How to Start a Business Blog (7 Simple Steps)

So, you’re ready to take the plunge and dive into the world of business blogging, but you’re not quite sure where to begin. Great news: Dove Mountain Marketing has you covered.

The truth is, business blogging creates a massive reservoir of search-engine-optimized, converting content. A business blog establishes you as an authority in your field, provides your sales team with engaging educational content to qualify leads, and brings in loads of organic traffic. In short, blogs help your business boom.

Now, the question remains: how exactly do you start a business blog?

This article provides a step-by-step guide for setting up a business blog, including choosing a platform, defining your target audience, developing a content strategy, and optimizing your blog for success. Let's dive in! 

How to Create a Booming Business Blog

Step 1 – Choose a Blogging Platform 

Your blog should be an organic extension of your website – a digital heart-pumping SEO juice throughout your entire website. Blogs are a website feature that is often prebuilt into your website that isn’t that difficult to activate.

Website builders that include a blogging option include:

• Hubspot
• Webflow
• Wix
• Squarespace
• Substack
• Medium
• Weebly
• Blogger

The simplest way to utilize a blog is to house the blog through your website. You may want to hire a developer to assist you with any HTML or JavaScript coding that’s necessary for your desired aesthetic. 

Just like with your business website, user experience (UX) is the name of the game for cultivating an enjoyable user experience. Your blog can also be a part of your Learning Center, which is often comprised of a blog and video library.

Check out HubSpot's article The 13 Best Blogging Platforms for 2023 (& How to Pick One). 

Step 2 – Define Your Blogging Audience

You might be thinking, “target audience” sounds a lot like college rhetoric 101. And, seeing as I’m a university English lecturer, you’d be right. Defining your target audience helps you zero in on the right demographic – those great fits that require your products and services.

The good news is, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Your blog audience overlaps neatly with your buyer personas or avatars. Now, due to the breadth of the internet, you’re casting a wide net – a worldwide net. Depending on the type of your business, a significant chunk of your traffic may not even be in your service area (especially when your keywords and educational content begin to take off).

This is alright. Why? Because - brand awareness is king. 

Defining and understanding your target audience is crucial for the success of your blog in terms of:

Content Relevance

Knowing your target audience and speaking their language, so to speak, enables you to create engaging content that is specifically tailored to their needs, interests, and preferences. By understanding their demographics, pain points, and motivations, you can directly address specific challenges, providing relevant insight and solutions (your products and services – duh) to the world.

Your business blog should revolve around the context of your products, services, and industry – highlighting an educational relationship between you and your readers.

Increased Organic Traffic and Visibility

Targeting a specific audience helps you optimize your content for relevant keywords and topics. This enhances your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, making it more likely for your blog to appear in search results when your target audience is actively seeking information related to your niche. By attracting the right visitors, you can increase traffic and visibility for your blog.

Improved Conversion Rates

When you create content that resonates with your target audience, you have a higher chance of converting them into customers. By understanding their needs and providing valuable insights or solutions, you can establish credibility and trust, leading to increased conversions and achieving your blog's goals, whether it's generating leads, selling products, or promoting services.

Differentiation and Competitive Advantage

Understanding your target audience enables you to differentiate yourself from competitors. By identifying their unique pain points and gaps in the market, you can provide specialized content or address specific niches that are underserved. This allows you to stand out, establish your expertise, and gain a competitive advantage in the blogging landscape.

Overall, defining and understanding your target audience is essential for creating a successful blog. It helps you tailor your content, connect with your readers, increase visibility, improve conversions, and differentiate yourself in a crowded online space.

Discover the nuance of how to zero in on your target audience through HubSpot's Target Audience: How to Find Yours [+ 5 Campaign Examples]. 

Step 3 – Develop a Content Strategy

As a tenured professional content creator, developing a blogging content strategy involves a systematic approach that combines your expertise with the needs and preferences of your target audience. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you develop an effective content strategy.

Define Your Content Goals

Map out where you want to go. I would start by identifying the major overarching goals of your blog: to establish thought leadership, generate leads, promote products or services, or build a mastermind community. What do you want to achieve via your business blog?

Clearly defining your goals guides your content creation efforts. Often your blogging content goals will align with your social media strategy and email marketing campaigns.

*Note – topic clusters prove a great place to start if you’re uncertain where to begin. This is where you write about a singular product or service extensively from various angles – cost, benefits, complications, product reviews, and so on.

Know Your Target Audience

As mentioned previously, it’s imperative to gain a deep understanding of your target audience. Analyze their demographics, interests, pain points, and aspirational identities. You can do this by conducting surveys, engaging in social listening, and interacting with your audience to gather insights that will further inform your content strategy.

Identify Content Themes and Topics

Based on your expertise and audience research, identify broad content themes that align with your goals and resonate with your audience. These themes should cover a range of topics within your niche. For example, if you're a marketing professional, your themes could include content marketing, social media strategies, SEO, etc.

Conduct Keyword Research

Use keyword research tools to identify relevant keywords and search terms within your chosen content themes. This helps you understand what your audience is searching for and allows you to optimize your content for better visibility in search engines.

