Starting a Blog for your Business: What you Need to Know

Starting a blog to round out your online presence is a natural step down the path of online entrepreneurship. There are loads of ways that you can make sure that you get your blog up and going such as using a SEO scheme. This will help you get more people reading your blog. If this is something that interests you then you can check out something like these Whitehat Search Engine Optimisation SEO Services Packages. Knowing if your business has the time, drive, and ambition to run a successful blog can be hard however; especially considering all the failed blogs scattered throughout the web. It might also be a good idea to consider using something like this best email hosting site to help your business grow.

What are the potential benefits of starting a blog? What are some of the real risks and potential outcomes? What leads to so many failed blogs? These are things all entrepreneurs should be concerned with before starting a blog for their business.

Benefits

There are plenty of benefits when it comes to starting a blog on your business site. So let’s just run through them:

• Increased interaction with customers
• Increased communication
• Increased transparency
• Increased social presence
• Potentially increased site traffic and viewership
• Potentially cost effective marketing
• Establish yourself as an expert in your field

Sounds great, doesn’t it? All of these potential benefits make blogging seem like a no brainer. But, don’t be fooled. Blogging is a real responsibility and all these benefits can potentially be risks as well—particularly when you have poor quality posts or out of date content.

Risks

Blogging is a very serious branding opportunity. If mishandled, you could just as easily brand yourself as a low quality business.

Everyone’s seen examples of bad blogging. Whether it’s poorly maintained, bad content, or articulation problems, they undoubtedly hurt the bloggers reputation—the business would be better off without ever starting blog.

If you’re going into blogging with false assumptions, you should be prepared for a less than stellar performance for your blog. False assumptions such as:

• Blogging will instantly result in a large audience and readership
• Blogging is free
• Blogging is just like keeping a journal – you can write whatever you feel
• Blogging works great without the support of other social media
• Blogging doesn’t need specific goals – it’s enough to write anything
• Blogging isn’t about community or discussion – it’s your platform to broadcast through
• Blogging is a great way to continually pitch your new products and company in general

Any and all of these assumptions can result in low quality content and an underwhelming blog. The fact is that blogs are slow in gaining momentum, extremely time absorbent, and require a continual flow of interesting content with a narrow focus. You should have set goals for your blog and be working weekly to accomplish them.

Getting Started

The old cliché of content is king applies here. There’s a reason it’s stated over and over and over again. It’s because, at the end of the day, content is truly what will maintain traffic to your blog. But how can you get traffic to your blog initially? Well, here are a few things you should focus on:

• Advertise your blog well before its release
• Guest post and comment on other blogs to establish yourself as part of the community
• Have a back stock of blog posts to start with for your own blog, so you don’t end up publishing slowly
• Stick to subjects you’re passionate about and within the scope of your business
• Include subjects your customer base will be interested in
• Encourage discussion and a sense of community
• And finally, be patient. No blog takes off overnight. If you organize a blog for seo, pages and categories will be found easily in search engines, allowing for an easier navigation.

Blogs are extremely useful. They add personalization to your website, dramatically increase your branding opportunities, can increase your traffic, and rank your website for long tail keywords. But, the need to be treated the same as any other marketing opportunity.

No small business would go into a marketing campaign expecting instant results without the investment of time, energy, money, thought, consideration, analytics, etc. etc. So don’t walk into a blog expecting it either.

Blogs can be a great channel of communication and discussion with your potential consumers. They can create a sense of community centered on your business. They can help drive traffic to your site, increasing your online presence. They can be such an amazing branding tool.

Just be prepared for an excessive amount of time, energy, and investment. You should have a web designer involved with the initial creation. Then you’ll need the time and energy to create the content. Then you’ll need to spend time with your audience driving discussion and responding to comments. Then you’ll need to take the time to market your blog. Do you see what I mean?

The worst possible thing any business can do when starting a blog is to not take it seriously. If you’re not willing to put 100% effort into this exciting new digital age marketing, you’re not ready to start your blog. And that’s what ever online business needs to know before starting a blog.

Cory Collins is a writer who is passionate about white hat SEO, link building, and blogging. He is an online content producer for Page One Power, a relevancy first link building services company. They have an in-depth SEO link building blog full of free great information.