Blogging for your business

Social media expert, Louise Thomas, reveals how blogging can help your business in a variety of ways

Do you want to bring more traffic to your website, increase sales, rank higher on Google, increase customer loyalty and brand awareness? And no – this isn't an online marketing scam – it's called a blog, and if you do it well, it has the possibility to bring you all of the above!

Blogging is hands down one of the most valuable forms of social media marketing, but is quite often one of the lesser used platforms. Presumably, this is due to its time consuming nature. It's far quicker and easier to send a 140 character tweet, or post a quick Instagram post, whereas posting a blog on the other hand, can take a fair bit more planning and time.

Although time is our most valuable asset, I'd definitely advise you not to discount blogging as a form of online marketing. Instead, here are some tips to ensure you get the absolute most out of the hours you put into blogging, so you can ensure you're spending your valued commdodity wisely!

1. Pick a platform that works best for you

The two most popular platforms are Blogger and Wordpress. Blogger is ideal for the hobbyist or relatively small business owner, whereas the latter is the more professional of the two platforms. If your business' website is already set up, simply talk to your web designer about building a Wordpress blog into your website. It's a fairly simple process that will save you a lot of time setting up yourself! However, if you're looking to start a blog on your own, there are plenty of helpful beginners articles online.

2. Decide on your angle and a rough schedule

Formulate a brief outline of what you plan on sharing on your blog. Go back to basics – remember how important it is to give your readers something, whether that's information, entertainment or a freebie. If readers can see that you're an expert in something and have great advice to lend, they'll instantly 'trust' your business and, psychologically, this can seriously work to your advantage. Once you've decided on a general structure, it's now a good idea to realistically decide how often you can commit to posting on your blog, once or twice a week is ideal to hold your readers interest and keep them coming back for more.

3. Keywords are key!

If you haven't heard already, Google pretty much run the internet and everything you do on your website should be geared towards gaining higher search rankings in Google – otherwise known as SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). Blogs are a great way to gain a higher ranking on Google, just ensure that you use keywords to optimise your blog and make the most of this. When writing a blog post – particularly the title – try to imagine what the average person would type into Google to discover your blog post, we tend to Google questions such as 'What is SEO?' – this is a great rule to follow when titling your posts. Rhetorical questions also make for interesting reading, and help you build up a relationship with your reader by asking for their interaction.

4. Don't give up too soon!

It takes around 30 blog posts before you start noticing an effect on your business – whether this be a surge in visits to your website, a following of readers starting to grow or a direct increase of sales or business enquiries. But quality is of course more important than quantity – so don't rush through a blog post just to build up an archive of posts, write something informative and helpful and work on getting it shared as much as possible online on other forms of social media.

If you decide to take the plunge and start a blog for your business, then best of luck! Let us know how you get on and send us a link to your blog – we'd love to take a read.

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