A real leap into cyberspace is living in the digital age.

Nowadays, people are more inclined to research online instead of scanning newspapers or books while having a cup of coffee. 

It’s inevitable! Imagine, you can connect to a lot of people and gain tons of information in just a few clicks and ticks. Easy and convenient, isn’t it? 

If you’re a business start-up, having a strong online presence is a must. With the use of different social media platforms, you make people aware of your products and services. 

Awareness is a step inside your customers’ psyche (mind).  Once you catch their attention and incite their curiosity, your business brand is already inculcated in their minds. Now, the question is how?

A powerful tool that you can use is blogging.  However, the fact that there are a lot of blogs these days vying for a limited amount of attention means that you have to create a blog that will outshine others. 

Here are some tips on how to start your business blog. You will be equipped with a set of skills on how to start creating a blog, set it up, make it attractive to your audience, and earn from it. 

Nature of business

When starting a business blog, you must clearly understand what kind of income-generating business you will discuss and market. Since there are many niches you can blog about, choosing a topic is important so that your target audience and goals are clear from the beginning. 

1. Fashion trend blogs. This topic would suit your taste if you are into fashion, style, and make-up. It explores different clothing lines, make-up brands, hairstyles, bags, and other beauty products.  To give you a picture, here are some famous fashion blogs.

2. Health and Wellness blogs. You can share your health and fitness practices and preferences through a blog. Some topics would focus on exercise equipment, gym routine, sports, yoga, healthy lifestyle, and the like. Look into some health and wellness blogs for more ideas. 

3. Food blogs. If you love cooking or see yourself as a foodie, you can share your thoughts and experiences on restaurants, cafés, or even recipes you’ve tried.  Here’s a list of some food blogs that people do these days. 

4. Travel blogs. Are you always up for an adventure? Then, you can take your audience to beautiful and interesting places through your blogs. You also give them tips on how to travel if they’re on a tight budget. Be inspired by these travel blogs.

5. Mommy blogs. Raising a kid can be challenging, so if you’re passionate about sharing some mom hacks on going about some of the challenges, this topic is good for you. You can talk about some breastfeeding tips, how to help babies sleep on their own, or even parenting. Get some ideas here. 

6. Business and Finance blogs. This blog typically concentrates on particular types of businesses (such as starting small firms, startups, or entrepreneurs), industries (like restaurants, construction, agriculture, and so on), or topics (like marketing, finance, leadership, management, or human resources). Check out these well-known finance and business blogs for extra inspiration.

Select a Web Host for Your Business Blog

Utilizing a good and user-friendly blog hosting site makes content writing, development of readership, and monetary gains smooth and quick. You can start a topical blog using a third-party website such as Medium, or a personal blog on Blogger. 

One of the perks of using a third-party website is quick access to your target audience since they have already formed an audience that might be interested in your chosen niche. 

The downside, however, is you cannot customize how you package your brand to your audience since you are bound to the standards and set features of the third-party website.   But, if you’re still exploring or just want to have fun, then this could fit you.

Another way is through creating a self-hosted blog. This is where you can monetize from blogging as you customize your web features including themes, plugins, and marketing tools.  

You can try creating a blog and selling products/services using some web-builder tools like Wix, Leadpages, or Weebly. You can also utilize Google AdSense or Media.net to monetize your content. 

The good thing about a self-hosted blog is that it allows you to design your brand identity, choose your domain name, and connect to a wider array of audience. 

The challenge now is how you make your site appealing and accessible to your target audience. There are more business tools out there that can help you kickstart your business. Just explore, learn, and have fun!

Choose a Domain Name

Once you’ve decided on your web builder, it’s time to choose your domain name (e.g. abcd.com). This can be nerve-racking, so to help you out here are some guidelines on how to find the right domain name for you. 

1. Identify the goal of your website: Consider the usage of your website and the demographic you hope to reach. This will enable you to think of a meaningful and pertinent domain name.
2. Select a domain name extension: There are a variety of extensions available, including.com,.net,.org,.info, and. co. Each extension has a unique purpose, but .com is typically the most well-known and well-liked.

3. Make it memorable and simple to spell: People are more likely to visit your website if they can readily discover it, so choose a domain name that is simple to remember and spell.

4. Think about your branding: Your domain name should match your company’s name and branding. Use that as your domain name if you already have a name for your company. If not, think about utilizing niche or industry-specific keywords.

5. Incorporate SEO keywords. If you want people to find you easily, make sure to include your primary keyword in your domain.  This will help people find your site when they do their research on Google. 

6. Use a domain name availability checker to determine if the domain name you want is available. If it isn’t, you might have to think of an alternative or add a prefix or suffix to make it distinctive.

7. Register your domain name: Once you’ve identified a suitable, available domain name, you must register it with a domain name registrar. You can then use it as both your website and your email address.

How to Monetize your Blog

It’s crucial to draw a sizable and active readership to your business blog if you want to make money from it. 

This may be achieved by constantly posting high-quality material that speaks to the needs and interests of your target audience, as well as by advertising your blog through social media and other marketing methods.

