The company blog is a central asset to any marketing strategy. Discover why, and our advice, in my article!
Definition: What is a company blog?
A company blog is a digital tool that allows businesses to discuss topics of their choice. It is based on content creation, usually written (blog articles), aimed at serving business objectives and gathered in a dedicated space, either independent or integrated into the company’s website. It is the central point of content marketing strategies.
In a few years, the company blog has almost become a standard, both in B2B and B2C. In 2020, there are more than 600 million active blogs! With this avalanche of free content offered daily, the challenge is not only to have a blog but to:
- Offer remarkable and high-value content
- Think of your blog as part of a well-defined marketing strategy
Without this, your content will likely be lost in the crowd and invisible to your target audience.
That said, building a professional blog is easier said than done! Or is it?
After reading this article, you will have all the tools to create and develop a company blog that matches your ambitions.
Why create a company blog?
First, let’s look at the many benefits of creating a company blog.
Improve the organic search ranking (SEO) of your site
First of all, know that regularly writing articles on a dedicated space allows you to continuously improve the organic search ranking (SEO) of your site. On average, companies with a blog obtain 434% more indexed pages than those without one.
Why?
A company blog allows you to enrich your website content without limits. Each new article published is a new page indexed on search engines, and thus another opportunity to drive traffic to your site.
Combined with a relevant keyword strategy, the blog helps you rise in Google search results for queries made by your target audience. At a time when 90% of users search for information on the web before making a purchase decision, the stakes are huge!
Additionally, working on your SEO allows you to gradually reduce your budget allocated to paid acquisition (SEM) by driving organic traffic without spending a dime.
Finally, maintaining a company blog increases the number of inbound links to your site by 97%. These links further strengthen your SEO and generate additional traffic. A true virtuous circle.
Read Also: SEO vs SEM: Which Strategy Should You Choose?
Generate qualified leads
Once your blog has driven more traffic to your site, you increase the possibility of converting these new visitors into leads: elementary, my dear Watson 🕵
Marketing teams that use a company blog generate 67% more leads than others (those who have chosen the dark side of marketing force).
You can’t say you didn’t know 😏
How to do it? Each of your articles should contain an email capture form with an appropriate call-to-action (CTA). In exchange, offer content attractive enough to convince the visitor to leave their email: a white paper, access to a webinar, or a free trial.
Unsurprisingly, leads coming through a blog article are more qualified than leads purchased from a directory. They have already engaged with your brand and are potentially interested in your solution: a significant advantage!
Create a trusting relationship with your target audience
A company blog also allows you to build a community of people interested in common themes and sharing the same values!
An excellent way to create a genuine trust relationship between your brand and prospects or new customers.
On this front, the interest is twofold:
- Guide your potential customers at every stage before the purchase
- Maintain a long-term relationship by building a community of brand ambassadors
Develop your brand’s reputation
Writing blog articles allows you to develop your brand’s reputation and image through brand content.
Each article is available in many other formats (computer graphics, video, etc.) but can also be shared by your audience via their own social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) The opportunities to make your brand visible are therefore multiplied!
Demonstrate your expertise
A blog allows you to share your know-how and areas of expertise. A unique opportunity to gain credibility with your customers, investors, or partners.
Now imagine a prospect with questions before making a purchase finds the answers on YOUR Company Blog? There is a higher chance they will move forward in their buying process and choose your solution over a competitor’s.
Also, note that this content can be used by your sales teams to support their arguments at each stage of the sales process.
In B2B, the company blog has become an essential channel for asserting or confirming market expertise.
Educate your customers
Does your product or service disrupt traditional practices or revolutionize an industry?
One of the challenges of your communication may be to educate your customers about the benefits of the innovative solution you provide. In this case, your blog is an excellent medium for sharing your vision and educating people about the changes you are driving.
