6 Easy Steps To Guarantee Your Startup Blog Success

Companies with blogs get 67% more leads per month than those without them. That means a business will have more opportunities to convert prospect buyers and earn more money than its competitors.

Thus, it’s imperative for startups to launch their blogs and get them running immediately.

One of the most powerful tools for growing and maintaining your startup is through content marketing. Its benefits include:

• attracting new clients and retaining existing ones;
• sharing ideas, providing information, and educating customers;
• building your brand and promoting your products or services;
• connecting with customers and forming relationships based on trust;
• ranking high on search engines, thereby increasing your website traffic.

As a startup, you must put various systems in place quickly to ensure your survival. Keep reading to learn how to get your startup blog off the ground fast and start winning over your target audience.

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6 Easy Steps To Guarantee Your Startup Blog Success

• Focus on Trending Keywords Among Your Target Audience
  • Steps for Finding Trending Keywords
• Implement Good SEO Tactics to Boost Search Engine Visibility Faster
  • Some Common Blogging Mistakes
  • Best SEO Practices for Startups to Implement Early On
• Understand Your Customer’s Needs
• Focus On Your Startup Blog Design
• Make Your Content Valuable
• Build an Email List and Social Media Following
• Conclusion

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6 Steps To Guarantee The Success Of Your Startup Blog

Startups need to not only save money but also market their businesses effectively. 

Research shows that 77% of online users read blogs, and this statistic demonstrates that blogging can be a great avenue to reach those sales objectives.

How can you leverage your startup blog to boost your business and achieve success?

Here are some content marketing tips to consider.

1. Focus on Trending Keywords Among Your Target Audience

Write about things people are interested in, and you’ll notice more of your target audience will tune in to your blog posts.

Investigate what keywords are trending online and use them as your topics.

Computer software company Adobe has a blog called CMO by Adobe, which provides insights and advice on various subjects. They use analytics tools to find the words people are using to describe their pain points. 

This information enables them to create blog posts about commerce, technology, and lifestyle, making them relatable to a broader audience. 

The strategy works for them because their software applies to all industries. Moreover, there’s no pressure to sell because the blog highlights the benefits people will get from the software. 

How To Find Trending Keywords

First, check on Google Trends to find out what people are searching for online. You can set preferences such as country, local area, and niche. 

Look at the volume of searches and check whether major publications are covering the topics related to the keywords. This will help you shine on popular issues that writers haven’t written about yet. 

Next, review social media platforms to see what people are talking about. Twitter, for example, always shows you what is trending. 

Pick the most common words and use them in your blog posts to show empathy for your prospect’s problems. 

Other avenues to consider are comment sections, Reddit, and website feedback pages. 

Ask your audience to give you feedback since this will get you more keywords that are relevant. 

Last, try options such as Buzzsumo, SEMRush, and Google Keyword Planner to find the ideal keywords for your blog.

2. Implement Good SEO Tactics to Boost Search Engine Visibility Faster

Optimize your startup blog from the get-go to boost its online visibility faster. Search engine optimization (SEO) improves user experience and raises the organic search rankings.

Consequently, better placement in search results amplifies your website traffic and increases your online engagement.

It takes time to achieve good results on search engines, but good SEO tactics pay off in the long-term. 

The key is to set the foundation for preventing common issues that hurt blogs once they start getting visitors.

Some common blogging mistakes include:

• low-quality content, plagiarism, and keyword stuffing;
• broken or disreputable backlinks;
• poor connection with the audience leading to little feedback;
• insufficient content or too much content on topics people don’t care about;
• terrible blog design, slow loading, on-page viruses, and too many pop-ups.

Do your best to avoid these to ensure you achieve optimal results.

Best SEO Practices for Startup Blogs to Implement Early On

There are several ways to apply SEO to your startup blog and get fantastic results over time. You can find plenty of them explained here.

The most crucial point to remember is you are creating content for the benefit of the user. Thus, your blog posts should be useful, actionable, and improve the user’s experience on your website.

3. Understand Your Customer’s Needs

When you research keywords, try to understand the intent of the customer when they were searching for a particular topic. 

If you know the intent, you can tailor the content for specific stages of the sales funnel. 

Your goal for the sales funnel is to bring awareness and traffic in the first stage. Then, educate people in the second stage, and convince them to take the actions you want at the end.

Establish content calendars and have a steady flow of topics that relate to the audience’s needs.

Optimize your headlines, write detailed posts, and link to reputable sites. Use clusters to deliver comprehensive content on a subject, and it will build your authority.

