What Are Your Small Business Blogging Goals?


If your answer to the title of this post is "increase sales", you've got that part right. But you should also realize that there's no direct path from one to the other. You don't start a blog and immediately make more sales - although I sincerely wish it were so.

To help you stay focused on that path to increased sales, identifying a couple of content goals is essential. These are typical business blogging goals:

1. 'Touching' your customers, prospects and colleagues regularly
2. Building strong business relationships
3. Developing your reputation and sphere of influence
4. Sharing your valuable information, products, and services
5. Being seen as an expert
6. Growing your fans, followers and contact list
7. Keeping up with your competition
8. Increase website traffic via SEO

While you may think all of those things are desirable, they aren't all equally important to your business. The ones that are most important for you will depend on what type of business you have, how long you’ve been in business, what your competitive situation is, and more.

Pick only two goals from that list to focus on. It doesn't mean you're abandoning other results - many of these goals are interconnected. For instance, if you're successful at being perceived as an expert, you have likely improved your reputation. (But that is not the only way to grow your reputation.)

By focusing on only a couple of goals, you can shape your content strategy around them. Here's an example...

Let's say one of the goals you choose is #5 (being seen as an expert). Building trust in your knowledge and skill is part of being seen as an expert - and there are specific types of articles that serve this purpose better than others.

If it's not already obvious, after choosing your two goals to focus on, the next step is to do some brainstorming and research. This is where you define the types of content you'll create for your blog. Focusing on only two goals makes it much easier to hone in on the best content options that will work for you and your business.

Which goals have you chosen? Please share in the comments.

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