Enjoy long-term results
Writing blog articles has an immediate as well as long-term benefit. Unlike paid acquisition channels, which require paying a certain price for each visit or conversion, a blog allows you to build lasting visibility by progressively indexing your website to drive free traffic.
Also, the richer and more developed your blog is, the more material you will have to nurture each stage of the customer journey with relevant content.
Example of best practice: Use a set of existing articles to nurture your leads by creating an automated email loop.
Our 11 expert tips for a high-performing company blog
1. Consider your blog as a building block of your marketing strategy
To ensure your company blog helps you achieve your business goals, you must integrate it into a broader content marketing strategy. Give it a clear objective and KPIs that enable you to track your results.
Ask yourself:
- Why create a blog?
- What do you expect from readers when they visit your blog?
- What results do you expect in 3 months? 6 months? 1 year?
A blog is often used as an entry point to your brand. In parallel, you must have clearly defined actions and channels to convert these visitors into leads and then into customers.
Additionally, we strongly recommend conducting a keyword audit to identify topics that will help improve your website’s positioning.
2. Define your editorial guidelines
Before starting, you must also have clearly defined your editorial guidelines. As a pillar of your content strategy and reference document, it will ensure consistency and uniformity in all your content production.
To start, your editorial guidelines should specify:
- The objectives of your strategy and the target audience
- Your positioning relative to competitors
These answers will then help you define your editorial line:
- What communication channels should you use?
- What are your areas of expression: on which topics do you want to speak?
- How to group these topics into different content pillars?
- What tone, style, and vocabulary should you use? Not use?
Don’t hesitate to look at what your competitors or other companies in your industry are doing. And find a unique and distinctive angle! If your readers can find the same content elsewhere, they won’t return.
Finally, you’ll need to adapt this overall editorial line for each chosen communication channel.
3. What topics should you write about?
The topics you cover on your blog depend heavily on your objectives and the SEO strategy in place. If you’re lacking inspiration, here are our tips for finding original and useful content ideas for your target audience:
Be curious and break down silos:
Why go it alone when a 15-minute coffee break with a colleague can give you more answers than three days of benchmarking?
Talking with your customers and the teams in direct contact with them (sales, customer success, project managers, etc.) is the best way to learn more about your target audience’s concerns and the most frequently heard objections.
If possible, conduct a series of customer interviews to better understand them. At the very least, make a habit of collecting some information during each interaction with a customer.
Provide real value:
Educate your prospects and provide them with quality content that genuinely helps them.
An example of content that works well? Comprehensive guides that address a customer issue or provide information. One of the latest on our blog? The ultimate guide to creating a newsletter: over 5,000 words covering the topic from all angles 😉
In addition to demonstrating your expertise, you genuinely help your prospects achieve a goal or find answers to their questions. Trust us, they’ll remember it!
Share your customers stories
Share your customers stories:
Through testimonials, interviews, or case studies, tell the story of your customers and their relationship with your brand. Don’t hesitate to put them in the spotlight using storytelling.
4. Subfolder or Subdomain?
When you launch a company blog, you can choose to create it as a subdomain or a subfolder of your website. Let’s clarify:
- Subdomain = blog.yoursite.com
- Subfolder = yoursite.com/blog
For the natural SEO of your site, it’s preferable to choose the subfolder option.
Why?
When you create a subdomain, Google tends to identify it as a separate domain. Your blog may not benefit from the natural SEO of your main site, especially its backlinks.
Conversely, the keywords targeted by your articles and external links pointing to your blog will not impact the improvement of your main site’s SEO.
Good to know: Google claims that their analysis tool can identify a site’s subdomain without SEO consequences. However, several studies show that a subdomain takes longer to be indexed.
In conclusion, the simplest strategy is to create your blog in a subfolder. This way, all created articles will directly benefit the natural SEO of both your blog and your main site.
5. Define a goal and CTA for each article
The advantage of a company blog is that it allows you to create various content formats to achieve different goals. The key is that each written article has a well-defined goal and a clear place in your web marketing acquisition channel.
