As a small business owner, you are always looking for ways to drive customer conversions. One way to effectively reach your target audience is by writing blogs related to your industry. This will not only help boost your SEO ranking, but it will also show potential customers that you are an expert in your field. If you can provide valuable, relevant information, then you are more likely to convert leads into customers. In addition, by consistently blogging, you can build trust and credibility with your readers. If they see that you are regularly sharing helpful information, they will be more likely to do business with you when they need your product or service.
But it’s not enough to just write any blog post – you need to make sure that your posts are relevant, current, and engaging in order to really capture your audience’s attention. We have seen many of our clients struggle to even start their blogging journey due to this. So we have compiled a list of the top 5 tips on how to write blogs that will drive conversions for your small business with lesser hassles from your end.
1. Think about writing relevant posts that will excite your customers.
Most small business owners today get stuck in this very first step of “what blogs to write?”. While wondering about that, the best process we recommend you is to put yourselves in your audience’s shoes and then start thinking about what will you be searching on the internet related to your service/product. You know your audience best, you know where they hang out, what trends they follow, what they like and more. It’s time to use that.
Use that mindset to start thinking about what topics will be most relevant and exciting for your customers. And believe me, if you’re writing about something they care about, you’re more likely to get their attention – and keep it. And once you have their attention, you can start working on converting them into paying customers. So what are some topics your customers might be interested in? It could be anything from industry news and trends to tips on using your product or service. You could also write about your company’s story, or share some behind-the-scenes looks at what goes into making your product or delivering your service. Whatever you write about, make sure it’s interesting, informative, and relevant to your customers. That way, you can keep their attention and set the stage for the more conversion-focused approach, later on.
2. Stay current with trends.
As a business owner, it’s important to stay up-to-date with the latest trends in your industry. This way, you can make sure that your blog posts are relevant and helpful to your target audience. Additionally, by staying current with trends, you’ll be able to position yourself as an authority in your field – which is always a valuable asset when trying to drive conversions. Of course, this can be easier said than done – especially if you’re already struggling to keep up with the day-to-day demands of running a business. However, there are a few simple ways that you can make sure that you’re always aware of the latest industry trends.
First, make it a habit to regularly read industry-specific news sources. This way, you’ll be able to quickly identify any new trends that are emerging. One of the ways I love to ensure this is to create your own boards and feeds in a very helpful tool called Feedly (screenshot below). You can create feeds of topics and blogs/news sources that you will like to follow, club them into relevant groups and visit each day for maybe just 5mins to check if anything new came up in your feeds which seem interesting. Your feeds are nothing but grouped links to latest blogs/news from the sources that you have followed. So it becomes easy to check at a glance and also hard to miss. And, they have a free version which is quite great in itself.
Similarly, you can setup Google Alerts for relevant keywords or topics that you want to be notified about whenever there is a mention of that keyword in any article published recently.
Additionally, you can follow influencers and thought leaders in your field on social media (wherever you know your audience is most active). Not only will this help you stay up-to-date with the latest trends, but it will also give you some great ideas for blog posts and other content that you can create to position yourself as an authority in your industry.
3. Become a go-to source for information in your niche.
If you want people to come to your blog (and thus, your small business), then you need to give them a reason to do so. One of the best ways to do this is by becoming a go-to source of information in your niche. When people know that they can count on you for accurate and helpful information, they’re much more likely to keep coming back – and even recommend you to others. Over time, this can really help increase conversions for your small business. you know why? Because they already trust you and this will just be an extension to that.
Think of it in this way, we all have that one friend or colleague in our circle whom we look up to and feel that he is someone who is very knowledgable when it comes to some particular topic. Let’s say he is known to be a geek in all aspects of technology from smartphones to computers. So, would be odd if you end up going to that person someday to get their help with some computer-related problem that you are facing? It won’t right? So you have to become that person in your audience’s life.
