Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Why Blogging Makes Sense for Your Business

Blogging has been with us for some 10 years or so. These days anyone can easily set up a blog and start writing. So what benefit can this be to you and your business?

It's fresh content

Google loves content and especially fresh content. This will help your site's rankings and search results.

It's another marketing tool

Writing a blog gives you the opportunity to talk about your business and the products or services you offer.

Show your expertise

If you an expert in a particular area it allows you to share this expertise and knowledge with a wider audience.

Offer an opinion

Not all blogs postings will be purely about your business. You may have strong opinions on certain topics relating to your area of business that you wish to share. If there is an interest in your opinions there is the potential that they will be shared to other sites. Naturally this will lead lo links back to your site and should help the visibility of you site and business.

Link your blog to other social media.

Your blog postings can be easily shared on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social media. This gives you a potentially greater audience without having to do any further work.

So how do I do it?

There are three ways to do this. You can set up a blog on Blogger or Wordpress, two of the largest blog hosting websites. Both have free options. You can also install Wordpress on your own site and set it up yourself.

What next?

You need to start blogging. An initial post might just be an introduction to your business or to you. Try to make a list of areas you think you can talk about and see if they offer you any ideas. Also search for other blogs and see what they are talking about.

How long should my posts be?

This is a difficult question. It should be long enough to give some information but not too long so that your readers get bored. In general a post should be between 50-500 words. Over 500 words, even in a very interesting post, readers may move on to something else.

How often should I blog?

This is another $64,000 question. It can be anything from once a month to multiple posts a day. How often can you schedule time to write a blog posting? Many bloggers prefer once a week as it is easier to find time to write. Whatever you decide on you need to blog as this helps you to build an audience. As quickly as you gain readers it is hard to keep them if your blog is not updated regularly enough.

What If I can't write?

You can invite others you know who write blogs to be guest writers on your blog. You can also consider using a blog writing service. There are many such services which will provide you with new articles and blog posts.

Blogging can be personally very rewarding. It can also be a very good insight into you and your business for your readers. Blogging has the potential to reach a much larger online audience and that can only be good for your business.


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