Business Blogging – a Beginner’s Guide

Business blogging is a very popular online activity and can have many benefits if done properly.

If you’re having a new website designed for your small business it’s worthwhile asking if you’ll be able to update yourself so that you can make regular blog posts.

What is a blog?

The word blog is an abbreviation of weblog and in a business sense provides you with an opportunity to communicate with your customers, share your knowledge and discuss any topics which you feel are relevant to your company or the industry as a whole.

As the owner of your own small business you may want to take responsibility for your company blog and monitor any comments that are made about your blog entries. Most companies have a blog section as part of their main website.

Why do I need a blog?

A blog can give your company a personality online by putting across your opinions, ideas and expertise. It’s often said the people buy from people so by posting under your real name rather than your company name you can engage your customers through a regularly updated blog.

A blog can also encourage repeat visitors to your website and benefit your search engine rankings if you use your chosen keywords and phrases in the right places in your blog posts.

What should I write about?

The decision about what to write on your blog is entirely up to you and dependent on your industry but it should be something that’s interesting to your target market.

For example you could review a book about your industry, respond to stories that have been in industry publications or reveal details of a new product or service you’re about to launch. See our article on 10 Great business blogging topics for more ideas.

How long should my blog posts be?

In order to give people enough information without boring them, you should aim to make your blog posts around 250-500 words in length.

If you want to blog about a topic that can’t be condensed into the range above then you could write it in 2 or 3 parts to split it up and encourage people back to your site.

What if I’m too busy to blog?

If you’re too busy to blog yourself, you can either ask of one your staff to take responsibility for it or outsource it to a freelance copywriter who will be able to research ideas for topics as well as writing the blog posts. You can then put your own name to the blog posts when they’re published on your website.

If you liked this article you may also want to read my top 10 business blogging tips

This entry was posted on Monday, November 15th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Blogging, Guides for Beginners. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.