Hi! Wanna get your business blog in gear? Here are 10 (plus 1 bonus!) battle-tested tips that you can start implementing today: * Host on your own domain: One of the biggest mistakes made by business bloggers is hosting on a third-party domain, such as “typepad.com†or “blogspot.comâ€. It can be a great way to get up and running with minimal technical fuss, but in the long run it will come back to bite you. Once you’ve built an audience, search engine value, etc., you’re tied to that domain. Get off on the right foot, and make sure you’re using your own domain name from the beginning. * Get a real design: Marketing is ultimately about differentiation, and you’ll have a hard time standing out when your business blog looks just like a hundred others. Skip the free themes, and put some money toward hiring hiring a blog design company to do the job right. Never underestimate the effectiveness of powerful design. * Integrate the blog with your business site: The classic business blogger story goes something like this — “Blogger gets website. Blogger writes and writes and writes. Blogger builds an audience. Blogger wonders why no new business is coming in. Blogger had forgotten to tie the blog back to his business website.†Don’t be that guy. Integrate the blog into your business site. Make sure readers know who’s doing the blogging, and what else you can do for them. * Keep it simple: It’s exciting for your inner geek to play with widgets, plugins, add-ons, modifications, customizations, etc., but your readers really don’t care about that stuff. They came to read blog posts. The cleaner and more pure you can make your blog, the better. Cut as much clutter as you can. * Define an “audience of oneâ€: Narrow your audience down to a specific niche (ideally one that meshes with your company’s target market), and then create a persona profile that describes an individual from that niche. Give him or her a name. Find a headshot you can use. Figure out what he or she wants out of your website, and then write all your blog posts to that one imaginary person. This will keep you focused on your audience at all times, and will give your voice a more personal touch. * Stay on topic: Related to the last point — once you’ve defined your audience, only post things that are relevant to your audience. (Don’t dilute your blog with posts about your family, a great new movie, or how sorry you are for not posting more. Save that stuff for your personal site.) * Provide content, not commentary: Rather than just “reblogging†links to other sites or blog posts with a quick little comment of your own, focus instead on being the site that other people are talking about. Post original thoughts, views, tips, etc., not just your rehashing of what other people have already done. * Promote the blog through your business: Business blogging is a two-way deal. Instead of just using it as a lead-generation tool, make sure that your current customers know about the blog as well. It will help to build awareness, increase loyalty, and increase your ability to communicate on important topics. * Answer the big questions: Business blogs are most useful in a time of change, and yet this is when many businesses panic and neglect their blog. When something is happening, many people will be hitting your blog for answers. Don’t let them down. If your blog seems to be pretending nothing is going on, people will lose trust in it, even during calm times. * Enable discussion: If you want to have a conversation, you’ve got to be willing to take a few thumps. Enable comments on your blog, and don’t go around deleting everything that’s unflattering. The only things that should really be moderated are blatantly offensive trolling and obvious spam. * Don’t obsess about traffic: It’s fun to watch your traffic spike when you get on Digg, or get a link from a major blogger, but the reality is that these traffic spikes have little effect on the overall success of your business. Stay relevant to your core audience, work hard to get the word out, and then be happy with whatever you’ve got. Even one interested reader can totally change the course of your company. Happy Blogging!!
* Remember your talking to potential customers, calling every product you sell the best product in the world will not help sales in any way, a balanced, honest but (ofc) a bigger tilt towards the qualities the product gives will generate more sales. Thought id add that in there
Nice tips. I fully agree to use your very own domain name from the very beginning and remember, only the STRONG survive
lol Anyways the second to last one is one of the more important ones on there IMO. Giving active readers is a great way to boost traffic and repeat visitors. Lets face it if you comment you will probably come back and if it is a subject you are interested in and well written chances are you will comment.
Those are all great tips, and blogs are a huge value on a commercial web site. Additionally, building your static site on the WordPress platform has huge advantages as well. I'm seeing more and more businesses do this. You can build the whole site, strictly with pages and just keep your blog on a separate page. You can then take advantage of the multitudes of plug-ins available that make SEO "almost too easy" and which easily enable interaction with comments, subscribe to comments, podcast plug-ins, feedburner plug-ins and more. Or as I like to say: WordPress - It's not just for blogs anymore! -Sherry
This is true I have seen a "rash" of sites using Wordpress with there regular webpage. Is it as easy as it looks?
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