What is a Blogging?

Last week Cyber Sushi Design started sharing ideas to help your business with its internet marketing particularly if you find yourself less busy than usual during lockdown. This week we’ve decided to take a look at blogging. Here you can find out – What is a blog? How can a blog benefit your business and enhance its online presence?

History of Blogging

In 1994 we saw the birth of the online blog. The name ‘blog’ come from a combination of the term ‘web log’ which was used to describe such content. This format first took on the guise of an online diary. People would share details of their daily life to facilitate communication in a new way via the internet.

Over time businesses saw the potential of blogs as a marketing tool. And these days a blog typically forms part of a website that imparts information/news on which a person or business wants to become known as a thought leader, influencer or expert. They are written to inform and entertain their audience and appear in chronological order with the latest post appearing first. A blog can be personal, or used for business purposes. They keep people up-to-date on industry trends, provide tutorials and generally communicate with their intended audiences to communicate, build trust and convert visitors to customers.

Blogs

Blogs are a great online marketing tool. They provide a forum in which customers and businesses can interact, offering the following benefits:

• Cost effective
• Simple to use
• Gains traffic to a business website
• Enhances search engine rankings
• Gains a business trust and credibility
• Engages with your audience
• Generates opportunities for business

Blogging as a business is usually an attempt to promote its products or services. To rank its website higher in search engines, to boost traffic and to increase visibility. The more frequent a business blogs the more likely a website will be found in search rankings. When building a great blog it is key to know and understand your audience and what they want.

Building a Blog

Building a blog involves the following steps:

• Decide on a topic on which to blog about.
• Choose a blogging platform like WordPress through which to create the blog and add content.
• Set up web hosting.
• Configure the blog.
• Design the blog, choose a theme.
• Add a logo/identity, choose colours and page structure.
• Write and add pages and blog posts.
• Optimise blog posts with relevant keywords to ensure the blog can be found in search engines.
• Share the blog across social media in order to gain traffic and build a community.
• Set up Google Analytics to understand what the audience like about the blog.
• Keep posting regularly.

Internet Marketing Strategy

To maintain a blog, it is vital to have a blogging strategy. A schedule of when to blog, ideas of what to blog about and then have a process for how to go about posting each blog in order to be effective.

1. Plan

• What the blog will be about
• When the blog will be published

2. Research

   • Keywords
   • Facts

3. Write

   • Create the content
   • Focus on what needs to be said
   • Keep the style of writing consistent across all blogs
   • Proofread

4. Upload

   • Upload to the blogging platform
   • Add headers
   • Include links
   • Add images
   • Optimise
   • Schedule for publication

5. Promote

   • Share across social media platforms

6. Measure

   • Use analytics to establish how and where the audience are accessing the blog.

Blogging

A blog post typically features the following:

• An attention grabbing title (H1 heading)
• Opening paragraph – which should make the subject matter obvious and include the keyword/phrase.
• H2 Header – a sub heading which includes the targeted keyword.
• H3 headers can be used if you need to break up the content between H2 headers.
• Featured image
• Content relevant to your niche, featuring relevant keywords
• Call to action

Video Blogs

Blogging has its fall backs, it is time consuming, it can be difficult to come up with new topics to write about and then it’s not a given that anyone will actually read it.

Video blogging (vlogging) has become increasingly popular in recent times, and YouTube is 2^nd to Google as the biggest search engine. According to Biteable.com videos see 1200% more shares across social media than written content, with 81% of businesses now making use of video marketing.

Internet Marketing Princes Risborough

Cyber Sushi Design blog regularly. We do this to keep our audience informed, to offer help and support and also to ensure we are found by potential clients in search engines. If your business needs a blog but is not quite sure how to go about it, we can help. We not only build blogs, we also offer blog writing packages, including search engine optimisation to help your business get found in search engines. For more information about blogging and internet marketing Princes Risborough, get in touch on 01494 356 778.