5 Simple Steps to Building a Blog and Gaining a Loyal Audience

Currently, the majority of company websites have a blog. It doesn’t matter whether they are an e-commerce site, B2B site or a purely informational site. You will find countless articles touting figures about why every company should blog, but how many companies are actually walking the walk when it comes to a successful blog?

I visit countless websites, check out the blog and find the last post was published almost a year ago—and on top of that, the posts published have not received a single comment. I would suggest that companies with this nonchalant and negligent management omit their blog. In an effort to ensure you aren’t in the company of blogs like the one I just described, I have created a short list of things you can do for your company blog so you are not that blog.

1. Ownership – Before creating the first piece of content or even the direction of the blog, it is crucial to determine who owns the blog. This doesn’t mean one person has to create every piece of content because odds are they won’t. However, if no one takes responsibility for the success of the blog, it will end up as a place where content goes to die, at best. Upward Brand Interactions was once guilty of unreliable ownership as well, but since we have turned over ownership solely to the content marketing team, our blog runs more efficiently.Changes will not materialize immediately, but we are one step closer to optimizing our blog to its full potential.
2. Blog Frequently – It sounds simple enough doesn’t it? At the beginning, everyone has tons of ideas about what they will blog about, and they are excited. Unfortunately, everything changes when the time comes to actually write the post. Blogging is work, and work is not always very fun – let’s be honest. My advice is to schedule a content calendar and stick to its deadlines. This helps to ensure the constant creation of content. So, if and when a visitor does check out your blog, they will know your company is still alive and your ideas are fresh—not rotting on the vine.
3. Get people to read it – Just because you have created a blog post does not mean people are reading it. In fact, I can almost guarantee lack of promotion for your blog will result in no new readers outside of your company and its immediate network. You need to find your audience and bring them to you.
4. Identify your audience – Start by asking yourself a few simple questions. Who is your reader? Where do they hang out? What blogs do they like? What else interests them? After you have answered these questions, make a list of 10 blogs and 3 forums where you think your audience is and see if you were right. Results and interaction will follow.
5. Participate – This should be the responsibility of the owner of the blog. It is great if more people want to participate, but you need at least one person you can count on to participate. Now that you have your list, use it. Visit these blogs, forums or whatever they may be and then participate. I mean actually participate. Leave meaningful comments. Most blogs allow you to leave your name (use your real name or alias, but be sure to do the same on your blog) and URL. Take advantage of this feature, but do not abuse it by stuffing it with keywords. The goal of this exercise is to drive visits to your blog, not manipulate organic search traffic.

Like the editorial calendar, create a schedule for visiting these blogs and forums. Over time, you will see which ones you enjoy and more importantly, which ones generate quality visits to your blog. As you see these patterns emerge, you can stop visiting the sites that do not generate visits and focus on those that do.

Following these 5 simple steps will help you create a blog with valuable content—and more importantly, valuable readers.