What My Team and I Learned From Maintaining a Good Professional Blog
It’s the work that pays off that actually matters.
When I decided it was time I turn my side hustle into a business and established my WordPress development agency, I was pretty convinced I wanted to invest in a good professional blog.
See, I’ve always had a thriving relationship with words. I studied Journalism, I enjoy books, I frequently engage in some thrilling and educational reads. I knew how important is to provide your customers with valuable information.
I believe one can always find a way to share something interesting, worthy, and well-detailed. Pretty often I’ve heard people express doubt when it comes to creating great content — is it necessary, is my business suitable for a blog, do I have what to talk about?
The short answer is yes — regardless of the business niche your company stands in, there are always topics and subjects that just wait to be covered in detail. In today’s article, I’d love to share with you some of the lessons me and my team learned after quite some time of establishing a blog. I’m pretty sure you’ll find some of the advice useful — hell, you might even feel inspired enough to start your own blogging experience right away!
The power of words is one of the most important weapons in business
One time I had a client who didn’t particularly believe in blogs and articles. He was convinced his products and services could speak by themselves. We had several meetings in which I failed to persuade him to focus some of his working energy on establishing a blog.
Instead of continuing to waste both of our time, I suggested he made a survey on his social media channels — did his customers and website visitors need more information on the products and services? That way, I told him, you can get the best idea of whether or not you should maintain a professional business blog. As he raised his eyebrow in doubt, in the end, he reluctantly agreed to perform the questionnaire.
Some time after that he requested a meeting. The subject? Enterprise blogs. Turned out the results from the performed survey were more than clear — the majority of people stated they would love to get to know more about the products and the business itself.
See, information is not the only purpose of a professional blog.
By using a great set of words one can use the power of persuasion. What’s more, when maintaining a blog, you build trust in your potential customers. Ask yourself — how likely are you to purchase an item from a website that seems abandoned, where there is no information whatsoever? Blogging perfectly shows your clients that you care. It also shows search engines that your website is active and relevant to search queries (if keyword research is done right).
If you want to learn more about the importance of quality content, you can check out another article of mine:
But today’s topic has more to do with an overview. I was lucky enough to have gathered a team of expert copywriters so it’s safe to say I’m quite happy with how our company blog turned out to be. Let me share with you what we’ve learned along the way.
Maintaining a professional blog requires hard work — here are the basics and what we’ve learned meanwhile
- have professional writers on board
- have a content marketer to lead the team
- get to know the search engines and do them justice
- write with your client in mind
- post daily
- spread the love on social media
- engage in informative screenshots and infographics
- be persistent
Have professional writers on board
Maybe this sounds too obvious to be worth the mention, but still. Copywriting and content writing are jobs which means there are professionals who are trained to write well and properly. Don’t fall into the trap of wanting to execute everything by yourself — you risk burning out while, at the same time, your blog will lack some professional touches that are of crucial importance.
Even if you can write well, delegate this task to the professionals. The content creators are the people who can best invent your brand’s tone of voice and create an image for your company using words.
Have a content marketer lead the team
Don’t forget that, more often than not, content creators are artsy people who, just like everyone else, need schedules, disciplines, and guidance. The best blogging results come when your writers have a leader who navigates all their tasks and helps them establish a daily and weekly schedule.
Content marketers have a great idea of the writing trends and prompts — their task is to overview the competitors’ blogs, to be up to date with everything that’s new, to keep an eye on the overall clients’ experience when browsing through your blog. It’s definitely a must to have a content team leader.
Get to know the search engines and do them justice
Another crucial part of your content manager’s job is getting to know how the search engines work and performing thorough keyword research. This way you’ll be sure that your blog covers all the important topics and subjects in your business niche. This approach guarantees your visitors will have time well-spent in your blog when reading valuable and educational information that has to do with their search query and intention.
When establishing our business blog, my team and I definitely saw the benefits of keyword research — by creating content that answers people’s search intents, there is a high chance you’ll end at page one on the search engine results page. This means more visitors and more potential clients for your business!
Write with your client in mind
Even though search engines play a significant role when it comes to content creation, one should never forget to put the readers first.
When we create our blog content, we always aim to sound engaging, interesting, thought-provoking, even funny at times. My advice is to avoid the dull robotic tone of voice when it comes to writing articles. Stay fresh and open-minded — create content that people will enjoy.
Post daily
All right, this can be a slight exaggeration, but you get my idea. The point is to be consistent. The best enterprise and personal blogs out there have a schedule of frequent posting. Try to put a realistic posting goal when creating your to-do. Then, make sure you never miss a date on your agenda calendar.
Readers love blogs that provide frequent, well-built, and engaging pieces on interesting subjects. If you start posting daily and then, all of a sudden, no one hears from you for the next two months, there is a high chance you’ll lose a devoted audience.
Spread the love on social media
Search engines may love your blog and ranks it high on the results page, but this doesn’t mean you have to count only on Google or Bing.
Every successful business nowadays has an established presence on social media. One great way to promote your content and win new customers is to share your articles on your business pages. The more engagement you achieve, the better. Start conversations, ask questions, post polls that go with your pieces.
Engage in informative screenshots and infographics
Sure, the content of your blog is its most important asset, but you should not forget about the visuals.
Readers just love a well-built beautiful article. Great ways to gain attention and approval are to include between the lines great photography and images. When building a case study, try out screenshots. When trying to tell important news, statistics, or just wanting to make a point, choose infographics. There are plenty of ways to make your content stand out.
Be persistent
By mentioning persistence, I’d like to address your patience and immunity to discouragement and giving up.
Establishing and maintaining a blog is oftentimes a slow, time and energy-consuming activity. Be patient and be realistic — you’ll hardly turn in the most read source of information in your niche after a month or two. Regardless of the little amount of traffic in the beginning, never stop building a well-established professional blog. Your hard work will pay off — at some point, your blog will easily become your company’s business card.
The bottom line
Blogging and creating content can be both exciting and challenging, enjoyable and frustrating. But one thing’s certain — it’s definitely extremely beneficial for your company.
I hope our experience will be of use to some fellow aspiring entrepreneurs or bloggers out there. My team and I are happy to maintain a company blog and the results are already paying off. Dedication always pays off, sooner or later.
Hi, guys, I’m Ivan and I’m here to share with all of you my passion for words, great content, entrepreneurship, personal development, management, hobbies, and everything in between.
I serve as the CEO of my WordPress Development Agency @ Vipe Studio where I have the pleasure to lead a diverse, wonderful and energetic team of experts. Feel free to contact me anytime — I would love to exchange new ideas and inspire each other!
