With blogging taking on a new look every day, the purpose and the use of blogs has changed to a very great extent. Initially blogging was a online tool that helps you maintain an online journal but today things have changed so much that business and websites are powered by blogging platforms. There are so many tools and apps available today that the purpose of a Successful Business Blog has changed altogether.
From my experience blogging is a form of online marketing. Its something businesses and individuals use to promote and market their products online.
This post is a simple yet effective five step guide to build a business blog.
Be Authentic
Authenticity is the key to building a online community. When readers trust you they tend to engage in conversations. Do not lie or fake details about what you talk online. As a business blog, you talk about things that are happening, what’s working for you and what’s not. Do not falsify information. If you readers find out the truth. They are most likely not going to visit your blog again and are most likely to spread the word that your not legitimate My best advice is to follow the simple rule of Keep It Simple Stupid.
Write To Your Readers
Understand your readers, know what they want and why they visit your blog. If your a product based company, you readers might be looking for either, additional info on products, support, accessories, suggestions, offers and much more. So keep your readers in mind when you write a blog. This way you are most likely to have happy readers as they get all the info they need. Avoid talking about irrelevant topics and keep to your line of work.
Ask For Feedback
One of the best ways to know what you readers want and to know what they think of you is to ask for feedback. Be a new product feedback or requirements for a new project a blog works wonders with your community. Run a survey, giveaway prizes and discount codes to people who answer your survey. I am sure that you get the point now as to how you can build up on your blog and make it better.
Don’t Be Offensive
As a business blogs, its your responsibility to keep your brand in mind and maintain a certain level of standard. This is generally expected of from a customer who purchases from you. If you are a company that is going to offensive/controversial a blog is not really going to work for you. People are most likely going to avoid what you have to say or offer.
Have Fun Blogging
The most important part of all this is to keep it fun and not become stiff about blogging. Even though its business its still blogging. Write with the joy and happiness of blogging and not just writing for business, you are most likely to become boring if your not having fun blogging. From my experience I tend to bore my readers as well if I am not having fun. This is because if your not having fun, you indirectly tend to have an impact on your writing and that in turn effect your readers.
As a business I hope that you will find this post useful and improvise on my findings. If you enjoyed reading and found this post useful, appreciate it if you can Tweet about it and share it on Facebook.
About Eddie Gear
I do not have what I would consider a successful blog so I might not be a best one to answer this question, but I think that my failure to produce made me have a pretty good idea what makes one blog successful. First, the standard advice you listed in your question still apply. It’s what makes a mediocre blog moderately successful. Actually, that’s pretty much where I am at the moment, except for the regular posting part… Now, in my opinion, besides blind luck, there are two things that make any blog a success. One is originality. If you want your blog to succeed, it really *must* be unique! There has to be something that will make everybody who visits your blog exclaim in delight! Your main topic does not need to be unique, but your writing style, your design, your ideas… they must be special! You must offer your visitors incredible value for their time. The other thing is the audience. If your blog is so unique and original but it is interesting only for a 100 people in the entire world, it’s obvious that it can not be so successful. If your blog can appeal to a wide audience, if it is truly unique and stands out from a zillion similar blogs, with a little promotion, it will become a success! I hope that you will manage to reach those two objectives!
Elijah, Success is what you define. If you say there are only 100 people who read about the topic your writing about, Then if you are able to get the attention of those 100 people then you are successful in your space. These are the basic principles that make a business blog successful. THere are hundreds and thousands of tips and suggestions marketers and bloggers can provide based on the type, location and various other classifications.
When I was a kid, every businessman worth their salt was after developing their speaking skills. Today, it’s all about writing. You reach more people writing a blog than speaking to a room full of people.
Times sure have changed, hasn’t it?
Yes Jim, Actually speaking skills are just as important as your writing skills today. I tell you this because your writing comes to play only if your a web business. However in the real world if you wanna network and also build reputation you need to know to speak well.
Hi Eddie,
It has been a while since I chatted with you. Being kinda hectic with my wedding and all. Now I am glad to be blogging a bit again.
I think I am guilty of not writing to my readers enough. Looking at my many posts, I can see that a lot of time, I have focused on what I know and not what my readers want to know. Would you have some ideas to generate ideas for finding out what our readers would like to know?
I like to treat myself as a consumer and simply ask what will I want to ask if I am a consumer? I do come up with some good ideas. But beside this, what else?
Cheers
Congrats on your Wedding Jimmy. One of the simplest ways to find out what your readers are looking for is to look at your Google Analytic dashboard. Simply check out the keywords that visitors used to come to your site. That will tell you what type of information that people are looking for on the web. Once you have that you can build on related keywords.
My Gosh, Eddie. How could I have missed that. I will get right to it.
Cheers
As a marketer in charge of our business blog these tips were dead on.
Great job you’ve done here. I especially agree with the part about having fun. Business blogs sometimes feel that because they are a business they can’t have a personality. They think that they have to be dry and stick to business.
But, I’ve found that some of our business’ most successful posts have been the ones where we went with a more personal, photo centered, or humor driven post.
I never got any flack from readers and we often saw these posts get shared in the thousands.
Love it,
Bryce
Bryce, Its good to see you back commenting, I’ve been very busy with my new role as a social media analyst as well. I hope things are going great for you. Yes. I also strongly agree with the point business blogs tend to become very boring to even read updates from after a point. Its important that the blogger has fun and ensure that the posts are creative.
Totally, unfortunately I am at the will of others for how much commenting time I’m allowed. With recent developments I have become a much more valuable person to the whole team in general and our company. It’s keeping me busy and involved in everything behind the business.
Hope I can be around more soon.
Bryce
Hello there,
As I mentioned in another post of your blog, I am really new to the blogging world. My blog is one month old. I still try to learn how the whole thing works and I try to read as many articles as I can to learn and apply better. I appreciate the tips you give in this posts and I try to apply them in my blog…maybe it is too early to have an outcome. Thank you very much for the information.
Lenia, Appreciate your feedback and comments here. I am glad to help bloggers around the world to set up and establish themselves, If there is any suggestions or help you need, drop me a note and I will do my best to help you out.
One word of advice would be to do one thing at a time.
When you get to read others blog post, you learn a lot from it and integrate those to your writing style.