5 Tips In Creating a Great Business Blog

It seems everyone wants to be a blogger nowadays but there is a big difference between a celebrity blog carrying adverts and endorsements, and a business blog which is run by a business to help spread news and information about the industry.

If you are looking to create a great business blog for your new start-up or for an established business, it’s important to understand a couple of key things before you start. A blog is not a news channel. Lots of companies use their blog either to report on company news, or to share industry news articles they have found online.

A blog should be much more than a news channel. It’s a communication tool and a way to give your company its own unique and authentic voice. It can set your business apart as an authority thought leader in your industry and the content you provide can help to drive traffic and potential customers to your website. A blog is a key tool in your marketing arsenal.

If you find yourself thinking of revamping your business blog, take these practical tips from our friends at Crunch.co.uk on how to create a great business blog.

1. What is your blog for?

Your blog needs to have a purpose. What do you want to achieve with your blog – start with your vision for the blog before you start trying to write one. Is it to increase sales, or is it to raise your business profile? Do you want the blog to be formal or funny, pictorial or video, is it going to be long or short. There are many decisions to be made about why you need a blog and what it’s for, before you sit down to write one.

2. Who is your blog for?

It’s important to identify the audience for your blog as you need to know who it is you are writing for. The audience will help you to define the content you are going to write about and the style you are going to write in.

You won’t want to write in a fun slang style about clothing trends, if your audience are men in their 50s who wear suits, for example. You need to know who is going to read so that you know what to write about.

3. Where will your blog be published?

You need to think about how people are going to get to see your blog – will it be published on your own website or on a separate blogging platform? Also, how are you going to share your blog with your audience? Are you going to share the blog posts on your social media platforms and if so, does that impact the type of style and content you are going to write about?

4. What are you going to write about

Once you know what your blog is for and the audience you want to read it, only then can you start to develop ideas for your content. The best way to do this is to develop a content calendar for the year ahead. This can include planned topics, key dates, anniversaries, campaigns, but also ideas for the type of content. You might go for a long in-depth blog one month, followed by a fun video blog, then a list blog, to keep it interesting for your readers.

There is nothing worse than sitting down to a blank screen when it comes to trying to write your blog so this way, having a content calendar means you will never have to face that problem as you will always have some kind of content in the pipeline.

5. Keep your blog updated

There is nothing worse than going to a company page and seeing a business blog which hasn’t been updated for months or even years sometimes. It makes the business look out of touch and lazy. If you aren’t going to keep up your blog then delete it.

But better still, once you commit to your blog make sure you write it regularly. It might be that you can only fit in one blog post every month, or every two months but as long as they are regularly posted it will not only look better for your business but it will help to keep your website SEO rankings higher as Google will acknowledge new content on the pages every time you add a new blog.

Conclusion

While creating a new business blog can seem like hard work it is worth creating one that works for your company as it can bring in new website traffic, raise your profile as a thought leader, boost your social media content and even help to raise your rankings on the search engines. A great business blog is far more than a way to share industry or business news with the world.