Have you been hired to blog for a business, or are you getting ready to undertake that task for your own company? There are certain “must haves” in this realm that may not have applied to your personal blog. If your business blog isn’t driving business up and forward, it’s a waste of your time and efforts. Remember that a business blog needs to align with your company branding in order to be effective.
There are many reasons your company should be blogging according to Social Media Examiner, but how do you know you’re doing it right? With each blog, make sure they follow the below rules and you’ll enjoy optimal results:
- A reasonable word count
Assuming your blog is text based (you can also go video or image-based if you want a Tech Crunch-esque viral video), remember that people unfortunately don’t like reading much these days. Chunks of text will turn them off. Shoot for a word count between 450 and 600 words with plenty of white space. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than four sentences per paragraph.
- Stop pitching
A blog has one or two goals: To inform, entertain or both. This isn’t a platform for your sales pitch. It’s supposed to draw readers in, engage them, and hopefully get a conversation rolling in the comments section. If you get to that point, you might also need a blog moderator (which can also be the blogger) to make sure there’s nothing fishy going on in the comments.
- Outreach
You can have the best blog in the world, but it’s useless if it’s not getting read. You should always link appropriately to your social media site, engage in link sharing with complementary (but not competitive) blogs, and generally show pride in your growing blog. Engage, engage, engage needs to be your mantra if you’d like your blog to take off.
- Insert links that matter
Your blogs should have between two and four links each, and ideally you should be linking back to other blogs you’ve posted (but don’t force it). Make sure the links not only make sense, but build on your posting. Remember that if you link to any site besides yours, you’re encouraging your readers to leave your blog, so do this carefully.
It can take weeks or even months for your blog to garner readers who actually comment. Blog regularly and don’t give up.
1 Comments on "4 Things Every Business Blog Needs"
This is great advice and nice summary. I especially like number four. This is absolutely true that links not only make sense but build on your posting.