This is the fifth post in our Better Business Blogs series. In a previous post, I talked about how to identify the five kinds of readers that come to your site and the differences in what kind of content they need to find there in order to help them build trust and develop a relationship with you. In this post, I want to discuss with you the importance of relevance in your blog posts.
Keeping It Relevant
Keeping your blog posts relevant means looking at ways that you can connect your product or service with the needs of the audience you want to attract in a way that is at once useful to them and allows you to demonstrate your skills. For instance, a graphic designer who wants to attract small business owners might write a blog post on how to get the most for the money when hiring a graphic designer, since money is a major concern for most small business owners.
Relevance Determines the Audience
Everything from how you write your piece to the way you write it will attract a certain kind of people to your website. Let’s go back to that graphic designer in the earlier example. If her target is small business owners but she’s busy posting funny stories about her cats that have nothing to do with either small business or graphic design, she’s going to attract lots of cat lovers. However, she might not attract any small business owners.
Even if she does attract some small business owners, they are probably going to be few in number and they aren’t likely to take her seriously as a graphic designer because she’s not presenting herself that way. Is she being authentic? Certainly. Is she developing a relationship with her audience? Certainly. However, she’s not attracting the kind of people she’ll need to have a successful business.
Relevance Sets the Right Expectations
People look to your blog to try and figure out what kind of business you have and what they can expect when they do business with you. If you blog about something completely unrelated to what you do, it’s not setting the proper expectations for them and it’s going to lead to audience confusion. Confused audiences don’t usually buy products or hire people for services. They go to someone that is clear about the expectations instead.
Relevance Determines the Loyalty
When you consistently deliver relevant content to your audience, they will become loyal followers of yours. They will seek you out when they need information on that topic. Provided that you are delivering high quality content as well, they will refer friends and associates to your blog because it is known for something.
Relevance Establishes Expertise
It is fine for the rest of your website to talk about what you can do for someone. Your blog, though, needs to demonstrate your expertise. When you are consistent in delivering relevant information on that topic, you demonstrate your expertise. Especially when the advice you give or the recommendations you make in your blog save your readers time and money or allow them to avoid expensive mistakes.
Relevance Is Good For SEO
One of the factors search engines use to determine how to rank you when listing out search results for any terms is your relevance. How much of your content seems to fit the search criteria of the user? The more relevant your site is deemed based on your content, the higher up those rankings you go.
Want Us To Feature Your Business Blog?
If you would like us to look over your business blog and make recommendations, or to make it a case study for one of our upcoming blog posts, just email brandy at nvcreativetechnology dot com.
What’s Your Big Blog Challenge
Comment below and let us know what you thought of this article, or what blog challenges you’re facing in keeping your business blog relevant.