Blogging is a great way to grow your business. It adds credibility to your business, helps brand you and your business and creates the kind of community and authenticity prospects are craving.
People no longer care to do business with a nameless faceless entity; they want to know who they’re doing business with and what they’re about. A blog helps you accomplish this, thus building your awareness and customer base.
Here are a few tips and strategies to use blogging to grow your business.
#1 Blogging is a fine balance of information and entertainment – People do want to get to know you and your personality however only if it relates to helping them solve their problems. So too much information isn’t necessarily a good thing. For example, let’s say you have a niche specific coaching business and you coach stay at home moms who are trying to open their own business.
Your blog will ideally offer tips, strategies and advice on how to handle the struggles that those moms face. You can, and should, mix in stories that relate to the blog posts however, blogging about what you had for breakfast or how the date you went on last night didn’t go so well, isn’t relevant or helpful to your readers. So be personable and share stories as they relate to your business. Ask yourself if it benefits the reader, if it doesn’t, get rid of it.
#2 Blog frequently – A blog helps draw traffic because it’s updated frequently and thus can achieve a higher search engine ranking than your website. Yet if you only blog once a month not only are you short changing anyone who subscribed to your blog, you’re shortchanging yourself because the search engine results are going to suffer. The great thing about blogging is that you can write thirty posts in one sitting and then schedule them to be posted over the next thirty days; you don’t have to sit down every single day and write something. Find a posting schedule that works for you and also benefits your readers and the search engines, a minimum would be once a week.
#3 Be sure to link to your website – One of the advantages of a blog is that people often land there instead of your website, due to the search engine optimization features. If you want to drive traffic to your website home page, make sure there is at least one link to it.
#4 Have patience – It takes time to build up a following and for some it doesn’t really ever happen. Does that mean your blog isn’t working to help build your business? Absolutely not. Many people may read your blog posts without subscribing or commenting but if the information they found was helpful, they’ll be more likely to buy from you.
#5 Choose your blog host wisely – There are many blogging hosts, wordpress, blogger, typepad and so on. Compare the features and functions each offers before signing up and building your blog. WordPress offers a number of SEO features, tagging, analytics and so on and is very easy to use. If you’re on my personal mailing list then you’ll know that I’ve recently switched hosting companies.
The reason? I’m so sick and tired of dealing with garbly-gook talk. I wish hosting companies would just tell it to me in plain english, so I’ve opted to go with a wonderful company with an amazing support assistance. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to feel like the host is actually working WITH me not AGAINST me. I recently switched over to Reliable Webs, awesome people!
Blogging helps you build your business in other not so obvious was as well. You’ll learn what your audience likes to read and comment on. You’ll also learn more about what their problems are and how you can solve them and thus build your business. All in all, blogging is an exceptional way to connect to your audience, build traffic, and sales.
You can find out more about the new host I just swit hosting company here.
Great Tips….i will follow them.
These are some nice tips for the beginners. Nice that You want to help people blogging, not everyone would do that for free. And that is why I’m very glad that I had an ocassion to look at Your blog and read the article. Nice job.
Very good suggestions! I liked patience as a key factor. It takes time to build up any startup. Greatness comes with time and you often may “lose” a lot of money in the beginning in order to create an exceptional company.
Also, you must link to your website. Having one link is not sufficient, unless it is really obvious. You need to make readers aware of the website link, so they can actually see where the products and information you are introducing is coming from.
Lack of patience has always been my biggest downfall when it comes to blogging.. I tend to get frustrated when things don’t work out immediately and have to frantically fight the temptation to give up
I’m form South Africa and I have found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Look forward to reading more from you in the future. If you want you are more then welcome to visit my website by Googling (Mortgage Plus cc). Keep up the good work.
Morne Prinsloo
Really wonder.Blog is becoming more powerful tool for business promotion even blog itself is a business.Blog can add some sugar in your in the business.I am not a single blogger in the world who is earning more than salary from my blog.
So go ahead follow to writer’s advice and start your business or personal blog right now.
Writing and scheduling posts for the future is an excellent tip. The one downside of doing so is that you content isn’t always new or fresh. So when you write in advance make sure that you don’t limit yourself to those posts. If something newsworthy happens and you can make good connections and lessons from it, post!
Paitence is the tough part for me. It’s slow going building the kind of traffic we need.
Great list of blogging benefits! Maybe one more would be, if you can’t write well then have someone do it who can. You want to be careful about the image you project on your business.
great tips!
It is helpful to me.. i’m just starting a brand new blog.
With business blogging you get the benefit of providing updates to your consumers and staff without having to re-do an entire website. This will be an added advantage.
Great tips to grow business with blogging. Blogging is really helps to build business, brands & making money.
As far as the hosting issues, I do agree that you need to resolve those, and in my opinion.. you really need to do your research alot before you begin, because it can be alot of headache later on switch over to a new host, and I know from experience!
Till then,
Jean
Blogs do have a downside. Blogging does not provide the functionality of web pages, has limits for e-commerce solutions and can be time-consuming with regular posts. But with minimal costs, it maybe advantageous to start blogging
i’m going to start a blog right away. i never thought of blogs like they matter but after reading this, i think it’s time to do so. you can also place adsense on your blog to gain some revenue from it btw 🙂