4. Tell stories about your business
Stories have the power to engage and connect us like nothing else can. People love stories – so why not use this knowledge to your advantage? We love hearing stories about other people, and oftentimes, these stories can even inspire us to take action. That’s why using your blog as a platform to tell stories about your small business can be such an effective marketing strategy.
Use your blog as a platform to tell stories about how your small business started, the challenges you’ve faced along the way, introduce the faces behind the brand or even just talk about some of the successes you’ve had recently. These types of posts will not only help humanize your brand but also give potential customers a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into running a small business brand – both of which can be very effective in driving conversions. As people starts connecting with you more on a human level, buying any product/service from you becomes all the more feasible for them.
5. Optimize Your Posts
Last but not least, it’s important to optimize each of your blog posts for search engines if you want them to be successful in driving conversions (or really, for anything). This means using relevant keywords and themes throughout the text of your post. But when we say this, always remember with the ever-evolving search engine algorithms and also after the latest update from Google called the “helpful content update”, it is very important that you use keywords only where it is relevant or necessary. DO NOT use keywords just for the sake of using it and DO NOT ever keep repeating them throughout your blog, it creates a bad impression on the reader as well as for the search engine as you end up losing points for this.
Ensure to keep the meta-description and title field of your blogs, relevant and engaging to ensure not only better search performance but also higher clickability rates.
Also, another important strategy to ensure a search visibility boost with the help of your blogs is using internal links or including links that are connected to other parts of your website – like product/service pages or landing pages for special offers. Search engine optimization may seem like a lot of work, but it’s definitely worth it if you want people to actually find and read your blog posts!
6. (Bonus Point) Use the conversion tactics skillfully to ensure higher conversions
The best kind of sales pitch is when it doesn’t sound like one.
Yes, that’s one of the most important things that we have learned and something we like to mention to our clients, and everyone too. Gone are the days of traditional sales, it is more of a relationship building now. When I talk about relationship building, I don’t mean having those so-called “account managers” that big corporates have to take care of a specific set of clients and their main aim is to build a relationship with them and maintain it to upsell or cross-sell. In terms of small businesses, what we mean is all the points that we have mentioned above. Building a relationship with your audience is now easier than ever in this digital age and blogs form an important part of it. All you have to do is make your communications a part of your audience’s life, let them come to you for tips, trends, or information, let them celebrate the success with you, and also at times share your pain too. Once you reach that stage convincing them towards conversion becomes much simpler.
Follow the 80-20 rule for your blogs too. 80% of all your blog post’s content shouldn’t have any conversion angle, just simply provide value to your readers.
For the rest 20% of the content, you can have a conversion focus but it shouldn’t seem like an ‘out of the blue’ promotion. There needs to be a build-up from the content towards that. When I say about having a conversion angle, we don’t mean having a sales pitch at the end of your every blog, you can try out different things.
- In blogs where it doesn’t make sense to put in a sales pitch at the end, try to avoid it then. Sometimes it is best to keep some things apart from personal gain and just focus on providing value. In such blog posts, link relevant keywords to internal pages on your website (it’s called subtle CTAs). But believe me, even if you don’t mention any CTA in those blogs at least 55% of your readers will go to your homepage to check out your brand surely if they get some value out of the blog. But make sure that your homepage has a relevant CTA to convert them.
- If you are talking about certain pain points and challenges in your audience’s life in your blog, and you have related products that might help them to solve these issues, then definitely mention them at the end of your blog with a proper build-up to it, through the content.
- If you have blogs that are personal and tell your brand-specific story, try to end it on a note where you thank your existing customers and take them to a campaign-based landing page to showcase your products, customer testimonials, and also limited-time offers for them.
As a small business owner, driving conversions is essential for your success. Writing blogs related to your product/service or industry is one of the most effective ways to do this – but it’s not enough to just write any blog post like in the good old days. In order for it to be successful in driving conversions, it needs to be specific, current, engaging and optimized for search engines. Use these 5+1 tips as a guide next time you sit down to write a blog post for your small business website – and watch those conversion rates soar!
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