You’ve been running your small business’ blog for a while now.
Maybe it’s been seeing traffic, maybe it hasn’t.
It might be doing a great job at getting leads for you.
However, something about it just isn’t where you want it to be.
Whether it be that your traffic is too low or your conversions aren’t high enough, you’re ready to do something to make your blog better.
You want it to start performing it’s best.
You’re in luck.
Today I’m going to teach you 5 things you can do to make your small business blog perform like a champ.
As a bonus, they’re all things you can do in just a few minutes a day.
There Is No Substitute For Consistent, High-Quality Small Business Blog Content
Before you go jumping head-first into making changes to your small business blog, consider your content.
There are two major questions you need to ask yourself about it first.
- Am I blogging consistently enough?
- Does my content point to a clear goal?
If you answered “no” to either of these questions, you’re going to want to start there.
When you don’t publish a new article to your small business blog at least once per week, you probably won’t see any traffic from it.
As it turns out, posting daily can get you a lot more traffic.
But if you’re not pointing it towards a clear goal, you’re not going to do anything with that traffic anyway.
Your small business’ blog articles should align properly with your marketing goals.
They’ve got to focus on the topics that your ideal client wants to read.
And they’ve got to draw your ideal clients in and get them invested.
So let’s talk about exactly what you need to do.
These Basic Tips Will Make Your Small Business Blog Perform Better
Obviously, you want your small business blog to perform better than ever.
You want to “supercharge it” if you will.
But, like many small business owners who handle their own blog content, you’re not sure what to do.
After all, you’re not a content creator by trade.
This isn’t what you went into business to do.
So, obviously, anything you can do without adding too much time to your day would help.
You need to get back to making your business run correctly.
I’ve put together some tricks you can do to boost your blog’s performance.
They don’t take much time out of your day.
Even better, there’s no technical skill involved.
As I share them, you’ll realize they make a lot of sense.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
Study What Your Audience Wants
Your small business blog has one purpose: to draw in the right market.
That right market is then supposed to enter your lead funnel so they can eventually become your client.
But what blog content do you write to make that happen?
For most small business owners, their instinct is sales.
They immediately go into a sales pitch on their brand or one of their products.
The problem with this method is that nobody likes to be sold to.
Most people avoid sales pitches and commercials.
That’s why the DVR was invented.
Other small business owners jump straight into complex industry knowledge.
They know that educating their audience is useful, but they forget to keep it basic.
Technical jargon and big words don’t help you sound intelligent.
Those things just confuse your audience.
So where does that leave you?
It leaves you trying to figure out what your audience will find useful.
According to research done by University of Tennessee professor Barbara Kaye, some of the reasons people read a blog are for specific inquiries and information that offers them guidance and opinions.
Your job is to figure out the specifics that bring your audience to your blog.
Look at your past articles.
Are there any that get a ton of traffic?
Among those, do any convert a larger number of qualified leads?
These two metrics can offer you a good idea of what your ideal audience wants.
From there, tap into your buyer personas to guide you to other information.
Jump into Quora, Buzzsumo, Alignable, and even Reddit to find the questions people are asking about your industry.
Those questions and topics make an excellent foundation for future content.
Take A Peek At Your Competition’s Most Successful Content
For your blog content to be its best, you need to know what’s going on in your industry.
Your goal is to produce the best content around.
It helps to see what you’re competing with.
Especially if you’ve never looked before.
Knowing what your competition is doing and how it’s working for them can give you a leg up.
By examining the competition, you know exactly what you need to prepare for.
Plus, if there’s something they’re doing that’s working exceedingly well, you can use that to inspire your own content.
Visit your competition’s websites.
Read their blogs.
See what content is getting the most engagement.
You’re looking for what’s working best.
Take notes on the content and pay attention to the feedback the audience gives.
If there’s a question or clarification that your competition hasn’t addressed, or you find their information to be contrary to your take, use that to base future content on.
More than their content, your competition’s readers are the best gauge you have in identifying what content you need to produce.
After all, it’s the same audience you’re looking for.
While you’re there, dig into their comments section.
Begin interacting with their audience.
Comment on their content and leave valuable expansion on it.
You’ll not only get a feel for the content the audience wants, but you’ll introduce yourself to them as an alternative source of information.
