5 Steps to Creating a Credible Blog for Your Business

Creating a blog for your business isn’t very complicated. You purchase your domain name, set up web hosting, install blogging software and begin publishing blog posts. That’s pretty straightforward. It’s not expensive, and it can be done in less than an hour.

But that’s not what this article is about.

Creating a blog that adds credibility to your business and presents you as a leader in your industry is an entirely different matter. Many businesses have blogs, but their blogs make them look like amateurs. You don’t want first-time visitors to take one look at your blog and immediately click away to seek out one of your competitors. So here are five things you need to do to create a high-quality company blog that gives you instant credibility.

1. Start with a Professionally-Designed Website

Studies have shown that blog visitors will leave a website immediately if the pages take more than three seconds to load. So it’s important that your website is properly designed to maximize page load speed and reduce lag time.

But along with speed, your site should also make you look like a professional. The graphic design elements should be pleasing to look at and should represent your brand consistently in terms of colors, fonts and other visual features.

Navigation should also be user-friendly and not confusing in any way. If a visitor knows what they’re looking for but needs to click on several different pages to find it, then that is not a good experience for the user, and it’s very possible that you will lose them forever.

2. Publish High-Quality Expert Content

The next step to building a credible blog is to only publish high-quality content. Some companies make the mistake of publishing thin content written by amateur writers in order to save a few bucks. This is a huge mistake.

Your blog content doesn’t exist simply to trick search engines into sending you traffic. These are real people coming to your blog to find solutions to their problems, so your blog content needs to deliver the goods. Make sure that every blog post is well-written, offers real value and includes in-depth information that establishes your expertise. If you don’t have the time and skills to write such content, then hire a reputable content marketing agency like articlez.com who can deliver the kind of blog content you need.

3. Enrich Your Blog with Multi-Media

When publishing in-depth articles on your blog, it’s also important that you aren’t just presenting your readers with a giant wall of text. The text needs to broken up into smaller chunks with short paragraphs, bullet lists and subheadings. But beyond the textual content, you should also include multi-media content consisting of images, charts and graphs, podcasts and videos.

Videos in particular offer a huge opportunity for growing your traffic levels and increasing conversions. Make sure that your homepage and all landing pages include at least one video, as video content is currently growing in popularity at a fantastic rate.

4. Build Social Proof with Social Media

Social proof is another way to gain credibility with your blog visitors. Not only should you be engaging with your customer base through various social media platforms, but your blog posts themselves should make social sharing quick and easy.

Make sure that the sharing buttons at the top or bottom of your blog posts include share counts that update automatically. When a visitor sees that your blog posts have been shared multiple times on several different channels, that gives them confidence that you are a real expert with a sizable following. This social proof is worth its weight in gold, so put some effort into building it up.

5. Guest Post to Build Your Brand Reputation

The final step to building your blog’s and your brand’s credibility online is to perform outreach within your industry. Write high-quality guest posts and submit them to industry blogs and major media outlets on a consistent basis. This not only helps with your SEO and attracts more traffic to your blog, but it also gives you credibility with your readers.

Make sure you have a banner graphic on your homepage that shows the logos and names of major websites where your guest posts have been published. These visual elements instantly convey that you are an expert and that your products and services are highly valued. Do not underestimate the power of this technique for building your credibility.

When it comes to establishing your brand online and getting traffic, building a blog for your company website is only half the battle. You also need a blog that gives you credibility and makes a positive impression on your readers. By following these five steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating an authoritative blog that attracts readers and customers from around the world.