So you’ve heard about the benefits of blogging and want to cash in on them? Luckily, anyone who desires this can easily start a blog. It is an effective marketing tool for businesses to generate more traffic and, in turn, leads.

While starting a blog might be easy, it isn’t as easy to get results from it, which can leave businesses feeling hopeless. So before you decide to establish a blog for your business, there are 5 things you should know.

1. You won’t get results right off the bat

The phrase, “patience is a virtue,” definitely applies to blogs. It doesn’t matter if you are blogging to get more traffic, increase SEO, or to establish your business as a thought leader. All of these take time and effort.

Don’t expect to see drastic results after only your first week of starting your blog. Online marketing is highly competitive. Nowadays, there isn’t an industry online in which there is no competition. You’ll start off with little to no traffic on your blog, but don’t let that dishearten you. Results will come if you keep at it and continue to provide valuable information for your audience.

2. Know your target audience before you start writing

It’s an obvious comment to make that you should write content that’s related to the industry you’re in. But that doesn’t automatically mean that you will get readership.

The only way you can ensure your blog gets visitors is if you research your target audience. This will allow you to determine the niche and decide on a topic to focus on, helping you get more traffic and readership from your target audience.

You also want the topics to solve your audience’s problems, be it in the form of tips, a guide, or answering a direct question that stems from your keyword research. A smart blogger will explain how their products/services can help the audience solve their problems, which will entice them to opt for your solution, knowing it is valuable to them.

3. Be ready to be more social

You can’t rely solely on search engines to direct traffic to your blogs. If you do, you’re doing yourself a disservice and not getting the most out of your content. The most effective way to get traffic to your blog is with the help of social media, with Instagram kicking up a storm for online marketers.

There are two effective ways to use social media to generate traffic towards your blog:

1. Post the blog on your social media profiles: this will increase the likelihood of your audience reading your content and sharing it.
2. Run an ad campaign: an ad campaign featuring your blog post will enable you to reach out to a wider audience, an audience that is and isn’t already following you, having twice the impact.

Your target, at first, is to get them to your blog. And as long as you follow the 10 commandments of blogging below, you will have them hooked to keep coming back each time you post something new.

4. Consistency is key

It’s true, one blog post per month is better than not writing anything, but will it really get you the results you’re after? According to a study conducted by Hubspot, blogging once a month only gets you 1% more subscribers than not blogging at all. However, you can get an 11% increase in subscribers if you were to blog regularly, more than once a week.

You don’t have to go all out and blog on a daily basis. Blogging twice a week is more than enough to keep engagement and subscription levels up.

Be ready to stay committed to blogging, because it can be the difference between customers choosing you over your competition, and, after all, there is no harm in increasing your amount of followers.

5. Learn to grab attention with your writing

You don’t have to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but you do need to know the basics of writing in a style that grabs and keeps readers’ attention.

It all starts with your headline. The headline needs to be as catchy as possible. But at the same time, remember that you are dealing with professionals, so no clickbait headlines.

To make headlines more appealing, make them as specific as possible. You want to entice the reader to want to read it. So if your topic is online marketing, don’t just have a basic title like, “ What you should know about online marketing.” Instead, make it more appealing; something like, “5 online marketing tips that online marketers don’t want you to know.” The latter headline is more mysterious and attention-grabbing than the former.

Final words

There’s no doubt that blogging is an extremely popular marketing tool. But it needs to be done the right way.

By ensuring that your content is relevant to your target audience, that you do your research, and back up any facts and claims you make, you’re going to establish yourself as an authority in time.

Combining the power of a blog and the 10 commandments with the popularity of social media, you’ll be well on the way to increase your viewer base and the prosperity of your business.