So, we like to talk a lot here about the importance of business blog writing, and we like to think
we provide some useful tips from time to time. However, for a newcomer to inbound marketing, a lot of this blogging business can seem pretty strange and obscure.
How does writing online business blogs generate sales? It sounds like some “Field of Dreams” wishful thinking.
Well, inbound marketing is an indirect art, so it's useful to take a step back and do a refresher of the basics from time to time. This isn't the most intuitive process in the world, but it does make sense with a little explanation!
Where Online Business Blogs Came From
OK, so, going back about five years or so, it had become quite apparent that conventional marketing methods just didn't work online. You probably remember the bad old days of endless email spam and pop-ups spawning pop-ups.
There were a lot of problems with this setup, but we believe the central problem was this: the Internet gives users almost unlimited power to choose what they see. Internet users don't want to be annoyed by intrusive ads they didn't ask for, and it's entirely within their ability to block them.
The conclusion we can draw from this is that Internet advertising has to be, in some way or another, voluntary on both sides. Customers have to be truly receptive to your advertising and have an interest in seeing it.
Well, this creates a problem, doesn't it? A lot of people might be inclined to say that this is a defeatist attitude, since who wants to see adverts? As it turns out, that's not the case, and online business blogs are one of the best ways of putting forward promotional material that people want to read.
Online Business Blogs: If You Blog It, They Will Come
The key to making online business blogging work is to put material on your blog that your market already wants to see. For the most part, this is going to be issues that relate directly to your product or industry. You make this information available on your site so that people searching online for it will be drawn to your site first.
So, for example, let's say you have an auto repair shop and want to convince more people to come to you. You create a blog with a series of articles about DIY repair, with tips and tricks. This establishes you as an expert. Then, when someone who needs their car repaired searches for information online, they'll see your blogs and consider using your services.
However, there's another element that's needed for this to work: Your keywords.
Keywords Lead Customers To You
To get the most people seeing your (to stay with the example) auto blogs, you need to target keywords that people would be searching for. If it's a phrase they're likely to type into Google when looking for information relevant to your business, you should try to include it in your blog. So you'd want to use phrases like “Garage in Cincinnati” or “Low cost auto repair.”
There are numerous tools available online, such as from Google, that will help you pick out the best keywords to target. Then, by using those keywords and hopefully inspiring some people to link to your blog posts, you'll become more likely to appear near the top of a user's searches and, therefore, make it more likely they'll visit you rather than your competition.
So, step by step:
-
You write blogs targeting certain keywords, giving you a strong showing in search results.
-
Customers searching for information come across your blogs, enjoy your content, and decide you're worth doing business with.
-
If they like what they see, they sign up with a Call-To-Action or convert into being customers.
And that, in the proverbial nutshell, is how online business blogs make you money.