Long-form content works best in showing your expertise, so make sure to write longer posts. 

Include subheadings, images, and videos to reduce large blocks of text. Also, edit your content and format it well to avoid looking unprofessional or getting a low-quality reputation.

4. Focus on Your Startup Blog Design

Aside from the content, one aspect contributing to the overall user experience is the website’s blog design. 

Adobe’s blog has a straightforward design, which loads pages quickly. They use graphics to display direct quotes from experts, which gives the expert opinion more authority on the page.

On the other hand, HubSpot’s blog is the home of marketing, where they cover customer experience, service, and selling. Their blog design has menus for exploring topics, from beginner, intermediate to advanced level. 

They offer free eBooks, State of Marketing reports, and guides.

Additionally, they have analytics for their blog to review the topics that are doing well.

HubSpot interlinks their posts to create an extensive topic archive for each stage of the buyer’s journey. In various parts of their design, they have pop-ups for capturing emails in exchange for free offers or consultations.

Due to their quality content and appealing designs, the HubSpot blog often appears on the first page of Google. Their posts include a lot of targeted keywords and SEO tactics to boost their ranking.

5. Make Your Content Valuable

Ensure the content on your startup blog is valuable, educational, and shareable to get attention, social shares, and backlinks to your website.

Educate your followers about your products or services and other related topics they may be interested in. 

Remember, your target audience will not stick around if they don’t find value in your posts.

Make your posts shareable to increase your chances of attracting more traffic to your blog. It allows you to engage your customers and build a stronger relationship.

For instance, the social media management app Buffer created shareable content to enhance their reach. Guest blogging on other well-regarded websites helped them increase their follower numbers. 

You can also leverage other people’s audiences to grow your startup blog.

Encourage the public to share their stories and inspire people on behalf of your blog. Don’t worry too much about links, even though they are important. 

Instead, focus on building relationships with other users and reputable sites, and the links will come to you organically. 

Show your blog’s authority by making one niche your unique selling proposition (USP). 

For example, the e-commerce website Etsy has a Journal, which focuses on Life Improvement. There, they can explore life improvement ideas such as better fashion, gift ideas, self-care, and home enhancement.

6. Build an Email List and Social Media Following 

Build an email list and social media following to get more engagement and loyalty for your blog. Initially, it will take some effort for your blog to establish itself. 

You must promote it on social media and give free offers on your website to capture customer email addresses. Afterward, you’ll start getting more organic traffic.

General Electric’s blog, GE Reports, focuses on energy efficiency and processes, technology, environmental care, and health. 

Despite having a tough niche to get users excited about, they made themselves relatable and fun to the public. 

They invited several influencers to tour the GE facilities and share the posts with the public. This campaign got a lot of online engagement and connected better with the audience because it was user-generated.

Increase your social media following by:

• posting regularly and creating or sharing appealing posts;
• responding to comments;
• connecting with influencers;
• using hashtags strategically;
• checking the analytics to improve your social media posts.

Boost your email lists by capturing emails during webinars, using pop-ups on new blog posts, and having sign-up forms on the front page of your website.

 Trade free stuff for email addresses and remind your social media followers to subscribe to your emails.

Recommended Read: The Most Effective Social Media Marketing Strategy For Your Business

Conclusion

As you can see, getting a startup blog off the ground is not just about launching quickly but about setting up the foundations for a successful blog. 

• Tailor your content to your audience and ensure your blog has a responsive web and mobile design.

• Test different ideas, learn quickly and change whatever is not working for your blog. 

• Establish processes, such as a content calendar and topic creation strategies. 

• Put in the effort to research keywords using various tools and optimize your content to get better traction in online searches.

• Choosing your niche or purpose will give you a clear direction for your blog. 

• Ask your audience for their opinions and pick relevant or evergreen topics to keep them engaged. 

• Pay attention to SEO and be careful not to fall foul of Google rules, or you’ll receive penalties that’ll hurt your blog in the long-term.

• Also, use social media to build trust and loyalty, and allow your audience to become brand ambassadors.

Finally, be consistent with your branding message. 

Don’t spend all your time selling.  Instead, let the public get a sense of who you are so they can identify with you and build a connection with you. 

Contributor: Joe Peters

A Baltimore-based freelance writer and an ultimate techie. When he is not working his magic as a marketing consultant, this incurable tech junkie devours the news on the latest gadgets and binge-watches his favorite TV shows.
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