Blog your way to business success

Every day, more and more business owners are finding out that business blogging can do wonders for their websites and their businesses. But that success requires more than launching a blog and publishing posts.

A successful business blog is strategically planned and executed in a meaningful way.

Before launching a business blog, it’s helpful to understand the benefits that your company can reap through business blogging. Then, you’ll be able to develop a plan specific to your business needs.

Here’s a look at how business blogging can help increase traffic to your website and grow your business.

Regular Updates for Google Goodness

Nobody except the geniuses at Google knows exactly what makes the world’s most popular search engine tick. The algorithm that determines where a website ranks in the search engine results pages (SERPs) is top secret. What we do know is that Google gives good love to sites that make regular updates as well as sites with lots of inbound links. By making changes to your website and adding to it, you can earn some hearty Google juice and increase your website’s rank. One of the most effective ways to regularly update your site is with a blog.

Linkability

Every time someone links to your website, the Google gods smile upon you. There are many ways to get inbound links. You can launch a bunch of websites and link to yourself. You can trade links with other website owners. You can even pay for links. But nothing works like good old-fashioned organic linkage. To get that, you need to produce content that interests people enough to want to share it. You can easily use a blog to publish content and then promote it by networking with other bloggers, leaving comments on other blogs, and sharing your content via social media. Links are one of the foremost ways to draw traffic to your website via business blogging.

Keywords and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Unless you have a gargantuan website, there probably aren’t a lot of opportunities for you to plant enough keywords on your site to really gain traffic through popular search terms. Also, keywords can be obvious when they’re packed into a small space, and this renders text that is unfriendly to readers. Business blogging provides infinite opportunities to implement keywords on a regular basis, so you can expand your keyword pool and place more keywords throughout your website.

Customer Outreach

The online marketplace is increasingly competitive, so it’s essential for business owners to find innovative ways to communicate with customers. A blog gives you a permanent platform that you can use to talk to your customers. Tell them what you’re offering, how it’s important, and why they should buy it from you. Offer specials and discounts to subscribers. Announce new products and run contests or collect feedback from your readers. This empowers you as a business owner and it also puts some power into the hands of consumers, who appreciate having their voices heard and concerns addressed.

Promote Transparency

The latest trend in politics, pop culture, and business is transparency. Talking about your company’s mission, business philosophy, and professional practices helps build trust and customer loyalty. To practice transparency, you need a way to communicate the inner workings of your business with the public. Business blogging is perfect for that — a blog provides an open forum where you can share information about your operations, policies, and procedures. Some bloggers even publish their revenue information, which is the height of true transparency in business.

Establish Credibility

If you’re practicing transparency by discussing the inner workings of your business on a blog, then you’re also establishing credibility, which is essential for gaining trust among prospective buyers. Trust is especially important online because there’s a lack of face-to-face interaction. There are also tons of snake-oil sites on the web, which strive to sucker buyers with fake or useless products and empty promises. By establishing professional credibility, you can earn trust and loyalty from far more customers.

Publicity and Media Platform

Traditional marketing is expensive. All those brochures, business cards, yellow pages, and newspaper advertisements add up. Marketing online isn’t always free, but it can definitely be more cost-effective than doing it the old-fashioned way. A blog is a permanent advertisement for your business, a place where you can publish news and announcements, including product launches and specials. You can even embed videos, and if you’re lucky, one of them will go viral, bringing hoards of hungry consumers to your site.

Professional Online Networking

Businesses need other businesses. Professionals must connect with one another, and blogs are great for networking online. You can interact with colleagues and peers whose products and services complement yours and forge valuable partnerships with them, which can lead to growth and expansion for all parties. Blog networking is a modern phenomenon but a powerful one. Links, blogrolls, and comments all provide ways for business blogging professionals to interact, get to know each other, and develop lasting relationships.

Get Busy Business Blogging

A blog isn’t an endeavor to enter lightly. It takes some planning and there’s a lot to learn. For starters, there’s the blog design and associated technology like plugins and widgets that make a blog more effective and user friendly. Then there’s the strategy involved, plus the challenge of producing relevant, compelling content on a regular basis. Most importantly, you have to find your audience and figure out how to keep them interested. In future posts, we’ll be exploring all of these components and many more.

Business blogging for beginners

So, you have a small business and you’re thinking about adding a blog to your website. You’ve heard that a blog can help your business attract new customers while building loyalty among existing customers. And you’re right; business blogging is a great way to grow your business online.

But blogging is a world unto itself. Think of your blog as a house on the web. Other blogs dealing with topics that are similar or relevant to yours make up your neighborhood. Like all houses, your blog needs to be carefully planned and maintained. And if you want to be a successful member of your community, you’ll have to connect with your neighbors.

Like a home, a blog is an investment. You can invest dollars by hiring a professional blogger to manage and maintain your blog or you can invest your own time and to learn how to do it yourself.

The Beginner’s Guide to Business Blogging

This quick guide is for small business owners who want to explore business blogging as a way to grow their online presence. The list below includes basic elements to help you get started blogging. It’s by no means an exhaustive list. There is an endless array of blogging activities that you can do to build and grow your blog. But this list does include the bare essentials.

