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The internet has opened up a whole new world of marketing possibilities, with one of the most common and successful being, content marketing. Content marketing is a marketing approach focused on the creation and distribution of relevant and valuable content with the goal of attracting and retaining an audience. In terms of businesses, this audience is then nurtured into paying customers, meaning that content marketing can be a relatively inexpensive way for businesses to demonstrate their knowledge and expertise as well as to increase their online presence and boost their bottom line. When starting a content marketing strategy the first thing businesses need to do is decide where they are going to publish their new content, and for most, the answer can be found in the creation of their own business blog. 

Here are a few things to consider if you are thinking of starting your own business blog.

Where will you host it?

Business blogs typically exist as a page on a companies pre-existing website and enable the business to easily link through to their products and services as well as to promote their content through other digital channels such as social media. There are now a number of ways to host a blog and website from google WordPress hosting through to website builders such as Squarespace and each has its own set of pros and cons. In the beginning, just host your blog wherever your website is hosted. 

What will you write about?

For content marketing to work you need to be writing about things that your ideal customer would want to be reading and so deciding what you want to write about is very important. Sit down and think about the pain points of your customers, what would they be searching the internet for? What value can you provide them? With your answers to these questions, begin brainstorming some content title ideas, or if you are still a little stuck then take a sneak peek at what your competitors are doing for some inspiration.

How often should you post?

The key to successful content marketing is to create consistent and valuable content, and this means posting reliably but not for the sake of it. As a general rule once a week is a good place to start when beginning your content marketing, but you may find that this eats up your content ideas quite quickly. Rather than sacrificing the quality of your content, opt for a slightly more spread out publishing rate of perhaps once a fortnight and remember that one of the tricks to content marketing is the repurposing of old content. 

Where should you promote your content?

If your blog posts are SEO optimized then they should appear naturally in Google search results but there’s no harm in also promoting them to your audiences across your social media. When thinking about where to promote your content the question to keep in the back of your mind is ‘do my customers hang out here?’ if the answer is yes, then share away, if it is no, then you may be publishing your content in the wrong place. 

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