Business blogs are a fantastic tool to get more visitors to your website, market your products and services, and generate leads. An important aspect of blogging is writing consistently and publishing solid content. The focus of your blog should be on the benefits that your solution offers, helpful information and resources, and also news and updates relevant to the industry you serve.
There are easy-to-use blog platforms, like WordPress, that make a blog easy to implement and manage. Once you make the decision to blog, it will be to your advantage to learn about the seven common mistakes that many business blogs make, so you can avoid them.
1. Forgetting that Aesthetics and Usability Matter
Looks do count; especially if it makes your blog easier to use or more engaging to viewers. Your blog should permeate both professionalism, as well as simplicity, as not to overwhelm viewers. Your blog should be developed and crafted with your ideal prospect or customer in mind. With the popularity of blogging platforms, such as WordPress, it’s easy to find a good looking theme that will take care of this aspect. If you’re looking for ideas, take a look at other blogs that are either in related industries or in your own industry. But be sure to keep it simple, as it usually works best when your viewers are focusing on your message, not confused by the layout. And if you’re using a designer to incorporate brand elements, be sure to give your blog a look that’s consistent with your primary website.
2. Becoming a Distraction
Your company blog should support and send traffic to your main website. Since your primary site should be the final destination, don’t turn your blog into a deterrent by making it a distraction. The blog should be used to generate referral traffic to your site and boost your businesses credibility by showcasing expertise at the blog. It can be easy to get carried away and turn your whole site into a blog, but it’s important to let each play their part.
3. Going Off Topic
Small tangents are okay sometimes, but resist the temptation to go too far off topic when writing for your blog. Writing in a more conversational tone sometimes causes this to happen, but stay on topic and focused on what your audience is looking for.
4. Making It About You
Your blog is serving a purpose to attract and give your prospects what they want or need, so don’t try to stroke your own ego too much at your blog. This goes back to writing in a conversational tone. You certainly want to give some personality to the blog’s tone, but don’t allow that to drive too much focus on yourself and your business alone. Your audience will visit and return to the blog for the value it provides to them and making the content too promotional and self-serving can kill the interest that good and valuable content creates.
5. Not Spreading the Word
Blog promotion is arguably more important than your blog’s content, since it’s only serving your audience and you when there are visitors. If you have a business blog, then you don’t want to keep it to yourself. It’s important for you to promote it. Be sure to spread the word and your latest posts via your social media profiles and email. If you’re not spreading the word of your blog, there’s little chance it will be effective.
6. Allowing it to Become a Ghost Town
Success with blogging requires consistency and effort — there’s no way around this. Knowing this upfront might help you determine if blogging will work for you. In a world of information overload, your visitors will only keep coming back if the content is useful to them, and if there’s nothing new, there’s no reason to return.
7. Not Monitoring Comments
A blog is meant to be a conversation. The engagement and interaction that can take place on a blog is part of its attraction. Its purpose is to be a dialogue between you and your customers So unlike a static website, it allows customers and prospects to engage with your business through conversations. This conversation will flow through commenting. And while it’s a great idea to use comment moderation to filter spam, you have to be attentive and quick to approve and interact with comments that are left for the conversation to happen. Be sure to get back to feedback promptly so that your potential customers know you value their comments.
If blogging sounds like a lot of writing work, remember that you can always hire writers, tackle writing by committee with others on your team, or by allowing guest bloggers to provide content.