Check Out the Neighborhood

Start by subscribing to blogs in your niche. Find businesses like yours (some of these will be your competitors) and find businesses that complement yours. If you’re an architect, find blogs about construction. If you’re a hairstylist, find blogs about makeup application. Use an RSS reader or subscribe by email. Then, incorporate blog reading into your daily schedule. This is the single best way to get familiar with business blogging. Watch and learn. And make sure you visit the blogs you read directly so you can check out the features on-site and view the comments.

Draw a Blueprint for Your House

Once you’ve familiarized yourself with blogs in your niche, start putting together a plan for your blog. What topics or issues will you address? Make a list of possible post titles. Write down the categories that you’ll use to organize your posts. Be sure to think about features you want for your blog, such as plugins that make your blog more attractive to readers or that make your blog easier to find on the web. Learn how to use these features to your advantage.

Identify Your Audience and Your Goals

Will you use your blog to reach out to customers? Other professionals in your industry? Are you establishing your expertise and credibility or are you sharing news and information about your service offerings?

Your audience will probably be your target customer demographic. It’s absolutely essential that you write in a voice that speaks to your customers in a language they know and understand. The number one mistake that small business bloggers make is that they blog to their peers rather than to their customers. Your blog posts should cover topics that interest your customers, not industry-centric issues. You can also look around the web to find places where your audience is hanging out as these places can offer your business online visibility.

Put Your House on the Map

Once you launch your blog, focus on creating excellent content. You’ve identified your audience, now write content that appeals to them. What questions do they have? What kind of help or tips do they need? Answer their questions and fulfill their needs. I recommend that new bloggers start with a simple posting schedule of one update per week. That leaves plenty of time for other blog-related activities.

Hit the Road

Now that you know your way around your neighborhood and have your house fitted with great content, start connecting with other bloggers. Visit those blogs you’ve been reading and make it a point to leave comments. When folks comment on your blog, be sure to reply and then head over to their place to reciprocate. Set up a Facebook page and mention your posts on your Twitter stream. Add a link to your email signature. Tell your friends and colleagues about your blog and be clear about how they can benefit from reading it.

Build Your Community

You’ll start building your community when you’re out on the road promoting your blog. Return to home base every once in a while (be sure to keep those posts coming regularly!) to make sure your visitors are comfortable. Use questions to encourage readers to comment and participate in discussion. Throw a little contest, host a giveaway, and make your home the hottest spot on the block.

Bring it Home

Throughout the business blogging process, you’ll pick up a lot of blogging techniques and strategies simply by observing other bloggers. Notice how they format their posts. Do they include images or videos? How does the layout affect you as a reader? What do they blog about? Ask yourself what other business bloggers are doing to be successful and then bring it home so you can succeed too.

For starters, you need to have a solid content development plan. What topics will your blog cover? Just news and announcements about your business or industry? What else could you possibly write about on a business blog?

Fortunately, there are plenty of areas to explore in terms of topics. The main ingredient you need for any blog is a good writer – someone who can produce compelling content. A clever and talented writer can make the driest subject in the world juicy and interesting.

Business Blogging

Business blogging is really no different than most other blogging endeavors. Business bloggers are often working to grow their subscriber base, readership, and traffic. Businesses are looking for ways to grow their customer base and doing so through an effective online presence can be highly beneficial.

Business blogging provides a number of opportunities for improving your online presence and increasing your online success. You can grow traffic to your site, gain rank on search engines, and publish quality content that other websites will link to.

But how can you also leverage your blog to grow your business, increase sales, and connect with your customers?

Five Business Blogging Ideas

From lengthy blog posts that feature your products and services and describe them in great detail to shorter posts that showcase photos or videos that depict your merchandise in action, business blogging offers ample opportunities for sharing news and information about your business offerings. Here are just a few ideas for how to use your blog to promote your business:

1. Products and Services

Write posts with images and descriptions of your products and services to help people better understand what you offer. Be sure to include a mix of newly launched products along with your core or staple products. And don’t forget to highlight the benefits of your offerings!

2. Customer Service

Every business has tons of stories about customer service. Good service, bad customers, and vice versa. Use business blogging as showcase to demonstrate how your business has helped customers. Offer a question-and-answer format that invites customers to send in questions, which you then answer on your blog. Or, encourage customers to send in brief letters or testimonials and post these on your blog.

3. Specials and Discounts

A blog is one of the best places to inform customers about specials or discounts that you’re offering. You can design promotions especially for your blog readers or subscribers, or you can offer open specials and simply promote them on your blog.

4. Features and Benefits

Do more than describe your products and services. Explain the features they boast and the benefits they offer for those who use them. A business blog is a great place to go into greater detail regarding how your product or service will improve people’s lives and solve their problems. Use examples. Tell stories. Compel people to buy.

5. Multimedia

You can post a wide range of media on your blog – images, audio, video, and text. This means there’s no limit to the content you can create and share on your blog. Did you recently do a radio spot or TV commercial? Make sure you post it on your blog. Have you run an ad in the local paper? Post it.

Blogging for Business

Once you sit down and start brainstorming the material you can share through business blogging, you’ll be surprised at just how much fodder for blogging a business actually provides. There are great benefits to be had through business blogging, so what are you waiting for?