Top 5 Business Blogging Tips
Unbelievably, blogging is 13 years old this month, well, on 14th of July to be exact. The first ever blog was wrote by a guy called John Barger and was basically a random collection of things he found on the web. Today blogs can be about anything and there are plenty of them! According to Technorati, there are 112, 000, 000 blogs and counting, the blogosphere is doubling about once every six and a half months and there are more than two blogs created every second of every day. Incredible statistics when you think blogs were started simply as an online diary for individuals but now they even have political importance globally and are a key part of internet marketing for many businesses.
Used correctly, business blogging can build relationships with your clients, add value to your business and provide you with valuable advertising that differs totally from any other type of marketing. However, used badly, it can have some not so great consequences. Using the 5 points below, think about a blog for your business as yet another way to draw more important customers to your site.
- Inform your audience. Too many businesses make the mistake of simply trying to sell themselves through their blog when really your blog is an opportunity to forge and maintain relationships with clients and besides, who wants to read yet another sales pitch week after week? Instead, choose topics that are informative and interesting and related to your industry.
- Be professional. This sounds obvious but it is important to remember that each time you publish a post, it is a reflection on your business. Treat your blog as though you are talking directly to a customer, so, hopefully, that means no swearing or being generally impolite!
- Be personal (but not too personal!) . A blog should help to build a friendly face for your business therefore an interesting or funny story could add some personality to your blog. However, it is important to bear in mind to not be overly personal, steer clear from personal issues and keep your blog voice positive.
4. Be objective. Decide who you are writing the blog for; is it for current clients or prospective clients? This will give your blog a strong purpose, allowing you to be succinct with the topics you choose to write about. A good strategy for any business blog is to take a view of your industry as a whole, picking up on bits of interesting news or developments whilst frequently going back to your own business.
5. Keep it frequent. Your audience will rapidly loose interest if your content isn’t fresh and regularly updated, for some, this may mean a new post daily, for others, maybe only weekly. However, before making the commitment of starting a blog, have a think about how often you would need to post and if you could keep up with it. It is a bad reflection of your business if a client enjoys your blog for a month, only to find after that time it isn’t being used anymore.
Well, hopefully the above points have given you some ideas to ensure that your blog succeeds. It is an old fashioned view that blogs are simply for fun, as we have seen with social media such as Facebook and Twitter (which is actually a form of ‘micro-blogging’!), these forms of communication can form a highly lucrative part of marketing for your business.
If your unsure of how to include blogging within your marketing strategy, give one of our team a call or email to see how we can help you. For some of our current clients, we solely manage their blog, therefore we are in charge of setting up the blog and content creation for the blog on a regular basis for businesses who struggle to find the time to keep up with regular posts. As well as creating and maintaining the blog, we can also intertwine it with social media such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn thus ensuring you get the best possible results from this invaluable tool.
