INBOUND ACCELERATOR

Do you ever wish you had a blueprint that could guide you through the most important steps in creating a great business blog post? Something with some specs to refer to as you build from an idea out?

Luckily, Business2Community has drawn up plans for us, which fit well with what I’ve shared before (so I’ll link to more resources below the infographic).

We know that some marketing content just doesn’t last—depending on where you look, the half-life of a tweet is anywhere from just 18 minutes to maybe 2.5 hours. Either way, they aren’t going to be around for long.

But there are ways of extending the life of your tweets and other social media and online content, as the infographic below from Maria Peagler of Social Media Online Classes shows.

Whether you are writing a business blog post, an email, or the content for your standard website pages (the home page, “About Us,” product pages, FAQs, and more), first impressions matter, and the quality of your content is one of the four elements that make an instant impact.

Your blog posts and website content must be on-message, educational, valuable and well-written.

Business blogging is a long-term commitment, if you are dedicated to making it a part of your marketing strategy. And it is essential for inbound marketing, as it is a key way of building search rankings and linking website visitors to lead conversion opportunities.

As humans, we tend to like our routines and habits. We set an alarm for the same time every morning. Breakfast looks identical most days. Following routines and doing things the same way every time is reassuring and comfortable.

But sometimes, it can mean you are stuck in a rut. And while our brains crave routine in what we do, they also crave new experiences in what we read and watch. As a marketer, or the writer of a B2B business blog, that means that while you feel most comfortable writing the same style of blog post every week (or every day), your readers are looking for something new and different.

We all make mistakes from time to time. But when those mistakes limit the effectiveness of your business blog, it can put your entire inbound marketing strategy at risk.

Luckily, 15 of the most common business blogging mistakes have relatively quick fixes.

You want your business blog to attract visitors, not go unnoticed.

You want it to establish your brand as an industry authority, not turn prospects away with bad writing, inconsistency or pushy sales.

So many things you want your business blog to do, that it can only achieve if you do the right things first in planning, writing and promoting your posts.

Grading yourself and your own work isn’t always a fun endeavor — if it were, we would look forward to the self-critique portion of the annual review with a boss, rather than dread it. But self-reflection IS key to improvement, because you can’t fix problems until you acknowledge they exist.

Some things are meant to bounce. Basketballs. Kids on a trampoline. Baby boys (or so the phrase goes). Others shouldn’t. Video footage. Checks. And business blog visitors.

Social media is a natural medium for sharing the business blog posts you write to add content and boost SEO power on your business website. Every blog post you write should be shared multiple times over the course of a few days, weeks or months in order to increase potential traffic.