How to Write a Blog To Support Your Company's Marketing Goals

By Brandon Cornett
© 2011. All rights reserved

When used properly, blogging can be an effective tool for small business marketing. Blogs are versatile, easy to use, and fairly easy to install. But I'll save the technical details for another day. In this lesson, you'll learn how to write a blog to support your company's marketing program.

Define your purpose before you start blogging. Why are you starting a company blog? What do you hope to get out of it? Who is your audience, and what kind of information do they need from you?

These are some of the questions you need to answer before you try to write a blog for your company. The writing process will be much easier if you spend some time thinking about your blog's intended purpose.

There are good and bad reasons to start a blog. You want to make sure you're doing it for the right reasons.

• Bad — I want to write a blog for my company because I've seen other companies do it. It seems like thing to do these days.
• Good — I want to publish a blog to educate people about the products and services my company provides. I want to answer the reader's question. I want to help my readers understand a certain topic or achieve a certain goal. I'd also like to attract more visitors through the search engines.

You should never write a blog just because other people are doing it. Trust me, you won't get very far if this is your only motivation. You should have a specific goal for your blog, like the one presented in the second example above. This person knows exactly what she is trying to accomplish through her blogging efforts. She has a very specific goal in mind. Actually, she has several goals, which is even better.

These are just a few of the benefits to business blogging. Over time, you may identify some additional benefits that are not listed above. The point is, you have to think about your reasons for blogging.

You can learn how to write a blog as you go along. You'll get better with time and practice. But you have to know your objective(s) from day one. This is especially important if you have more than one author. Everyone needs to be on the same page.

Choose the Right Person for the Job

If you're a sole proprietor, this is going to be an easy decision. You will have to write the blog on your own. You have no other choice, unless you outsource it to a freelancer.

But if you have a company with many employees, you'll have to consider who might be the best person for the job. It might be the CEO. It might be one of your customer service or sales people. You could even have several authors writing for the same blog (from a technical standpoint, this is fairly easy to do).

Of course, all of this relates back to the objectives we discussed earlier. Once you've identified a purpose for your business blog, you'll have an easier time choosing the author.

For instance, if you are going to blog about your products and services, you will need to choose someone who is intimately familiar with them. A customer service representative might fit the bill. If you are going to blog about your company's philosophy, the CEO is probably the best person for the job. The author should match the objective.

The person you choose to write for your blog should have the following traits:

• The author must understand the blog's purpose. A writer can only achieve a certain goal when he or she knows what that goal is.
• The author should have some basic writing skills. Remember, this person will be the voice of your company -- from a blogging standpoint, at least. So they should have a good grasp on spelling and grammar. If they have good writing skills in general, they can always learn how to write for a blog in particular.
• The author should be enthusiastic about blogging. If it feels like an unpleasant chore, the content will suffer as a result. Readers will notice. So if you're not excited about the idea of writing for a blog, you need to find someone who is.
• The author should have a basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO). Company knowledge and writing skills are the two most important criteria for your blogger. But they should also understand the basics of SEO, as it relates to blogging. The good news is these skills can be learned through one or two sessions with an SEO consultant.

Remember, you can always teach your author how to write for a blog. The most important thing is that they are excited about doing it.

Seek Training on How to Write a Blog

I touched on this topic in the previous section. Obviously, the company's blogger must have a working knowledge of how blogs work. Fortunately, this can be learned in a fairly short time. Anyone who can write an email can learn how to write a blog post. The blogging program does all of the technical work for you. Once the program is installed, it's just a matter of typing your blog post and clicking the "publish" button.

Your designated blogger should also receive some training on search engine optimization. Blogging is an easy way to add a large volume of content to your website. This can help you pull in more traffic through search engines like Google. You'll get even better results if your writer understands the basic concepts of SEO. An SEO consultant can teach your blog writer how to conduct keyword research and basic optimization tasks. The end result will be more traffic, more readers, and more business for your company.

Write for People. Optimize for Search Engines.

We talked about the importance of search engine optimization when writing for a blog. With a basic understanding of SEO, the blog writer will be able to pull more traffic through Google and other search engines.

But at the same time, you must remember that people are your primary audience. You need to create content that is useful and engaging for people. The search engines should be a secondary consideration. Once you've written some good content, you can always go back and optimize it with certain keywords and phrases. But this optimization should never interfere with the quality of the content.

