Does Your Business Need a Blog?

An effective business marketing strategy is a vital part of any successful small or big business

As a savvy business owner you already know the importance of a good performing website, but many business owners in the real world overlook how critical a blog is to their company’s marketing efforts.

Unlike your website, a business blog gives your business a place to share and communicate with both potential and existing customers and establish you and your business as a leading specialist in your field.

If you have not already started a blog for your business, in this blog post we will take a deeper look at why it’s so important, and a few things to keep in mind as you get started.

Why business blogging is a big deal…

Every business owner I know is excited about their company and what it has to offer.

These very same business owners also pay close attention to developments and trends in their industry.

A business blog is the ideal location to share that expert knowledge and enthusiasm, all whilst positioning the business as a leader and innovator.

Furthermore your business blog is also a place to interact and engage with potential (and existing) customers.

A good business blog not only builds awareness of your company, it aligns it with an identity and character. Most importantly, this can be done without any significant financial investment other than time.

What to do before starting a business blog…

Once the decision has been made that you need to business blogging, it is important to implement some planning and preparation before you write and post your first blog post.

You need to establish your blog’s focus.

Important questions to ask is…

• what do you want to get out of business blogging?
• who is your core audience?
• what do you want them to take away from each of your blog posts?

For example, you may wish to create a blog that gives insider secrets within your industry.

You might decide to outline certain trends in your industry, and position yourself as an expert and thought-leader in your field.

Perhaps your business blogging strategy is only there to boost traffic to your website, using specific keyword-driven blog posts to generate website visitors and improve search engine results (this is definitely by far my favourite and one of the main reasons any business should be blogging)

Your blog will also need a catchy and memorable name that portrays its purpose.

IMPORTANT: When choosing ‘where to put a blog’, best to include it as part of your existing website and not on another domain or 3rd party blogging application.

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How often should I post on my blog?

Create a content calendar.

With you team brainstorm ideas and topics and consider how frequently you’ll be able to post with your existing team resources.

It is not important to add new content every day – this can be very time consuming and unfeasible for most businesses (small or large).

One post per week is typically enough to stay topical and fresh without overburdening your team.

If possible, compose your blog posts in group lots (say x4 blog posts at the start of month) and schedule them on the website over the 4 week period. 

Whilst your blog posts don’t have to be long, if you are doing blog posts for SEO purposes and to attract visitors from Google (and/or other Search Engines) by targeting keyword rich topics, your blog posts have to be 500+ words depedning on the competitiveness of the keywords you are targeting (some blog post on higly competitve keywords can be 10000+ words). 

Who creates the content for the blog posts?

What is holding a number of business owners back is the worry that the burden of blogging will be too much to handle while still running the day to day operations of your business

Consider having an employee or virtual assistant from Freelancer – click here to help share the load of creating content, especially if writing isn’t a strong skillset.

You could even outsource the whole process. We offer a blog writing service for as little as $75 per month. Contact us today

Whoever you get to handle the content creation, whether it’s in-house or externally contracted, ensure every blog post is 100% checked for spelling and grammar – as you don’t want careless mistakes to undermine your business image to the outside.

It is important to create original content (i.e. – do not copy and paste something you found on the internet) and any images you use are ones you have either created yourself, or stock imagery that you have the right to use. (we recommend and use Istock – click here)

Use multi-media to make it engaging

It doesn’t matter what type of blog you will write, your blog posts will need more than just words to captivate a reader.

So it is important to create blog posts that include photos, videos, audio clips and links to relevant content, even if it’s elsewhere on the web.

Take this blog post as an example ….. everything (except the audio clip) was used in creating the content.

When sending the traffic off the blog post with external links – ensure the external links opens in a ‘new tab’, that way your blog post reader is still on your blog post and is not taken away from your page. 

Remember to generate additional website visitors for your blog by linking to each new blog post in your business social media profiles (and your personal ones, too).

It is advisable to include a call to action in each blog post, whether it’s a request for the reader to subscribe to your blog, to download some information, to register for an event or mailing list, or to just to click elsewhere on your site for more information.

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