in mind, when do you post all of those new articles? The frequency matters, but more so is the consistency. Yes daily posts are better than monthly posts in terms of raw SEO benefit, but don’t commit to daily posts if you can’t keep up or afford to hire a writer.
Do as much as you can comfortably do on a regular basis and then maintain that schedule. If that means only writing once a month, so be it, but make sure your posts are live every month on time.
If you maintain a steady, professional stream of content that compels, connects, and generates interest from your audience, you’ll see tangible benefits from your blog quickly.
