Business Blogging: The Basics
Here at Masterlink Interactive, we eagerly encourage all of our clients to integrate a regularly-updated blog into their Internet marketing strategy.
Think of it like a fountain of information targeted at your clients and customers. Basically, your blog should just be a section of your website devoted to regularly updated posts of information (like, of course, the one you’re reading right now) like advice, announcements, and updates. A company blog is a great place for all sorts of information, including:
- News announcements
- Promotions and discounts
- Product launches
- Educational spotlights for products and services
- Tutorials, how-tos, and FAQs
- Any other timely or relevant info that doesn’t have a natural place anywhere else on your site.
It’s simply an ideal platform to communicate the messages you want to spread. So—especially in this modern digital marketing age—a corporate blog is a smart investment for two primary reasons:
Client and Customer Connections
A blog can help cultivate lasting relationships with your customers in several ways:
- Adds a human face—or multiple human faces, if you make blogging a company-wide team effort—which humanizes your brand, and lets customers and clients connect in a little deeper way.
- Gives your customers a chance to respond to posts with questions and complaints, or join the discussion. This makes them feel valued and validated, and makes it easier for you to develop a nuanced understanding of customer/client concerns and needs.
- Creates space to address customer concerns in advance, that wouldn’t otherwise have a natural place on your website. Customers appreciate this intuition.
- Creates incentive for customers and clients to return to your website. When regularly updated, your customers and clients will know to check in for information they care about. In fact, if your blog develops a reputation among your customers as a place to get discounts, it will give them an incentive to check back over and over again. This increases exposure to all your other products and services, and gives a chance to connect with them in other ways via the blog.
- Highlights your company as flexible and responsive to the ever-evolving worlds of your customers.
Search Engine Success
Search engines simply love small business blogs. The blogs build links (when another site posts a link to an excellent post you wrote, the search engines take that as a sign that your blog is respectable, and worthy of a prominent spot in the search results). They’re loaded with keywords and phrases (the terms that the searchers are using in Google, Bing, or Yahoo to find your site). And they keep your site fresh (search engines appreciate active sites more than stale sites)
The need for search engine optimization is a frustrating reality for many businesses, who don’t want to spend time focusing on it. Blogging is a great, fun way to feed the search engines, without sacrificing quality or alienating your customers with awkward, clunky search engine-oriented content.
How often you update the blog is, of course, up to you. But we recommend to all of our clients that they update at least once a month, and regularly, to keep site visitors checking in. Give one of our Dallas Internet marketing experts a call. We can help you develop a blog that works.
3 Comments
CatherineMarch 30th, 2011 at 12:50 pm
How often should you Blog?
Kimber CookMarch 30th, 2011 at 2:35 pm
Catherine, I would say you should blog as often as you can commit to blogging. Don’t go all gung ho and start blogging daily only to fizzle out of ideas and stop altogether. You want to make sure you set a regular schedule and stick to it so your readers can know when to expect new content from you.
Good luck with your blogging!
Peter MartyMay 4th, 2011 at 8:41 pm
@Catherine I agree with Kimber that you really do have to be consistent as to when you post. A very well written and thorough article on the topic of blog posting frequency and scheduling of, was recently posted on Smashing Magazines’ blog. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/30/the-importance-of-consistency-using-editorial-calendars-and-style-guides/
@Kady On a separate note… I have heard opposing arguments as to whether it is beneficial or harmful to your business/organizations’ branding and recognizeability to thematically keep the blog site design the same as the website design or have it be different. I was wondering what your thoughts were on this as I noticed that Master Link’s website is a completely different design and feel from that of their blog and Twitter design. I am also currently working on designing a blog and am asking because I would personally like to create something which is different than my website.