It is estimated that there are over 100 million blogs lurking out there in cyberspace, and whilst a large proportion of these fall into the personal category with their often gripping tales of teen angst and casual chit-chat, there are also many blogs with content that perhaps is a little more highbrow, relevant and engaging. Business blogs have really come into their own within the past five years and there are many reasons for this. Blogs are a great way to appear accessible and allow you to communicate with your customers in a personal way. They also give you a web presence and create brand awareness for your products. The best thing about having a business blog is that they are typically very search engine friendly and can be used to gain search engine traffic for particular phrases and keywords. Search engines in turn love promoting blogs as they are updated frequently and offer a large amount of relevant content.
If you’ve decided that you want to jump on the blogging bandwagon, then our five simple tips will help get you started.
Tell Stories
Most people wouldn’t think anything about spending four hours curled up on the sofa reading a riveting crime novel, yet the same people would physically balk at spending even 20 minutes reading the ins and outs of the criminal justice system. So why is this? Well humans are naturally storytellers and have been since the caveman days, when the hunters would come together at the end of the evening and regale their tribes with tales about the day’s hunt. A non-fiction book about the criminal justice presents only the facts in a cold hard manner and as such readers turn to it for the content that they require but will not return in order to learn more. When writing a blog make sure that you tell a story that people will want to follow, rather than just a number of facts that are guaranteed to make your readers switch off.
Engage Your Readers
You want to grab your reader’s attention and make sure that they continue to follow all your blog posts, and as well as using your excellent storytelling skills there are a number of different ways in which you can do this.
One such way is including photos on your newsfeeds and the Mr and Mrs Smith blog is a great example of this (http://blog.mrandmrssmith.com/). As you can see the glossy travel photographs are the perfect tool for drawing your readers in and make them eager to read more of your content. Another way of engaging your readers is your use of graphics. There are many unbranded business blogs out there and these can look unprofessional and somewhat dry, which often detracts from the great content. Make sure that your graphics look professional and portray the unique selling points of your company.
Short and Sharp
You may have a lot of incredible content that you wish to share with your customers, but the golden rule of business blogging is to keep it short and sweet. Tour operators are naturally enthusiastic about the great products they sell and have a tendency to ramble on about their fantastic resorts, which can turn readers off. The Adventure Company (http://theadventurecompanyuk.blogspot.com/) is an example of a company that is certainly passionate about the great holidays that it sells but at the same time tends to overdo it on the blogging front. One of the recent posts about reaching Everest base camp seems to go on forever! I am sure that it is very interesting but it could seem a little like a chore to wade through it all. To show you an example of blog that we have been writing for Captivating Cuba (http://www.captivatingcuba.com/blog/cuba/) – here we have made an effort to keep the posts much shorter in order to give readers bite size articles about activities in Cuba.
Don’t Sit On the Fence
Enthusiasm is said to be contagious so if you’re passionate about a subject show this on your blog and it’s likely that your enthusiasm will rub off on your customers. Be prepared to debate subjects and invite your readers to join these debates. Invite them to submit ideas, post stories of their experiences with your brand and get involved with your story-telling. This will show future customers that your company is not only passionate about the product you sell but that you have an active community around your brand.
Be Committed
Blogging isn’t something which should be taken lightly and if your company decides to jump on the blogging bandwagon then you should be prepared to put in a lot of commitment; at least one blog post a week should be considered the minimum effort. However, if you think that this is something that is likely to wane in the near future then you may want to split the load in-house, asking everyone in your company to contribute 1-2 posts per month. By doing this you will get regular input from everyone in your office and bring in a lot of new opinions, which can be integrated into your blog. You may even want to consider giving each member of staff their own profile page, so that your readers can get to know the different personalities behind the business name. This personal touch is very a la mode and is sure to be a hit with a younger audience.
Another option is asking an agency such as LeadGenerators to ghost write on behalf of your company. This is a popular approach to blogging and something that many people and companies are choosing to do, from Barack Obama to Budweiser, as professional agencies are skilled at attracting target audiences and writing great content which is sure to appeal your client base. They can also create great graphics which help draw in your target audience and they have the relevant skills and knowledge needed to make your blog search engine friendly.
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