For example, on the same topic, the angle and content of an article will vary depending on whether you aim for natural SEO and traffic or lead conversion.
Based on the defined goal, you need to choose the right CTA. Here are some examples of goal/CTA combinations:
- SEO/traffic goal → CTA linking to another blog article
- Lead generation goal → Email capture CTA
- Conversion goal → CTA linking to a page presenting your offer / Contact page
6. Focus less on your solution
When a blog doesn’t perform well, it’s often because it’s too centered on the company and its offer. While it can be interesting to share news occasionally, successful bloggers understand that the key to success is providing useful, informative, or inspiring content for their target audience.
For some companies, this approach is far from obvious. You invest time and money in content creation, so why not promote yourself?
However, by addressing the concerns, fears, worries, and problems faced by your targets, you’ll lead your blog to success.
Remember, your professional blog is primarily a tool to help you build trust and/or establish expert positioning. This is achieved through interesting and useful content, not by promoting your solution.
7. Prioritize quality over quantity
This debate is mostly settled. Ideally, you should excel in both areas. But if you have to choose, always prioritize quality.
Why?
Today, everyone publishes content: the topics you want to address have most likely already been covered by others.
So, how do you stand out? Create higher quality content, meaning more relevant and comprehensive.
What about quantity? Of course, the more high-quality content you produce, the more likely you are to achieve your goals. But in content marketing, consistency is more important than volume.
8. Be consistent and create a schedule
No matter the chosen frequency, the most important thing is to stick to it. It’s better to write one article per week rather than three articles at the beginning and end of the month.
The goal: establish a schedule with your audience. If readers like your articles and know you publish every Monday, they’re more likely to visit your blog at the start of the week.
Additionally, Google regularly analyzes your site and rewards consistent publishing.
9. Outsource content production or not?
Your professional blog will be successful if you put in the necessary time and effort.
To turn it into a real growth lever, outsourcing part of the content production can save time and budget in the following cases:
- Your internal resources are not available
- You don’t have the necessary skills in-house
- You don’t have the means to hire the required talents (in web writing, design, and SEO at a minimum)
- You lack ideas and time to dedicate to strategy and/or content production
- You’re afraid you won’t have time to analyze your actions, key to the success of your blogging strategy If you check one or more of these boxes, there’s no doubt you’ll benefit from seeking help!
The question remains: should you choose an agency or freelancers? For more advice on the subject, we’ve dedicated an article to the question of outsourcing.
10. Medium or classic blog?
Medium is a social platform that allows you to share your articles. When starting with content creation, the question may arise whether to choose a classic CMS or Medium.
Here’s a quick overview of the advantages and disadvantages of Medium:
Main advantages:
- Elegant and intuitive design
- Extreme simplicity for beginners
Main disadvantages:
- No possibility to reference your main site
- Design and page customization are very limited – a significant issue for converting readers into leads or customers
- Your content is on a third-party platform, leaving you at the mercy of its practices
In short: Medium is nice if your goal is to share an opinion, feedback, or vision at a specific moment.
For a company blog, we strongly recommend using a CMS and purchasing your own domain name. While the start may be a bit less straightforward, it’s the only way to fully benefit from all the potential of a business blog as discussed in this article.
11. Choose the right CMS?
As a reminder, a CMS (Content Management System) is a platform that allows you to manage a website or blog.
While various CMS options exist, we recommend creating your company blog via WordPress. As a global leader in the CMS market, WordPress is so efficient and user-friendly that it’s used today by freelancers, small businesses, medium-sized businesses, and large corporations alike. It also has the advantage of being free and offers numerous visual and functional customization options.
Ready to create or boost your company blog?
If this article made you want to develop your company blog, so much the better: you now have all the cards in hand to succeed!
You can handover us this mission to create and manage your business blog, Contact Me!.