Say you are a business owner with a solid website and understanding of the several benefits of blogging for your business. You want to take the next step and add a blog into your existing website, but how do you begin?
This post is the first in a series meant to provide advice and explanation on how to start a business blog.
Building your Business Blog from the Ground, Up
Determine your Readers & Tone
Before you ever publish the first post on your new blog, there’s some research and planning that needs to take place. Just like how you identified your core customer when planning to launch your business, you need to decide who your target reader(s) will be. You also need to decide the tone you will take with your blog post writing. Chances are, your target readers and tone will be the same as your core customer and the existing writing style on your website, and if so, be sure the future content published on your business blog is consistent with that.
Determine the Content to be Published
Blogging can benefit your business because it increases your sales leads and provides an opportunity to showcase your expertise. Because of this, you need to decide how much and what you will share on your blog. Some business blogs believe in the benefits of “giving it away for free” while others prefer to discuss topics relevant to their business niche but withhold the most detailed and significant information from public view.
Also, if you have more than one customer type, you probably have more than one reader type, too. Because of this, you need to be conscious of providing content that is relevant to all of your types of readers. This doesn’t mean writing the same post two (or more) different ways, but rather, to fairly represent all of your reader types over several posts (i.e. Don’t publish 5 posts in a row that speak to only 1 type of reader. Instead post 1 or 2 that target one reader type and write the next 1 or 2 posts with a different reader type in mind.)
Determine how much Time you will Devote to Blogging
It’s very common to start a new project like a business blog with grand plans, oodles of ideas and intense enthusiasm. But it’s important to be realistic, too. Writing on your business blog is one more task being added to your marketing To Do list. Nothing leaves a potential customer with a poor opinion of a business more than a visit to a business blog with, say, 10 posts published in its first week, and no additional posts published in the last 6 months.
Patience and thoughtful planning will take you a long way with your business blog. A clear plan and proper foundation will make the growth of your blog a much easier and more manageable marketing effort for you and your business.
Do you blog for your business? What has been your biggest challenge?
(This is the first post in a series on how to start a business blog.)
I’m pretty settled with my current blog, as it’s 2.5 years old, but it’s always good to have a reminder. Thanks for sharing. I’m looking forward to the other parts in the series.
This is exactly what I am starting today! The beginning of my website blog as a precursor for my website launch later this month. Answers exactly the questions on my mind this very minute. Thanks.
Yes I do blog for our company and I consider that one of the biggest challenges I have faced it to write what I planned. We build a strategy and we decide the topics for the future weeks and I then when I have to actually right on that topic it just seams like I’d write anything else. It only happens sometimes but it does take lots of energy to get motivated on that task when it happens.