You've probably encountered a web page in the past that was overly optimized. It probably repeated a certain word or phrase to the point of sounding ridiculous. This is bad writing, plain and simple. This is what happens when people develop "SEO tunnel vision." They become so focused on search engine optimization that they forget about the quality of the content. It's okay to write a blog post with a certain topic or phrase in mind. This is the first step to creating highly focused website content. But you should never optimize your content to the point that it reduces readability.

Use the LASSO Factors of Blog Writing Success

I've developed an acronym to help you achieve business blogging success. It's called the LASSO model, and it describes the five key ingredients of a successful blogging program.

Here is how these five factors relate to your business blog:

1. Length

Each blog post should be long enough to explore its topic in detail. This is good for people and search engines alike. No one wants to read an article that glosses over the subject. Most people prefer in-depth and useful information. Write your blog posts with this in mind.

Each post should be as long as needed to explore the topic at hand. There are SEO benefits to this, as well. With all other things being equal, a longer web page will generally outperform a shorter one.

2. Audience

Before you write your first blog post, you need to know your audience. Specifically, you need to know (A) who they are and (B) what they are trying to accomplish. What kind of information do they need from you? What kind of solutions do they seek? How can you help them understand a certain topic or achieve a certain goal?

I recommend that you create an audience statement before you start writing your blog. It doesn't have to be complicated. It might just be two or three sentences on an index card. It should answer all of the questions listed above. Keep it on the desk where you plan to do your blogging. Refer to it every time you start writing a new blog post. This will help you stay laser-focused on the mission at hand, and the people you are trying to reach.

3. Scope

It's best to keep your individual blog posts tightly focused around a certain topic. If the scope is too broad, you run the risk of losing the reader. Remember, it's incredibly easy to publish new content with a business blog. So you don't have to cover all of your ideas on a single post. You can give a separate post to each idea. This allows you to fully develop each idea, and to cover all of the pertinent details.

If you write specific blog posts about specific topics, you'll win the favor of people and search engines alike. People will appreciate the fact that you've written an entire blog post around the one topic they are currently researching. Search engines will reward you with better visibility for the very same reason.

4. Schedule

This is the second 'S' in the LASSO acronym. You should establish a blogging schedule before you start to write your blog. You don't have to be slavishly devoted to the schedule. But it does give you a sense of purpose and direction.

The whole idea of publishing a blog is to publish new information on a regular basis. This is why blogging programs were created in the first place. You don't want your company's blog to become stale or outdated. This doesn't serve anyone's interests, least of all yours. I recommend that you write a new post at least two or three times per week. If you can do more, great!

Again, this is good for people and search engines alike. (Are you noticing a pattern with the statement?) Nobody wants to visit a blog and find outdated information. In the digital age, people expect fresh content. We have been conditioned to expect up-to-the-minute information, and to ignore anything that's more than a week old. If you want your company blog to be successful in the long run, you must keep to a regular schedule.

Frequent publishing will also support your search engine optimization goals. The more information you put online, the more ways people have to find you through Google. Consider the difference between a static 10-page website, and a rapidly growing blog with 200 pages and counting. The second site will show up for a lot more search queries than the first one. It offers a lot more content, so people have more ways to find it when researching certain topics online.

5. Optimization

Business blogs and search engine optimization go together like peanut butter and jelly. I've probably said that a hundred times over the years. But it's true. Blogging is a great way to improve your company's performance in the major search engines.

Search engines reward websites that publish new information on a regular basis. SEO-savvy publishers have known this for a long time. That's why most SEO companies have blogs that are updated daily. Build a large base of quality content, and your website will appear for a broader range of keyword searches. This is the math of SEO.

Keep the LASSO factors in mind as you write your blog posts. Create in-depth material that covers the subject in detail (length). Think about the people you are writing for, and what they need from you (audience). Try to limit each post to a specific topic or idea (scope). Publish new information on a regular basis to keep things fresh (schedule). Include relevant keywords and phrases to help with search engine visibility (optimization).

Basic Model of a Blog Post

Over time, you will start to develop your own blogging style. The "shape" of your blog posts will evolve to support your marketing objectives. You'll become more confident as a writer and blogger. You'll learn how to write a great blog post with less time and effort. It gets easier as you go -- I promise.

But in the beginning, the task may seem overwhelming. How do you begin a new post? What points do you need to cover along the way? And how do you know when to stop?

The following model should make things easier for you. This is certainly not the only way to create a blog post. But it does give you a good starting point. If you follow this model, you'll be off and running in no time.

We Can Help You

If you're still not sure how to write a blog for your company, you might want to schedule a consultation call. We offer one-on-one training on everything covered in this lesson. Need help creating a list of topics? Have technical questions? We can help. You can learn more about our consulting services on this page.