All this information and conversation will lead their audience to your content.
Which, ultimately, is what you want.
Fix Your On-Page SEO
Ok, I’m not a huge advocate of traditional SEO.
When people put to large a focus on it they tend to destroy the quality of their content.
That’s more damaging than ignoring SEO.
However, if you’ve already got blog content that’s getting some traffic, but underperforming, you might want to revisit your on-page optimization.
Why on-page and not off-page (like backlinks)?
Simple.
For most content creators, on-page SEO is easy to manage.
It’s a kind of low hanging fruit.
Besides, even though I’m not a huge advocate, it’s still important.
That’s how you see more search traffic and conversions.
But Google is regular about changing the algorithms, so figuring out what you’ve got to do can be tough.
First and foremost, focus on making your content awesome.
If you’re helpful, entertaining, and easily understood, people will read.
Next, you need to prove your knowledge.
Outbound links that back your content with facts and figures help to demonstrate that.
And then there’s your website’s design.
If your users can’t navigate your site, they’re going to leave, and Google will penalize you.
Google uses the amount of time a reader stays on your site to determine your site’s relevance to the search.
You need to keep them there and engaged as much as possible.
There’s plenty more you can handle from there, but make sure you never sacrifice the quality of your content for any of it.
Quality is what helps traffic convert.
There’s no point in traffic if it never becomes a lead or a customer.
Add Optimized Calls To Action Into Your Posts
Your small business’ blog is there to help bring in traffic.
Preferably well-qualified traffic.
If you’re filling it with useful content that holds tons of value for your readers, you’re also building trust.
It’s the starting point for building a strong client relationship.
But you can’t just expect them to call you or email you because they read a blog post.
It takes time to nurture them to a ready-to-buy state.
Which means you need to communicate with them further.
You need to show them the next step.
Additional value is a great way to do that.
Lead them to excellent gated content with a great call-to-action.
On every post.
The idea is to make sure you sell them on your offer every time they read an article.
But that doesn’t mean every article is a sales pitch.
Your CTA should do the selling.
The blog article is more like a smooth transition.
It’s there to teach your audience about some aspect of your industry.
Maybe it’s the problems you can help with or the way your offering works.
It helps them get comfortable with who you are and what you do.
Hopefully, it will help them feel better about becoming your client too.
That’s when your CTA kicks in.
Your CTA isn’t subtle.
It needs to give them a clear direction and benefit. The clearer the better.
Determine the right placement for your CTA – top, mid-content, or after-content – through A/B testing and intent.
Fill your call-to-action with the details it needs to demonstrate why your readers should click it or sign up.
Spend the right amount of time and effort on it so you can convert leads like you want to.
Consider A Better Writer
Sometimes you’re not the right person for the job.
I know that may be hard to hear, but if you want your blog to be successful, you need to remain objective.
If you want people to come to your blog and read your content, it has to be great.
Content that’s written with knowledge and passion usually is.
It’s that “from the heart” perspective that can really capture people’s attention.
When the subject matters to the writer, the audience shares it.
There may, however, be several reasons that you shouldn’t be the one writing.
Maybe you’re not great at getting your thoughts typed out.
Perhaps, like most small business owners, you’re short the 3-6 hours it takes to write a great blog article.
In either case, you may need to find someone else to write your blog for you.
That someone should have the time and talent to write about the topic.
They should put in the effort to do great research.
Most importantly, they need to write with a personality that connects with your audience.
In fact, the personality that shines in your content is just as important as the quality of it.
That’s what’s going to get your readers to connect.
And when they connect, they grow loyal.
Sometimes for the sole reason that they like the personality they connected with.
One that they want to work with.
You Should Be Able To Make Your Small Business Blog Perform
While your small business blog may have been underperforming before, it’s going to soar now.
All you need to do is take advantage of the tricks we just went over.
As I already stated, they don’t take any technical knowledge.
They also don’t take a huge chunk of time out of your day.
With just a few minutes a day spent improving the way you do things you can create much bigger results.
You can expect more traffic.
The articles you publish will convert more site visitors to qualified leads.
And nurturing those leads to become clients will take far less effort.
You’ll have all that fantastic new and refreshed content on your small business blog to pull from.
You’ll start to feel the power of a supercharged small business blog.
