How to blog for your business
If you’re in business, you need to blog. It’s that simple. But blogging isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and we can hear some of you groaning already. Unfortunately for those of us who don’t like writing, content (that’s articles, tweets, video, e-courses, webinars, e-books and more) has never been more important than it is today.
If you want to know why it’s important, take a look at our guide Blogging Tips, our Online Marketing White Paper and our Link Building Beginners Tips. These guides, and our other guides on marketing gives some of the reasons why creating content and getting your blog going, is a smart move for promoting your business, from connecting with potential customers to driving traffic to your website as well as presenting yourself as an expert and building a community of interest.
Blogging platforms
You don’t need to pay for a blog site – there are many free blogging platforms. These will give you a hosted name for your blog – your blog won’t have your own domain name but be called something like ‘www.yourname.wordpress.com’. Free blogging platforms include:
• Blogger – owned by google
• Wordpress.com – wordpress is open source, has great flexibility and is far and away the world’s most popular platform
• Tumblr – great if you’re always out and about as you can easily post from your mobile
• Posterous – brings everything together, email, blog, social media streams, the lot.
Setting up a blog from your own domain is cheap and easy. This gives you your own branded blog, which you can run as a single domain, or as a subdomain from your website. You’ll need a domain, hosting and blogging software like wordpress. It’s really straightforward to set up and domain webhosting companies like www.123-reg.com have free apps that make the whole process extremely quick, cheap and easy.
What to blog about
A good blog needs focus (think narrow rather than broad) and meets a customer need – whether that need is for information, entertainment, how-to’s or other tips and techniques. Keep the focus of the blog related to your main business so you naturally use ‘keywords’ in your writing. A good blog is personal, engaging and has a conversational style, it’s about reputation, trust and relationship building. It’s absolutely not a sales pitch. Think of your blog as ‘pre sales’ and find a way to talk around your product or it’s context. For example, you could blog about rally driving, if your widget is associated with a rally car or team, or you could blog about the problems an someone will face being an executor of a deceased family member’s estate, if you provide a will writing service. There’s nothing wrong with blogging about your industry or product generally, but try make your blog different by adding value for example, by sharing ‘industry insider’ info or gossip for example.
Planning your blog
Blogs need to be updated regularly and this means you will need a way to get ideas for blog posts, have time to write them, and then post them regularly.
Get used to bookmarking web pages or clipping content into Evernote. Listen to questions your customers ask you. Send yourself a text if you’ve had a good conversation and got a couple of ideas. As your employees or friends and family for ideas. Or carry a notebook with you. Whatever works.
If you get stuck for ideas –
• think of something that interests you and write a list of tips or facts
• review the latest book, movie, gadget, gizmo, method, technique whatever that people are talking about
• pick up on something in the news relevant to your business and share your thoughts.
Some people are natural born planners, others find planning a deadening influence. However you do it, post a least once a week, if not more. You probably can’t post too much. Don’t forget to tweet your posts regularly too.
Keep going
You need to keep going once you’ve started – your blog is another shop front to your business and if the last post was a year ago or even a month ago, it doesn’t reflect well on you.
Schedule time in your diary for blog post writing. Clear some time at least once a week to make it your one and only priority.
A blog post is short, 200 words or so. Don’t over think it, don’t over write it: keep it short and your writing relaxed.
Make the blog a team effort. Invite others to join you in the blogging project. Always allow different writers to sign off with their name, never use ‘admin’ or ‘anonymous’.
Pay someone to write the blog. More and more marketers and PR professionals are writing blog content and there are many freelance writers expert in writing good quality copy with your keywords in. Find someone who writes well and give them the job!
Network with other bloggers. There are awards and groups popping up all over the place and it’s another great way to network with other business people. Find bloggers you enjoy reading and invite them to write a guest post.
