Business Blogging: A New Tool for Your Business

Posted in: Content & Google, Marketing Manifesto.., Trivial Tips!

Does your business website need a blog?

In order to find out if a blog could be good for your business, answer the following question:
• Do the vendors, targeted customers spend good amount of time on internet?
• Do people research about product or any information related to your business online?
• Do you have some instances in your experience or specific business related information which you can share with customers?
• Can the information you share add value or educate people regarding your business?
If you have answered affirmative to most of the above question, you can be sure that your business and your website can be benefited by integrating a blog.

The “why” of corporate blog
The concept of corporate blogging has been around since early 2000’s, and now we can certainly come of age today. The importance of business blogging was not highlighted initially, but today, a blog is considered as a tool for public relations, marketing, brand promotion as well as communication with customers and other business. From an internet and web presence perspective a business blog has obvious SEO advantages.

SEO Advantages of the blogs
When a blog is a part of your main website, it increases the chances to get quicker attention of search engines. Blogs basically work by pinging mechanism. A correctly set up blog quickly ping the search engines indicating that there is new content to index.

• When posts of your blogs are linked to some pages of website with appropriate anchor text, those pages also gets indexed quickly.
• Frequently written good quality blogs attract many eyeballs. You are also credited for sharing the industry specific knowledge with people.
• You can target more number of industry related key words with your blogs.
• Having a blog written by a person adds a feel aspect to the business. This also increases the trust factor among the customers.

Preparing to blog
Before you begin to blog, spend some time in the realm of the blogosphere to get an idea about what is going on and what are the hottest topics being discussed about your niche area. You would obviously benefit by reading the blogs form the leading personalities in your field. The general frequency you can maintain is about one post a week. This shows that your website is updated with relevant content at a decent frequency. Ideally a post between 300 to 600 words is good enough.

Tips for blog content
The key points that indicate a good business blog are
• Relevant topics: Ensure that the content on your blog is relevant to the industry. Be sure that the subjects you write are recent and add value to the subject matter.
• Accuracy of the content: Being accurate about whatever you write adds to your brand value and gives the impression that you as an individual and as a company are reliable.
• Being concise: People come to your page to read blog not a book, so be concise. If a particular post is longer you could consider making two posts out of it.
• Respond to the comments: It is imperative that you respond graciously and appropriately to people who comment on your blog. This is one of the best ways to connect with people on a personal level. This also engages the customer s and creates positive image about your business.