Business Blog Advice

by Brandon Cornett

Most business blogs are created around a certain objective. This objective usually involves visitors taking some form of action – reading, clicking, subscribing, downloading, purchasing, etc.

You can increase the chance people will perform the desired action by making it very easy for them. In web terminology this is known as usability, and it has everything to do with your business blogging success.

Tips for Business Blog Usability

1. Limit the number of posting categories to reduce confusion. Most business blogs can get by with a handful of categories, if they’ve been properly planned out. More than ten categories on a blog, and you begin to create an information-overload situation.
2. Add links to the blog’s home page, “About” page and “Contact” page (when applicable). Regardless of where somebody enters your blog, they should be able to find the home page (to get oriented), the About page (to learn the blog’s purpose), and the Contact page.
3. If you want people to subscribe to your RSS feed, create a “subscribe” button and link it to a page that explains RSS feeds, the benefits they offer, and how people can use them. It might be a good idea to include a subscribe-by-email option as well. You can get a free RSS-to-email program from a company like Zookoda, and there are many paid versions as well.
4. Reduce clutter any way you can. Some business blogs have so many RSS buttons, graphics, advertisements, and other bells and whistles that they become an absolute mess. You can avoid this by cleaning up your sidebar area, using a supplemental menu area when necessary, grouping things logically, and removing anything that doesn’t need to be there.
5. Conduct a simple usability test. Ask a friend or colleague to visit your blog, and see how quickly they can (A) find the main menu, (B) determine the blog’s theme and purpose, (C) find contact information, etc.

Conclusion
When it comes to business blogs, usability has a direct impact on profitability. Keep you blog clean and easy to read. Web readers and researches are skilled at hopping from site to site. They don’t need much of a reason to bail out on you, and they’ll do just that if your blog is hard to navigate. Make blog usability a top priority when creating your business blog.

 by Brandon Cornett

The business blog can take many forms and support many objectives. That’s part of the beauty of using a blog for business purposes. But sometimes the many uses of a business blog can overwhelm aspiring bloggers, making it hard to decide on a particular blogging strategy.

If you have been meaning to start your own business blog, but you’re not sure how to start, consider one of the following five strategies.

1. Instructional Business Blogs
Instructional blogs are extremely popular, and they come in many flavors. If you can teach your audience about a subject that’s important to them, you have what it takes to develop a popular instructional blog. For example, if a company sells accounting software, it might develop an instructional blog to teach readers about accounting methods, technologies and best practices. This would help the company develop readership and interaction, while also educating readers toward its products.

2. Controversial Business Blog
Controversial blogs can bring in a big readership. But the trick here is to avoid being controversial just for the sake of controversy. Some companies / niches are naturally controversial, and their business blogs are an extension of this. For example, a business that sells political merchandise (shirts, stickers, etc.) could use a blog to generate legitimate controversy of a political nature. This could help generate buzz, readership, and sales.
 
3. Entertaining Business Blogs
People love to be entertained, and some companies are able to tap into this for business-related purposes. For almost every product or service, there’s an audience who finds it entertaining. This is especially the case with the hobby industry and niche products / services that have a devoted (almost “cultish”) following. In such industries, a company might use its blog to educate as well as entertain its audience.

4. Behind-the-Scenes Business Blog
This approach to business blogging gives your customers and readers a behind-the-scenes look at your products and services (and to a certain extent, your company itself). When done well, this business blog strategy can help the company foster trust among its key audience. When readers learn about the people behind the company, and how they go about their work, they are more apt to trust the company on a whole.

Microsoft is probably the best example of this. For many years, Microsoft has had a perception problem with both consumers and the media. In the past, many people have viewed it as a secretive and soulless company bent on world domination at any cost. In more recent years, this perception has begun to soften. Many current and former insiders of Microsoft have attributed much of this perception shift to the company’s various blogging campaigns. Suddenly, the public gets to know the people behind Microsoft products. And trust begins to grow where there was a real lack of it before. 

5. High-Value Business Blogs
Naturally, people are naturally attracted to things of value. We seek value constantly in both our personal and professional lives. As such, a business blog that offers value in some form will eventually attract readers. Those readers will become advocates of the blog, happy to share its value with friends or colleagues.

Value comes in many forms. Information can be valuable, if it helps us perform a task, save money, live a better life, etc. The greater this value, the more people it will attract. So a business blog that helps its audience succeed in some way has great potential for growth and popularity.

Conclusion
There are many ways a business blog can support your company’s goals. The blogging strategies listed above only scratch the surface. What ideas and strategies can you come up with? How might you use your business blog to turn strangers into readers, and readers into customers? There is no limit to the possibilities.

by Brandon Cornett
1. Better Search Engine Ranking
Search engine visibility is a big part of online marketing. Thus, it’s also a big part of blog marketing. The goal of blog SEO (search engine optimization) is to improve your blog’s ranking in major search engines, which will also increase your blog’s traffic, readership and interaction levels. These are the first steps to blog success and profitability. But it all starts with search engine ranking and visibility.

Fortunately, business blogs have certain characteristics that make them ideal for search engine option / search engine visibility. These characteristics can improve your blog’s visibility and traffic levels – key components of blog marketing success.

For one thing, blog’s are easy to publish, so you can create a large volume of quality content fairly quickly and easily. This “breadth and depth” of content is a fundamental building blog for search engine visibility.

Most business blogs are also, by default, well structured and easy for search engines to crawl through. Blog programs automatically archive content and allow you to categorize your writing into topics and subtopics. These category and archive links give blogs an easy way to access content.

2. Lead Generation Tool
Lead generation is an important part of business blog marketing. You can generate leads from your blog in a variety of ways. When people leave comments on your blog and include their email address, you could follow up with them on the blog itself and also by email. You can also feature “white papers” or other exclusive reports on your blog, and allow people to request them online. Of course, if your business blog is about a truly exceptional product or service, then your blog marketing (and lead generation) will be even simpler – highlight your contact info someplace visible, and people will contact you.

3. Collaboration / Joint Marketing
Business blogs can easily support collaboration and joint-author activities. Having multiple authors can increase your blog’s usefulness and popularity, while also increasing the number of people promoting your blog. With blog marketing, two heads (or three, or four) can be better than one, and blog programs make it very easy to collaborate. You just invite your authors, give them posting authority on the blog, and you’re off and running. Just be sure to choose the right authors and share the benefits accordingly.

4. Online PR Tool
The business blog is also an ideal channel for news, articles and other PR pieces. This can support your blog marketing efforts in a number of ways. These days, journalists use business blogs to stay informed about companies in their coverage area. That’s because they know they’ll get much more current information from a blog than a regular website, as business blogs are often updated weekly or even daily. Blogs also produce RSS feeds, which can be easily be republished onto other websites with links back to the source website / blog. This lets you use your business blog as a syndication tool for content distribution, which can further support your blog marketing efforts.

5. Buzz Generation / Word-of-Mouth
If you go the extra mile to make your business blog unique, informative, engaging or entertaining, you will eventually develop a strong base of readers. In time, blog readers can become loyal advocates who eagerly share your blog with friends or colleagues. This buzz factor can be a powerful tool in blog marketing, because it can spread like wildfire thanks to the speed and reach of the blogosphere.

Small businesses are sometimes at a disadvantage when it comes to marketing. But there’s a “secret weapon” that small business owners can use to tip the scales back in their favor. It’s the small business blog, and you’ll learn all about in this blog post.

Like any business, the small business needs to get the word out about their services and/or products. But by their nature, these businesses often lack the marketing budget of their large counterparts. A business blog can help fill this gap between marketing needs and marketing budget, and when used properly it can also help you propel your small business to the next level.

What is a business blog? In technical terms, a blog is a content-management tool that allows you to quickly and easily publish news, articles or marketing messages onto the Internet. But in the right hands, the business blog becomes more than a simple publishing tool. It becomes a powerful tool for online marketing and communications.

Easy to Publish
Business blogs are easy to publish, even for the web novice. That’s because the blog does all of the technical work for you. You simply type your message, add links or images as needed, and click the “Publish” button. The blog will convert your text into web code for proper display on the Web. This simplicity is ideal for the small business owner, who usually does not have an extensive IT department (if one at all).

Easy to Launch
Blogs are also fairly simple to setup, especially if you get help from an experienced blogger. For instance, I recently set up a business blog for a company that provides factoring financial services to small and medium-sized businesses. I customized a WordPress blog template, designed a few buttons, and that was it. In two days, the blog was up and running.

Blog Marketing Success
As your blog grows in size and popularity, it can support several marketing objectives at once. It can help you attract readers, generate valuable leads, improve your search engine visibility, and position yourself as a trusted expert in your field. In other words, a business blog can help you compete with the “big dogs” online — because after all, nobody knows how big you are online. If you blog effectively and build an audience of loyal readers, you could even outperform your larger competitors online!

Best of all, many blog programs are free, which is an ideal price for the small business owner!

Get more advice on small business web strategy here.

Related resources: Small business online payroll

Inbound links are important for good search engine ranking / blog visibility. An inbound link is simply a link from another blog or website to your business blog. Creating resources is a good way to acquire inbound links. When I say “resource,” I mean something truly helpful and informative that other bloggers would like to share with their readers (by way of linking to the resource).

An informative blog series is one type of resource you can create. If the series is exceptionally entertaining, engaging or educational, other bloggers in your niche / industry will be likely to point it out to their readers (often with a direct link as well). This can increase your business blog’s traffic and visibility.

Example of a Blog Series
There are endless ways you could create a series for your business blog. Start with a topic you know a lot about, and then break that topic into a lot of “bite-sized” chunks. For instance, I publish a real estate blog. Over the past few months, I’ve been using it to educate real estate agents on successful blogging.

As a result of these efforts, my series on real estate blogging / Internet marketing has helped me acquire inbound links, blog traffic, and even a few clients along the way.

Ask yourself: “What aspect of my business do I know a lot about? Which topics are most interesting to my target audience? How can I divide my knowledge into a logical series of blog posts that my audience would find helpful?”

Elsewhere on this blog, you’ve heard me stress the importance of writing helpful or interesting content on your business blog. In this post, I’d like to offer some specific tactics that go beyond this basic premise.

Tips for Business Blog Writing 

• Write in your own voice. Don’t try to impress people with your vocabulary. The best blogs convey quality information in a conversational style.
• Write each blog post so it can stand on its own. Each post should offer value on an individual level (in addition to being  part of a greater whole).
• Include your key phrase in blog post titles (when applicable) and throughout the body of your post. Do this in a natural way — avoid keyword overuse, or “stuffing.”
• Link between blog posts as needed to help readers navigate and find related information.
• Whenever possible, use keywords in your hyperlinks to make them more descriptive for people and more effective for blog visibility / SEO.
• Include a brief call-to-action at the end of posts, when applicable. “To learn more about this new service, please email us at…”

Search engines also pay a lot of attention to the title element of each web page / blog post. When you create a title for your blog post, the title also becomes the HTML title element of that page. When you are looking at a web page, you’ll notice a short title up in the blue bar at the top of your browser window. This is the title element, and search engines use this title to understand more about your page content.

The title element also appears in search engine results pages (SERPs), above the description and URL for each listing. So in this capacity, the title must be well written, descriptive and enticing. Remember, if your business blog appears on a search engine results page, there will be nine other listings on that page as well. So you have a 1-in-10 chance of getting the click-through. Your title will play a big role in that.

Fortunately, most blog programs take the title you assign to each blog post and automatically convert it into the page’s title element. So you don’t have to think about the web coding side of things. You just write a great title, and the blog program will handle the coding for you.

This all might be a bit confusing, but here’s the important thing to remember. The title you give your blog post is important for search engine visibility. So it should be descriptive, accurate, and filled with keywords and phrases.

We begin this lesson with a reminder that readers come first, and search engines second. When posting new content to your business blog, try to create something of value for the reader. Try to create blog posts that are interesting, helpful, entertaining or otherwise engaging. Do this, and half the search engine “battle” is already won.

