Everyone is doing it – blogging that is. Or at least it seems that way. You’ve thought about setting a blog for your business, but how do you go about it? What would you write? Why is it even necessary? If you’ve ever wondered about blogging for your business, then you’ve come to the right place. Having a blog allows your business to have a voice on the web. It’s a nifty way of allowing you to interact with your target audience on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, get information back from your blog readers which you can use to improve your product or service, while at the same time increasing your knowledge about what your prospective customers really want.
A lack of know-how, the time and commitment to regularly keep the blog updated, being a technophobe and the fear of what people will say are the main deterrents. However there’s no better way to learn than just to take the bull by the horns and start writing.
Wordpress.com has a blog format which you can have up and running within 5 minutes if you’re unsure of how to set one up as part of your company website. You can write the content yourself or if you don’t think you have the time or writing isn’t one of your strong points, you can always engage the services of a professional SEO copywriter. A professional copywriter with SEO skills a knowledge will have a working knowledge of Google principles and keyword usage throughout the copy will allow your blog to be easily found via search engine.
What do you put in your blog? The content needs to be useful. You can write about the latest news, how to guides, news relevant to your industry and make it interesting by putting a little personality into it. You can experiment with different content, because unlike print, a blog can always be changed. Make sure you always use a punchy headline which creates interest. If you find this difficult use the four “U’s”– make it USEFUL, UNIQUE, URGENT and ULTRA SPECIFIC. People in social media share or retweet blogs sometimes purely based on the headline. A good way to test whether your headlines generate interest is to tweet or share a couple of ideas on Twitter or Facebook and wait and see which has the most response. Stop procrastinating and start your blog today. There’s no time like the present.
