Should Your Business Blog?

Blogging is a powerful tool. It helps you establish your expertise and attracts very positive attention from Google.

But blogging is also time consuming. Do you have the time? Is it worth it?

In this article we’ll look at why blogging can benefit your business, how to get started, and ultimately how to grow your business through blogging.

Why blog?

There are many reasons why blogging can be a great tool for your business. Here are the three main ones:

• Establishing expertise: A lot of websites for the same type of business look (and sound) alike. They try to sell you a product or some services. When you include a good blog on your website, you add something that isn’t just about sales, but is about creating valuable content and educating your prospects and customers. You establish your expertise and also create goodwill. You position yourself as a helpful authority in you field.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): Every blog post you write creates another page on your website. Each one of these pages is another opportunity to rank well in Google for a specific phrase your ideal customer is searching for. By creating blog posts that answer your prospects’ questions, you can show up in their search results.
• Building your list: The most valuable asset of almost any small business is “the list.” A list of people who want to hear from you. Through your blog you can offer free reports or discounts and ask for visitor email addresses in return. Or you can just offer to deliver your posts into your visitor’s email box.

How do you get started?

To start blogging you’ll need a blogging platform. There are several, but WordPress has become the most popular one.

Because business blogs typically contain so many keywords that are relevant to your industry, they can be a major source of new traffic from search engines and social media. Your blog posts will often be the first thing a potential customer sees about your company. For this reason, it is important to be sure your blog is closely connected to your company web site. Having the blog as an actual part of your web site is ideal. It’s less effective to have your blog on a site you don’t control, like mybusiness.wordpress.com.

What should you blog about?

For a business blog, the key is to create content that’s genuinely valuable to your ideal customers.

1. Share knowledge or expertise:
What kinds of questions do your customers have? What worries or concerns them? Some examples:

• How do I lower my home heating bill?
• How do I choose the right paint color for a small bathroom?
• What type of tree will thrive in a wet corner of my yard?

Posts of this type can attract potential new clients who are searching for the type of information you’re writing about.

2. Predict or critique trends
Do you have opinions about where your industry is headed? Share these opinions with your readers and also welcome their comments. You can get a very lively discussion going this way.

3. Provide tutorials or product demonstrations
If you sell a product, you can create screenshot tutorials or videos that demonstrate your product’s features and how to get the most out of the purchase.

4. Answer questions
If clients ask you certain questions regularly, then answers to these questions can become a very informative series of blog posts.

5. Ask questions
Pose a question on your blog and invite readers to answer it by leaving their comments. You can write a follow up post that summarizes the responses. You can also use this type of post to ask your readers what they’d like to see featured on your blog.

6. Spotlight your clients
Ask some of your best clients if they would be interested in answering questions about the work you’re doing for them. This is a great way to illustrate the type of work you do and is an interesting variation on the traditional “Case Study.”

7. Invite others to blog
Your blog will gain interest from having other voices besides yours. Ask your employees to participate by writing about their areas of expertise. From time to time, invite an industry expert from outside your company to write a guest post.

8. Offer reviews
As an expert in your field, you have the knowledge to evaluate products and services that are related to this field. This is a very helpful service that your readers will appreciate.

9. Announce what’s coming
You can use your blog to generate interest before the fact in any new products or services your company is planning to introduce.