Business blogging needs to be professional as
well as appear it. Regular posting on topics that
your readers will genuinely find interesting can
promote you as an expert in your field. A blog can
keep the line of communication between you and
potential customers open. It enables you to post
relevant, keyword rich postings that encourage
new traffic and help increase your client base.
It’s far from an exhaustive list but below are ten
tips to remember when doing business blogging
(i.e. blogging for business):
1 – Set Your Goals Early
In just about every guide you ever read it says “set
your goals”; it might be a cliché but it’s true. With
business blogging your most likely goal is to
increase sales but other worthy goals can include:
* Communicating with your existing or potential
clients.
* Relaying company news.
* Answering queries and questions.
* Providing guides for current customers.
* Providing a portal to everything useful related to
your industry.
2 – Use SEO Friendly URLs And SEO Plugins
WordPress is an invaluable SEO tool. It is a
dedicated Content Management System but, more
than that, it has a team of frighteningly dedicated
users that create themes, plugins, widgets, and
more and then provide them for free of charge to
other users. Among these tools are a great number
of SEO related tools that can be used to determine
your meta description and title tags.
3 – Consider Your Media Placement
Adding photos and illustrations, logos, videos, and
other forms of media are great for reader
engagement but you should consider each of your
blog assets and place the most valuable and useful
in the most prominent position. The quicker you
can grab a reader’s attention, the more likely you
will be to keep it for longer.
4 – Consider Your Ad Placement
The primary target of a business blog is not usually
to make money directly through the blog itself.
Therefore, the placing of third party ads is not
necessarily a good choice. However, you can add
ads for your own company or service as well as
partner websites. You can even add banners to
specific categories, tags, or pages in your blog.
Don’t overdo the number of banner ads and other
distracting advertisements though and try to keep
the interface clean and professional.
5 – Offer Your Readers The Chance To Pass
You Around
Social sharing, Add me, share this, retweet, and
email this functions should be provided to your
users. When you post something useful and one of
your readers shares it, it has the potential to go
viral and create a lot of exposure for your blog and
therefore your website and your business. This
works especially well with highly unique content
and can be text, audio, video…
6 – Keep Quality Content Coming
Try to set yourself a regular schedule but
remember that it can be broken and it can be
added to when necessary. If news breaks then post
your own commentary on it. If you intersperse
product reviews and articles that relate to your own
business then try to schedule these. Make sure you
post regularly, at the very least once a week, and
spend some time getting involved in the
community that builds up around your blog.
7 – Not Every Post Need Be An Advert
As long as you fill your blog with relevant,
interesting, and well written posts then visitors will
take the time to look around, read a few posts, and
even click the ads to your own site in order to see
exactly what you have to offer. Not every single
post needs to include multiple links to your website
pages.
8 – Respond Where Responses Are Expected
Or Deserved
Managing a blog is more than posting a missive of
the week’s news every Friday. No matter how often
you post you should spend some time interacting
with the community that develops around your
blog. Answer questions and queries, offer insight,
and provide a response where one is requested.
9 – Stuck For Inspiration? Immerse Yourself
In Web 2.0
More specifically read forums and blogs, wikis and
news sites related to your own industry. Look for
those news stories, articles, and videos that you
like the most and are relevant to your blog and
write about them. Read the comments in your own
blog and look through your analytics to determine
the pages that are most popular with readers.
10 – Blogging Is Great For Business But
Business Is Also Great For Blogging
Getting stuck into a blog and truly developing your
blog community can be a great way to build traffic
to your website and develop clients for your
business. Reading related blogs and becoming an
active member in social networks can help you find
out what your readers want and deliver it
frequently.
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