The who, what, and why of blogging for a business.
Every business should have a blog. It’s not as scary as it sounds.
A number of solopreneurs, start-ups, and small businesses are missing out on an opportunity to expand their online reach by means of blogging. Yet, I often see cringes and fear in their eyes when telling them just that.
This is the information that I find myself sharing as I educate my clients, fellow colleagues, etc on the ‘who, what, and why of blogging for a business’.
WHO SHOULD BE BLOGGING?
Essentially anyone who has information to share can become a blogger. But that does not necessarily mean that you should. The essentials are quality grammar, easy communicator, and the most important is VALUABLE information.
The individual representing your business through a blog should have a level of education that surpasses high school. You will lose your reader’s attention if they are focusing on the spelling and grammatical errors versus the content that you are sharing.
The writing needs to be shared at a simple and easy to read format.
Using heavy industry jargon will turn away readers who are not as familiar with your industry. Organizing your post into two — four headings that are bold or in a larger font will make it easier for readers to skim the headlines within your post to determine if they want to read it all the way through. Plus, organized headlines tell the reader upon initial peak that your thoughts are organized and the read overall will be simple! Using visual components to help relay your message also break up the heaviness of the text itself. Great examples include bulleted or numbered lists, images, graphs, and/or embedded video.
The most important element is the information you are sharing. It needs to add value to your target audience. The posts in your blog should not focus on selling your product or service, but rather help prove to the reader that you are an expert in your industry. Although you may want your ‘experts’ in your business to be focusing on other areas (such as what they are experts at), you can easily access knowledge from them that would be easy to share to your audience.
WHAT SHOULD YOU BLOG?
Often as soon as I mention the word ‘BLOG’ to any client, their eyes open wide in fear. Blogging is not scary. It can actually be fun. I’ve had a surprising number of clients tell me they actually enjoy blogging after getting them through the initial stage of fear.
The easiest way to start your blog is to think about the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) that your target audience (or your current customer) is asking. Each question and its answer is a blog post. Think about it this way. Someone has asked you this question for a very good reason. The chances are pretty good that others are asking you this same question (or searching for the answer to this question online). You answering the question in the form of a blog post will help you drive traffic to your website through the search engines, and then you have proven that you are the expert in the industry. The FAQs are an excellent starting point because they ADD VALUE!
‘But then what do I blog about?’
Ok, so you’ve exhausted your FAQs as blog posts. Well, I’m sure there are more questions that you can help to answer online. But in the event you are tapped dry, some additional things you can blog about:
• The HOW TO’s of your industry • The reason your product or service is important to the community, industry, etc (not selling) • Your experience at trade shows or educational seminars • Share information on industry trends • Let the world know about news and events within your business • Highlight a recent project that was successfully completed • Really, this list could go on, and on.
WHY SHOULD YOU BLOG?
The reason any business has an online presence is to generate MORE business for themselves. Even if you are online it will be difficult to generate more business if you don’t have a strategy. I could easily ramble off a long list of reasons why you should blog, but rather I’ll focus on some key points:
- A blog is literally fuel for the search engine fire. The more content you have on your site, the more reason for the search engines to want to come back and crawl your site. The search engines want to see what new juicy content you are sharing on your site. A blog is the easiest way to continually add new content to your site.
- A blog is a great partnership with your social media strategy as you can easily share your posts to your audience, driving traffic back to your site!
- Studies indicate businesses that are actively blogging acquire more customers. Why? Because they can learn more about your business and brand. They will feel confident in their choice to do business with you because they can see that you are the expert in your industry.
- Blogging is a cost-effective way to get your message out. The content that is published online is there indefinitely. Unlike a printed article or direct mail piece, your blog will live online and continue to pull traffic to your website for longer than you’d ever imagine. I have blog posts that I wrote years ago that are still the leading source of new traffic to Keystone Click, primarily because the content is valuable and timeless.
- The data you will collect from site traffic and visitors alone will help you get a better understanding of your target customers and what they genuinely want to hear from you.
