Use Your Business Blog as Bait
When developing your blogging strategy, it’s important to understand the purpose of your business blog. A business blog should be designed to lure target audience members to your content and as a result, to your business website. You may think of bait as what we put on the hook to attract and catch fish. We know it’s something that they want so we dangle it right in front of them and wait for them to latch on. Business blogging should be viewed the same way. Blog content is the bait that we use to get target audience members to latch on to our brand.
Of course, fish aren’t just going to latch on to anything and the same goes for your target audience members. Blog content is only bait if it’s something that your target audience is interested in. To start, we’ll tell you what they definitely aren’t interested in. Your target audience members will not latch on to blog posts that are promotional in nature. If your target audience smells a sales pitch, at best they’ll just ignore it and at worst they’ll be completely turned off by it (and your brand).
So what are target audience members interested in? What’s going to “hook” them? The best blog posts take two things into consideration:
#1 Target audience interests
First and foremost, a blog post needs to provide your target audience with good information that they are interested in. It should provide tips, tricks, lessons learned, or other insights that are going to help your target audience in some way and also position your business as an industry thought leader. Don’t overthink it. Any nugget of useful information can be turned into a blog post. If you’re stuck, don’t be afraid to reach out and ask current customers or prospects what kind of information they’d be interested in. Your customer’s service and sales teams can be great resources when deciding on blog post topic ideas. What questions come up again and again? Turn these questions into blog posts and you’ll have an evergreen resource that you can point to whenever the question comes up the next time.
# 2 Target audience attention spans
Everyone browsing the web has come to expect information instantaneously. If you market to a B2B audience, there’s a good chance that decision makers are continually being asked to do more with less time. The likelihood that someone is going to read a blog post word for word is slim. Instead, write posts that break the content up into pieces that are easier to digest. For example, instead of one long blog posts break it up into a series. Or, if you plan to publish a webinar, break it up into 5-minute chunks. Depending on your niche, your target audience might not be desk-bound. They may be on the move throughout the day. Make sure to keep this in mind. There’s no way they’ll be reading anything long or complex, but they may be willing to give you a few minutes. Make those few minutes count.
Categorized in: Content Marketing
LIKE AND SHARE THIS ARTICLE:
