 | 16 TOP TIPS FOR BUSINESS BLOGGERS | | | | |   | Growing traffic to your brand ... | Posted by Steffi Lewis on 15/04/2013 |
Many businesses start blogging with the intention of either driving traffic to their website, making extra money through advertising, or increasing overall brand awareness. However, it is sometimes a difficult journey and many bloggers fall by the wayside ...
 it's always handy to get tips from the business blogging experts
It is a sad thing - a business blog that hasn't been updated for months and months. You can almost see the cobwebs in the corner of the page and the odd tumbleweed rolls across the screen to the sound of a wild coyote in the distance.
Many end up that way because the visitor rates are not growing and - if it's a business blog - management don't have the long-term vision to make it a success. Immediate results are what's required, but unfortunately business blogging doesn't work like this.
Here's 16 top tips for growing your business blog and keeping management happy ...
- Realise that any form of blogging is a 'slow-burn' and it takes time to move your pages up the rankings and sometimes even get indexed in the first place. Google is a great machine for spewing out links, but it's sometimes difficult to get recognised.
- Try to tie your blog posts into current events. If there is breaking news happening, is it possible to write about a particular service or product you supply as a solution to the issue happening in the current event? If so, write a blog post about it - but be careful and compassionate as it's easy to offend people, especially those caught up in whatever is happening. Many large brands have been accused of exploiting disasters.
- Ensure that you have plenty of search engine friendly keywords embedded in your content but don't overdo it. You don't want to "stuff" your content because it may become unreadable and put the visitor off completely. Remember that language has to flow.
- Use permalinks and clearly put the title in the permalink. Put the most important keywords at the start. For example, "10-money-saving-tips-for-mums" could get read by a lot of people, especially when times are hard. If you typed "Business Blogging" in to Google and saw "16-top-tips-for-business-bloggers" pop up, would you click on it?
- Write for as many people as you can. If you've ever heard of Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) you'll know that different people understand things in different ways. Some people are visual, some auditory, some kinaesthetic, some auditory-digital. If you're primarily visual and often say things like "I see what you mean" you need to know that your language may not appeal to all. "I hear what you're saying" or "feels good" or "I understand" are just different ways of saying the same thing. Maybe an NLP training course featuring use of linguistics would be a good investment?
- Include an appropriate image in every blog post you write. It does take time to find something suitable but there are many resources out there. Try to get royalty free where possible (Microsoft Clipart) but you may have to pay (iStockPhoto). Always put a caption below it and match that caption to the ALT tag of the image itself. Try to put the essence of your article into this caption/alt-tag as it helps with Google image search.
- Be grammatically correct at all times. If you're not sure about the correct usage of "your" and "you're" or even "their", "there" and "they're" then get someone who is really good at writing and give them your raw thoughts to turn into a blog post. Always ensure apostrophes and commas are still showing in your post when you publish it because if you're copying from email to an editor they can sometimes get lost in the translation.
- Include your business blog URL on all of your marketing materials. We're all used to putting our website URL on there so why not our blog? Make sure your blog URL is under the same domain as your website. Websites are usually "www.mycompany.com" and your blog should be "blog.mycompany.com". As your business blog authority increases, it will also help your website ranking automatically.
- Remember that Google now prioritises newer stuff. This is great news for bloggers but bad news for web designers and SEO experts (and for businesses who'll need to pay a lot more for regular SEO). Think about putting links to your recent blog posts on your website homepage to help Google see that something has changed. It is now entirely possible to watch your blog climb the rankings as your website plummets. Ensuring your blog is under the same domain as your website will help stop your website from disappearing.
- Clearly link your blog to your website and your website to your blog so that people can switch between the two quickly and easily.
- Get out there and comment on other people's stuff. Linkbacks (or backlinks or whatever you want to call them) are seen by Google and increase your own authority. Don't be silly though, just writing "great blog" on someone's page is annoying. Be intelligent in what you say and the other blogger is more likely to publish your comment.
- Get a mailing list! Put a subscribe box on your blog and let people sign up. If you're into business networking, add the email address from every business card you receive. It may seem like a chore, but it'll be worth it in the end. If you publish a new blog post each week then send it out to your subscribers. If you publish a few posts each week, then save it for a Friday digest and send them all your links at once.
- Use social media! Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all useful resources for sharing your posts and you'll find a lot of traffic comes in from them. Make sure that your readers can take something of value away from your blog posts and they'll share them on.
- Don't make what you write a blatant advert. Business blogging is about relationship marketing. If your blog post is a sales pitch then people won't read it. Be personable, be open, be honest, be transparent, be interesting.
- Write to a schedule. If you're going to publish blog posts once a week then pick a day and stick to it. If you're going to publish a couple of times a week then try Monday and Thursday so that both blog posts will benefit from their own traffic.
- Tell everyone! Put your blog on your letter head, on your business cards, email your entire business network, all your staff, your family and friends. And keep telling them until they listen and go read stuff you publish.
If you implement all of these ideas then you're going to watch a steady growth in your business blog traffic over time which will put more eyeballs on your brand, and how great will that feel?
Remember that blogging is an ongoing thing - well written, grammatically correct, interesting, timely and relevant content will appeal to the widest possible audience and get them to share your blog posts with their own friends, followers and contacts which can only grow your traffic further and more quickly.
Sounds like a lot of work doesn't it? Well - if truth be told - business blogging IS a lot of work, which is why working with sblogit.com makes sense because we do 95% of the work for you. And that's the only sales pitch you'll see on this blog post because we've written it so you can take some ideas away to implement on your own small business blog rather than having to read a blatant advert from us!
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STEFFI LEWIS
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 | DIRECTOR AND SHARER OF THE BLOG LOVE LIKES: My friends, cats, spooning, good filter coffee, fast bikes, my iPad and iPhone, Jimmy Choo, Jaeger, Mercedes, Aston Martin, people who make me laugh hysterically, rock music, Sci-Fi, Chinese food, wine and Chocolate.
DISLIKES: Isms, labels, Marmite, Salmon, stress, early mornings, hangovers, people that make me sad, self-centred and selfish behaviour, Soaps and Reality TV.
VIRTUE: Effortlessly combines calming serenity & inspiring awesomeness.
VICE: Likes to party like a rock-star.
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