How to Create a Successful Business Blog in Minutes

Fact: it is obscenely easy to set up a business blog today and begin driving new, qualified traffic to your site soon.

Regular readers of HubSpot's blog are probably already experiencing the benefits of regular blogging, including harvesting the long tail of search traffic to drive incremental, high-quality leads to their site. If you're not already doing this, though, you can and you should be blogging for your business.

5 Steps to Starting a Successful Business Blog

1) Pick a blogging service . HubSpot, Wordpress, Blogger, Posterous, whatever - and start a blog. This will take no more than 5 minutes.

2) Host your blog on your main site . If you leave it on its original domain (i.e. mybusiness.wordpress.com), your domain won't be getting any of the SEO credit from your blogging efforts. Note that this change is typically a paid service, so be prepared to put some skin in the game. Contact your current developer, your cousin who's "good with computers", or do it yourself; just get your new blog set up on a subdomain or page of your main site.

3) Consider your ideal site visitors . They have a problem they want to solve that your business can help address. You probably write 20 emails a day about this problem. What would they search for in Google to solve that problem? Got it? That's your very first keyword.

4) Brainstorm keywords related to your business. Write them down! Concentrate on long tail keyword phrases 3-4 words long--if your business is in one specific geography, that's a great way to target your keyword phrases. You want to be choosing slightly more obscure keywords that are highly relevant to your business. More obscure = easier to rank for = easier to get to the front page of Google. Furthermore, obscure words will actually be more specific to your business and the types of products and services you provide. Both of these are key to driving quality traffic to your site.

5) Write your first blog post. Take note to un-salesify your language and try to educate the public for something related to your business. Remember that no one cares about your business until you can solve their problems. Keep all your posts educational, link to other resources online, and provide the very best value you can for your readership.
What's Next?

Keep going. The most important part of blogging for business is to do it regularly. Over time, this will generate new traffic to your site and get you found online. And if your blog is properly integrated for lead generation, you will start to generate new business relatively quickly.

In the case of Raul, he can use his iPad to write posts while waiting for his next fare. For you, maybe you can think up a post idea over a morning coffee, run or shower, scribble a few notes on the way to work, and devote a few minutes 3 times a week to blogging. Ultimately, making content creation a personal priority is the only way you'll accomplish your blogging goals. Take those 10 minutes to dream up your next post .

There's certainly an art to blogging, no doubt about it. But until you get started, you've got nothing but a mountain to climb. Get out there and start climbing--the reward is proven to be sweet.

How to Bake a Blog: Recipe for Business Blogging Success

As you cook Thanksgiving dinner today, watch how your hungry guests keep returning to the kitchen– drawn in by attractive, delicious-smelling food. Today, these hungry people are your family, but on your website they represent your visitors. You want to attract vistiors to your website with compelling content. Notice that as your family comes into your kitchen, they sniff it out, maybe even steal a bite. If this was your website, you’d offer the bite in exchange for a bit of information about the visitor and transform them into a lead.

                              

                              How to Bake a Delicious, Content-Filled Blog

INGREDIENTS

1 blogger (preferably someone passionate about content production)
1 RSS reader (set up and containing blogs related to your industry)
1 URL (with Typepad or Blogspot accounts removed and discarded)
Blog Analytics, installed
2 cups Social Media
1 cup SEO
1 Image, iconic and captivating
Blog Post Titles, Engaging
3-10 Meta Keywords, Researched
1 Meta Description containing 1 Keyword Phrase
Call-To-Action, Attractive and Mixed with a Compelling Offer
A whole lot of patience (don’t worry if you bake it, they will come)

(Optional) Team of passionate employees who foster a sense of content creation in your company

PREPARATION

1. Use your RSS reader to begin reading the blogs of other people in your industry. Be sure to comment, especially on posts interesting to your prospects, with meaningful insights and questions. Repeat this step continually while your blog bakes.

2. Begin writing posts that your prospects will find interesting. You can format your post in a variety of different ways, but make sure that you organize your thoughts in some way. People have a tendency to skim, so be sure to highlight important sections with a sub-title or organize your post into a list format. When completed, set blog post aside to cool.

3. Start thinking of photos for your blog post. It’s easy to get distracted searching for an image. Keep the process short by focusing on the theme of your post and using it as a keyword in an image search. You can make an image yourself (a chart or graph) or use Flickr’s Advanced Search to search for images based on tags people have used. Be sure to include alt-txt that contains important keywords when you add the image to your blog post.

4. Now it’s time to add an effective call-to-action to the end of your post. If you’d like you can prepare these ahead of time. Make sure your offer is compelling to people who may read your blog post.

5. Top off your blog post with an engaging title which will draw people into your site. It’s best if your title is also less or around 70 characters in length.

6. Return to your blog post and populate the keyword Meta data with appropriate keywords you’ve selected as low difficulty, but have a generous search volume (if you’re a Hubspot customer you can use Keyword Grader to compile and monitor your list of keywords).

7. Write a unique Meta description that does not include your blog title. Include 1 of your keyword phrases. You want to keep your Meta description less than 156 characters in length.

8. After proofreading your post, your blog post is now ready to share. Be sure to share your blog posts via your social media accounts such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. If you can, set up a tool that automatically posts your blog posts when they go live.

9. Your blog is now in the oven of the internet, baking. Repeat steps 1 through 8 once a week or more for the next few months, all the while using your Blog Analytics to discover who is visiting your blog posts. Check out your most popular blog posts and try to recreate your success in new posts. Analyze and repeat.