Summary: Want to start a blog for your business, but unsure where to begin? This article is your business blog 101. Everything you need to know to start a successful blog for your business.
Wanting to start a blog for your business, but don’t know where to start? First, you need to think about which blog platform you wish to use, e.g. WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc. Below, I have listed some of the good and bad points of each platform. Each one operates differently, so it maybe worth giving each one a test run and seeing which one you prefer and which is best for you.
WordPress v Blogger v Tumblr
WordPress
- Free and easy to use.
- Simple to use, but can be developed and advance with you as your knowledge of blogging increases.
- Can be developed to look like a website and not just a blog.
- Can be hosted on WordPress or own domain (for business use it would need to hosted on your own domain)
- Can be set up to automatically to send your posts to Twitter
- Lots of additional help and guidance from WordPress docs .
- Loads of great plug ins – for example, All in One SEO and Google XML sitemaps takes care of your SEO tasks.
Blogger
- Free and easy to use
- Can post anything i.e. text, photos, etc
- Can be used to blog about a business on a blogger domain, unlike WordPress.
- Easy to maintain and update
- A negative would be you can’t host it on your own domain, unlike a WordPress blog.
Tumblr
- Free and easy to use
- Can post anything i.e. text, photos, links, videos, audio, slideshow, etc.
- Can be used on a custom domain
- Update via email
- Update via mobile phone
- Automatically update your other profiles, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, etc
WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr are the top three blogging platforms across the world. Another not so well known blogging platform is Typepad. Typepad has a monthly charge - this could explain why it is not so well known or used as it is competing with the free blogging platforms.
Aims and objectives
Before starting anything creative it is important to establish your aims and objectives for your blog. These could be simply to have somewhere to discuss what is happening in the Company, new products, new staff etc, a place to discuss industry goings on and/or a place to share your industry knowledge with customers. Other reasons that most companies have a blog is to send traffic back to their own website and to publish their own company news.
Get creative
When creating your business blog you need to make sure it is set up in a way that it is search engine friendly. For example Google likes quality content, user friendly navigation and quick loading pages. If you select WordPress as your blogging platform, it does a lot of the search engine friendly elements for you. Although if you wish to rank highly you would need to be adding fresh content every few days.
Some things to think about when creating your business blog:
- Does the title of your blog make it clear who you are, why you are posting, along with your blog’s mission? e.g. to share industry knowledge with customers.
- Do you have an ‘about us’ page, enabling readers to find out about your company/ products and/or services?
- Can the author/publisher be found easily?
- Do you have contact page?
- Can readers share posts by using social media share buttons?
- Do you have a call to action? i.e. join our Facebook group, follow us on Twitter, join our mailing list etc.
- Can readers add comments? – This encourages engagement and participation.
- Have you already published around 10 posts?
The final point being important because you don’t want to send people to your blog and have nothing for them to read. If you do this, people are unlikely to return to your blog in the future. Also having a few posts enables the readers to get your sense of style, how you do business and the company’s personality. I would suggest you have at least eight to ten posts before promoting your blog. Ideally the posts will be on different topics across your industry sector.
Promotion time
After setting up a blog and creatively crafting a number of posts, what’s next? You need to tell people about your blog, actively promote it and let people know it exists.
First things first,
- Place a link on your website, if you have one
- Sync your blog content to your Twitter feed – meaning every time you post on your blog it will appear in your Twitter feed (there are plug ins to do this with Wordpress). A great way to tell your followers fast, and once you have set it up you don’t have to do it again.
- Link you blog to your Facebook page and vice versa – again a quick way to tell lots of people and once it is set up you don’t have to do it again.
- Place a link to your blog on your Linked In profile.
- Submit your business blog to blog directories.
- Contact your current customers, and inform them of your new blog and encourage them to take to look. The best way to do this would be email because you can include a direct link to your blog.
- Produce a press release and post it on the online distribution sites.
Some ideas you can try to help keep your blog current and ever-changing are:
- Have a live online chat – give followers the chance to ask you questions
- Post photos of your offices, colleagues working etc – show your office has a fun side as well a hard working team of people.
- Have regular competitions with great prizes, giveaways, etc – regular competitions promote engagement.
- Host a video chat
- Comment on other blogs in the same market sector – get your name and blog known in your market sector.
- Feature experts in your field, maybe interview them. If you can’t get an interview, blog about their activities, their recent posts, events, appearances.
- Do some market research or studies and see what you find out – blog about your findings.
- Guest postings on other sites – another way to get your name known in your sector.
- Ask fellow professionals to guest post on your site – interested followers will then come and have a look at your blog.
Summary
To summarise, chose your preferred blogging platform, establish your aims and objectives for your business blog. Then, get creative and craft your very own business blog. Consider the above points when producing posts and promoting your blog and before you know it you will have a success blog on your hands.
There you go, you are now on your way to becoming a brilliant blogger.
If you’re not yet sure whether you’re ready to start a blog, try reading our articles ‘Using blogs to obtain links for SEO‘ and ‘Should I start a blog for SEO‘.
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Further Discussion
6 Responses to “Business blog 101”
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said at 5:00 pm on August 18th, 2010
I have a blogger blog and I host it on my own domian (http://www.turkeytraveller.co.uk) so I don’t see that can be a negative, also a draw back of having a wordpress blog is if its one of their wordpress.com platforms you can’t run any ads…
said at 6:59 pm on August 18th, 2010
Thanks for putting together the post. I was going to do a similar review but including Posterous. Will let you know once I post. Thanks! Alex.
said at 6:53 am on August 19th, 2010
@Online marketing Calgary – Thanks for the feedback and can’t wait to see your post, keep me updated!
said at 6:58 am on August 19th, 2010
@Felt Rugs – Thanks for the comment – blogger and Wordpress are great platforms, admittedly Wordpress has some great features but you can use blogger for commercial use, so I guess it’s down to what you are trying to achieve with the blog.
said at 2:31 am on September 14th, 2010
Took me time to read the whole article, the article is great but the comments bring more brainstorm ideas, thanks.
- Johnson
said at 5:02 pm on September 15th, 2010
Great post
If I had to start all over again, I would choose wordpress self hosted once again! It’s great to have a fully functional system that you can both control and upgrade according to your needs.
Cheers,
Angel