Running a business has its own rewards and challenges. As the owner of a company, you’re able to reap the benefits of total creative freedom and scheduling your own hours. This is great for business owners who are tasked with juggling family and business responsibilities at once. However, growing a business is easier said than done. The inability to properly manage marketing can quickly derail the company.
And one way to grow the brand is with content writing. Maintaining a blog is a very effective way to do this. Blogging boosts your SEO, expands your reach, and makes your business appear more credible. Yet many businesses struggle to maintain a blog. But it doesn’t have to be as cumbersome as you might think.
After you create a mission statement and goals for your blog, you might want to work with a marketing agency that specializes in your field. The more niche your content, the better. For example, as a legal company, you might want to work with a team like Sutton Digital (https://suttondigitalmarketing.com/), which offers dedicated legal writers with tailored experiences. On the other hand, you might hire a freelancer on a site like UpWork. Either way, always work with your writer(s) to ensure they understand your style, tone, and voice.
Sometimes, seeing how other brands have made money with their blogs can help you better understand how it works, and inspire you to rethink your content efforts. With that in mind, here are a few brands that continue to generate income with their blogs:
Slack
Slack is a business-focused messaging platforms that makes collaboration and communication easier than ever. The Slack blog not only features extensive details on how to make the most of your Slack experience (you’d be surprised at how many users don’t leverage the full tech power of a product they use on a daily basis), but also how to build teams internally. Slack also strives to be transparent in their messaging, which is extremely important in business today.
For example, in one blog post, they detailed the entire design and thought process behind their logo rebranding. This is something many companies don’t do—they simply rebrand and push their new look to consumers. But Slack wanted readers and users to have a deeper understanding of how their company makes decisions. Not only is this level of transparency useful to readers and users, but it also helps current business owners rethink how they approach their own branding efforts.
River Pools
No matter what size your business is or what industry you’re in, you can push your way towards extra dollars with content. Marc Sheridan, who ran a pool company called Sheridan Pools, was able to generate $2 million from a single blog post. The blog post addressed the most frequently asked question he received: how much will my pool installation cost?
Up until that point, many companies weren’t detailing the answer with a face-to-face consultation or phone call. Breaking down the real price was difficult, and potential customers didn’t fully understand the process or how different features and setups affected their price. With this blog post, the company was able to boost their credibility significantly, and it results in many new pool sales.
Shopify
As previously mentioned, one of the best (and organic) ways to connect with potential clients and customers is to infuse value. Shopify is a great example of this. The platforms offers Ecommerce websites to business owners looking to grow their brand.
Rather than push their own product to its users, they took a step back to analyze the needs of their target market: business owners. Of course, they are multiple segments that fall under that umbrella, and Shopify does a great job of honing in on their ideal customer persona, which tends to lean in the independent entrepreneur side. With a thorough understanding of who they’re trying to attract, they were able to craft highly tailored content around that.
What makes Shopify especially unique is that they don’t publish cookie-cutter content. What you’ll notice in much of their blog posts is that careful attention to detail, photos, and examples to back up what they’re saying. Rather than simply list web design trends, they point you towards beautiful websites created by successful Shopify users, thereby both illustrating their point and selling the product at once. As a result, Shopify has become not just an ecommerce platform, but a fully-fledged business resource.
Mark Schaefer
Mark Schaefer is a marketing consultant who uses his marketing blog to help attract potential clients. Consulting and speaking engagement remain Schaefer’s top earning methods, but through the power of content marketing, he’s able to attract the clients that eventually hire him. Think about it: if you’re seeking marketing services, one of the first things you’ll do is head over to Google and conduct a standard search. You might click a few links and start reading blogs on the topic to learn more. If you stumbled upon a particularly useful blog post, you might continue to explore their website. Because they were able to provide you with value, as a consumer, you naturally moved further down the sales pipeline. Now that they’ve already helped you, you’re more inclined to reach out to them for their consulting services.
Image: Pexels