When writing content for your business blog, limit each blog post to a single idea. Blog posts should be easy to digest in one reading. Shorter posts are more eyeball-friendly and will likely help you grow your readership, especially if those posts are engaging as well. My personal rule of thumb is to write more than 100 words (for value) but below 500 words (for brevity).

From a search engine standpoint, it’s also better to create a higher number of short posts. Most blog programs save each of your blog posts as a separate page. So if you blog once a day for a year, you’ll have 365 pages of web content. That’s a lot of keyword-rich content to educate people and search engines alike!

Also, be sure the content of each blog post is a direct extension of the blog post’s title. Search engines robots will compare the content of your blog post to the post’s title. So the key phrase in your title should be carried over into the actual blog post.

When you think about it, this should happen automatically. If, for example, you were blogging about a new software product for bankers, a good title might be “Bank Software: What to Ask Before Buying.” This title should then match the body content of the blog post. Maybe this blog post would go on to list the top-ten questions to ask before choosing a banking software program. The page’s content would be a direct extension of the title. Good for readers, and good for search engines!

Different blog programs have different features, but they all do essentially the same thing. They convert your text into an HTML web page (known as a blog post) at the click of a button. You simply type your blog post, add links or images as desired, and click a “Publish” button. The blog application will then publish your post onto the web, making it a part of your blog.

Most business blogs are published in reverse-chronological format, with the most recent post at the top of the first page. 

Different Ways to Publish a Business Blog 
When I say “ways to publish a business blog,” I’m talking about where your blog will be hosted and located on the web. Basically, you have three publishing / hosting options:

1. Have the blog hosted by a blog company.
2. Make the blog an extension of your website.
3. Give the blog a domain of its own.

Option 1 - Host your blog with a blog company.
In this option, your blog will reside under the blog company’s web domain. For instance, Blogger’s web domain is blogspot.com, so if Jane Doe setup a blog under this domain it would look something like this: http://www.janedoe.blogspot.com/. Jane will never truly own this domain, because it is part of Blogspot.com. This is one of the down sides of this hosting option.

Option 2 - Make the blog an extension of your website.
In this option, your blog will reside on your own web domain, but as a sub-domain. In other words, the blog will be an extension of your website. One of my marketing blogs, for instance, is an extension of the website ArmingYourFarming.com. I publish my blog to a sub-domain of my website: www.armingyourfarming.com/realestatemarketing.

Option 3 - Give the blog a domain of its own.
In this option, your blog will reside in the top-level (or “root”) directory of your website domain. So the blog becomes the website itself. When somebody types in the root web address ending with “.com” … they land on the blog itself. This blog that you are reading, http://www.ceoblogwatch.com/, is an example of giving a blog its own domain. This is a blog, but it resides on its own domain. It is not an extension of a website like my real estate marketing blog under option #2.

Which Option is Best?
All of my blogs are published through options #2 and #3 above. I avoid option #1 entirely. There are several reasons for this. First, I like having the website and blog under the same domain. It’s just easier to manage that way.

But there’s a more important reason why I avoid option #1. I once had a blog disappear from blogspot.com (remotely hosted by Blogger). I mean it just up and disappeared. I emailed Blogger’s “support” team, but they basically ignored me. Did I violate some term of use? Not that I’m aware of. It was just a harmless informational blog. I wasn’t selling anything … I wasn’t even running ads. Just a basic blog. And then poof, it was gone.

Because the blog was hosted by Blogger, I had no way to retrieve anything. And because Blogger is a free service with “as-is” disclosures, nobody seemed to care that my blog had vanished.

After that incident, I vowed never again to host a blog under somebody else’s domain. I still use Blogger as a blog publishing tool, but I publish the blog itself onto my own domain, where my website is hosted. Bottom line — I recommend you put your business blog onto a web domain that you own, regardless of which application you use.

We have not disappeared.

We are just overhauling the mission of this website to make it more useful to you, the reader.

Coming in August — more business blogging tips than you can shake a stick at. Writing, design, technical matters, bells and whistles, and then some.

Be back soon!

~Brandon