How To Create An Effective Business Blog

Blogging March 2, 2010 2 Comments

A trend that I have been noticing over he last 6 months is the massive proliferation of business blogs. You used to be able to stand out online if you had a blog but things have changed and it is getting to the stage where you would stand out if you didn’t have a blog. As with most blogs there are good and bad ones and some people take it more seriously than others. There are of course plenty of benefits for a business to have a blog including SEO (appearing for terms around their business in search engines), letting their customers know more about their business or simply as a creative outlet to share ideas and show knowledge in your area. The reasons to get in to business blogging vary greatly but there are some basic rules that you can follow to help engage your customers and create a compelling and exciting blog…

I Don’t Really Care What Awards You Won

Awards ceremoniesToo many companies seem to think their blogs are a place they should post once every three months about the latest award they have won. This really annoys me as they are in effect saying “hey look at us we are amazing” rather than actually trying to add content of real value. I don’t mind seeing a quick post about your achievements as everybody needs a good pat on the back every once in a while from their peers but don’t make it your only blog post.

Have A Timetable

I don’t care if you can only commit to one post a week or even one every couple of weeks the only thing I’d say is make sure that you don’t promise on a posting schedule that you can’t deliver. There is nothing worse than starting to enjoy a blog only for the business not to update it for weeks. We all get busy but having a schedule and sticking to it are important as there is nothing worse than landing on a blog and seeing that the company has not bothered to update it for 3 months, that sort of scenario is actually doing more harm than good in my opinion.

Share Your Data

analytics1Sharing your data is one of the smartest things that you can do in a blog post in my opinion. By doing so you are offering your readers something of real value and something that they will return to on a consistent basis. Some of the best posts like here, here and here are from businesses that I would normally have little or no interest in (health sector and property website) but because the blog authors have created something of real value to myself and other readers I am now subscribed to their blog and checking in for regular updates.

Let Your Personality Shine Through

Nobody really wants to read a blog written by a company logo. They want to read a blog that has a person behind it, a big of personality. We do that here with myself and Lauren where we try to bring the personality of the company through in our writing and people hopefully enjoy hearing the voices of the people who are running the company. It doesn’t even have to be the people who run the company who blog as lots of other employees from different areas within the company will have an interesting story to tell as well. Identify the right person within your organization and start letting their knowledge shine through.

Forget The Hard Sell

salesmanI see so many people trying to make a quick buck on their blogs by giving out constant special offers or even running ads on their blog. Sure you need to think about your blog as a sales channel but it needs to be done as subtly as possible and all of the sales that you make will most probably come indirectly and come after you have built up a certain amount of trust with your readers.

Be Patient

I see the same pattern with nearly every business blog I see emerge. It goes….Great start, lots of shouting about new blog, posts every couple of days, no comments or interaction, posts once a month, no more posts, blog dies. It’s amazing just how many times this repeats itself and the reason for this is that people need to realize that it takes time. You are going to have to have a lot of patience as it will take months of consistency to get you a following. Don’t give up like most others after a couple of months when you don’t see a sudden spike in sales.

Write About Your Passion Not For SEO

I have seen so many blogs where people try to pump out lots of content that is just copy and pasted videos, links or just content that has been lifted from other sites and given a new slant but although this may be a quick fix you are just not going to be able to build up community and a following around your blog by following those sorts of principles. You need to write from the heart about something you are passionate about (If you are not passionate about your own business then you have a totally different problem)

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