The website for your business is up and running, you are starting to get traffic to your site, and you are making use of social media to promote your business. You know that some businesses have blogs, so you decide to create a blog for your business. You create a couple posts that are not very much different from the posts you write (or have written for you) on your Facebook, Twitter or Google+ accounts. This means that you do not get very many visitors to your blog and eventually you give up on updating it.
This is something that is easy to avoid.
Pay attention to appearance
You are going to want a blog that has some of the same design elements as your website. Use the same fonts and colors as for your site, and put your business logo and name in the header. If you also decide to monetize your blog, make sure that the ads don’t take up most of the room. Remember to use text that is readable and contrasts with the background.
Create engaging content
This is one of the harder parts--writing interesting, engaging content that is both entertaining and informative is actually extremely difficult. You want to create content that is both relevant to your business and interesting to the reader. Remember that you do not necessarily have to write only about your business. For example, if your business is a furniture store, you might consider writing about interior decorating.
A blog should not sound like a series of press releases. Readers of your blog want informative content, but they also want to be entertained. Write about the bird that flew into the shipping area or the stray cat that the office manager has been feeding. Arrange for guest posts and reblog content that you find interesting.
Foster interesting conversation
This involves responding to comments to your blog posts or otherwise drawing your readers into a conversation. Create posts that are specifically for answering reader questions, and directly ask your readers about the subjects that they want to see on the blog. In addition, follow other blogs that are relevant to the purpose of your own blog and comment on their posts. (Note: Please make sure your comments are actually relevant to the post. Don’t just comment to promote your own blog.)
Blogging can be a useful way to communicate with your customers and draw in new clientele. A good blog should be a balance between informative, promotional and entertaining. It should reflect the overall “personality” of your business, and foster a sense of interaction and community.
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