business blogging

• Host a Blog on your own domain: One of the biggest mistakes made by many business owners is hosting blogs on a third-party domain, like “blogspot.com” or “wordpress.com”. Third-party hosted blog solutions can be very easy to set up and can get you up and running fast, however in the long run it will come back to bite you. Once you’ve built an audience, search engine value, etc., you will be sort of tied to that domain and it will be very hard to move to your own hosted solution. So the best strategy is to get off on the right foot, and make sure you’re using your own domain name from the very beginning.

• Invest on your Blog design: Many bloggers don’t concentrate on their blog design and start off with a free theme that is probably live in thousand other blogs. For personal blogs this model may work, but for a business blog a generic blog design may sell. Marketing is all about product differentiation, and you’ll have a hard time standing out as a business when your blog looks just like hundred others that are out there. Skip the free themes, and put some money toward hiring a designer to do the job right. Never underestimate the effectiveness of a really professional design.

• Keep it clean & simple: Don’t get overwhelmed with all the cool widgets, plugins, add-ons, hacks, customizations that many of the blog CMS offers. Always remember that most of your readers really don’t care about those funky stuffs. They came to read your blog posts. So the cleaner and more pure you can make your blog, the better. Cut as much clutter as you can and keep your blog clean & simple.

• Integrate your blog with your business website: One of the reasons you probably have decided to start a business blog is so that you can slowly directly some of your blog traffic to your primary business site to increase leads & sales. But in order to be successful at doing that, you have to make sure that your blog is properly integrated with your business site. Make sure readers know who’s doing the blogging, and what else you can do for them.

• Clearly Define your Blog Audience: It is important to keep your blog focused to your audience and write specifically for them. One effective way of keeping yourself focused to your audience is to create a persona profile that describes an individual from your niche. Try giving him or her name and brainstorm the type of things he or she would want out of your website, and then write all your blog posts to that one imaginary person. This will keep you focused on your audience at all times, and will give your voice a more personal touch.

• Always Stay on topic: This is very much related to the last point — once you’ve already identified your target audience, only post things that are relevant to that audience. Diluting your blog with posts about your cat is not going to help you build readership.

• Write original content: Rather than just “rewriting” what others have already wrote elsewhere, try to come up with your own original piece.

• Promote the blog through your business: Business blogging is a two-way deal. Don’t look at your blog just as a lead-generation machine; make sure that your existing customers know about the blog as well. It will help to build brand awareness, increase loyalty, and at the same time empower you with the ability to communicate on important topics.

• Encourage discussion: If you want to have a conversation in your blog, you’ve got to be willing to take a few thumps. Enable comments on your blog, and don’t go around deleting everything that’s unflattering and negative about your product/service. The only things that should really be moderated are blatantly offensive trolling and obvious spam.

Bonus Tip:

• Don’t be obsessed with ranking and stats: It can be really fun to watch your search ranking or traffic spike when you get on Digg, stumble upon or other social media, but the reality is that these sudden traffic spikes have little effect on the overall success of your business. Try to stay true to your core audience, work hard to get the word out, and then be happy with whatever you’ve got. Even one single loyal reader can totally change the course of your business!