How to create a business blog

If you’re a franchisee, you’ve probably heard of content marketing, but maybe you feel like you haven’t got the time, experience or knowledge to start.

As a business owner, writing an exciting blog regularly is one of the most cost-effective marketing tools at your disposal. If you’re not blogging, then you’re missing out on generating sales and making money. Just a word of warning though: you shouldn’t start a blog just to get more sales. The primary objective of blogging is to help you to identify your customers, to keep them informed and to demonstrate your value.

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How to Create a Business Blog

1. Don’t push; pull your customers instead.

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Not every potential customer goes online to buy something. Very often, they just want to research a product or find out information about a service. Even the most profitable franchises can deter a browser by trying to push their product or service without sharing the knowledge that they are seeking.

As an expert in your field, you should share information regularly. If your content is educational and informative, then readers will become aware of your product or service. Do it well and continue to share consistently, and you’ll build trust as well as awareness.

This may not lead to a sale today, or even next week, but you and your business will be front of mind when your audience is ready to purchase. If your blogs are entertaining, your readers may even share your content. This will then be noticed by individuals who might choose to buy.

2. The more you blog, the more you'll be seen.

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With the rise in small businesses using blogs to educate and engage their audience, how do you get your franchise information to stand out from the crowd?

The power of search engines

Well, thankfully, search engines will do most of the hard work for you. When you upload a blog to your website, search engines scan the content and apply their algorithms. If the content that you produce is of good quality and website visitors like, share or comment on your blogs, then search engines will recognise this.

Search Engine Optimisation

Search engines also seek out keywords that internet searchers are looking for. The number of times these keywords are used on your website and in your blogs will determine your site's relevancy. This is why it's essential to research the questions that your target audience want to know the answers to so that you can offer them this franchise information.

For example, you might find that ‘how to pass my GCSEs’ is a commonly searched question on Google. So, if you are running a tutoring franchise, you could title your blog article ‘Learn How to Pass Your GCSEs in 3 Simple Steps’.

As well as in the title, incorporate key words into body of the blog post as much as you can. This will mean customers are more likely to find your articles as they should rank higher on search engines. Some research suggests that in order to receive the optimum traffic to your website, your blog should have a title with six to 13 words in.

3. Be Consistent

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To stop your blog from going stale, be as consistent with your uploading as possible. You don’t have to always upload at the exact same time every day, but avoid posting 10 in one week and then nothing for three months. It is a waste of your time and resources to capture customer attention and then stop providing them with engaging content.

Studies have proven that uploading four times a week is your best bet. In fact, businesses who uploaded 16 or more posts a month received nearly three and a half times more traffic than those who didn’t post or who posted lower than four.

You need to strike a balance. Ultimately, your main priority is running your business successfully and coming up with new ideas to encourage its growth. Therefore, don’t be over consumed by writing articles. Hiring a copywriter is one way to achieve this.

But before you jump straight in and create your business blog, you should consider whether it will work well for your franchise.

Is a business blog right for your franchise?

The answer is yes for almost all franchise brands. There are too many benefits to blogging for it not to be the right decision for your business. The most profitable franchises are blogging regularly, appear higher in the search engine result pages and are converting more readers into customers. So, why wouldn’t you want to invest time and effort into developing useful content to help grow your franchise?

Seeking Help from a Copywriter

Well, the truth is, blogging can be tough for franchisees that have never attempted it before. If you do find the idea of producing regular content too daunting, you could choose to outsource your content marketing.

Just be mindful that blogs can often appear insincere if they don’t accurately represent your brand. If you decide to hire a copywriter to blog on your behalf, ensure that they are well briefed on your tone and style so what is produced is consistent with your brand.

How often should you write business blog articles?

Data from HubSpot confirms the impact that the frequency of blogging has on its effectiveness. Not only does consistent blogging drive traffic to your website, but it’s also crucial for converting these visits into actual leads. The research shows that businesses that blog between six and eight times a week will generate double the amount of leads than if they blogged only three to five times a week.

Finding a Balance

The advantage of writing more often will have a positive effect on your business but will also make the process of writing the content much easier. However easy producing blogs may become, it’s important to balance this aspect of your business with the other elements that are integral to making your franchise a success. Franchise brands such as yours will benefit from blogging, but make sure that the time spent creating content does not hurt your business as a whole.

What should my business blog be about?

Informative content

Blogging can help your franchise compete with much bigger businesses in your area. If you have a lot of competition and you’re the only one providing helpful information to people in your community, then you will stand out from the rest. By sharing educational and informative content while asking for nothing in return will help you make a name for yourself. You’ll be known as one of the franchise brands that have a reputation for being trustworthy and an expert in your field.

Personal Journey Stories

Another angle that you can take is to capitalise on the fact that you are a small franchise. Share personal stories about your business journey and how you decided to become a franchisee. This level of intimacy will help make your brand relatable.

How long should my business blogs be?

Your business blog posts should be long enough to cover the message you want to convey to your audience and also so they can fit in all of the relevant key words without them sounding shoehorned.

A study has shown that longer blog posts actually rank better in search engines. It was found that the top 10 search engine results were articles with word lengths exceeding 2,000 words.

Recap of Six Reasons to Create a Business Blog

1. Great opportunity to engage with customers and also to understand their wants and needs better 2. SEO is improved 3. You demonstrate to your customers or potential customers that you are an expert in your sector 4. It establishes trust with customers so they are more inclined to take the next step and purchase the product or service 5. By providing new and interesting content, you are giving readers a reason to keep returning back to your website. 6. To customers, blogs are a more personal form of communication than company PR and press releases. Remember, blogs have the power for your business to connect with potential customers.

How to Create a Business Blog - Summary

Make sure that your content is original, informative, educational, of high quality, entertaining and, most importantly, relevant to what your target audience wants. Yes, that is a lot to balance, especially when you’re trying to run and grow your business as well. The key is to concentrate on writing relevant blogs that are engaging. You can worry about factors such as keywords at a later date, but if your content isn't right, it doesn’t matter how attractive it is to search engines. Remember that the most profitable franchises don’t just blog to appeal to robots, they blog for real people too.

Adding images or videos can also engage readers, especially with many of our attention spans being so short. If you are a restaurant franchise, why not upload a video of one of your talented chefs created tonight’s special?