To give you some insights on how to increase your readership and make money from your business blog, here are some ways you can explore and try: 

1. Advertising: By placing ads on your site, you can get paid when readers view or click on them.

2. Affiliate Marketing: By advertising and linking to the products of other firms on your site, you can make money through affiliate marketing.

3. Sponsored content: In exchange for cash, you may create sponsored material for other businesses to post on your site.

4. Digital goods: Through your blog, you can produce and market your digital goods, such as e-books or online courses.

5. Services: You can advertise your services, such as consulting or coaching, on your blog and charge for them.

 Inside a Business Blog 

A good way to jumpstart your blog is to choose a theme that includes layout, color, and style elements. Your theme conveys your business identity and vibe, so make sure that it’s enticing and pleasing for your audience. 

Essentially, your theme is a representation of your business and directly affects how your audience interacts with it.

Remember, first impressions would determine if you can step inside your customers’ psyche (mind) so make it count. Here are some design tips: 

• Avoid strong colors
• Increase white space to make it look neat
• Be consistent with your icons
• Don’t focus so much on the design, mind also the basic tools such as search bars, sidebars, subscription options, author attribution, and the like.  

Now, let’s get into the interesting part- the content. Most people love hearing stories, so chances are they would want to know the story behind your business. Instead of diving right into selling your products/services, why not tell your story first? 

As you narrate your story, try targeting their pain points from the perspective of someone who experienced it. Be a problem solver as you introduce your business blog. Once you hit it, you’ll go beyond their doorstep.  

There are various types of business blog content that you can check out to help you build the very core of your blog. To make it smooth and more enticing, here’s a quick content guide for you: 

1. Utilize captivating openings to keep readers interested.
2. Give them helpful suggestions to keep them coming back. 
3. Use bullet points and sub-headers for easy scanning.

Dive into your blog content

About ME or US. This component of your blog site might be the most visited page of your site since people would want to know more about the person behind the blog. 

So, when your readers visit this part make sure you tell them about your inspiration, motivation, and the people that compelled you to create your blog site. It’ll be easier and more fun to read if you sound genuine and conversational. 

Tell them also how this blog can be beneficial for them. Give them meaningful reasons to come back for more. 

Robust CTAs. A call to action or CTA would tell your readers what to do next after reading your blog. Including this in your articles would increase the chance of having more visits. You can invite them to follow your page, give feedback, sign-up, or download a free resource. 

Whatever CTA you choose to write, make sure that it’s specific and stated in a friendly way. Here are some tips on how to make a good CTA.  

Create leads. Increasing your leads is a great help to boost your sales, marketing list, and readership. There are different tools and ways to boost your leads:  

• Invite site visitors to join your email list or newsletter. By doing so, you can gather contact details from interested parties and send them updates or promotions.
• Use pop-ups or lead-generating forms to gather visitor data. In exchange for an offer or piece of content, these forms can be used to collect information such as name, email address, and phone number.
• Create a how-to manual, instruction manual, template, or topic summary as an e-book or PDF, and ask readers to provide their email addresses before downloading it.
• Give free demos and or trials of your products/services. This offers a chance to gather contact information while letting visitors experience what you have to offer.
• Create a Podcast. This is a good way to entice your target audience to follow you at the same time lengthen your contact list. 
• Host a webinar/give free consultation. These will help you build your contact list. Creating a webinar that is educational and informational and offering free consultation can generate leads quickly. 

 Managing your leads can be as challenging as you create them. You can save time and effort by using a software system to help you in maintaining your leads and finding more.  The more efficient your tools are, the longer your contact list becomes. 

 Increase your site’s traffic

Now, it’s time for you to establish a strong connection with your audience. The more readers and followers the stronger your business becomes. You just have to persuade them and keep them engaged. There are a lot of techniques on how to attract them to visit your site. 

• Identify trending topics. Once you know the buzz of the town, you will have an idea of what most people want to know and search online. Most people search for timely topics and hype, so do include that topic in your site to increase your readership. 
• Make a killer headline. Making your headline enticing would catch the attention of your readers. You can start by exploring their pain points and then make your headline sound like a good solution. 

 Make sure it’s also timely and relevant to your chosen business niche. To help you out, you can check the latest news online, read some posts on your site, or ask your loyal subscribers about their preferred content. 

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Once you’ve created gorgeous and alluring content, you have to make people notice immediately by increasing their awareness.  

 This means that developing an SEO strategy for your blog is essential. The objective of effective SEO is for your business blog to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). When you input a search query into Google, these results appear.

• Email Marketing. A compelling method to increase your readership is through direct communication. Through personalized contact, you will gain more subscribers. You can make use of some email marketing tools such as Aweber or GetResponse to find your audience and acquire a pool of subscribers swiftly. 
• Enhance shareable content to Build backlinks. Let people know about your business by Increasing your blog’s Google ranks. In doing so, the traffic to your website will increase. To obtain backlinks from high-authority websites for SEO, you must create more content that is shareable and citable. 

In light of all the strategies for business blogs, it is still important to keep in mind that business is all about people. 

Your blogs should not solely focus on the products/services, but also on how people can improve or change their course of life in the long run. 

Hence, make them feel awesome, empowered, and inspired!

If you liked this article and wanted to share your ideas, feel free to send us a comment or feedback. 

Thanks!