While I hate to break it to you, yes, you need a small business blog. At least most of you do. Okay, okay. Maybe “need” isn’t the right word. But a blog would be worth every bit of time and money you put into it, if you do it right.

Let’s talk about why you want a small business blog and what “doing it right” means.

Benefits of Small Business Blogging

When you launch and maintain a well-planned-out blog for your small business, here’s what that blog can do for you:

• It can help you share news with your customers, from limited online deals to local event details. That means more customers get to take part.
• A small business blog can bring you visibility and recognition in your field, especially when you or key staff publish industry commentary or opinion pieces.
• Blogs can make you a trusted resource for customers. Educational or entertaining blog content can keep them coming back to your website, or it can get them to subscribe to your email list. That gives you more opportunities to sell them on your products and services.
• A regularly-updated blog for your business is a ranking signal for Google (which loves fresh and timely content). That can mean better search engine rankings. And better search engine rankings mean your customers will have an easier time finding your business — whether that means buying online, getting local business information like your address and hours, or learning about your latest products and services.

With all of these reasons your small business should have a blog, how do you go about it the right way? After all, if you’re going to put the time or money in, you want results.

Small Business Blogging the “Right” Way

Now look. There is more than one effective way to manage a business blog. But there are some “rights” and “wrongs” that apply in every case. It doesn’t matter if your blog is a marketing tool, a customer service resource, a part of your PR outreach, or even a direct money-maker. If you want your small business blogging efforts to pay off, here are three things you must do:

• Have a content strategy. Effective small business blogging doesn’t come from writing whatever you feel like on a whim. Know what’s coming. Plan content out weeks to months in advance. If it’s evergreen, have it written early so you can coordinate other social media marketing around each post.
• Talk to people. Your company blog needs to make readers feel welcome. Make sure your posts speak to them rather than you “talking at them.” Use second-person POV (saying “you” as if you’re having a conversation with each reader one-on-one). Leave your comments open — blogs are social tools. And respond to those comments when appropriate. Don’t worry about it being a huge waste of time. A new small business blog won’t get many comments early on anyway. But shutting them down tells your visitors you don’t care about what they have to say, whether they intended to share or not.
• Offer something of value. If your small business blog does nothing but scream “Me, me, me!” you’re not offering anything of value to readers. Solve a problem. Answer a question. Be a resource. Turn your small business blog into both a tool and a destination. It has to work for you. But it has to work for your customers too.

This is just a short introduction if you’re still on the fence about whether or not you should launch a blog for your small business. Moving forward here, we’ll talk more about the specifics. How long should your posts be? Should you write your blog yourself? (It might sound odd coming from a freelance blogger, but the answer might be “yes!”) How can you make your company blog an extension of your brand? We’ll talk about all of this and more. And I’ll be here to guide you through the process of small business blogging if you need a helping hand.

In the meantime, do you have a question about running a small business blog? You can contact me with your questions, and I might answer them here on the blog. Or, get in touch any time to discuss your blogging needs if you’d rather let a professional blogger handle your content strategy and writing.

The post Does Your Small Business Need a Blog? appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Your content strategy is your long-term plan for the content on your blog. Although it can (and will) change periodically over time, having a long-term content strategy can help you avoid the common pitfall of quickly running out of blogging ideas.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when outlining a long-term content strategy for your new blog (valid for any niche):

• Are there any regular features you can include (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) that will not only keep ideas coming in for you, but that will build anticipation regularly with your readers? For example, I offer daily freelance writing job listings on one of my blogs, which brings me repeat traffic daily. On a related blog, I offer weekly links to other blog posts in the niche for people to catch up on the field’s news from the week that’s ending. You may find that a weekly tip would suit your audience, or regular interviews or features on other sites and resources. People like stability, and these “themes” can help you to get out of a rut if you can’t think of anything completely different to write about.
• Do you have any content series ideas for the future that would give you a longer collection of post ideas? For example, maybe you can write a 10-piece series on basic HTML, or a 30-post series on how to lose 10 pounds in a month. Make a list of all of the series ideas you can think of while you’re still excited about the new blog.
• Is it realistic to think you could get guest posters to offer content on your blog (or can you afford to pay a regular blogger to keep it fresh)?
• Is your niche topic news-heavy, where you can link to interesting news stories and write your own short commentary when you’re having an otherwise slow day in coming up with post ideas?

One of the biggest things to keep in mind is that many bloggers are excited and passionate about their blogs when they’re new, but that fizzles to some degree when they realize exactly how much work is involved in the writing, marketing, etc. of their blog. It’s vital to understand early on that the ideas can seem endless in the beginning, but they can seem to dry up down the road. Take advantage of that start-up mentality, and plan as much of your long-term content strategy as possible, and avoid blogger’s block in the not-too-distant future.

This post was originally featured on January 22, 2008.

The post Creating a Content Strategy for Your New Blog appeared first on Pro Business Writer.

Someone wanted to know whether it was better to write for bots (search engines) or human readers. Their purpose seemed obviously to lean towards making a solid content-rich site. Because SEO is always a hot topic (because frankly most people are either too lazy or too dense to look beyond it for quality traffic sources), you’ll find a lot of information like this around (paraphrased):

“Write for search engines first to get rankings and traffic, and then start writing for readers to keep them.”

I had a total “duh” moment when I read that, thinking I must be on a total idiot binge lately on the webmaster front.

Actually, that suggestion is beyond stupid as far as content strategies go. Let’s break it down into to your two most basic options:

1. If you want to build an authority website or blog in a niche, and have a site with long-term potential, you write for the readers.
2. If you’re building sites only thinking about the short term quick buck (driving search traffic to sites loaded with high paying keywords), then you write for the bots.

If someone had the goal of number one above, but started off with the model of number two (as the forum “geniuses” suggested), the site might very well find itself doomed to failure. Why?

Because if the starting content (which is ranked well and the reason viewers are getting to the site) is nothing but SEO’d-to-death content for those rankings, those visitors aren’t going to come back. The only way to get visitors coming back (necessary if you want to build an authority site of any level) is to always write unique and interesting content for your readers.

Starting off with the wrong content strategy can seriously screw up the reputation of your site or blog even before it really gets going. Don’t make that mistake. Know what your ultimate site goals are from the beginning and tailor your content strategy to the right audience.

The post How the Wrong Content Strategy Can Ruin Your Website appeared first on Pro Business Writer.