Your new website is up, it looks great and your social media icons are prominently displayed at the top of each page so your customers can connect with you at all times.
All is well right? Well, maybe not.
Does your site have a separate blog? If not, you might not be maximizing the capabilities of your website.
Blogs are different than your main site because there you can delve deeper into what it is that you do and connect better with your customers and visitors.
A website is basically a marketing tool to showcase your business, your products and services and can used as a way for customers to purchase what you’re selling. A blog can be a journal, magazine, photo gallery, book shelf, a snapshot into your iPhone calendar or anything else you want it to be.
You can be more creative using blogs and this can allow you to attract more customers and followers on social media. Think of your website as your business’ restaurant and menu and your blog as its ambiance.
When you ask business owners to enhance things they already have in place they get nervous, but building a blog into your website doesn’t have to be a chore. Most website creation templates offer designs that are conducive to connecting a blog with your already existing site. There are even blogging content management system templates that can be made to look like websites.
Once you get the blog up and running you’re probably wondering what to write about and how to promote it. Here are 10 strategies you can use to get the most out of your small business blog:
Open the backstage door. If your business is active in the community, give your readers a behind the scenes view into the initiatives and causes that you’re involved with. Make sure to take professional and sharp looking photos when you’re participating in events so you can present them on the blog with a story about how your company is involved.
Broadcast your best: If you’re tapped for radio, TV or print interviews, document the experiences and share them on your company’s blog. This way your followers can get to know you better. People are more likely to patronize a business they feel more connected to.
Promote best practices: If you have achieved big wins in your business specialty, you can share some of your successes and how you achieved them without giving away trade secrets.
Use your audience to build stories that will appeal to them. Ask them what their challenges are in these areas and then give them real-world stories about how you would deal with it. Be not only a product, but an expert people can rely on.
Use creative polls to gauge what is important to your customers: You can then create larger stories using the results from the questions you asked.
Honor the reader: Create a monthly segment that highlights a valuable customer or social media supporter. Write up a blurb about them and give them a prize.
Share, share, share! : The great thing about having a company blog is that you can use the content for your social media sites. Promote stories on Facebook, Pinterest and Tumblr using photos and video and on Twitter with engaging hashtags (#SmallBusiness, #Work, #BizBlogs, #BestPractices etc…).
Take your readers with you: If you’re attending a business conference, trade expo or other business event that takes you across the country, use diverse ways to capture your experiences and learning. Interview other attendees with your Smartphone and post the audio files, snap images of the business panels and create an Instagram photo gallery, live tweet speaker sessions and create a blog post with the embedded tweets and YouTube yourself on the road. All of these examples would be great blog post entries.
Community Cultivation: Congratulate your business peers on their achievements by including them in “best of” lists and profiling their businesses especially if there is a chance there could be a collaboration between you in the future.
Read other blogs: A good way to get ideas for your own content is to see what others in your field are writing about and sharing with their communities. If you’re inclined, it could also be rewarding to comment on their content as well.
Encourage emulation : When companies are successful people often want to incorporate similar tactics, practices and philosophies in their own business plans. Give your readers selective insight into what you’re reading, listening to and watching and how you approach your craft. This could include creating a visual bookshelf or office hours music playlist.
Have fun with your business blog!
Image Credits: Blogging For Business
26 comments
I totally agree with you.
I do other things like sharing, quality content etc. but I am not able to take my visitors along and the main reason is because of my busy work schedule I am not able to update my blog regularly.
I should work on it and few other points which are mentioned here.
Thanks for sharing,
Esther
Thanks so much for your comment Esther. It can be a challenge to maintain your business blog when you have a hectic schedule. There are social media management tools that can help make postingbulk content easier. You can also incorporate automated follow-up methods on your site as well.
Most bloggers have a similar time management situation. The day you take up blogging seriously , you ‘ll won’t have it …it’s all about how bad you want it 🙂
ZK that is very true. Once you have honed in on what your goals are, you always find a way to complete them. It may take some adjustments, but when you want it, you do the work.
Yes, blogging is an important marketing tool for many businesses. But like any tactic, without effective implementation, it has no effect. And remember, your business plan needs to be written in a way that empowers you to implement it, otherwise, you’ll never use it.
Blogging can be used very effectively…it all depends on your content and how you connect with your readers..these are great tips from Bob on Blogging for small businesses
Thanks ZK. It’s nice to contribute on your site.
Bob, its been a privilege to have you here 🙂 thanks for the awesome post
You’re right Charles. Thanks for your comment.
Glad to have such a great detail. I think G+ is the best way these days to have good rankings in the Search results as it also shows friends and family shares and +1.
Hi Christopher. Thank you. Google+ is a good place to promote and share blog posts. It is a content focused social site.
There is so much great information in this post, it’s definitely going to take a few re-reads just to make sure I caught everything.
Really, I don’t think one should stray too far from one extreme to another, but rather oscillate between the two. This gives your readers a little more variety while also keeping the content creation interesting for yourself.
I’m happy that you received value from the post Marta. Thank you. Good points made as well.
Blogging is the most effective and important part of SEO. And fantastic technique of Business Promotion. For making your blog successful its important to update your content regularly. Google loves fresh and unique content. The strategies you have mention are amazing. Thanks for updating us.
Thank you. I liked your point about Google wanting fresh content. Site owners should realize that the better their content is, the better SEO results they will have which only helps to build their business reputations.
Thanks for the post,
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I completely agree about social media interaction, I think this can make a huge difference.
Sam
Sam, thanks. So many people forget that social media is about being social and sharing, not just pitching or promoting. One of the best places to share is your company blog.
A blog is an important marketing tool for many companies. But as in any strategy without effective implementation has no effect. And remember that the business plan should be written in a way that allows, if you can not use.
Very true. A static blog site doesn’t do any good. You must stay commited to updating and pushing out fresh and valuable content.
Hi !
I think its a best guideline for beginners , keep it up . . . ,
Thanks for reading it Muhammad.
Really great blogging strategies for small business. Thanks Bob for share 🙂
Hi Bipul. Thanks for your feedback.
Without doubt finding the time is the hardest thing for me. I have several sites and tried to keep a blog going on all of them, I ran out of steam so am now just focusing on one site.
I like your community cultivation idea, that one had not occurred to me, Thanks
Dave, other commenters have said the same thing. Having time to blog is probably the biggest challenge for site owners. Another way to tackle this is to get an intern to create some posts per your instruction and review or create a few posts in one sitting and use a social media management tool like Hootsuite to schedule them for future postings. That could save you a lot of time. I hope this is helpful.
Through blogging you not only share your views but it brings you great search engine visibility, moreover you can promote your business too.