Keyword research software:

• Semrush (we use Semrush daily here at Dove Mountain Marketing)
• Demandwell
• iSpionage
• CanlRank
• Raven Tools
• SE Ranking
• Serpstat
• Uberall Corex

Develop a Content Calendar 

Create a content calendar to plan and organize your blog posts. Determine the frequency of your posts (e.g., weekly, bi-weekly) and allocate topics to specific dates. This ensures consistency in publishing and helps you stay organized.

Mix Content Types to Keep Content Fresh

Consider incorporating a mix of content types, topic clusters, and thematic focuses to keep your blog diverse and engaging.

Best Beginner Business Blog Topics: 

• Comparisons: Head-to-head comparison articles evaluate similar products and/or services, presenting an unbiased analysis of their pros and cons. This helps readers make informed decisions based on objective information.

• Best of Competitors: These articles compile listicles of the biggest and most noteworthy competitors in your industry. Yes, at first this sounds counterintuitive, but covering products/services, qualifications, and customer reviews provides valuable insights for readers and helps you rank for competitor-related keywords.

• Reviews: Review articles offer comprehensive assessments of products and services, targeting specific industry audiences and providing valuable feedback for potential buyers.

• Price: Price articles discuss pricing, including price ranges and averages, to inform readers about the cost of a product or service. They list factors that can influence prices and build trust by ensuring transparency.

• Pros/Cons: These articles present both the benefits and drawbacks of a particular product or service, offering readers an unbiased look at the positives and negatives.

• Problems: Problem articles highlight potential issues or drawbacks associated with the solutions (products/services) being offered. By addressing concerns and revealing limitations, these articles help readers make well-informed decisions and avoid buyer's remorse.

• Descriptions: Description articles provide detailed explanations of processes, procedures, or the implementation of a particular service. They set clear expectations for readers and guide them through a specific service or process.

• Definitions: Definition articles cover classic "What is" topics, offering clear explanations of industry-specific terms or concepts. These articles tend to rank quickly and attract top-of-funnel traffic.

• Types & Classifications: Types articles outline the primary differences among various types and classifications of products or services, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding of the options available to them.
• How To / Tutorials: Process articles offer step-by-step walkthroughs of specific processes or DIY projects, providing practical guidance and empowering readers to take action.

Create Pillar Content 

All of those topic clusters you’re going to bust out aren’t just one-offs. You can combine these topic clusters to create an ultimate guide or be used to create a pillar page. These are comprehensive, in-depth pieces that provide a solid foundation for your blog's expertise. Pillar content can be longer and more detailed.

Plan for Evergreen and Trending Content 

Ride the wave of trends for as long as you can. Why? Because hopping on trends works. Think right time. Right place. Right pitch. Be sure to balance your content strategy with a mix of evergreen and trending topics. Evergreen content remains relevant over time, attracting steady traffic and serving as a resource for your audience. Trending topics capitalize on current events, industry news, and popular discussions to stay current and engage readers.

Learn more about how to develop a content strategy via the Business News Daily. 

Step 4 – Find a Writer, Blogger, or Content Manager 

You can write the blog yourself as a business owner or designate a current employee to write or hire a brand-new employee whose sole job it is to write. All of the above costs time or a good chunk of change. Hiring an outside third party for you is also a viable option. We have a great cache of bloggers right here at Dove Mountain Marketing. There's no shame in outsourcing content and it can provide great benefits in terms of saved time and expertise. 

Discover the top reasons to hire a marketing agency from Dove Mountain Marketing's article Why Should I Hire a Marketing Agency (Top 3 Reasons) 

Step 5 – Publish on a Regular Cadence

When you’re just kicking off a business blog, you want to publish on a cadence of about 3 blog posts a week. Now, this is for companies that are ready to burst out of the blocks and sprint. 2 blogs a week is also a nice rhythm and alerts Google – “hey, we’re publishing here. We have important information to add to the global conversation.” And 1 blog a week – well, that keeps the pulse alive.

It's also important to publish under a name/title that exudes authority. For example, you may want to publish the majority of your blogs under the name of the CEO of the company – even if someone else wrote the blog. Be sure to leave a LinkedIn link somewhere on your blog post. This takes advantage of Google’s EAT algorithm (expertise, authority, and trust). 

Step 6 - Consistency is Everything 

Blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Yes, I know I said 3 blogs a week is a sprint (and it is), but the key is to stick to a regular cadence if possible. However, if you miss a week or two, keep going. Organic traffic is worth the time, effort, and money needed to create high-quality, educational content that converts.

Blog Your Way to Success – More Organic Traffic, Leads, and Customers

In this article, you learned 6 steps to successfully start a business blog. If your creative wheels are churning and your writing juices are flowing, we suggest you start blogging immediately – do it yourself, hire a copywriter, or outsource your writing.

If you feel a bit intimidated by blogging or simply don’t have the time (which is far more likely), we’d love to blog for you. Our seasoned professional writers are here to showcase your products and services via educational content.

We write. You shine.

Check out our pricing page to choose a blogging package that fits your vision and your budget -