Articles » Blogging, Building Business
Blogging, Building Business
A blog (web log) can be about anything and written by anyone. For business, blogging is a great way to attract and maintain the interest of readers, with an online journal of your latest activities. With a business blog you can build brand recognition, establish credibility and develop a rapport, with potentially thousands of people who may not have otherwise known about your business.
Show your expertise
Showing that you're an expert in your industry is one of the best ways you can market your business. You should never underestimate what you know about your field or be afraid to offer opinions. If you operate in a specialist area, visitors to your blog will probably be looking to learn from someone in the know. Readers will seek knowledge and facts, ideally with a professional's interpretation. Blogging enables you to share your information in a friendly and personal way.
Build your reputation
By freely providing useful information without obligation, you can establish your credentials and gain the trust of visitors. A regularly updated and interesting blog will encourage repeat visits and subscriptions. Whilst sharing your knowledge, you can inform people about what separates your business from the competition. This can assist readers with their buying decision and help them to feel more confident about dealing with you.
Establish relationships
People respect honest, transparent and upfront information. Many blogs have a facility for two way communication where readers can leave comments and give feedback about articles. This interaction is an excellent way to get people involved with your blog and respond to individual queries and requests. Bearing in mind that most of your blog traffic will be from first time visitors, you can focus your blogging efforts on introducing yourself to the people who've just found you. People may be looking to solve a problem that you have a solution to.
Improve search engine rankings
Search engine robots / spiders love frequently updated websites. Having a blog will increase your search engine visibility (more pages will be listed) and improve search engine rankings. Applying known search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques and continually updating your blog with keyword focused content will help you keep ahead in the SEO race.
RSS
An RSS (Really Simple Syndicate) facility enables visitors to subscribe to updates. Through an RSS feed, readers can keep informed about a website's latest news without having to revisit the site. RSS feed readers present a summary of the news content, details like publishing dates and a link to view the content in full. RSS enables users to access news from different websites all in one place, rather than have to visit each site individually.
Most internet browsers will have an RSS toolbar. RSS content can also be read with various standalone programs for the PC as well as hand held mobile devices. RSS is popular as it ensures anonymity and privacy for subscribers.
Tags
Tags are specific words chosen by the blogger to categorise their blog content. You will normally see tags listed under the blog title. With the use of an internet blog search facility, people can search for blogs that are tagged with specific words. If your blog tags these words, it will be listed in the search results, usually chronologically.
Link building
Link building (back linking) is the process of getting third party websites to link to your website through hyperlinks (links) on their pages. Having quality internal and external links to your blog or website will increase web traffic and attract the attention of search engine robots.
Fellow business bloggers who share similar interests often exchange links between each other. This mutual alliance (and fairly standard practice) between bloggers is fantastic for SEO, but must be reciprocal and genuine. Linking with highly unrelated, illicit or spam type (link farm) websites must be avoided, as this can actually damage your search engine rankings.
It's very important to link only with reputable websites. Also, search engine robots are more responsive to links with keyword relevant anchor texts (clickon link titles) rather than links with web addresses as the link title.
Linking with well positioned websites can greatly boost your search engine rankings. Ryan Briggs uses his personal website rokryan.com to improve SEO for his clients' sites. As the site is well established and on a separate domain to his business website, he can quickly build up anyone's search engine ranking, as search engine robots crawl his posts within minutes.
What to blog about
While the options for business blogging are fairly unlimited, having interesting, well written content is critical. Writing about trivial and subjective matters, like what you did for lunch or the new carpet you've had installed in your office is unlikely to interest most people. Readers want to feel that their time has been valuably spent. Also being too candid, outspoken or critical may offend some readers.
Ideally, a business blog should be informative and entertaining, whilst creating a buzz about your product or service. Your business blog should never stray too far away from its marketing objectives. At the same time, the content should always be newsworthy and compelling and never overtly sell or self promote.
If you're at a loss for ideas, there are many things you can blog about:
- news about new products or services
- business related events
- references to online resources
- 'how to' information
- the current climate in your industry
- review of trade publications
- new and old ways of doing your business
- interviews with fellow professionals or customers
- offer open ended questions to customers on how you can assist them, responding to any feedback
- invite posts from readers
Does your business need a blog?
If you have a dynamic website, a well maintained blog can provide information to your visitors in a more personal and in depth way. By offering readers the opportunity to give genuine feedback in real time, other viewers will check a blog to find out unbiased information about a product or service they may be investigating. People are interested in news about what happens after the point of sale. A business blog can enlighten potential customers about this.
Business blogging; DIY or an all inclusive design package?
DIY business blogging
Writing your own blog can be fun, a chance for you to project your personality and expertise across to your readers and present knowledge about your business. Most CMS websites will have a built in blog facility that is very easy to update, alternatively an external blog website can be used, linking with your business's website. Business users with the time, money or resources to spare may prefer writing their own blogs, whilst other businesses may not always be able to. If you decide to have a business blog, keeping it frequently updated is very important.
All inclusive blog packages
Some businesses may feel that their time is better spent on other pursuits, but would still like to enjoy the benefits of having a well maintained, quality business blog. Ryan Briggs offers all. inclusive blog packages bundled with targeted SEO strategies and copywriting to all existing CMS customers; available in 3 month, 6 month and 12 month plans. Contact Ryan to find out more.
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