The business world has changed drastically in recent years. While you may just be getting up-to-date by having a business website, it is already time to make changes. In addition to utilizing online payment systems, social media, and other important internet tools, it is critical that you begin to maintain a business blog.
Creating and maintaining a business blog is a great way to generate additional traffic to your site. You will be able to educate your clients and the general public and build rapport between your company and consumer. Hiring a part-time ghostwriter for the blog can help you keep it up-to-date while being affordable. Included here are a few tips for designing your business blog.
Identify Your Niche
The first step in beginning a business blog is in deciding what topic to write about. Ideally, you will want a subject that is centered around your industry or field, but one that does not become inundated with “talk of the trade.” For example, you want to give greater detail about your work and industry without leaving the general layman behind. The purpose of the blog is to generate greater traffic, clientele and consumer awareness, not confuse them with technical terms.
Seek Out Guest Writers
One of the greatest advantages to having a blog is that you can have guest writers post and generate a two-way street of traffic. Guest writers are able to bring their loyal followers over to your site while your readers are able to also pursue the guest writer’s work. It is a two-way street of internet traffic and can supply a great benefit to both your company and the guest writer.
Promotional Purposes
Self-promotion in a business blog is a very precarious thing. Some businesses believe the business blog should exist solely for the purpose of promoting themselves, and this is dangerous for a number of reasons. First of all, no reader wants to read weekly posts about why they should buy from your company. Secondly, you cannot possibly maintain original content on a blog if you are only running promotional posts.
The rule of thumb for most business blogs is that you post seven informative articles to every one self-promotional. For example, if you work in the plant nursery industry, you would be able to post a self-promotional blog entry about your current stock, new seasonal plants and prices. Following this post, you may want to write about soil specifications for blueberry planting, how U.S. zoning temperatures have changed or tips on edible landscaping.
In any industry you should be able to find a significant amount of information to utilize in-between self-promotional posts. In some businesses it may be considered acceptable, and even desirable, to insert a few humorous posts. Imagine, “Five Worst Gardening Fails of All Time” or “How NOT to use a Forklift.” With humor, you must be very careful that you are not offending certain demographics or mocking individual people, but allowing the humor to be general.
Originally posted on April 8, 2016 @ 7:11 pm