Business Blog Advice

This post is part of our blogging tips series for business bloggers.

Okay, first thing’s first. Before you can get off and running with your business blog, you need to define your blogging purpose. In other words, you need to know the reason you are blogging in the first place … and it should be a good reason.

Here are some examples of bad reasons to start a business blog:

• Because my competitors are blogging
• Because a buddy of mine said I should start
• Because search engines love blogs

Now here are some good reasons to launch a business blog:

• I have a lot of information to share with my readers
• I can genuinely help my audience succeed with [blank]
• I love to write and want to put that to use for my business
• A blog is the perfect tool to help me grow my business online

Define the blogging objectives you hope to achieve along the way. Define the audience to whom you are writing. Define your blogging purpose and how it relates back to your business.

If you do these things in advance, it will be a lot easier to keep your business blog going over the long haul. When you know where you’re going, the journey becomes a lot easier. On the contrary, when rush off without a plan or a purpose, it’s easy to get lost.

Here’s an easy way to define your blogging purposes. Write it down in a single sentence. If you have trouble with this little exercise, you haven’t yet arrived at a purpose. For example, here’s the purpose of this blog in one sentence: To teach business owners how to use blogs to get more business from the Web.

Can you define your blogging purpose in a sentence?

This marks the start of a new series dedicated to business blogging. This new series will consist of 100 articles built around blogging tips for business owners (i.e. those people who use their blogs for marketing or business communications).

If your blog is about kittens, then this article is not for you. However, if your blog is about your business, and your goal is to generate more business from your blogging efforts … then these blogging tips are aimed at you.

I’ll use this page as a compilation as well. Each time a new article is posted, I’ll link to it from this page. An ongoing chronicle of blogging tips and wisdom … or so I like to think.

Tip #1 - Define Your Blogging Purpose
For what reason will you publish your business blog? If you can’t answer this fundamental question, you have some homework to do. This article explains why.

Tip #2 - Put a Blog Plan on Paper
Before you start blazing forth in all of your blogging glory, try to figure out what you hope to accomplish with your blog and how you will work toward that goal.

Tip #3 - Choose the Best Writer
Who you choose to write your company blog is an important consideration, because the writer alone will determine the blog’s success or failure.