Open a company blog is important to optimize your business … B2B marketers who use a corporate blog in their communication strategy have reached 67% more users and leads in the last three years.
The statistics reported by the Hubspot and Business2Community platforms are clear: open a company blog is a decisive and indispensable step for businesses that wish to enhance their online existence.
Most small and medium-sized Italian companies invest their online resources in the development of a decent corporate site and in the management, often reduced to the bare minimum, of social networks. These activities are essential to have good visibility on search engines, but they are not sufficient: in order to reach new potential customers and exploit the potential of the web optimally, it is essential to improve direct communication with users and share experiences with them business.
In order to develop an ideal communication with its customers it is essential to open a company blog, which is an online space dedicated exclusively to the publication of articles regarding the possible topics of interest for the target user of the company. A company blog quality allows the business not only to improve its web reputation, but also to improve itself in SEO and position itself effectively in search engines.
But what are the methods to open a corporate blog and manage it effectively?
How to open a company blog?
If you have decided to optimize your online business and open a corporate blog, you should know how to do it optimally
1. Buy a domain and choose a name
Before buying a domain, or the online space in which to create your own page, it is good to make sure that it is not a trademark already registered or that it is not similar to that of a competitor, so as not to encounter problems of privacy or branding. It is also recommended to purchase a top-level domain as it allows a particularly high margin for customizing content. Finally, the domain name should usually coincide with the name of the business for a question of immediacy and online recognition.
2. Choose hosting
Hosting means the network service that allows the company web page to be placed on a server. The most well-known hosting are ServerPlan, Siteground, Aruba, GoDaddy and Bluehost: to start with, network services are recommended that do not include an excessive amount of traffic and that have financial plans specifically designed for companies without particular online experience.
3. Choose the blog placement: internal or external to the company website
It is possible to open a company blog either within an existing site, as a folder or subdomain, or separately from the web page, thus purchasing new domains and hosting. To encourage positioning within search engines and for a question of branding it is always recommended to open a blog with the same domain as the company page.
4. Install the appropriate CMS: WordPress
Following the purchase of a domain and the choice of a hosting, it is necessary to install the CMS: the most used and simplest CMS to use is WordPress, an open source platform that allows even the least experts to manage a blog in an optimal manner. WordPress is in direct relationship with Google: the contents produced on WordPress are easily indexable for the search engine.
5. Choose the template
The choice of the theme is fundamental for a blog: the aesthetic impact that a web page has on visitors determines 50% of its success. It is essential that the graphics of a corporate blog are light, with a simple and clean HTML code and above all with a Responsive design, that is, with a design capable of adapting optimally and without distortion to all types of devices. WordPress offers free and paid templates, but it is always recommended to entrust the graphic design of the blog to a professional.
Why is it important to open a company blog?
Opening a company blog is an indispensable activity for all the companies that want to optimize their online activity; sharing content within the blog allows the company to improve some business processes by achieving significant goals …
Intercept customers
Opening a company blog allows users to find business content posted on the blog through informational searches, in other words simply by searching through a search engine on topics covered in published articles. In order to intercept new potential customers, it is essential to insert specific keywords within the articles: an SEO oriented writing able to optimize the produced contents is the key to intercept the users’ needs.
Improve corporate web reputation
Creating a successful business blog can reduce the distance between the company and its potential customers. Publishing articles produced in person is fundamental to personalize one’s work and therefore to give a clear and precise image to the company: the blog must not be a simple archive of news, but a bridge between company and customer.
Customer loyalty
By opening a corporate blog, it will be possible to retain its users not only by producing interesting content, but by trying to publish extra content such as images, videos or e-books on the web page: the ability to access this content can convince the customer to subscribe to email marketing lists or follow the company’s activities on social networks.
Get inbound links and improve SEO ranking
The publication of articles regarding interesting content for the corporate target, but at the same time not strictly related to the brand in question, can be an effective tool for obtaining incoming links. To do SEO links are needed and to get quality links it is essential to produce highly specific and optimized content. The market analyzes carried out by Hubspot show, in fact, that companies engaged in blogging activities receive 92% more links than those who do not have a company blog.
Gather testimonials from industry influencers
Blogs are the most suitable formats for hosting interviews or testimonies of authoritative figures in their sector …
a page chosen by a qualified and recognized personality to convey a message easily proves to be a reliable and specialized source. Furthermore, sharing an interview with an influencer can allow the company to take advantage of the possibility of “reposting”, or the opportunity to repeatedly share the statements made, always citing the blog itself as the source.
Open a company blog: Tips before you start
Opening a company blog is an investment of time and energy and requires the right preparation; here are three activities to be carried out necessarily before opening your blog:
1. Search for the target audience
The choice of the target audience is essential to fix the type of content to be explored in the blog articles: identifying the target audience it is possible to analyze their needs and hypothetical online researches, thus trying to produce relevant content in order to be traced by users.
2. Create an editorial plan
To be successful it is necessary to post articles with a regular frequency: the constancy in the publication allows, in fact, the reader to establish a precise frequency in visiting the company blog. To keep the situation under control and manage the blog optimally, it is essential to develop an editorial plan that summarizes the publication activity of all the articles.
3. Make Bench Marking: analyze the competition
Before choosing the topics for the articles, analyze which links are the most clicked by your potential customers, study the content marketing methods applied by the competition and collect the results of your analysis in an Excel file to have a precise action plan. In this way, you will be able to publish posts with qualified and interesting contents that will allow you to increase the visibility of the blog.
Do you want to grow your business and improve your business results?
