An Introduction to Blogs for Small Business

This post is a brief introduction to Blogs for the Small Business Owner.

A blog is a very good way to publicise your website, but like any marketing activity, you will get out of it what you put in.

A half-hearted blog post every 3 months will basically just be a waste of time, but well-written, interesting, and regular blog posts can add a great amount of value to your site and ultimately drive you more visitors, leads, and business.

What is a blog?

A blog is just a way of publishing on the internet stuff that you want to write about, and stuff that other people may want to read.

Often blogs are associated with a company or individual and will generally be related to a particular subject. So, for example, this blog you are reading is on my website which is about search engine optimisation, and therefore most of my other blog posts will have some relationship with small businesses, marketing, the internet, etc.

The best blogs are ones that are interesting and add value to the reading community; blog posts just trying to sell stuff are not generally interesting and will not help you to build up an audience for your blog posts.

Click here for some further insight into blogs and their uses.

Blog Comments

A blog post is different from just publishing a web-page on a certain subject as there is the capability for others to comment on your post. This can then develop into a dynamic online discussion which adds value to the original post plus developed a relationship between you and other bloggers.

You can also drive more people to your site by commenting on other peoples blogs, so for me being interested in small business and SEO, I would comment on other SEO blogs, blogs about marketing and small business etc.

WordPress outline some of the options available to you for who can comment on your articles. Click here to see what they had to say.

RSS Feed

An RSS feed is just a way for your audience to be automatically notified when you put up a new blog post. It’s a really good idea to set up an RSS feed on your website so you give people (who like what you have to say) the opportunity to sign into these automatic updates.

Setting up RSS feeds is not the topic within this post, we will be writing a post on RSS feeds in due course but in the mean-time just Google ‘setting up an RSS feed’ to give you some pointers.

Find out more about RSS feeds and how they work by clicking here.

5 Steps to getting your blog going:

1. Set up a new blog (www.wordpress.org, www.blogger.com, etc)
   If you have an existing website you may need to get your web designer to set this up for you, if you want more hints on this just Contact Me.
2. Look at other blogs in your sphere, you will quickly see the good and bad ones. You can do this by doing a normal Google Search then just clicking on the Blogs option on the left-hand column.
3. Commit to writing one to two blog posts per week – to be found you need to be producing content that people may want to read.
4. Comment on other blogs – engage in the conversation, comment on others’ blogs, and add value, this will help you to build relationships in the online community. Please do not just spam other sites with how great you are, and if you are going to link back to your site only do so if say you have a blog post that expands on the subject being discussed.
5. Commit for 12 months – you will not get traffic overnight, your blog is an investment that over time will set up a pipeline of visitors to your site.

Need a little more help? Check out this excellent article by Search Engine Watch – 10 ways to promote your WordPress blog for beginners

Is it Worth It?

Many, many, many, businesses and individuals have driven a great deal of revenue, business, and opportunity from their blogs, the rewards are there for the taking, but the effort needs to be put in first.

Find out some of the reasons that people choose to blog by clicking here.

Thanks for reading and I would love to have your comments and questions.

We understand that not all business owners have the luxury of being able to find the time to write effective and interesting content for their blog. Fortunately, we are here to help pick up the slack and we offer a range of cost-effective services designed to help take the burden from your shoulders.