| Blogging for Business | | Print | |
| Written by themomsalon.com | |||||||
 If you haven't started a blog for your business yet, it's time you did. Over the past few years blogs have increasingly become vital components to the bottom line of online businesses because they offer potential and long-term customers regularly-updated information about the products and services you offer and that they desire. Blogs are also useful tools for business owners because they are extremely easy to set up, easy to maintain, and help businesses spread their message through new online channels. More on that later.You may be asking yourself what are the overall benefits of writing a blog for your business. The answer is simple; a blog is another avenue to stay connected to your customers. It will help to forge strong relationships with potential customers to entice them to buy, and a business blog is useful for posting discounts and specials, sharing customer testimonials, or announcing new products. It is equally useful for relaying your unique journey to start, own, and run your own business, or to blog about the press coverage or special awards your business may have received. Most importantly, a business blog provides a personal touch to your bottom line because it shows web-savvy consumers that you or your team of bloggers care enough to write about your business on a regular basis and are willing to allow them to join your conversation. Hearing all of this good news about business blogging probably has you itching to start your own. Here's how to get started. Start Your Blog: Choose a blog-hosting company where you would like to house your blog. There are several to choose from, each with its own benefits and advantages. We suggest the biggest and most popular blogging platforms, Blogger, WordPress and Typepad, although there are also a host of others from which to choose.Type in "blog hosts" in Google to find others that may interest you. Get Inspired Before Your Write: Take a look at other business blogs and glean ideas from blogs that will make yours interesting and fun to read. Study blogs in your industry and then tweak their approach to best fit your style and the purpose of your blog. There are several theories about what makes a successful blog. Certainly, one theory is to post regular updates (sometimes two and three times per day). If you're going to gain a loyal and engaged following, your blog must have intelligent, focused writing and a unique style and feel. Avoid rambling posts about things that don't matter unless you are a truly gifted writer and can easily mesh your business objectives with personal perspectives. The key is to keep your blog simple and to the point. Index Your Blog: Place your blog in directories such as Technorati, Blogarama, and The Mom Salon directory. Directories are a great way to get your blog indexed in search engines. When readers are better able to find your blog, the larger your traffic will become. Blog directories also serve as avenues for finding like-minded business blogs. Go Viral: Open accounts with Feedburner and AddThis.com. Among many other features, Feedburner allows you to put a free email sign-up box on your blog where readers can subscribe and receive posts automatically in their inbox. AddThis.com is a tool that makes bookmarking and subscribing to your blog extremely easy for your readers with a one-step approach to adding your blog to their preferred feed reader. Spread the Word: Let other bloggers out there in the blogosphere know you're blogging. Most bloggers do this by commenting on blogs and linking out to those they enjoy reading. Introduce yourself to other business bloggers and spark up a conversation. You may even want to email them especially when something they've written has affected you in some way. TheMomSalon.com is one of the oldest sites specifically catered to mom bloggers. Visit them at www.themomsalon.com.
Bookmark
Email This
Comments (4)
Michelle Robinson
said:
|
|||||||
Subscribe to this comment's feed|
Visiting other blogs that are similar in concept or subject to yours and then exchanging links is a good idea. For example, for my blog (www.mad-about-kids.com) I go to other mom and parenting blogs and ask about exchanging links. In other words, I put the link of the other mom/parenting blog on my blog under my "blogroll" in exchange for the same. (A blogroll is simple a list of blogs that you like or recommend to readers--your readers may be likely to visit blogs on your blogroll.) So, the bottom line is this--I have my blog listed on other mom/parenting blogs as a blog that they recommend. Visitors to those blogs may come to my blog because of this. :) Every little bit helps when it comes to spreading the word about your new blog, right? |
Kathy Murdock
said:
| I have written about this for allbusiness.com as well. It is so important for a business to have a blog. That said, I can't seem to get mine up and running lol! That is my next job! I wrote about a realtor who mentioned most of her customers had come from those finding her blog on the internet! Pretty amazing. |
Shannon
said:
| You can make money by blogging for other companies too. We hire bloggers at Babies Online all the time! |
Write comment
Show/Hide comment form
