Business blogging is one sense blogging – obviously – but perhaps it would be better thought of as marketing. At any rate, this is why countless companies engage in the activity; it is a proven method of increasing interest in the company, raising brand awareness, growing leads and, ultimately,increasing sales.
Business blogging offers consumers a panoramic view of the industry, allowing them to make more informed consumer choices. Moreover, if your business is the one offering this advice, it is more than likely your products and services will appeal.
However, it should be noted that business blogging is sometimes a passion or a primary source of income for certain online endeavors. There are business blogs with no commercial dimension save perhaps the blog itself. And a good business blog is certainly a lot more than a load of marketing material for a specific brand. Follow that route, and you can be sure to alienate readers before long.
That’s not to say that you can’t promote your brand, but the best way to think about a successful business blog is one which is valuable in its own right. You create a good and useful business blog, then you nestle your own promotion within it. That way, you provide a useful service, and your blog also works as effective marketing material.
But of course, this can be a tricky balance to strike.
The Benefits of Business Blogging
Here are a few of the reasons why business blogging is good. These will set out, in a bit more detail, precisely why you should do it.
Boost Your Online Visibility
If you just sell products and services, you just attract thoseinterested in such products or services. If you do that and have a business blog attached to your website, then you attract those interested in your topics. Now consider that that latter group will be exposed to your products and brand identity – it’s easy to see how they could become customers in time.
Customer Education
Naturally, anything worth reading will educate you in some way, but what customer education more often refers to is affording your customers – and potential customers – the knowledge and expertise needed to get the most out of your products and services. That’s good for business, and so too is giving your readers an idea of why your company is the one to go with.
Tips for Business Blogging
Design Right
There are a few web design requisites for an ecommerce site – things that simply work in most cases. There are also many that make a blog more attractive and readable. Azola Creative, experts in website design services with offices in Jacksonville and San Francisco,say that integrating the two is realizing what works for product descriptions and what works for blogs. After a while, an index is a good move.
Choose the Right Topics
But what are those? Well, we mentioned above the importance of striking a balance between genuinely useful industry information and topics more specific to your brand. Here’s an example: if you sell, say, vacuum cleaners, articles on cleaning tips will promote your product but they will also be useful to most people.
Mix Topical and Evergreen Posts
Topical posts are those that capitalize on hot topics.For example, a no-brainer here would be an article on the new iPhone for a technical blog. You can think of such posts as giving you more of an immediate return. An evergreen post, however, is one that is relevant months or even years after it has been written. These posts reward you over time. You should include both.
And that’s the value of business blogging – value for discerning consumers, and value for you too.